IDEALS

PARIS, (May 11, 2009) IPS/GIN – The food crisis in African states
will not be solved by investment to spur agricultural production
because the problem is not food output but poverty that is making
food unaffordable for urban Africans.

This is the argument of Gilles Saint-Martin, the head of
international relations for the French Agricultural Research Centre
for International Development, known by its French acronym CIRAD.
CIRAD’s approach to sustainable development focuses on the
long-term ecological, economic and social consequences of change
in developing communities and countries.

Saint-Martin talks to Hilaire Avril about the dire need for
investment in African agricultural research; the effects that the
economic partnership agreements will have on food production; and
whether the African Union should adopt its own Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP). Read the rest of this entry →

MANILA, (May 19, 2009) IPS/GIN – Improved access to foods with
higher protein is expected to improve the overall health of
indigenous people of the highlands, thanks to a new program called
the Fish for Upland Dwellers project, or FishFUD. The project is
being pilot-tested in the upland tribal community of the Higaonons,
one of the numerous indigenous tribes in Mindanao. Some 300 to 400
families will initially benefit from the pilot program.

“FishFUD is a good pro-poor project,” said BFAR Director Malcolm
Sarmiento. “It will improve access to food, and will also provide
them with livelihood income. The project is the first major
investment for an indigenous peoples’ community anywhere in the
country, and will go a long way towards securing a better deal for
them through the wonders of modern aquaculture technology.” Like
most upland dwellers in the Philippines, the Higaonon indigenous
people in the southern town of Sumilao are living in extreme
poverty. There are no jobs available and members of the tribe
barely scrap by on subsistence farming, mainly root crops. Read the rest of this entry →

FAQUA, Northern West Bank, (Jun. 10, 2009) IPS/GIN – The
inhabitants of the West Bank village of Faqua have no access to the
abundant natural underground springs that inspired Faqua’s own
name, which means “spring water bubbles” in Arabic..

Today Faqua’s water springs are controlled by Israel.

Faqua’s problems started in 1948 with the establishment of Israel,
when 24,000 of Faqua’s 36,000 dunums of land (one dunum is 0.10
hectare) and most of the underground springs were appropriated by
the new Jewish state. Read the rest of this entry →

BERLIN, (Mar. 24, 2010) IPS/GIN – Rampant illegal fishing is
decimating fish populations for some of the poorest West African
countries, with the practice most rife in the east central Atlantic
Ocean area, which covers the territorial waters of some 15 African
countries from Morocco and Mauritania in the north to Angola in the
south.

Most affected are Guinea and Sierra Leone while the majority of
ships and companies involved in the illegal fishing navigate under
flags from China, Russia, Indonesia, and Panama but also from the
European Union (EU) and other industrialized countries, such as
Portugal, Italy and Japan. Read the rest of this entry →

WINDHOEK, (Jun. 16, 2009) IPS/GIN – A Namibian regional tribunal
denied Zimbabwe’s last-minute application for postponing the
controversial land case brought by farmers who are eager to resume
production amidst ongoing farm seizures.

The Namibian tribunal referred the case to the next Southern
African Development Community Summit of Heads of State.

In his ruling on the Jun. 5 application for postponement, presiding
justice Ariranga Pillay from Mauritius referred to a Nov. 29
judgment in the case of Mike Campbell & Another vs. the Government
of Zimbabwe, which ordered the government to allow 75 white farmers
to stay on their land and compensate three others whose farms were
already expropriated. A day earlier, the court reserved judgment
in the case of Luke Tembani, a black Zimbabwean farmer whose farm
was also taken. Read the rest of this entry →

ANTANANARIVO, (Jun. 17, 2009) IPS/GIN – Drought conditions
continue, and famine conditions are worsening in the southern part
of Madagascar after a lack of summer rainfall destroyed the
country’s main harvest in March and April.

Half a million Malagasy have little or no access to clean water
and food.

The World Food Program (WFP) and United Nations Children Fund
(UNICEF) have started to hand out food aid, but say their current
budgets will only be enough to help 116,000 people in the southern
regions of Androy, Anosy and Atsimo Andrefana that have been worst
affected. Read the rest of this entry →

OUAGADOUGOU, (Jul. 18, 2009) IPS/GIN – Burkina Faso was one of
several countries where a rapid rise in food prices led to rioting
in the streets in 2008. Policy-makers had sensed a crisis
developing, but the country was not able to build up sufficient
reserves of imported commodities such as rice, wheat and oil to
avoid it. There is now an emphasis on achieving food security.

Bonou tells IPS that Burkina Faso is one of the handful of
countries respecting the Maputo commitment to spending at least ten
percent of its budget on agriculture. Read the rest of this entry →

CAPE TOWN, (Jul. 17, 2009) IPS/GIN – Commercial farmers sometimes
fail at organic farming because they switch over too quickly,
ditching all chemicals, which is as traumatic for the soil as “a
drug addict going cold turkey”.

This is how Cornelius Oosthuizen, the head of the South African
Biofarm Institute’s management team, explains why there are
relatively few organic farming success stories in South Africa. The
South African Biofarm Institute promotes sustainable and profitable
biological and organic farming.

“Failure occurs when a farmer who has been using chemicals on a
farm for a long time suddenly switches to 100 percent organic
farming. If you have 1,000 hectares of land, you cannot start
monoculture organic farming on all the land. One first has to farm
biologically. Read the rest of this entry →

ROME, (Feb. 18, 2010) IPS/GIN – Haiti’s misery after last month’s
earthquake will be compounded by a food catastrophe if the
international community continues to ignore the country’s
agricultural needs, the United Nations has warned.

Despite pledges covering over 95 percent of the 575-million-dollar
target set for the U.N.’s Flash Appeal to rebuild Haiti, where food
insecurity was a massive problem even before the earthquake that
killed over 200,000 people, there is a big shortfall in the
campaign’s agriculture component.

Indeed, only eight percent of the 23 million dollars required for
the sector’s immediate needs have been raised, the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said. Read the rest of this entry →

STOCKHOLM, (Aug. 18, 2009) IPS/GIN – “We can provide astronauts
with a safe supply of drinking water when they travel to the moon,
but we cannot provide the same service to slum dwellers in Kibera,
Nairobi or Dharavi, Mumbai,” Anders Berntell, executive director
of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told a
gathering of over 2,400 participants at the annual World Water Week
concluding Friday.

Pointing out the inequities and disparities in the supply and
distribution of water worldwide, Berntell said the international
community needs to find solutions that give the poorer segments of
societies access to these services, while at the same time ensuring
that the institutions that deliver those services are economically
viable. Read the rest of this entry →