Category: Environment & Climate Change

June 2010 by

Andy Coghlan

Fertilisers, pesticides and hybrid high-yielding seeds saved the planet from an extra dose of global warming. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new analysis which finds that the intensification of farming through the green revolution has unjustly been blamed for speeding up global warming.

Steven Davis of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues calculated how much greenhouse gases would have been emitted over the past half-century if the green revolution had not happened.

The study included carbon dioxide and other gases such as methane emitted by rice paddies. It found that, overall, the intensification of farming helped keep the equivalent of 600 billion tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere – roughly a third of all human greenhouse-gas emissions between 1850 and 2005.

The emissions were avoided because the green revolution boosted crop yields – for instance by promoting hybrid varieties that had higher yields, and through widespread distribution of pesticides and fertilisers. This meant that more food could be produced without having to slash vast swathes of forest to expand farmland.

Complete story at New Scientist

Original paper at  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0914216107

Augustine Nsada has become famous in his trading centre of Kasambira in Kamuli district of western Uganda, albeit for doing what many of his folks know how to do already.

Thirty-year-old Nsada gained popularity for being the only commercial producer and supplier of plantain bananas last year when the area was facing a severe drought. The bananas are a staple food crop in most parts of Uganda, but production has been declining in recent years.

Using largely abandoned traditional practices of mulching and applying compost to his bananas, Nsada managed to continue producing badly-needed food. The composting is effective, but it is used with few other crops.

The people of Kasambira and much of Busoga region in eastern Uganda had till 2009 been self-sufficient in food, growing plenty of maize, sweet potatoes and beans. But a six-month drought, starting in April 2009, altered seasons and delayed rainfall. It took many poor farmers by surprise: they had experienced nothing like it for years. The serious food shortage that affected households forced hundreds of thousands of people to buy food from traders instead of being able to rely on the seasonal crops they grew themselves.

A man pushes his bicycle loaded with green bananas, in Uganda.

Bananas are being recognised as an important source of food secuity with unpredictable weather

/ Trygve Bolstad – Panos pictures

Claims that climate change caused the drought

The Ugandan Ministry of Agriculture attributed the unexpected drought to climate change. While there is no conclusive evidence of this, recent reports, including those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, point to the weather changes already apparent in poor countries like Uganda. A study by Oxfam in 2008 concluded that the erratic rainfall seen recently in Uganda was consistent with scientific predictions of the effects of man-made global warming, while cautioning that weather patterns in Africa are still relatively poorly understood.

Whatever the origin, the impact was devastating. Last year’s drought in Uganda is estimated to have affected up to five million people, in a nation of 31 million.

Plantains are not particularly nutritious compared with beans and maize. But plantain consumption is a strong part of Ugandan culture, which insists that any serious meal must include steamed plantains.

Nsada managed to continue harvesting the plantains for home consumption and for sale throughout the drought. Plantains will grow all year round with moderate rainfall and sunshine. But plantain growing is demanding work, and not many people are ready for the laborious mulching and pruning required.

“During the recent drought, many people looked to me for food because they had consumed all their reserves,” he said.

Cushioning families

Abdu Waiswa, who runs a maize mill in Kasambira, agreed that annual crops like bananas and cassava can help to cushion families against unexpected weather changes such as droughts.

Dr. Andrew Kigundu, a banana researcher at the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Kawanda, near Kampala, says bananas store water in their stems as well as producing fruit all year round, making them a vital source of food security during dry spells. But he says that, ‘Bananas have succumbed to extreme weather changes largely because most farmers have abandoned the old traditional practices such as mulching”.

‘Mulching not only prevents fast loss of moisture from the soils, but also minimises tillage that destroys the crop’s root system,” Dr Kigundu says.

While much of the country has largely recovered from the effects of last year’s drought, the government has been encouraging people in its broadcasts to store cereals so that events like the drought find them better prepared.

But the increasing frequency, length and sudden onset of droughts and floods in Uganda and its neighbouring countries in recent years has meant it is difficult to estimate just how much food people need to store when they are already poor.

David Isabirye, a resident of Nalinaibiri near Kasambira trading centre, said he had kept some food for his family last year, but was forced to sell some to pay his children’s school fees.

Uganda’s State Minister of Agriculture, Henry Bagiire, says the government is pursuing several measures, including encouraging the growing of annual crops.

Annual crop production facing challenges

But the shift towards annual crop production faces many other challenges. Farmers usually prefer seasonal crops, which normally guarantee them two annual harvests, have a longer lifespan than the highly perishable plantains, and are eaten by more people outside Uganda.

Pests are another problem. Scientists estimate that over the past ten years Uganda’s banana production has halved because of the devastating effect of the banana wilt disease. Cassava, another important source of carbohydrates for most communities, has been greatly affected by the cassava brown streak virus. Scientists from NARI say they are close to developing disease-resistant varieties.

Land scarcity is also a factor. Widespread sugarcane growing has taken up much of the land previously used for food production. High population growth rates mean portions of land becoming increasingly smaller, which when cultivated continuously quickly lose their fertility.

Nsada also says the lack of political leadership in the area to mobilise people for production is one of the problems that has deepened vulnerability during weather-related disasters. ‘The government needs to follow its words of encouraging people to save the environment and grow more food with concrete actions and support that ensure people replenish their soil fertility,” he says.

Henry Lutaaya is a Ugandan journalist working as a News Editor for The Sunrise newspaper, published in Kampala. He wrote this article thanks to a fellowship with the Climate Change Media Partnership – an initiative of the Panos Network, Internews and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

NAIROBI, 26 May 2010 (IRIN) – The plan by the Kenya National Cereals and Produce Board to buy contaminated maize from farmers must also ensure the grain is properly destroyed and does not find its way back to the market, agricultural and environmental experts warn.

The plan follows a government decision to buy the maize, which contains aflotoxins, to prevent its consumption. It followed an alert issued on 10 May that aflatoxin had been found in maize samples from Eastern and Coast provinces.

“Whichever way the disposal is carried out, care should be taken to ensure the contaminated maize does not enter the food chain in any form,” an agricultural researcher said. “There are several ways of disposal; we have chemical decontamination – which is expensive and not yet available in the country – and conversion of the maize to industrial use, such as glue, starch or methylated spirit.”

Agricultural officials estimate that at least 300,000 bags out of four million could be contaminated, following poor handling that resulted in a high moisture content in the grains.

Consumption of such maize, they say, could lead to aflatoxicosis. Since 2004, at least 200 people have died across Kenya after eating aflatoxin-infected maize, according to health and agricultural officials. Its symptoms include jaundice, fever, abdominal swelling, vomiting, swollen feet or hands and diarrhea. The condition can cause neurological impairment and stunted growth.

“Lack of proper handling from harvesting, drying, and preparation for shelling to storage, predisposes the grain to fungal attack,” Joseph Ngetich, the deputy director of agriculture in charge of the plant protection services division, told IRIN on 26 May.

“If the maize is shelled by beating, the result could be a lot of broken grain, and if it is not stored in bags made of natural fibre and in well-aerated storage, the grain is again predisposed to fungal attack.”

Ngetich said the stored maize should be treated with the adequate pesticides to prevent insect attacks, which could also lead to aflatoxin contamination.

“Care should be taken so that the maize does not get contaminated even before storage; in fact, without laboratory testing, it is difficult to tell with the naked eye the clean maize from the contaminated one,” he said. “It is possible to have contaminated but clean-looking maize and to have mouldy-looking maize that is not contaminated.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A maize field: Agricultural officials estimate that at least 300,000 bags out of four million recently harvested could be contaminated – file photo

Funding set aside

On 22 May, Kareke Mbiuki, assistant minister for agriculture, said the government had set aside Ksh2 billion (US$26 million) to buy suspected bad maize in Eastern province.

The agricultural researcher, who requested anonymity, told IRIN: “The only way out is to get all the contaminated maize, [assess] the extent of contamination and decide what should be declared fit for human consumption, what can be used in formulation of animal feeds and what can go to industrial use. The highly contaminated maize should be destroyed through incineration.”

Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and those from the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services have taken samples from maize in the affected areas and are analyzing them to determine the extent of contamination.

A 6 May report, compiled by the National Cereals and Produce Board, indicated that out of 1,600,000, 90kg bags the government purchased in Eastern and Coastal areas, 103,000 bags had “very high levels” of aflatoxin.

According to February 2010 Ministry of Agriculture projections, a harvest of 4.3 million bags from Eastern province and about 6.7 million bags for the whole country was expected between February and April.

Source IRIN news

NAIROBI, 28 May 2010 (IRIN) – Kenya should encourage the use of bamboo in building affordable shelters, especially for 60 percent of the population who live in poorly constructed dwellings in rural areas, says a specialist.

“Poor construction means they [houses] serve as breeding grounds for diseases including malaria, amoebic dysentery and respiratory conditions, which commonly claim the lives of many of their inhabitants,” Jacob Kibwange, project director of an initiative at Maseno University that aims to encourage bamboo exploitation, told IRIN.

The project, Tobacco to Bamboo, is pioneering the construction of cheap bamboo houses in the Mau and Kakamega areas of Western Kenya.

“If we improved bamboo housing, we could change the lives of many people,” Kibwange said. “With about 15,000ha of mature bamboo ready to be used, particularly in the Aberdares, Mau ranges, Mt Kenya and Mt Elgon, [we have] viable and inexpensive housing material in Kenya.”

According to a 2007 study by the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan, nearly 60 percent of Kenya’s 37 million people are rural farmers who live on less than US$2 a day and live in inadequate homes that are often made of mud and poorly ventilated.

In the cities, the housing demand has reached 150,000 units per year against an annual production of about 50,000 units. According to the UN Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, the shortfall in the cities has led to overcrowding, slums and sub-standard housing.

The tobacco to bamboo project was launched by Maseno University’s School of Environment and Earth Studies in 2006. It began as a research activity to encourage the cultivation and utilization of bamboo as an alternative livelihood to tobacco farming in South Nyanza and Western Kenya and later set up nurseries in Migori, Kuria, Homa Bay and Suba districts.

Maseno launched housing projects in Kisumu town and trained 240 bamboo small-scale farmers and set up 120 field experimentation sites. The aim is to train 20,000 farmers to exploit bamboo in the next 15 years.

“Bamboo is a remarkably fast-growing plant that thrives in a range of different climates,” Kibwange said. “It can be planted easily in homesteads and harvested at the time of need without any additional expenditure.

“Because of its lightness, a bamboo house suffers very little damage from earthquakes and could serve as temporary and quick construction in disaster-prone areas in emergencies.”

After the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, about 4,000 bamboo houses provided shelter to thousands made homeless by the disaster, particularly in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It was also found that bamboo could resist heat of up to 55 degrees and unlike steel, was not vulnerable to rust and salty humidity.

In Kenya, however, an existing ban on harvesting bamboo could affect plans for its use. A Kenyan Forestry Services source, who requested anonymity, said the ban restricts harvesting to some selected users and government institutions. Experts are lobbying for it to be lifted.

Source: IRIN