Innovation, key to food security

Busani Bafana reports.

Forget the linear system of promoting technologies in agriculture; Africa needs inclusive methods that will speed up the adoption of new technologies by poor farmers, say experts.

"The linear approach has not helped Africa," says FARA executive director, Dr. Monty Jones. "Adoption of technologies is only about 10 percent but where we have implemented the innovations system approach which brings everyone together, we have seen the rate of adoption shoot up from 10 to 90 percent."

Bemoaning past linear patterns of promoting innovations and technologies as being effective, Dr. Jones said Africa had credible technologies but these had not made the desired impact due to poor implementation approaches. Africa has made a breakthrough in technologies, such as the tissue culture banana, which has out yielded the traditional banana by up to 50 percent raising farmer incomes. The New Rice for Africa (NERICA) has doubled yields of previously known varieties, while striga resistant maize has boosted grain yields in some parts of Africa. In Burkina Faso, Bt cotton is being promoted to increase income for farmers.

"One of the problems we have faced in Africa is the dissemination of these technologies either because we have not determined appropriate pathways to disseminate those technologies or we do not have the skilled manpower to do that," Jones told a press briefing on the opening day of the 5th Agriculture Science Week in Ouagadougou. "Innovation will increase productivity enabling us to get closer to the six percent agricultural production that has been predicted as the level we must attain by the year 2015."

CTA director, Michael Hailu, said the innovation approach seeks to promote existing knowledge within different stakeholders who then come together to use the knowledge and put into practise.

"The linear approach assumes that researchers will come up with their own ideas of what is needed and work on the technologies without considering what farmers need, said Dr. Hailu adding that, "The whole key is create a space so that everyone has a voice in the process of technology development and dissemination."

The six-day African Agriculture Science Week and FARA General Assembly are expected to produce action plans to develop agriculture in Africa. Low investment in research and development has been singled as a factor stifling the agricultural productivity as well as the adoption of innovation and technology. FARA research has found that Africa is investing about $2.2 billion in research and development efforts, a far cry from the $4 billion needed to increase agricultural output.

Using research to make the case for policy change

Using research to make the case for policy change

Scientists need to do a better job at drawing out findings from peer-reviewed research to support evidence-based policies and approaches, said a panel of leading policy experts and researchers at the FARAweek side event Climate Change and Agriculture: the Policy Challenge.

“The challenge is to turn excellent peer-reviewed science into evidence, so that we don’t rely on system of belief,” said David Howlett of Africa College at University of Leeds. “How do we know that organic agriculture can feed the world? We have to communicate beyond peer-review system in order to have an impact on the public’s understanding of the issues.”

As part of the panel, Carlos Sere of ILRI, highlighted two areas where research from his institution had been used to influence. One example, Dr Sere noted that findings from a 2007 ILRI study mapping climate vulnerability in Africa had been widely cited and used in the influential publications like the Stern Review and the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.

In the future, we’ll be going into more detail to figure out what kind of interventions would work best locally. This would evidence could help inform policy decisions on the local and national level, he added.

"It is critical that we use research evidence emanating from Africa to improve our productivity and adapt to climate change,” Lindiwe Sibanda of FANRPAN. “We have to have benchmarks for our farmers. For them to raise their productivity, they need to know nature of the problem they are facing and the best way to address them."

The Stove-top Pot Emerges as New Weapon to Protect Crop Diversity

By Matthew Davis

As Director General of Bioversity International, Emile Frison is a tireless advocate of the need to preserve Africa’s rich array of crop varieties both in the field and in national and international crop genebanks.

But at the 5th Annual African Agriculture Science Week and Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, now underway in Ouagadougou, Frisson said the campaign needs to move into the kitchen as well.

He said part of the loss of crop varieties is attributable to a more narrow selection of foods appearing on many African dinner tables, and that one way to maintain crop diversity is to rekindle an interest in a wider array of traditional foods, particularly among women who do the majority of cooking.

“They are the ones you want to target because they will choose what goes into the cooking pot and on the table,” he said.

Frison said the fight to protect crop diversity needs to enter the “nutritional domain.” He said the “simplification” of the diet in many African regions, its focus on a smaller set of food crops, is linked to a rise in diet-related afflictions across the region such as heart disease and type-2 diabetes. But Frison said there is a natural link between policies that seek to improve nutrition and policies that seek to encourage wider cultivation of native African crops, such as traditional, healthy varieties of leafy green vegetables.

He pointed to a partnership in Kenya with a major supermarket chain, which agreed to carry locally-grown greens and saw sales of the vegetable increase by 1100 percent in just two years.

He said the success of the program shows that it is possible to push against the negative stigma increasingly associated with native foods and use nutrition as a force to “re-diversify" African agriculture.

Making a buzz about biodiversity

By Susanna Thorp, Wrenmedia

Bees pollinate three-quarters of the world’s crops. The production value of insect pollinated crops is four times those that are not. And yet very little recognition is given to their role, according Kwame Aidoo, a scientist at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana during a presentation on the significance of pollinator biodiversity on the opening day of FARAweek.

Pollination gives better quality, better production, but habitat destruction and degradation is putting Africa’s pollinators at risk, said Aidoo. “Reliance on national parks is not sufficient to preserve bee diversity; land use practises must enhance conservation of pollinators,” he said.

According to Aidoo, a systematic assessment of the decline in crop yields due to the absence of pollinators and the development of participatory methods to assist farmers in collecting data on pollinators are needed.

“We also need more information on the effects of pesticide concentrations on social and solitary bees and we need identification of habitat management practices to best build up pollinator populations,” he added.

“There are strong expectations that intensifying agricultural production in Africa will address issues of hunger and poverty. However, we need to grasp the opportunity to build on and enhance the natural wealth of Africa’s ecosystems. Pollination serves as an excellent flagship area of R & D for Africa,” Aidoo told participants.

Prevention is the Cure to Africa’s Fight Against Plant Pests

When it comes to suffering losses to plant pests and weeds, Sub-Saharan Africa leads the world and by a large margin. Damage to crops in the region is 40 to 60 percent higher than anywhere else on the planet, with most of the problem—which cost farmers millions of dollars— caused insects, bacteria, aphids, virus and fungi.

Disease experts meeting at the 5th Annual African Agriculture Science Week and Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa said its time to make the region less inviting to these crop killers by focusing on prevention.

“The signature of a developed agriculture system is one characterized by its emphasis on prevention and not reaction” said Julian Smith of the Food Environment Research Agency in the United Kingdom, which is working with partners in Africa to stop pests moving so quickly to epidemic proportions.

Smith and other experts said pests are particularly a threat to realizing the potential of new, high-yield crop varieties being developed for Africa. But as these new crops become available they need to be protected from pests. For example, plant breeders recently waited to distribute new varieties of cassava until they had been screened for the brown-streak disease that has emerged as a major threat to cassava production in East Africa.

Conversely, several years ago due to a failure to understand disease threats, promising new banana varieties were released to farmers and subsequently succumbed to a banana wilt disease.
Disease experts at the meeting agreed that it’s time to move away from an approach focused on fighting diseases when they emerge to better monitoring and surveillance systems that can contain outbreaks and give new, improved crops the maximum opportunity to realize their potential to boost yields in Africa.

FARAweek Opens: Sharing a Common Vision

The 5th Annual African Agriculture Science Week and Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa is underway in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, attracting over 700 prominent agriculture researchers, policy makers, and development experts from around the world .

Dr. Monty Jones, FARA’s Executive Director, opened the meeting by noting the series of crises that have jolted the world since the last FARA meeting in Johannesburg: the fuel crisis, the food price crisis, the economic and financial crisis, and the realization that climate change is upon us and its impacts more evident across the continent.

Fostering resilience in an interconnected world
Even the volcanic ash from Iceland has made its presence felt in Africa, Jones said, disrupting the horticulture industry in Kenya and Ethiopia. What all of these impact show us, said Dr. Jones, is that in Africa, “We are bound to be affected by events that we are remotely responsible for.”

But in the face of so many and various challenges, Dr. Jones said African countries have responded with resilience, and he welcomed indications that the continent is “climbing back.”

“Africa has demonstrated resilience during this crisis,” said Jones.

“Emerging evidence shows that half of African countries are on track to meet the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015,” he said.

If there is a blessing to be found in all the turbulence of the past few years, Dr. Jones said, it is that crisis spurs innovation,. “This explains the rationale behind the theme of this African Science Week and FARA General Assembly, that is African Agricultural Innovation in a Changing Global Environment.”

Dr. Jones said the next two days will feature an Open Space, a welcome opportunity for intensive discussions dedicated to the week’s theme. They will include discussions of securing strong investments in agriculture innovation in the post-financial crisis era, building knowledge networks to cope with the challenges of globalization and climate change, and the resilience of African agricultural trade to domestic and external shocks. He said the main recommendations from this forum a will be fed into the FARA General Assembly for endorsement and consideration as part of the African Agriculture for Development agenda.

Dr. Jones said that he looked forward to a series of exchanges that will focus on a “common vision of seeing Africa realize the full potential of its agriculture to achieve a food secure and improve the livelihood of all its people.”

Africa's biggest assembly of farm experts meet in Ouagadougou

(photo credit: Neil Palmer (CIAT)

Over 700 prominent agriculture researchers, policy makers, and development experts from around the world along with the President of Burkina Faso and ministers of Agriculture, Science and Foreign Affairs from several African and European countries are gathering 19-24 July in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso for the 5th African Agriculture Science week and General Assembly of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

FARA Week (www.faraweek.org) comes amid widespread recognition that investments in agriculture research must increase significantly and the fruits of this work must reach the fields more quickly to provide African farmers with the innovations they need to feed the continent’s rapidly growing population. The gathering also occurs at the same time African leaders will be in Kampala, Uganda at a summit of the African Union, which is focused on maternal, infant, and child health and development.

“The links between these two incredibly important meetings could not be clearer because nothing is more vital to maternal and child health than the food that is produced on Africa’s farms and the income agriculture provides to lift our people out of poverty,” said World Food Prize Winner and executive secretary of FARA, Monty Jones.

Among those participating in the African Agricultural Science Week and General Assembly are:

• H.E. Blaise Compaore, President of Burkina Faso
• Ministers of Agriculture, Science, Technology, International Cooperation and Foreign Affairs from Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, France, Germany, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra-Leone, Uganda, and Togo, who will hold a press-moderated ministerial roundtable.
• Monty Jones, Executive Secretary, FARA
• Denis Kyetere, Director General, National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO), Uganda, Chairman of the Executive Board, FARA
• Namanga Ngongi, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
• Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)

Key issues to be discussed at the FARA meeting include:

• Increasing and sustaining public and private sector investments in African agriculture in the wake of the global financial crisis;
• Delivering innovations and building capacity at the local level that will enable farmers to adapt to the challenges posed by globalization and climate change;
• Assessing the resilience of African agriculture trade to domestic and external shocks that include: protectionism and subsidies, the short and long-term trade-offs between biofuel production and food security, and access to agriculture commodity markets; and
• Embracing importance of biodiversity to African environmental and agriculture health in addition to social and economic development.

There also will be a week-long exhibition featuring dynamic array of agriculture innovations from inside and outside of Africa that provide new insights into such challenges as pests and plant diseases, bioenergy production in Africa, maintaining Africa’s agriculture biodiversity, climate change, and regional integration.

In addition, there will be a range of discussions organized by FARA constituents on a number of compelling topics, including efforts in Africa to develop the capacity and expertise required to conduct regulatory assessments of agriculture biotechnology, and the role of the public and private sector in driving innovations on African farms.

For more information, please visit: http://www.faraweek.org/