What is meant by non-commercial ‘orphan crops’?

Traditional crops such as cowpea, sorghum, millet, pigeon pea, cassava and sweet potato are referred to as non-commercial ‘orphan crops’, as part of a particular narrative that values crops that are produced commercially and traded on international markets, while everything else, like traditional or indigenous crops, are considered ‘orphan’. But on the ground, these crops form the basis of our food and farming systems. The value of these crops is not recognised. They’ve been neglected in regional, national and international policy, and in research and development spaces.

"GM crops simply cannot address multiple nutritional challenges"

But we do not agree with the use of the term ‘orphan crops’. In the same way that we changed the discourse around ‘informal seed systems’ to ‘farmer-managed seed systems’ we have to question whether crops are really orphan or underutilised. Terms like ‘orphan crops’ are derogatory and I regret that we used it in our recent report, but it’s out there now and it’s a learning curve for us. The more we work with farmers on the ground the more we are humbled and we go back to the drawing board to rethink our strategy and way forward.

What is your concern with genetic modification of these crops?

First, we are very critical of genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa and have been opposing GM in Africa for almost 20 years. We are fundamentally opposed to reductionist solutions imposed upon Africa by powerful external forces that are based on replacing existing farmer-managed food and farming systems with a model that is ecologically unsustainable and inherently socially unjust.Claims that GM addresses vitamin and nutrient deficiencies through biofortification is turning the attention and resources of politicians and researchers towards new technologies such as gene editing and genesilencing. There has been a spate of articles and discussion around this, yet very little attention goes to the biosafety risks nor the past failures associated with GM crops. It is surprising that biofortification receives so much attention when GM crops simply cannot address multiple nutritional challenges arising from, amongst others, environmental degradation and lack of access to public health and sanitation. Our main objection is that this diverts resources and the policy making trajectory away from real solutions which can be found in the diversity of food and farming

"There is clearly an opportunity to embrace an alternative transformation agenda based on agroecology"

In some parts of Southern Africa, and in the USA, Canada and Latin America, farmers can’t even imagine agriculture without GM. At the same time, smallholder farmers in Africa produce 80 % of our food largely based on their own seed systems. So in our recent report (see box), we look at what the GM industry is doing with farmers’ traditional seeds and crops, and where public research funding is going. Now at least groups have, in one document, an outline of who are the companies donating technology, which traits in crops are being researched, which crops are being targeted, and how much money is going into these projects. The report reveals that there are whole host of agendas at play. For instance much of the research is on new GM traits and is in the stage of either greenhouse containment or confined field trials. The prospects of commercialisation are unclear as approval of new traits takes a long time and depends on the evolution of biosafety regulations and new or existing moratoriums. It is not clear when, or whether or not, any of these GM crops will reach the commercialisation stage.

But in general, we are very concerned about the GM industry and multinational companies further prying open Africa’s food and farming system through its expansion into non-commercial crops, while there is clearly an opportunity for governments and a host of actors to embrace an alternative transformation agenda based on agroecology.

New ACB report: For your own good. The chicanery behind non-commercial ‘orphan crops’ and rice for Africa

The African Centre for Biodiversity released For your own good in April 2016, outlining the GMO industry’s expansion across Africa. The report focuses on non-commercial crops – cassava, sorghum, sweet potato, pigeon pea and millet, as well as rice – revealing that a great deal of research and development is currently underway into the genetic modification of these crops. Most of the ongoing trials are focused on drought and salt tolerance, nitrogen use efficiency, resistance to tropical pests and diseases and nutritional enhancement (biofortification). The key countries that have been targeted include Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi. The current wave of GM research is not enabling smallholders in Africa to choose their means of production and survival and is shifting control over the future of farming in Africa from farmers to those who will benefit from profits to be made from GM. Moreover GM crops threaten genetic diversity that exists amongst traditional plant varieties. The report concludes that “the GM industry appears to be expanding its grasp over traditional subsistence crops. […] By focusing research on traits that are meant to ‘benefit’ farmers and malnourished populations, the industry is bent on winning the hearts and minds of Africans regarding genetically modified crops.” This report complements work already produced on GM banana (Schnurr, 2014) and GM cowpea (ACB, 2015).

Can you elaborate some of these real solutions?

It is important to support the right of farmers to choose their means of production and survival. And this means starting with where farmers are and emboldening and strengthening their systems. Moreover, the protection of farmermanaged seed systems is needed. In these systems you find diversity and resilience. We need to shift away from the idea that seeds within farmer-managed seed systems are sub standard or of poor quality. Within these seeds, you may have drought resistant or nutritional properties and characteristics with cultural importance.

What steps can be taken towards these solutions?

We are pushing for big policy change towards recognition and protection of these systems and supporting local campaigns. For us information is key and ACB tries to put current information and knowledge in the public domain, complemented by other activities and events. Earlier this year we organised a course where we brought together activists from across Africa and spoke at length about GM of non-commercial, indigenous crops.

I think the revaluation of traditional crops will increasingly become part of the resistance campaigns against GM. There is a conference coming up in Nigeria where church groups will discuss the rise of GM cowpea. Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of cowpea and field trials with Bt cowpea are in quite an advanced stage so we expect a lot of resistance there. Our previous report on cowpea was translated into French and is being used by our friends in Burkina Faso, where there is a growing resistance to GM from the grassroots, for example through an event to coincide with the international march against Monsanto in May 2016. When our colleagues in Africa integrate information from our reports into their local campaigns that way, it’s a big victory for us.

Diana Quiroz and Madeleine Florin work at ILEIA (www.ileia.org)

The post Interview: Mariam Mayet on protecting farmers’ crops from GM appeared first on Ileia.

What was the main motivation behind the urban agriculture programme?

At the end of the 1990s, there was an emerging movement for territorial development, and looking at the benefits from vegetable gardens, the municipality was interested in promoting local development, and establishing an inclusive municipal policy on urban farming.

Building on experiences from earlier programmes which focused on agroecology and targeted disadvantaged neighbourhoods we defined a number of aims that would contribute to vulnerable urban families achieving food sovereignty. We wanted to improve neighbourhood landscapes by producing healthy organic food, to establish markets that directly connect farmers with consumers, to uncover the potential of unemployed people and secure tenure rights. We saw an urban agriculture programme as a most suitable vehicle to meet these objectives.

Why did you choose agroecology as an approach?

We want to promote sustainable crop cultivation as a means for social transformation and to generate conditions for ‘living well’. Agroecology has the advantage of using accessible technology while reducing the dependence on external inputs. Farmers learn to produce their own inputs and they manage the entire production process themselves.

How big is the programme?

There are currently 1500 farmers who produce food for their own families and another 250 who also sell their surplus produce. And there are various types of urban farming in Rosario. Some are in families’ own gardens, or in schools, or public parks, as well as on 24 hectares of ‘unused land’. This land that is owned by the national government, the municipality or the railway company, is divided into plots of between 600 m2 and 2000 m2 and free and secure tenure is assigned to interested families.

Where is the produce sold and to whom?

Rosario’s urban farmers produce the only widely available agroecological fruit and vegetables in the city. This food can be bought from the farms themselves, at farmers’ ‘agrochemical free’ markets, through vegetable box schemes or eaten when dining out, as some urban farmers also sell their vegetables to restaurants.

The market for the programme’s produce is expanding rapidly, and it has transformed from a niche market into a ‘mass’ market. Much effort has been made to ensure that the most vulnerable can produce or afford to buy seasonal fruit and vegetables. For example, families from the same neighbourhood can join ‘exchange clubs’.

How did the programme establish producer–consumer relations?

We value all knowledge and wisdom embedded in farming practices

During its 13 years, the programme has built a trusting relationship between the state, urban farmers and consumers. The Network of Gardeners of Rosario has been very active. And, a consumer network the Green Life Network, organises farm visits, guarantees the purchase of vegetables before harvest, and many members participate actively in monthly ‘healthy lunches’, a farmer-inspired idea.

Is this only an urban experience or are rural farmers involved?

We are actively involved in the National Forum for Family Farming which helped to create the national Secretariat for Family Farming in July 2014. The positive experience in Rosario was one of the reasons that small scale urban farmers became recognised by this new institution. This is important, as it enables them to be registered with the National Register of Family Farmers, which then gives rights to beneficial tax and pension schemes.

We work with farmers in Rosario’s peri-urban zone but also those in the rural areas beyond, and with several associations and agroecology technicians. Through CEPAR, we are also linked to organic farmer networks in Argentina and with the Latin American Movement of Agroecology (MAELA). For the past few years, a movement promoting agrochemical-free rings around the towns in the highlands where Rosario is situated has become more active, with our programme being a focal point.

Amongst the participants, those with a rural farming background have been able to share and promote their agroecolical knowledge, particularly that related to soil improvement and pest management.

Photo: Silvio Moriconi

How are women and youth involved?

Through workshops and other activities, we build awareness about the need to change the asymmetric power relations between men and women. Women lead the network and make up 65% of all involved. They participate in all activities, in gardening, processing, management, and take a leading role in commercialisation in local markets.

We believe farmers and gardeners should be at the highest level of the social hierarchy, because without food, there is nothing. However our society still does not adequately appreciate farmers’ work. We make an effort to improve the image of farmers and gardeners as caretakers of the environment. This helps to make urban farming more attractive to our youth.

Young people are increasingly active within the programme, and today, about 140 are training to become urban farmers. Some are members of cooperatives which offer ecological gardening services. Another youth group provides courses in vegetable gardening, while others train school children in the city centre. This latter work is particularly important because it encourages interactions between young people from the poorest neighbourhoods and those from the wealthier city centre.

What about training, and links to schools and universities?

Photo: Rosario Urban Agriculture Team

Training and long-term capacity building are at the core of our work. Learning starts in the field, and is complemented with workshops, encounters, exchanges, excursions, seminars and congresses. We value all knowledge and the associated wisdom embedded in farming practices.

We have created a mobile school that focuses on ecological crop production practices. The first 18 people have received their certificates and later this year a second group will follow. The certificate opens opportunities for them to work as specialists in ecological farming.

The programme is embedded in 40 schools that have vegetable gardens to promote healthy food and care for the environment. We also undertake many activities with different faculties at the University of Rosario, including the Faculties of Agrarian Sciences, Architecture, Medicine and Civil Engineering.

How do you share your experience?

Our pioneering experience has inspired other urban agriculture initiatives across Argentina, in Morón, Mar del Plata, Rio Cuarto, Corrientes, Tucumán and Santiago de Estero. And we have also inspired other Latin American cities that are now implementing urban agriculture initiatives, including Lima in Peru, Belo Horizonte and Guarulhos in Brazil, and Bogotá in Colombia.

Political decision makers, technicians and professionals from other cities have visited us to learn and adapt our experiences to their situations. Many come during our annual Week of Urban Agriculture called RAICES (Roots: Networks, Food, Inclusion, Culture, Ecology, Solidarity) that we have organised for the past 12 years. Our farmers and team members also actively participate in other events.

What makes the programme so relevant?

Although we work primarily on urban farming, our programme is strongly focused on social issues such as territorial approaches, agroecology, social inclusion and environmental protection. The programme has built bridges between the rural and the urban, between the public and private sectors, and between farmers, consumers and civil society as a whole. And in particular, we have helped to transform the image of farmers into a positive one, and farmers are now appreciated in Rosario as caretakers of the earth and our landscapes. And perhaps most importantly, the youth, the farmers of the future, have been infected with enthusiasm for agroecology as an innovative occupation.

For more information visit www.agriurbanarosario.com.ar or twitter.com/AgriUrbanaRosar

Interview: Teresa Gianella-Estrems and Teobaldo Pinzás

The post Urban agroecology – a tool for social transformation appeared first on Ileia.

Politicians and policy-makers now frequently discuss the crucial role of agriculture in development. What will be the future of agriculture?

There are contrasting views about precisely what needs to be done, and the question is complex because many policy-makers seem to think that today, there is a trade-off between the various objectives that any agricultural policy must combine: improving levels of production and raising the revenues of small producers, while respecting the environment. There is also a clear schizophrenia within governments: while more market liberalisation is sometimes seen as a solution to encourage production, many realize on the other hand that this squeezes out the smallest and least competitive production units, which is exactly not what we want to achieve, as this increases inequality and poverty, and therefore hunger. In this context, a serious ideological battle is being fought. The problem, as I see it, is that large agribusiness corporations exercise a disproportionate influence on governments, while small farmers are not involved in most processes.

Then what is the relevance of all your high-level meetings for the lives of small farmers in Africa and Asia?

There is often a serious disconnection between the high-level officials I meet and the poor farmers, living in the most marginal areas. I see my role as trying to understand the needs of the most vulnerable, and ensuring that policy-makers are made sensitive to those needs and are more accountable. The right to food is about raising accountability. It’s based on the idea that you cannot work for the poor without the poor.

But what is the impact of high-level declarations to global developments in agriculture? Will they really convince governments to implement better policies?

There are important vested interests in the existing system, despite its failures: it has succeeded relatively well in raising production, but failed in addressing the root causes of hunger. Things can change, however. Two levers are important. First, through international meetings and the preparation of declarations, we can change the perception of governments about what needs to be done, and gradually arrive at a common diagnosis. Second, through improving accountability at the domestic level, particularly by encouraging countries to set up national strategies by participatory means and to establish consultative bodies, we can increase pressure on governments, and ensure that their efforts will be appropriately targeted to the needs of the most vulnerable. These tools should not be underestimated. Together, they can lead to real change.

During the last world summit on food security in November 2009 in Rome, the UN have called for a reform of the Committee on Food Security (CFS). What real impact can this reformed committee have for small farmers in the world?

It will be important to see how the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) will function, under its new composition and with its new role. During a second phase of its work, the CFS should adopt a global strategic framework – a plan of action at global level, identifying measures that governments and international agencies should take. It should set priorities and guide the work of development co-operation and investment in agriculture. This has the potential to improve the understanding of governments about what needs to be done to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, and of raising the accountability of all actors – donor governments, their partners in developing countries, and international agencies.

It also has the potential to improve co-ordination across different international agencies. For it is bizarre, to say the least, that within the World Trade Organisation, countries are pressured to relax the measures that protect their agricultural sector in the face of foreign competition, while at the same time they are told to support smallholders and to diminish their dependency on international markets to feed their populations.

“Large agribusiness corporations exercise a disproportionate influence on governments”

The CFS should ensure that these inconsistencies do not persist. All governments and international agencies (both from within the UN system as well as outside it, such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO) and also civil society and the private sector will have to justify their choices in the face of a shared diagnosis of the priorities. This can be significant. But whether or not real change will result, will depend on whether they in fact agree to subject themselves to this collective evaluation. Will they act co-operatively? Or will they continue to prioritise their national interests and ideological agendas? This is the real test for the future.

What should small farmers do to get their voices heard?

They must organise themselves! I am encouraged to see, for instance, how fast co-operatives of small farmers are developing. This means that small farmers improve their bargaining position and can improve their access to infrastructure or to public goods such as storage facilities, information about prices, or transport. It also means that they will find it easier to be heard at all levels, from the domestic to the international level. I am convinced that we would not have seen the mistakes of the past if small farmers’ organisations had been better involved in decision-making. I refer for instance to marketing boards that bought crops from farmers at very low prices either for export or to ensure low-priced food for the urban populations. But also the insistence on export-led agriculture in general, which has increased inequalities between larger, better-off producers and small farmers living on the most marginal lands. Farmers’ voices need to counterbalance the corporate sector in setting the agenda for agricultural and rural development.

Agriculture is affected by climate change, but also contributes to it. Livestockproduction has a big influence on the emission of greenhouse gases. Is this not a dilemma in promoting farming?

The increase in livestock production, in response to a growing demand for meat, tightens the competition for land between its various uses. Together, grazing land and cropland dedicated to the production of feed-crops and fodder already account for 70 percent of all agricultural land, or about 30 percent of the land surface of the planet. And in certain regions it is a major cause of deforestation or soil degradation, as a result of overgrazing. In a 2006 study called Livestock’s long shadow, the FAO noted that if we take into account deforestation as a result of the creation of pastures and production of crops for feed, livestock is responsible for 18 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions, almost double the share of transport.

Yet, at the same time, we must recognise that no two kilogrammes of meat are the same. Farm animals raised in industrialised countries consume more than five calories in feedstock for each calorie of meat or dairy food produced, and some estimates put that figure much higher, establishing a relationship of up to 17 units to one. But these figures represent the production of meat in rich countries, which is heavily industrialised, and it relates to animals fed on grains. In India, the ratio is a less than 1.5 to one. In Kenya, where animals are not fed grain but live off grass or agricultural by-products which humans cannot eat, livestock actually yield more calories than they consume. And it is equally important to acknowledge that livestock rearing represents a source of income for perhaps up to one billion people, representing one third of the poor in the rural areas.

In 2008, the IAASTD report on the world’s agriculture was published. You often urge governments to take this report more seriously, but even the extensive summary is difficult to read. Can we expect governments to use this report as an input in their agricultural policies?

The IAASTD is the result of a considerable amount of work, by some of the most renowned experts in the world. The obstacle its reception faces is that it calls for a paradigm shift in the way we conceive agricultural development and innovation, with a focus on the needs of the most vulnerable and on sustainable agriculture, away from the technological approaches of the past. We may need to break down the conclusions of IAASTD into parts, and treat separately those that relate to trade, those that relate to seeds and genetic resources, and those that relate to rural development, for example. Of course, all these issues are linked. But the task seems insuperable unless we cut it down in separate chunks.

China as a growing economy is becoming a more and more important player in the global political and economic system. China supports Africa with money and advisors. Their relationship with developing countries is very different from that of the EU or the UN. What does this mean for small farmers in Africa?

China has to feed approximately 20 percent of the world’s population with about seven percent of the world’s arable land. Its population is still increasing, and its capacity to expand agricultural acreage is limited. They are in fact facing a rapid loss of arable land and a large amount of soil erosion, and their access to water is precarious. The melting of the great glaciers of the Himalayas will make their position less and less tenable in the future. It should therefore come as no surprise if they seek to invest in agriculture abroad, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where land is available and where labour is relatively inexpensive.

For the local communities, the arrival of investors often means that their access to land, and therefore their livelihoods, will be affected. Some small farmers will be moved to more marginal, less fertile land. Others may be offered waged employment on the large-scale plantations that investors will develop. Others still will have no alternative but to migrate to the cities, with little prospect of decent employment. These risks cannot be underestimated, and it is therefore vital that investment in agriculture be carefully guided, and that local communities be involved in negotiations that are conducted with such investors.

Some people plead for a clearer dichotomy between big and small farmers in the West: on the one hand, industrialised farms competing on international markets and on the other hand, more ecological farmers, near to markets and consumers. Would that be a strategy for the whole world or should all efforts go to small farmers on a global level?

This is still an open question, in my view. The coexistence of very large, agro-industrial farms, and small-scale, sustainable farming, is something a country such as Brazil is trying to achieve. At a minimum, it requires strong support of family farming by the state. Smaller farms, while very productive per hectare, are more labour intensive and thus produce at higher costs. Therefore they must be supported, or they will be wiped out in increasingly competitive markets. Governments can support family farms by providing loans at lower-than-market rates, by adequate public procurement policies, by supporting farmers’ organisations, by providing access to credit and insurance against weather-related events or crop losses, and by supplying management policies or buying policies to establish public stocks that can ensure stable revenues. I don’t think we should place too many hopes on the attitudes of individual consumers. Although these attitudes are changing (consumers pay greater attention to where food comes from and how it was produced), price remains a determining factor for them.

Interview done by: Mireille Vermeulen

The post Food as a universal right appeared first on Ileia.