1.What makes a successful farmer?

2.South African wine industry cuts grape crop forecast

3.Climate change: What will we be able to grow in another 40 years?

4.Uganda bumper maize harvest depresses prices

5.Dry spell cuts 11 percent of Zimbabwe maize crop

6.Aluminum-tolerant sorghum cloned

7.Dutch companies to invest in biofuel programs in Mali

8.Jatropha cultivar optimized for growing conditions in Guatamala launched

9.Crop gene-modification technology continues to spread despite controversy

10.Libya-South Africa farm deal awaits investment protection agreement

11.Floods destroy crops in South Africa

12.Grain silos to be constructed in South Africa's Eastern Cape province

13.Land reform deals struggle in South Africa's Eastern Cape province

14.Former wonder crop Jatropha gets a brand new life through biotechnology

15.Monsanto fights its 'bad boy' public image

16.Mozambique: The costs of biofuel

17.Kenyan flower farms around lake face closure over pollution fears

18.Cannabis trumps rice as cash crop in Sierra Leone

 

What makes a successful farmer?

by Guy Scott

Many years ago I read the first of a number of papers by various researchers addressed to the question: why do different farmers get different crop yields under essentially identical conditions? The author was an agricultural economist who had found himself amongst a group of farmers arguing about this very topic.

Many were the theories advanced by the farmers, as I recall. So-and-so uses more fertiliser, or better fertiliser; Such-and-such ploughs deeper, Van has inherited better soil; and so on. Our man studied the problem in depth for the duration of a season and discovered the truth; a truth that has been confirmed and reconfirmed many times since. Success in agriculture is essentially a matter of temperament, translating into crop yields through an accumulation of small errors (or a lack of errors) caused by an insufficiency (or sufficiency) of obsessive carefulness.

A maize crop, which is what was studied in the original paper, is “processed” by the farmer in about ten stages. These are (with minor variations): ploughing or ripping; seedbed preparation (harrowing); basal fertiliser application; seed placement (planting); early weed control (whether by chemicals or mechanically); top-dressing fertiliser application; late weed control; pest identification and control; control of theft and assorted forms of depletion of the crop; harvesting. Now what our researcher found was this: that small imperfections in the execution of any of these operations caused a measurable reduction in yield.

He also found, of course, that the reductions are cumulative; and that even a quite careful (but not a very-very careful) farmer could take, say, a five percent “hit” on average at each stage. If you have ever looked after a crop from inception to harvest it is very easy to imagine this. Murphy’s law, sometimes called Sod’s law, will see to it that the plough or ripper takes the opportunity to “ride” through the soil, failing to loosen it to sufficient depth.

There will also be some error in the distribution and depth of planting of seed, regardless of whether you are doing it mechanically or by hand (you have only got to look at a few fields of maize to find some where the lines wave around, if hand planted, or even go blank for some distance where the mechanical planter got clogged or ran out of seed). Fertiliser placement is actually a difficult business; it is all very well saying “I have put 200 kg of compound “D” on this hectare”; yes, but have you put 5 grams on every single one quarter of a square meter? Or is it 6 grams here, 4 grams there? (in which case you have lost easily 5 percent of yield).

A lack of a sense of danger easily translates into insect damage (especially when the crop is very small) before the threat is identified and addressed; a lack of a sense of urgency easily translates into slightly late weed control, easily driving down crop yield potential by five percent. And so on: there is almost no point at which a moderately good farmer cannot have done better and saved himself the five percent commission taken by imperfect execution.

Now five percent taken at ten successive stages does not simply add up to 50 percent, since each cut is taken from a crop that has been reduced by previous cuts. Nonetheless, 10 successive reductions of 5 percent each time takes the crop down by 40 percent – reducing a “perfect” yield potential of, say, seven tonnes (depending on the weather) to around four tonnes.

If you are paying full whack for your inputs and receiving normal kinds of price for your product, this is your profit gone! Meanwhile, your next door neighbour, who has no obvious advantage over you, has indeed gone and produced the full seven tonnes, three of which are pure profit! Is he some kind of a witch? No, but he is some kind of an obsessive; ask his wife and she will tell you: “He only ever talks about his mealies, not even rugby interests him.”

A five percent average level of yield loss at each stage is easily achieved; and it is not too hard to imagine farmers or would-be “farmers” who hit the ten percent level. For a ten-stage crop this cuts the yield by two thirds. I estimate that in my kitchen garden (which I leave to the guys to manage) the attrition rate at each stage averages close to 15 percent. This makes a total of an 80 percent yield loss…..

The effect of a given level of yield loss is worse the more “modern” the cropping system. Modern agriculture, as introduced during the green revolution, tends to be very heavy on inputs (fertiliser, chemical, hybrid seed), on financing costs, and on capital and overheads. But yields can be staggering. The system is described as high-input-high-output in economic terms. The potential profits are high but they represent the difference between two high numbers and the ratio of profit to total revenue is not necessarily very high. Certainly, if you knocked 40 percent of the yield off each year’s yield, you would send any commercial farmer into the deadly spiral of fisherman, big game hunter and, ultimately, newspaper columnist.

Sustainable agriculture for small farmers in Zambia essentially has to be low-input-low-output. Thus sweet potatoes or cassava, for example, are ideal crops is suitable areas since they “hate” inputs other than quite a lot of labour. The profit margin is high and easily survives five or even ten percent attrition. The smallholder hybrid maize industry in Zambia, whose roots are deeply political, survives only because of heavy subsidies on the input side. The yield reductions experienced by most farmers are tolerable only because the cost of production is kept down (and the price kept up) to overcome the imperfections in the production process.

Even then, many producers go further and spread the fertiliser more thinly than the theoretical optimum because they instinctively know that the so-called optimum is not appropriate given the process of creeping losses than I have just described.

What makes a very successful farmer? It is a question that has taxed observers for millennia. On the one hand, the job description demands many feminine qualities; after all, much of a farmer’s time is taken up obsessively (that word again) nurturing and protecting baby plants and animals. He can talk as tough as he likes, but he cannot deny his track-record as a midwife and wet nurse to various delicate life-forms.

But at the same time agriculture is a very violent and thus masculine activity – though the immediate signs of the violence may have vanished by the time you come upon the scene. The farmer is a destroyer of forests to make fields, and of all forms of wildlife that may threaten his selected plants and animals.( Think of the Amazon rainforest!) He is also, historically, and unlike the hunting-gathering peoples, a maker of systematic and large scale wars to protect or steal the fruit of his or others’ labours.

The Post

South African wine industry cuts grape crop forecast

by Mkhululi Mancotywa

South African Wine Industry Information and Systems cut its forecast for the country’s wine grape crop by 62,000 metric tons from last month’s estimate because of weather-related damage to vineyards.

South Africa will probably harvest 1.24 million tons of wine grapes this year, 6.5 percent less than in 2009, the producer group said in its third estimate of the crop in an e- mailed statement today. Wine stocks of producers and private cellars will fall to 253 million liters at the end of this year from 337.2 million liters (89 million gallons) at the end of 2009, the report said.

“Sunburn, wind and heat damage combined with a shortage of irrigation water” contributed to the crop losses, the group said.


BusinessWeek

Climate change: What will we be able to grow in another 40 years?

Temperatures seem set to soar to perilously high levels because of climate change. In another 40 years, would maize still be the staple food in Kenya, already hit by five failed rainy seasons? If not, what could people grow and eat? And if you could grow maize, how much water and fertilizer would it need?
If you live in the remote semi-arid Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda - beset by 14 droughts in 25 years - you might also want to know what your options are for continued food security.

For the first time, a customized regional climate model linked to crop growing and water models, run on a supercomputer at Michigan State University (MSU), will help provide crop breeders in three East African countries - Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania - with detailed answers on crop yields.

Many research institutions have been working on models to predict the impact of climate change on food production in Africa, but in a few months the MSU model will help scientists and breeders to zoom in at a regional level on the possible impact of climate change on a wide variety of crops in these countries.

The research could help produce climate-resilient varieties of food crops, said Jennifer Olson, lead researcher and associate professor at MSU's College of Communication Arts and Sciences.

"East Africa is already experiencing the impact of climate change - food crops are experiencing extreme water stress," she commented. People living in Kenya's highlands, who have traditionally grown tea and coffee, have begun experimenting with maize and beans as the climate has grown warmer.

Work on the model began 10 years ago with the recording of relevant data, such as the impact of nutrients on a certain food crop, or the impact of water stress on another, which were subsequently fed into the model. "The model is still being perfected," said Olson.

The model can experiment with the impact of climate change, such as high temperature and water stress on a certain crop variety, saving the time that would have been spent on field trials, "which will help speed up the agricultural research cycle", she noted.

The researchers intend to launch the model at a workshop in June. Concern about increasing food insecurity in East Africa has prompted two institutions to set up a research grants to encourage innovative solutions.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), based in South Africa, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, announced a US$10.67 million grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) to support the establishment of a multidisciplinary competitive funding mechanism for biosciences in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

ILRI's Bruce Scott said they would be looking for innovative solutions using bioscience to improve crop resilience to climate change, or perhaps to improve the shelf-life of a food product.


IRIN

Uganda bumper maize harvest depresses prices

by Elias Biryabarema

Uganda's maize production rose an estimated 30 percent in 2009 from a year earlier, boosted by a wider use of fertilizer and high-yielding seeds, a government official said on February 24.

The bumper harvest has swamped local markets, causing a slump in prices and distress among farmers who say prevailing prices barely cover their production costs. A kilogramme of maize trades at an average of 300 shillings, down from a high of 700 shillings in 2008 and early 2009.

Traditionally, maize has not been a major cash crop for the east African economy but it has gained popularity and exports to neighbours South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya have grown.

Opolot Okasai, commissioner for crop resources in the Ministry of Agriculture, said Uganda was expected to have produced between 1.6 to 1.8 million tonnes last year, up from 1.26 million tonnes in 2008. "Last year an increased number of farmers used fertilizer and, through government extension services, they were also supplied with high-yielding seeds," he said, adding that data was still being collected to produce a precise output figure.

Although rains were poor in most areas in the first half of 2009, they were favourable in the last quarter of the year when much of the crop was produced, he said.

Uganda's domestic corn consumption stands at an estimated 1.1 million tonnes.

"That was certain to happen," Okasai said. "These farmers planted good seeds and used fertilizer and made a good harvest which inevitably had to overwhelm demand."

President Yoweri Museveni has directed the ministries of finance and agriculture to mobilise funds to buy the excess produce and stabilise prices.

The increase in food production has, however, helped bring down inflation. A significant drop in staple food prices slowed Uganda's inflation rate to 8.8 percent in January, the first single digit rate since April 2008.

Okasai also said the government was in the process of working with the private sector to establish strategic grain reserves in each of the country's main regions. Uganda has no such reserves at the moment.

Reuters

Dry spell cuts 11 percent of Zimbabwe maize crop

by MacDonald Dzirutwe

Zimbabwe's government has declared 11 percent of its 2009/10 planted maize crop a write-off after it was badly damaged by a dry spell, and repeated calls for urgent imports, an official report showed.

Farmers had also increased the maize area to 1.7 million hectares from 1.5
million hectares in the previous season, boosted by better availability of
inputs after the formation of a new unity government that raised prospects
of economic recovery, the crop assessment report showed on February 24. It did not give estimates of maize production.

Zimbabweans had hoped for an end to food shortages that have gripped the
country since 2001 but most crops in southern and eastern Zimbabwe had been
destroyed by a prolonged dry spell, with the remaining crop being said to be
in fair condition.

The country needs to urgently import 500,000 tonnes of maize to avert
shortages, the report said, echoing calls by Agriculture Minister Joseph
Made earlier in February. That would formerly have been the equivalent of Zimbabwe's strategic grain reserve, but the country has not had a stockpile for more than a decade.

The southern African nation is battling to end food shortages that have been
blamed largely on President Robert Mugabe's drive to seize white-owned
commercial farms to resettle black people. The veteran leader blames drought
and sanctions.

The report also showed that the government and foreign aid agencies had
greatly improved availability of fertiliser and seed, in a break with the
past where farmers have failed to access farming inputs.

"We recommend emergency food relief programmes to areas affected by crop
failure (and) mobilisation of resources for both 2010 winter and summer
cropping should start now," it said.

The 2010/11 summer season starts in October.

The government will carry out a second assessment at the end of March, which is expected to give estimates of maize output.

But farmers' groups have already warned the country may need to import half
its maize needs because of the crop failure. Zimbabwe's annual maize
consumption is 2.2 million tonnes.

Reuters

Aluminum-tolerant sorghum cloned

by Krishna Ramanujan

Cornell University researcher Leon Kochian, in collaboration with Brazilian scientists, has cloned a unique sorghum gene that is being used to develop sorghum lines that can withstand toxic levels of aluminum in the soil, a consequence of acidic soils.

Acidic soils limit crop production in half the world's potentially arable land, mostly in developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America, said Kochian. He hopes that the research will one day help farmers in developing countries significantly boost their crop production and better help feed the hungry.

Kochian, Cornell adjunct professor of plant biology and director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture--Agricultural Research Service Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health at Cornell, described the work on identifying and characterizing an aluminum tolerance gene in certain lines of sorghum and using molecular breeding techniques to introduce this gene into lines used for sorghum breeding in Africa, on Feb. 20 at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego.

In his talk, "Fighting Fire With Fire: Plants Tolerate Acid Soils by Releasing Organic Acids," presented at the Getting to the Roots of Agricultural Productivity Symposium, Kochian said that he and Jurandir Magalhaes, Ph.D. '02, of the Embrapa Maize and Sorghum lab in Brazil, started this project for Magalhaes' Ph.D. research at Cornell in Kochian's lab. He added that they have also found evidence for a number of variants of this tolerance gene that underlies the wide variation in sorghum aluminum tolerance.

Aluminum tolerance is found in a small number of sorghum varieties, he said, where this gene encodes a novel membrane transporter protein in the root tip that mediates the release citric acid into the soil when the roots are exposed to aluminum. The citric acid binds aluminum ions and prevents the toxic metal from entering the roots.

Since Kochian and colleagues have identified this gene, they have found evidence for other genes that also play a role in aluminum tolerance, he said. In work led by Magalhaes, the researchers introduced the region of the sorghum genome that harbors their aluminum tolerance gene from a number of tolerant sorghum lines into a common breeding line that is aluminum sensitive. When they did this, a significant degree of the tolerance in the donor line was lost, which strongly suggests that other genes are also needed for full expression and function of their aluminum tolerance gene.

Kochian and Magalhaes are also collaborating with sorghum breeders in Africa to generate genetic markers that will allow them to identify the best versions of their aluminum tolerance gene in African sorghum lines. These same markers will then be used to improve sorghum aluminum tolerance in Africa via molecular breeding techniques.

Kochian's lab has also used this information from sorghum to identify the first aluminum tolerance gene in maize, and in collaboration with Embrapa, similar molecular genetic approaches are being used to improve maize tolerance on acidic soils.

PhysOrg

Dutch companies to invest in biofuel programs in Mali

by Rachel Pollock

Dutch automaker Kia Netherlands recently announced that it would be investing in Mali Biocarburant SA (MBSA), a Dutch-backed biodiesel program in Mali. This investment allows for Kia automobile owners to participate in a voluntary carbon tax program, which will benefit jatropha production in Mali. The Dutch government as well as the Malian farmer’s union also supports the program.

Jatropha curcas is a poisonous plant that grows abundantly in Africa, Central and South America, Asia, and the Caribbean. The plant can cohabitate with other crops such as coffee, sugar, fruit, and vegetables and is already being used by farmers to protect their pre-existing crops from animals and insects. The seeds from a Jatropha plant can be crushed to produce oil that can be used in a standard diesel car and the remaining residue can be used to power electricity plants and also used as fertilizer. Jatropha can grow in areas where the environment is arid and the soil has experienced erosion, therefore, a place like Mali is the perfect candidate to cultivate jatropha as biofuel.

Since 2007, Jatropha has been recognized by several Dutch organizations to be a viable source of biofuel. However, it was not until recently that projects aimed at jatropha production were able to be implemented and show their impacts on the rural communities. Wind Energy for Mali, a small organization based in the Netherlands has set up workshops in mid-December to teach Malians how to build turbines and to educate the rural communities about energy alternatives and sustainable fuel. Piet Willem Chevalier, who is the founder of the organization, told MediaGlobal, “Mali has abundant renewable energy resources that can be used to make a relevant difference for access to affordable electricity in especially rural areas, which, until now, has been absent.”

Mali Biocarburant is a private company aimed at setting up sustainable decentralized biodiesel processors in West Africa. Hugo Verkuijl, who is the CEO of Mali Biocarburant, said, “Farmers are 20 percent shareholders in the company. We have a strategy of local production, processing, and consumption.”

Unlike other sources of biofuel, Jatropha production poses little threat to the local agriculture production and food security. It also offers the most practical advantages for the local farmer and the environment. Verkuijl told MediaGlobal, ”[Jatropha biofuel] allows farmers to produce food and also to reduce soil erosion, increase soil fertility, and increase yield of food crops.”

Verkuijl said, “Biofuel is sold at a competitive price, which is about 10 percent lower than the pump price of ordinary fuel.” The recent integration of biofuel has provided jobs and supplemental income for farmers utilizing land that was otherwise futile. The Jatropha oil is produced in Koulikoro with a field staff of 60 and works with over 5,000 farmers in Mali and Burkina Faso.

Furthermore, large-scale projects like the 15-year electrification program of Mali-Folkcenter in Garalo have been set up in small villages to bring electricity to communities that lack the technology and financial means. In May of 2007, special generators were installed to run on jatropha oil. Ultimately, the project aims to set up 1,000 hectares of jatropha plantations to provide oil for a 300 kilowatt power plant, thus providing electricity for 10,000 people in the Garalo community.

In regards to the environment, the jatropha tree reduces carbon emission. According to Biocarburant, biodiesel produces less carbon fossil fuel by about 73 percent. Furthermore, the waste left over from the jatropha seed can be used to make charcoal rather than the usual method of burning down trees.

The jatropha plant has many advantages when it comes to both the economic impact on the local Malian communities and sustainable energy alternatives for the rest of the world. Communities cultivating jatropha seed in Mali are serving as and example to companies looking to invest in these alternatives and replicate projects like those in small Malian communities. India, Brazil, Swaziland and the Philippines are among the countries, which foreign companies are looking to invest in the future.

Media Global

Jatropha cultivar optimized for growing conditions in Guatamala launched

SG Biofuels announced the launch of JMax 100, a proprietary cultivar of Jatropha optimized for growing conditions in Guatemala.

JMax 100 is the first "elite" cultivar developed through the company's JMax Jatropha Optimization Platform. The platform provides growers and plantation developers with access to high-yielding Jatropha, the sequenced genome and advanced biotech and synthetic biology tools to develop cultivars designed for their unique growing conditions.

JMax 100 is intended to increase the profitability of Jatropha to greater than $400 per acre. Company sources say the cultivar provides yields up to 100 percent greater than existing varieties. The SG Biofuels Genetic Resource Center contains over 6,000 unique accessions of Jatropha.

"JMax 100 is the tip of the iceberg in the development of Jatropha as a renewable energy crop," said Kirk Haney, President and Chief Executive Officer of SG Biofuels. "While Guatemala now has a significant head-start, we anticipate continued advancements through the JMax platform that will further enhance the productivity and profitability of Jatropha for growers around the world."

SG Biofuels will work with a select group of partners and collaborators to optimize JMax for region-specific planting through the establishment of in-region technology centers. In addition to its work in Guatemala, the company says it is collaborating with the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center (HARC) to develop a customized Jatropha cultivar that can be used to meet the high demand for locally-grown renewable fuel.

Jatropha curcas is a non-edible shrub that is native to Central America. Its seeds contain high amounts of oil that can be refined using existing technology to produce diesel fuel, jet fuel, and specialty chemicals. It can be effectively grown on marginal lands that are considered undesirable for other crops.

Penn Energy

Crop gene-modification technology continues to spread despite controversy

A decade ago, after European activists whipped up lots of negative coverage about the perils of toying with nature, the future of genetically modified (GM) crops seemed uncertain. The technology was adopted by farmers in the rich world outside Europe, but poor countries seemed likely to be left behind. However, according to a report released on February 23rd by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a non-profit outfit that monitors the use of GM crops, the sector is blossoming, especially in the developing world, where poor and unproductive farmers have the most to gain from such advances.

Despite the decline in food prices and the global economic downturn last year, the use of GM technology increased by about 7%, according to ISAAA. More than three-quarters of the soyabeans grown around the world are now genetically modified, as is roughly half the cotton and over a quarter of the maize (corn). Crucially, developing countries now account for nearly half of the world’s 134m hectares of transgenic crops, with Brazil, Argentina, India and China in the vanguard (see chart). Of the 14m or so farmers now benefiting from the technology, perhaps 90% live in poor countries.

Better yet, for the most part, this trend is now being driven not by pushy Western multinationals, but by domestic political pressure to increase agricultural productivity, and the home-grown research that this has fostered. Brazil’s dramatic rise to the global number two spot (after the United States) owes much to the government’s investment in local research centres like Embrapa, which in February won approval for an herbicide-tolerant soyabean developed locally in partnership with BASF, a big German chemicals firm.

The greatest potential for growth is probably in China. In late November the government gave its blessing to GM varieties of rice and maize. Both were developed by local researchers, without funding or other help from Western firms. As rice is the most important food crop in the world and maize is the main form of animal feed, these decisions could have a big impact. Clive James of ISAAA calculates that the GM rice alone could deliver benefits (in the form of higher yields, greater productivity, savings on pesticides and fertilisers, and so on) of $4 billion a year to China’s 100m-odd rice-growing households.

Africa’s leaders have been reluctant to accept GM crops. But that is changing, argues Calestous Juma of Harvard University. South Africa, Egypt and Burkina Faso are encouraging the use of the technology. China is also beginning to pioneer “South-South” technology transfers in Africa and elsewhere, he says.

Attitudes are also changing at Western agribusinesses, some of which used to dismiss poor farmers as mere “seed pirates”. As developing countries develop GM crops of their own, these firms are now pursuing public-private partnerships or joint ventures with local firms and otherwise softening their stance. Monsanto, a hard-nosed pioneer of transgenic crops, is donating its drought-resistant technology to a coalition called Water Efficient Maize for Africa, for example.

Yet in Europe, opposition to GM food appears as strong as ever, despite increasingly strident scientific dissent. The European arm of Greenpeace, a green pressure group, still denounces the technology and gloats about a decline of over a tenth in cultivation of GM crops in Europe last year. Sir David King, a former scientific adviser to the British government, argues that the unjustified vilification of GM is leading to needless deaths. He thinks the delay in the introduction of flood-resistant GM rice, for example, has condemned many in the poor world to starvation.

India, too, has recently been caught up in a Frankenfood fight. In mid-February the government issued a moratorium on the development of GM aubergine (Bt Brinjal, as it is known locally), despite a ruling last year by an official scientific advisory body in favour of the technology. The government’s decision was all the more puzzling given India’s success with GM cotton, which has helped transform the country from an importer of cotton into the world’s biggest exporter.

Ask Robert Fraley, chief technology officer of Monsanto, what he makes of Chinese and Indian GM technology, and he gives it a hearty endorsement: “I hope in future we can license it.” That would depend, of course, on governments approving its use in the first place.

The Economist