Africa Food Shortage Areas

Improving Soil Quality for Farming

A good quality of soil is very much essential in a successful plot allotment. If the soil that you will use is not fertile and packed with nutrients, chances are your effort to sew, weed and tend your garden will just go down the drain. Remember that it is the soil that will give your plants the water, air and food that they need to achieve healthy development and growing, which makes it a must to spend time in improving your soil’s total quality.

Kinds of Soil as Medium for Growing

One tip on how to improve soil quality will be to know the kind of soil that you are planting on. The five kinds of soil include:

• Sandy soil
• Loam
• Silty soil
• Clay
• Chalky soil

Each of these soil types has its unique characteristics which are also open for improvements in various ways. The sandy kind of soil cannot really sustain the nutrients very well, the reason why there is a need to supply it constantly with some organic matter.

Best Soil Types

Both loam and silty soils are regarded to be good for plant growing and they also require much lesser maintenance. However, you will encounter more problems with clay soil since its lacks aeration and you will also need to have a better structure for you to grow your plants. The best solution here will be to add more organic matters that are well rotted especially when autumn comes.

Worst Soil Type

Of all soil types, the chalky one will give you the worst cultivation since it is high in alkaline by nature and mineral deficiencies always happen. Good rectification for this will be to add more organic matter so that the nutrient content as well as water retention in the soil will be possible.

Soil and the pH Level

Majority of the plants will be nice to grow in neutral soil, but there are still some which prefer to grow in slightly alkaline or acidic conditions. Before you even start planting in your garden, determine first the pH level of the soil where you will plant. You can find a lot of testing kits in many garden centers. If the need calls for it, you can also adjust the soil’s pH level slightly in accordance to the kind of vegetables and fruits that you will want to grow.

To make your soil more alkaline, you only have to add some ground lime to the soil. If you want to have a more acidic type of soil, sulphur or aluminium sulphate can be added to it. Always bear in mind that the pH levels of the soil cannot be altered permanently for these measures are only temporary. The best solution will be to work with your soil type you are using, as much as possible.

Looking to Africa for Ideas About How to Fight Hunger

African Pinapple Farmers Share Expertise

How to Start and Run Your Own Small Farm Business

Small farms can have a very big impact on  food security nowadays.  Your  passion in farming can transform the food production in the community .

For you to start your farm business successfully, you just need to work hard, research and  plan carefully . As you begin to establish the farm, dedication and research are considered as the most important things which you need to look at seriously. You also need to understand the market, obtain the needed skills and make your own niche in the market. The following things are what you need so that everything goes smoothly as you have planned: marketing materials, website, ledger or accounting software, organic materials, compost, seeds, farm equipments, farm land, legal documents and business plan.

Tips in Starting and Running Your Own Small Farm Business

1 - The first tool which you need that will serve as the business’ secret weapon is no other than the business plan because this has all the details that must be followed. You can also make use of this in seeking for financial assistance. The following are just some of the most important factors which you need to include ion the business plan: financial projections, present financial information, marketing plan, competing strategies, market analysis, business description and mission statement. Researching about your competition and market is also very important because this will give you a hint on what to do and what to avoid in any of the business operational strategies. 
 
2 - You have to establish the farm as a business entity that is legal. You also need to file all the required forms in your local authority which includes business permits and licenses with regard to agriculture and farming. If you have queries, questions and concerns, you can consult the local office. A lawyer can also help you in settling all the possible fuss in your business.

After that, you can set up a reliable accounting system with the use of the computer with the assistance of a professional accountant.

3 -  You can find a farm land, which you can purchase or lease. Of course, this will be based again on the business model as specified by your business plan. Aside from that, you also need to be guided with factors that need to be considered.

When you have settled the leasing or purchasing transactions you can buy all the necessary small farm tools and equipments for you to get all the farm work done well. To save money, you also need to find the best deals on the materials you will purchase from a supplier. 

4 -  You can start marketing your business.

11 million hungry from East Africa's drought, worst in 60 years

NAIROBI, Kenya — East Africa's worst drought in 60 years is putting 11 million lives at risk, many of them in war-torn Somalia, where thousands of hungry families are making the dangerous trek across parched, violent territory to the promise of safety and food in Kenya.

Aid agencies warn the drought is regional — affecting Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia — and the hunger that now stalks the land may become famine.

Somali refugees line up on July 6, 2011. Photo: Roberto Schmidt

Most of the Somali refugees arrive at Dadaab, a sprawling complex of overcrowded camps in northeastern Kenya built in 1991 for 90,000 people. Today it is home to more than four times that number. It is the world’s largest refugee camp and one of the fastest growing human settlements on the planet.

But it is not large enough for the new refugees, who are currently arriving at a rate as high as 1,000 per day.

Bowing to international pressure, Kenya’s government has agreed to open a new refugee camp to house some of those thousands of hungry, desperate and bedraggled victims of Somalia’s decades-long war who cross into Kenya. The exodus has accelerated because of the drought that is pushing their already marginal existence to the edge of oblivion.

A few miles away from Dadaab’s dusty squalor is Ifo-II, a new $20 million facility for refugees built by the U.N. in 2010. But a year later the gleaming new camp remains empty. The lines of brick houses with tin roofs, deep wells for fresh water, latrines and health facilities are all empty and unused.

Kenya blocked opening the camp, complaining that the new facility would encourage more refugees whose arrival could provide cover for Somalia’s Islamist militants who have threatened Kenya in the past, such as the Al Shabaab insurgents. Kenya has suffered several terrorist bombings. 

“We have security concerns that Al Shabaab could be coming into our country under the guise of refugees,” said Kenya’s security minister George Saitoti earlier this week.

But on Thursday Prime Minister Raila Odinga caved into the pressure from aid agencies and the U.N. to open Ifo-II. “Although we consider our own security, we cannot turn away refugees,” he said.

The new camp will help to decongest Dadaab, but it amounts to little more than a sticking a bandaid on a gaping wound as refugees continue to flood across the border joining communities that are themselves suffering from drought-created food shortages.

Two consecutive poor rainy seasons has resulted in “one of the driest years since 1950/51 in many pastoral zones,” according to the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet). The drought has compounded the problems created by more than 20 years of war in Somalia.

“More than 11 million people need urgent assistance to stay alive, as they face their worst drought in decades,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic. U.N. agencies have asked for $1.6 billion dollars to pay for essential life-saving programs in the region, but have only received half that amount,” Ban said. “Our priority is to stop the suffering now.”

Civilians fleeing conflict and drought have made long, often deadly, walks southwards from Somalia in search of food and safety.

“Women and children have made the most incredible journeys, walking for weeks through the desert and braving hunger and attacks by armed robbers and wild animals, to get to the camps in Kenya,” said Joost van de Lest, head of Oxfam in Kenya.

“The numbers arriving are overwhelming and basic services are insufficient,” warned Nick Guttman, head of the humanitarian division at charity Christian Aid.

“Most people have been walking for weeks on end and are in a very poor state of health. Many only make the very difficult and arduous journey to Dadaab when their last animals have died and they have no other choice,” Guttman said after visiting the area this week.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, called the conflict and drought “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.”

In Somalia itself the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says malnutrition levels are currently the highest in the world.

“The population is no longer able to cope with harsh climate conditions, such as the current drought, while at the same time struggling to survive armed conflict and other violence,” said Andrea Heath, ICRC economic security coordinator.

The combination of conflict forcing people from their homes while drought kills off livestock and dries up the land has caused suffering for thousands. To make matters worse, Al Shabaab, Somalia's ruthless Al Qaeda-linked rebel group, has restricted Western humanitarian access in recent years and food prices have shot up.

In Somalia the cost of sorghum, a staple grain, has risen by 240 percent over the last year.

So dire is the situation that Al Shabaab said it will lift restrictions imposed on humanitarian activities in areas it controls, although aid agencies are wary of returning. The UN’s World Food Programme is considering a return to Al Shabaab-controlled territory after an 18-month absence.

“WFP withdrew from areas under Al Shabaab control … because of threats to the lives of our staff and the imposition of unacceptable operating conditions, including the imposition of informal taxes, and a demand that no female staff work for us there,” the agency said in a statement.

WFP added that it would “explore every possibility to return” with the necessary security guarantees.

This week the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, airlifted 5 tons of food and medicine into the Al Shabaab-controlled town of Baidoa. “We are ready to work anywhere in Somalia," said UNICEF Somalia head Rozanne Chorlton, "provided we get unhindered access to reach the most vulnerable children in need.”

Source: Globalpost

N’Dama: Ancient West African Cattle

As the African continent is faced with the challenge of meeting a growing demand for milk and meat, the genetic diversity of livestock breeds is being lost at an alarming rate. Governments and agribusiness continue to promote exotic commercial breeds of livestock that are bred to gain more weight and produce more milk than traditional breeds. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that around 1,710 breeds of livestock—21 percent—are at risk of extinction worldwide as farmers abandon their traditional breeds. For millennia, pastoralists have bred livestock that are well-adapted to local conditions. Understanding and preserving these breeds could be useful in helping communities adapt as their climates and environments change in the coming decades.

N'Dama of  West Africa (Photo: ILRI)

N’Dama is a hardy breed of cattle indigenous to the Fouta-Djallon highlands in the West African country of Guinea. N’Dama cows were domesticated around 8,000 years ago in the region and they have evolved to be resistant to local diseases and parasites. The breed is common throughout West and Central Africa, especially in areas infested by the tsetse fly—an insect known to transmit disease to both humans and livestock. According to the FAO, there are approximately 7 million head of N’Dama cattle.

N’Dama cows produce two to three liters of milk per day and their meat is renowned for its flavor. The breed is the most popular among West Africa’s small-scale, low-input livestock keepers. This is largely because they are heat tolerant, are docile and do well in harsh environments, and can survive on poor quality feeds.

But the most important quality of N’Dama is its resistance to trypanosomiasis, a widespread African cattle disease spread by the tsetse fly. In the areas of Africa with the greatest potential to increase domestic livestock production, trypanosomiasis is a major constraint. Because of its natural resistance to the disease, N’Dama cows do not require expensive antibiotics to be healthy. For this reason, N’Dama is seen as the breed of choice to help West and Central Africa meet the increasing demand for meat and milk products.

The International Trypanotolerance Centre (ITC) has launched an N’Dama improvement program in The Gambia. The program uses 400 breeding cows to try and select larger, higher milk-producing animals that retain disease-resistant qualities. A company in the Democratic Republic of Congo called Jules VAN LANCKER, in collaboration with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), has used its herd of over 40,000 purebred N’Dama to breed desirable qualities without losing hardiness. According to ILRI, the company has increased the average weight of its N’Dama cattle by 30 to 50 kilograms per animal through selective breeding.

Economically, livestock production is the fastest growing sector in agriculture worldwide. Livestock-keeping can be an important way to improve diets and raise incomes in the developing world. Less well-known livestock breeds contain valuable resources that could be vital for food security and help farmers deal with the challenges of climate change, animal disease, and dwindling water supplies.

What are some less well-known livestock breeds that you know about? Let us know in the comments!

Source: Matt Styslinger is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.

 

‘Unlocking the value of the cow' - East Africa’s small-scale dairy producers

A new project identifying appropriate dairy breeds for small-scale farmers in East Africa, and making these breeds more available in the region, was launched in February 2011 at the Nairobi campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The Dairy Genetics East Africa project—a partnership between ILRI; the University of New England, in Australia; and PICOTEAM, a consultancy group facilitating change processes—will help smallholders obtain the most appropriate cows for their farms so as to increase their milk yields and improve their livelihoods.

A small-scale dairy farmer with her cows in Uganda

Speaking to dairy stakeholders from Kenya, including officials from Kenya’s Ministry of Livestock Development, the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project and other dairy industry development partners, at the launch on 9 February 2011, Okeyo Mwai, a researcher and the project’s coordinator at ILRI, explained that even though smallholder dairying is booming in parts of East Africa, such as in Kenya’s central region and the north and southern Rift Valley areas, where farmers have adopted improved animal breeds and intensified milk production, many more smallholders lack research-based knowledge about which dairy breeds are best suited for their farms and production systems and information about where to obtain them. According to Mwai, ‘Kenya’s dairy sector currently does not have a clear “breeding strategy.”’ That means that many poor smallholders are unable to take advantage of breeds that best suit their situations.

In the absence of appropriate breeding strategies and the ready supply of appropriate replacement stock, farmers face an unpredictable, unreliable and often costly replacement processes. Many are forced to replace their animals from their existing animals or from their neighbours. Others go to large-scale commercial farms and end up ‘upgrading’ to the main commercial dairy breeds even where these don’t suit their farms.

This project will determine the breed composition of cows currently kept in the project areas, the breeds smallholders prefer and the reasons for their preferences, and which breeds perform best under specific conditions. ‘This information will help us assess the relative fit of the various breeds to different production systems,’ says Ed Rege, a team leader at PICO. ‘We’ll then develop partnerships and business models with the private sector to breed, multiply and continuously supply the best-performing dairy breeds to farmers at affordable prices.’

The project will be implemented in five sites in western Kenya and three sites in Uganda. The first phase of the project will start with gathering information to assess the relative performance of breeds in the sites, setting up partnerships with other stakeholders in dairy development in the region and developing business models that will be carried out the later (phase 2 and 3) stages of the project.

In the first phase, project staff will collect information on about 3000 cows based on two monthly farm visits made over a period of 18 months. Field agents will compile information on the performance of the cows vis-vis farm-level inputs for a cost-benefit analysis of the different breeds. The agents will also collect information on farmer-perceived risks associated with different breeds, on means of livelihoods of the farmers, on any gender-specific preferences for certain breeds, and on farmer use of the various breeding services available and their costs.

The breed compositions will be obtained using advanced genotyping technology, which will be led by John Gibson, the project’s principal investigator, who is based at Australia’s University of New England. This information will be combined with cow and household data to identify the most appropriate breeds for various dairy production systems and household circumstances.

‘This project will harness the diverse expertise of the key partners, and combine the latest technologies with tried and tested methods of engaging with the community, to answer critical questions much more rapidly and accurately than has been possible in the past,’ said Gibson, who formerly worked at ILRI as a livestock geneticist.

Participants in the meeting expressed their support for the project, noting its focus on cattle genetic improvement—an area that has received inadequate research attention in the region. Alex Kirui, country director of the non-governmental organization Heifer International, said the project’s focus on ‘giving farmers the right breed for given circumstances’ is an essential requirement if the dairy industry is to be competitive enough to meet the high and increasing regional demand for fresh milk and other dairy products. Moses Nyabila, regional director for the East Africa Dairy Development Project, said the project would ‘unlock the value of the cow, which is a key asset for smallholder farmers.’

Results from the project’s first phase will guide future dairy pilot studies in East Africa and will inform a comparative study of the South Asian dairy industry.

The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It started in September 2010 and is scheduled to end early in 2013.