Portion by Portion -- Improving Food Security Through Efficient Land Use

USAID/KenyaValue Farms beneficiaries and employees prepare to sell tomatoes grown from their consolidated land.Kenyan farm land, especially in western Kenya, is traditionally passed on to the next generation. Unfortunately, as farm land is divided among an ever-greater number of heirs, the plots grow increasingly smaller. Often, they become so tiny that owners don’t consider them worth farming, and less and less land is used to grow food despite being near a permanent water source.

“Coming from a western part of Kenya myself, I was always saddened that land was unutilized because farmers felt the plot wasn’t big enough to cultivate,” says Peter Waga, founder and executive director of Value Farms. “Malnutrition, lack of food security, and stagnant economic growth is a norm in the region.”

To help alleviate this problem, Peter developed the idea of a “Value Farm” in 2014, working with landowners to consolidate and lease their holdings for commercial agriculture. The combined land is then leased as a single block for the cultivation of high-value crops by participating farmers, who benefit from access to secure employment by providing labor with a guaranteed monthly income, and they earn profits as shares based on their land parcel size. This financial stability allows farmers to buy other food products to ensure a balanced diet for their families, send their children to school, and afford to pay for basic medical care. A section of the land is set aside specifically for the farmers, where they plant a variety of vegetables as part of Value Farm’s feeding program. To ensure each farmer’s family gets a fair share of crops, specific harvest days are assigned to different households once a week and farmers are allowed to harvest enough for their families.

The initial phase of the project consolidated 260 acres, with an additional 400 acres during the second phase, for a current total of 660 acres. Value Farms produces horticultural and grain legumes on the farms, as well as other high-value crops like beetroot, butternut squash, chili peppers, cucumber, green maize, kale, onions, spinach, tomatoes, and watermelon. By later this year, Value Farms expects to have reached its target of getting 1,200 acres of combined land under irrigation. This is expected to further boost crop production and income generation for local farmers, thereby increasing food and nutrition security. Value Farm’s management uses a dual approach when deciding what to plant on a given farm, retaining both traditional crops that have nutritional values, as well as planting crops that are in high demand. This approach ensures a diversified portfolio that will be financially sustainable.

“We could not afford to buy supplemental food imports from outside the region, and our children were always missing school because of malnutrition related diseases,” a Value Farms beneficiary said recently. “Things are different now - we’re able to grow our own food and also have enough to sell, giving us the opportunity to generate more income. I can rest easier knowing that my family and I have access to a balanced diet.”

As a community organization, Value Farms is supported in part through the Feed the Future Kenya Innovation Engine, a program that invests in new ideas with the scalable potential to improve the productivity and incomes of smallholder farmers. Value Farms was among the innovations nominated to receive Feed the Future funding, and going forward, the organization will focus on stemming post-harvest losses and sustaining market supply. Today, Value Farms continues to improve food security for the nearly 4,000 households living in the Lake Sare region.

Credit: feedthefuture.gov

Cambodia’s Commercial Horticulture Farmers Join Forces

Cambodia HARVESTMembers of a producer group pack their eggplants for sale in Pursat. With improved postharvest practices and better market linkages, producer groups have generated 2,715 tons of new sales worth $845,198.

In Cambodia, commercial vegetable farmers tend to operate alone. They form individual relationships with buyers, making it difficult to negotiate higher prices on the goods they’re selling. In addition, most farmers aren’t able to take advantage of the collective knowledge, resources, and relationships offered by the kinds of farmer associations common to other value chains, such as rice.

With assistance from Feed the Future, that’s beginning to change. Commercial horticulture farmers in Cambodia are organizing themselves into producer groups of 10 to 30 members, coordinating vegetable production, building relationships with traders and buyers, and receiving bulk discounts on input purchases. In addition, members share knowledge and best practices with each other. The groups function much like civil society organizations, with elected leaders and a consensus-based decision-making process.

Feed the Future’s producer groups are strengthening the horticulture value chain, resulting in increased food security in Cambodia and better incomes for both farmers and buyers. To date, farmers have formed 77 producer groups, and have sold 2,715 tons of vegetables, resulting in $845,198 in new sales. The groups have been so successful that non-program farmers are joining.

Phet Koeun, a commercial horticulture farmer in northwestern Cambodia, joined a producer group in August 2013. “Before, I had a hard time finding buyers. But now that I’m part of a group, buyers are coming to me, and they are paying better prices,” he said.

Phet’s group has 18 members. They've elected a leader and a deputy, and they negotiate with buyers and input suppliers by consensus to ensure that all members play an active role in decision-making. With his increased income, Phet has been able to expand the size of his farm by nearly 30 percent. “Joining a producer group is a smart move. It’s much better than being alone,” he said.

Producer groups are not just helping farmers; they’re benefitting entire communities. Retail input suppliers have increased their revenues by selling to producer groups. Likewise, consumers have benefitted from the increased supply of nutrient-rich vegetables available on the domestic market, which has strengthened food security in Cambodia. In addition, buyers and distributors are gaining access to high-quality products and filling gaps in their inventories. A recent survey taken in 24 district markets found that Feed the Future commercial horticulture farmers grow 36 percent of all vegetables purchased by buyers in the initiative’s four target provinces, which constitutes a sizeable market share. In addition, 11 percent of buyers said they went into business in order to form relationships with these producer groups.

Sao Phlauey, a vegetable buyer, struggled for years to meet the needs of his customers, mostly larger buyers further up the value chain. “The farmers I bought from couldn’t supply enough volume, and the quality of my product was low,” he said. His daily sales rarely exceeded 500 kilograms, barely enough to cover his costs.

Sao’s fortunes changed in late 2014, when Feed the Future introduced him to a horticulture producer group. He negotiated an agreement with the group and has been buying from it since. As a result, Sao has increased his daily sales volume to approximately 3,000 kilograms, leading to a 100 percent increase in his profits. “It doesn’t matter what the group grows. If Feed the Future farmers produce it, I buy it, because I know I can sell it,” Sao said.

Although many producer groups are still in the early stages of development, they’re working to strengthen their linkages to the market and better coordinate production in order to meet future domestic demand. As Cambodia’s population and agriculture sector grows, these producer groups will be vital to supplying their communities and buyers with fresh, high-quality vegetables for years to come.

Credit: http://feedthefuture.gov/

Liberian Women’s Co-op Increases Income and Food Security with Improved Storage Techniques

ACDI/VOCAParticipants from the Gbehlay Geh Rural Women Farmers’ Multipurpose Cooperative Society (GRWFMCS) demonstrate new storage techniques with assistance from Farmer-to-Farmer field staff.

The Gbehlay Geh Rural Women Farmers’ Multipurpose Cooperative Society (GRWFMCS) is a women-managed cooperative in east-central Liberia. The cooperative has 86 members, 81 of whom are women. Their members cultivate a variety of crops including vegetables, legumes, and rice. GRWFMCS manages a number of small enterprises led by women entrepreneurs, including a rice milling facility, an oil palm mill, and a recently established micro-financing institution.

For years, GRWFMCS farmers had been using traditional produce storage methods and, in the case of cowpeas and other legumes, farmers reused polyethylene-lined bags placed within woven polypropylene sacks. Because the bags were reused, they were often damaged, allowing both oxygen and cowpea weevils to enter and remain in the lining of the bags, re-infecting produce each season. The infestations grew rapidly and almost caused GRWFMCS to lose their stored crop completely. Most of the cooperative’s women did not know what was damaging their legumes. When Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) field staff visited the women’s farming co-operative in early 2014, GRWFMCS requested technical assistance through the F2F program in Liberia.

Managed by ACDI/VOCA, Farmer-to-Farmer is a knowledge-transfer program of the U.S. federal government supported by Feed the Future through USAID. The program is aligned with the objectives of Feed the Future, the US Government’s global hunger and food security initiative, and works to support inclusive agriculture sector growth, facilitate private sector engagement in the agriculture sector, enhance development of local capacity, and promote climate-smart development. F2F provides technical assistance from U.S. volunteers to farmers, farm groups, agribusinesses, and other agriculture sector institutions in developing and transitional countries with the goal of promoting sustainable improvements in food security and agricultural processing, production, and marketing. The program leverages the expertise of volunteers from U.S. farms, universities, cooperatives, private agribusinesses, and nonprofit farm organizations to respond to the local needs of host-country farmers and organizations. Volunteers, recruited from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, are generally individuals who have domestic careers, farms, and agribusinesses, or are retirees who want to participate in development efforts. As of today, F2F is active in over 30 countries worldwide.

In June 2014, F2F volunteer Carrie Teiken, a University of California, Davis PhD student in plant pathology and former Ghana Peace Corps volunteer, responded to GRWFMCS’ request for a two-week training course on Bean Bug Management and Warehouse Storage in Karnplay, Nimba County, Liberia. Thirty-two GRWFMCS farmers, 84 percent of whom were women, attended the training and learned new storage mechanisms and post-harvest handling techniques to reduce cowpea weevil infestations. Carrie demonstrated the importance and use of airtight steel drums or Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage bags. She advised the farmers to harvest their pods as soon as they mature and to immediately dry them after harvest to reduce weevil infestations. She also taught them that seeds should be exposed to solar heat prior to drying to kill any weevils and eggs that come from the field. Her specifications noted that cowpeas should be properly dried to 10 percent moisture content before storage and should not be stored for more than six months.

At the end of the training, Carrie encouraged farmers to begin practicing integrated pest management field practices, such as crop rotation; field sanitation prior to planting; adding compost to improve plant nutrient content and soil structure; insect trapping and disease monitoring; the application of organic pesticides such as neem oil (a natural insecticide), soap, and/or garlic; weeding twice per growing season; and planting in rows instead of scattering the seeds on the ground.

Since Carrie’s training, GRWFMCS farmers have put her recommendations into practice and reported a 20 percent reduction in cowpea post-harvest losses from the previous season, effectively increasing farmers’ earnings and boosting crop yields for the local Liberian markets. “Carrie’s training really helped us,” said Annie Kruah, GRWFMCS chairwoman. “We are now getting profit from our cowpea farms.” Thanks to Carrie’s introduction of preservation techniques, there has been a 22 percent increase in co-op members growing cowpeas, and a third of the existing cowpea farmers have increased their cultivation areas from three to five acres. With Feed the Future support, the training and knowledge sharing made possible through the Farmer to Farmer program has encouraged the women to share these best practices with other farmers in their community, as well as new members of the women’s cooperative.

Source: http://feedthefuture.gov/article/liberian-women%E2%80%99s-co-op-increases-income-and-food-security-improved-storage-techniques#overlay-context=?utm_source=Final+August+FTF+Newsletter&utm_campaign=August+2015&utm_medium=email

Tanzanian Villagers Flourish, Fight Drought

Aliza HashamMwele holds one of her three children, 2-year old Musa David Zoya, in her arms.

Living in dry, desert-like conditions isn’t easy for people in the Mvumi village in the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. Extended periods of drought and limited water sources routinely lead to dry fields, parched plants and poor crop yields, creating hard times for farming families. Fortunately, the beneficiaries of the Feed the Future-supported Mwanzo Bora Nutrition Program are able to meet these challenges head on. “Mwanzo Bora” in Swahili means good start. The program aims to reduce maternal anemia and childhood stunting by 20 percent in five Tanzanian regions, focusing on pregnant and lactating women and children from birth to 24 months. The program tackles anemia across the country by providing nutritional education on the importance of breastfeeding and a diversified diet through several points of intervention, including community health workers who organize peer support groups and trainings in their respective villages. The workers cover everything from vegetable demonstration plots and raising animals for protein intake, to proper hygiene methods. The Mvumi village group is one of almost 2000 village groups the Mwanzo Bora program has reached since its inception in 2011, benefiting close to two million women across Tanzania.

Walking through this village, Mwanzo Bora community health worker Lucy Masaka points out that almost every other household has a sack garden, a small home garden, or a rabbit hutch. In a drought-prone village like this one, sack gardens – small gardens with vegetables planted in bag or sack, filled with soil and stones as a simplified vegetable growing method – are particularly useful. In just six months, Lucy has seen how several women who participated in Mwanzo Bora peer support groups have already adopted what they learned about home gardening techniques and their nutritional advantages. Led by individuals such as Lucy, the peer support groups meet every week to discuss nutrition for their children and how to overcome various nutritional challenges. Lucy’s group is one of five such groups in the village, with approximately 12 members in each group.

In addition to small gardens, many of the women have also started raising small animals, such as rabbits, to supplement their food source. According to Lucy, eight rabbit hutches have already been built in the village since her training in February as a community health worker. In the spring of 2015, 1,128 households in the area adopted the use of either home gardens and/or keeping livestock for improved household nutrition in times of low agricultural productivity.

One of the women in the Lucy’s peer support group, Mwele David Zoya, a mother of five, has been inspired to go above and beyond the Mwanzo Bora model. Besides keeping and maintaining several lush, green, vegetable sack gardens, she has tried a new approach of rearing guinea fowl as a source of protein instead of raising local chickens. Mwele says guinea fowl are less prone to diseases compared to chickens and produce an abundance of eggs.

"The guinea fowl produce so many eggs that sometimes we can't eat all of them. I sell the remaining eggs to others," Mwele said. This small income of selling guinea fowl eggs has given her and her family both nutritional and financial support.

“I was having a lot of difficulty getting food. There were times that I had no income at all, my children were very hungry, and my husband was not able to find work. But now, during those times, the money we receive from selling eggs helps me provide my children with the food we need. With the little money I earn, I can buy flour, as well as chilies and tomatoes, which I don’t grow in my garden. This small income has reduced so much of the burden that I have as a mother trying to feed my children,” Mwele explained.

Mwele has applied new techniques to maintain a thriving home garden even in times of drought. “On days when we do not find water, the little water that we have in storage, we use for bathing the kids and washing the utensils. Then we use that waste water to pour it into the sack garden, which needs very little water to keep the vegetables growing.”

Mwele’s passion for low-water usage gardening and her initiative of breeding guinea fowl is an inspiration for other Mvumi village group members. She proudly encourages other women by showing them her home garden and guinea fowl with hope that they too adopt this approach as they see how she has created her own financial income, as well as a nutritious solution for her family.

The Mwanzo Bora Nutrition Program (MBNP) is a five-year project funded by the U.S. Agency of International Development through the Feed the Future initiative. MBNP works in five regions in Tanzania and three districts in Zanzibar, helping communities reduce childhood stunting and maternal anemia.

Source: http://feedthefuture.gov/article/tanzanian-villagers-flourish-fight-drought#overlay-context=?utm_source=Final+August+FTF+Newsletter&utm_campaign=August+2015&utm_medium=email

What does China's shock yuan devaluation mean for Africa? by Deborah Brautigam, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Deborah Brautigam is the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where she directs the International Development Program, and the China Africa Research Initiative. Her latest book, Will Africa Feed China? will be published in October 2015 by Oxford University Press. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN)China's development decisions are critically important for Africa. In Lagos, Addis and Johannesburg, China's surprise yuan devaluation has African analysts scratching their heads.

Obviously Chinese goods will be cheaper in Africa, and African exports more expensive in China. So far, this decision is just a tremor, not a quake. Yet why did China devalue, and what is this likely to mean for Africa?

Deborah Brautigam

To understand China's devaluation, we need to take a step back. Beijing has been trying to manage China's enormous structural transformation ever since Chinese leaders made their historic decision to move out of poverty by turning to the market in the late 1970s. Their supercharged development model depended on low wages, high levels of foreign and public investment, and rapidly expanding, cheap exports.

Today, China is an upper middle income country with more expensive labor. Their economy is increasingly based on domestic innovation, consumption, and exports of high-tech products. Chinese firms have become significant foreign investors themselves with interests outside China's borders.

This has been mainly good news for Africa. China's growing reserves were recycled into large loans for infrastructure finance across Africa. Prices for African commodities rose with Chinese demand, helping underpin a long period of sustained -- if unequal - African growth. Trade between Africa and China skyrocketed to $220 billion in 2014, nearly three times the U.S. level. Consumers benefited from low cost cell phones and other goods. On the down side, African manufacturing suffered from the competition with Chinese imports. Critics charge that China's embrace -- like that of other major powers -- has not budged African economies away from high dependence on raw material exports.

The devaluation is a step backward in China's strategy. Chinese authorities had pressing, but short-term political and economic reasons to devalue. Beijing's policy-makers need to avoid rocking China's political stability, while still pushing forward with measures that might cause temporary pain as they transform into a high income economy. Slower growth is now necessary, but this needs to be gradual, not dramatic.

What Africa can learn from China 06:18

In 2015, China's economy began to slow a bit too rapidly. The Chinese had been using their foreign exchange reserves to prop up the yuan against the challenge of a strong dollar. This pushed their currency to appreciate by 14% over the past twelve months.

The stronger yuan led to a drop in Chinese exports: 8.3% in July alone. That month, China's factory sector experienced its largest contraction in two years, leading to layoffs. Combined with the recent stock market crash, this was too much change, too quickly.

Last week's decision allowed the market a greater role in setting the yuan's value, and it promptly fell. This should lead to a modest export recovery but will do little for the long term goal of continued transformation.

Long-term view

So far, China's devaluation has been fairly modest -- about 4% -- but how will this be felt in Africa?

- Prices for African commodities will worsen, then improve. In recent years, China's slower growth has pushed down prices for gold, crude oil, copper, platinum and iron ore. South Africa's mining sector was expected to lose over 10,000 jobs due to lower demand.[vi] In response to China's devaluation, global prices for crude oil and some other African commodities fell further.

These goods have now become more expensive for Chinese buyers using yuan to buy inside China,leading to even lower demand. Yet over the medium term, if growth in China picks up as a result of the devaluation, demand for Africa's commodities will increase, and prices should recover.

- Africa will import even more from China. Cheaper Chinese exports will please African consumers while putting Africa's manufacturers at a further disadvantage. There will be more pressure for tariff protections.

South African wine, made for China 06:01

Lower cost steel imported from China will hurt African steel producers, but will benefit other manufacturers who use steel in their products. Chinese tourists will be more likely to vacation at home as African safaris become relatively more expensive.

- China's African investments will be helped -- and hurt. The appreciation of the Chinese yuan had eroded the value of profits from Chinese investments abroad when transmitted back to China and exchanged into yuan. Now, Chinese investors will see their profits from African investments automatically rise (in yuan terms) and this could lead them to expand.

On the other hand, new investors will find that they have to pay more (in yuan) to buy dollars for overseas investments. Furthermore, low wages in Ethiopia and elsewhere had been attracting significant factory investment from China. With costs now relatively lower in China, the push to relocate factories overseas will slow. This will save Chinese jobs, but postpones Africa's own structural transformation.

In the short term it is hard to see how this devaluation can help Africa, notably its productive and export sectors. But if this step backward works, China will bounce back and Africans will benefit.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/18/opinions/china-yuan-devaluation-africa-deborah-brautigam/index.html?sr=cnnifb

Rice Farm In Delta To Engage 50 Graduates

Mr Raymos Guanah, proprietor, Guanah Rice Farms, Illah, Delta, has said that he plans engaging 50 graduates to produce more rice to feed the newly procured processing mill in the farm.

Guanah disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in his farm at Illah, near Asaba, the Delta capital on Sunday.

The former Commissioner for Lands said the plan was to increase rice production and create jobs for the youths in the state.

He explained that each of the 50 graduates would be provided five hectares of land, improved rice seedlings, agrochemicals and other incentives, to encourage them to produce rice for the mill.

“I am starting a programme through which I intend to engage out-growers, so that I can meet my target in feeding the processing mill.

“I want to get up to 50 graduates across the state, support them with improved seedlings, agrochemicals and other incentives.

“At the end of the harvest, the whole rice would be processed in the mill and supplied to buyers.

“By so doing, they will make money and be happy and I will be happy too, while Deltans will have more rice to eat.

“You can imagine what government can do in this direction too: the number of jobs to be created and the quantity of rice to be produced in the state will be enormous.”

Guanah said that the farm had expanded, but was faced with the challenge of inadequate number of tractors to produce the required quantity of rice to feed the processing mill.

According to him, 10 additional tractors are required to meet the production need of the mill.

“What we need now are tractors; I have a rice mill but our current production capacity is not enough to feed it.

“We want to expand, we have acquired land across the state but we need tractors to be able to meet the processing requirement of the mill and timing is of essence in this regards.

“Because we do not have enough tractors, we cannot produce rice simultaneously in all our farms. For now, we have to move our tractors from one location, after a season, to another”.

He said the farm desired to engage in all season farming, but was constrained to do so now because of inadequate number of tractors.

He commended the state government’s plan to procure tractors for farmers in the state, and advised it to ensure that the real farmers got the equipment when finally delivered.

He called on the Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa-led administration to partner Guanah Farms through the provision of land and other incentives to boost rice production in the state.

 He advised youths to embrace agriculture and avoid cyber crimes and other social vices to be able to make decent leaving and even become rich.

“There is money in agriculture, the government must look inwards, support the right farmers and get the youths to have a new mindset about life.

“Any graduate who leaves the university today and thinks he can make it overnight without working, is joking,” Guanah added. (NAN)

Source:http://leadership.ng/news/455782/rice-farm-in-delta-to-engage-50-graduates

Agric Revolution Will Revamp Nigeria Economy – Dangote

The chairman of Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG), Mr Sani Dangote, has said that the present expansion of the country’s agricultural sector is capable of revamping the nation’s economy.

The group’s boss, who said this at its Maiden Annual General Meeting held in Lagos, added that the surest way out of the present problem created by the dwindling oil proceeds is to diversify the nation’s economy.

Dangote, at the forum with the theme “Setting Policy Direction: Strengthening Agriculture and Agribusiness Associations, Engaging Strategic Partners and Donors” said that the agricultural  industry has a lot of potential to increase the country’s earnings and provide jobs for the citizenry.

He said, “With the current low prices in oil, agriculture is inevitably the way forward for development. With the formation of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group, we now have a platform to address challenges and find solutions to issues pertaining to our industry.”

According to him, agricultural stakeholders in Nigeria lacked the presence of a unified voice prior to the inception of the NABG Associates Unlimited.

“The NABG is the brainchild of a 23-member executive leadership group headed by major players in the agro-allied sector. It was created as an organised private sector platform to lead in all matters affecting agricultural stakeholders in Nigeria through setting up of policy directions, engaging policy and decision makers in government at all levels and forging strategic partnerships with public and private sector groups across Africa and the world,” Dangote added.
Also speaking, the association’s co-ordinator, Mr Emmanuel Ijewere, lauded every partner who contributed to the formation of the association.

Source: http://leadership.ng/business/455893/agric-revolution-will-revamp-nigeria-economy-dangote