African Agriculture

2009-11-22T21:15:00.003Z

1.Genome of common maize variety sequenced

2.GM crops have a role in preventing world hunger, scientist says

3.Only ten percent of Africa’s potential crop land is irrigated

4.Brazil to invest $6 billion in Mozambique biofuels

5.EU close to cutting tariffs on non-ACP bananas in WTO deal

6.Rwanda targets 20 million litres of biofuel per annum in three years

7.China is sending its farming expertise to Mozambique

8.Zimbabwe launches inputs subsidy

Genome of common maize variety sequenced

2009-11-21T00:59:00.005Z

by Monica Heger

Researchers report in Science that they have sequenced the genome of a common variety of maize, which could lead to improved crops and help piece together the evolution of the plant. “When you have the genome sequence, you have an important part of the instruction manual,” says Richard Wilson, geneticist at Washington University’s Genome Center in St. Louis, who led the research.

Maize's genome, which is made up of some 32,000 genes, has been made available online, so scientists, farmers, seed companies or anyone else can study the genes and attempt to breed the plants with the most desirable traits. “It’s going to be really important for the agricultural business,” says Wilson.

Maize crops could be bred for genes that would make them favorable for specific locations and needs. For instance, some varieties of maize have a high starch yield, which is important for feeding people. But, those varieties don’t necessarily grow well in extreme climates, says Wilson. Using breeding techniques and the new data, you could try to combine maize with genes that enable it to grow in a hot, dry climate with maize that has the high starch yield genes. The new type of maize would be beneficial in places such as Texas or even in sub-Saharan Africa.

Using breeding to select for desirable traits is more efficient than genetic engineering, which occurs when scientists attempt to insert a specific gene into a crop to get a specific trait. Genetic engineering is “a little artificial,” says Wilson. “Nature is always going to do it better. If we can give nature a little assistance, that’s really the key.”

Knowing the genome will also help in tracing maize’s evolutionary history. “It’s like DNA forensics that you might see on CSI,” says Wilson. “When you know the genome sequence, you can start to piece together its family tree.”

In particular, it now appears that hundreds and maybe thousands of genes were involved in the domestication of maize, says Ed Buckler USDA-ARS researcher at Cornell University, who worked on the research. “It wasn’t just one or two genes that did everything.”

The results mark the culmination of a 4-year, $29.5 million project that was a collaboration between scientists from many different universities. The next step will be to figure out how maize’s 32,000 genes interact, and which ones are linked to desirable traits.

USA Today

GM crops have a role in preventing world hunger, scientist says

2009-11-20T13:26:00.004Z

by Rachel Shields

Genetically modified crops have a role to play in preventing mass starvation across the world caused by a combination of climate change and rapid population growth, a senior government (UK) scientist has said.

Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), called for UK trials of GM foods, arguing that the Government needs to be more open with the public about the risks and benefits of genetically modified foods.

"Over the next 20 to 50 years, the population is going to increase from 6.5 to 9 billion. There will be more extreme weather, more demand for food, meat, and water, a changing climate: it is a very challenging situation, which, if we don't deal with it, could become a nightmare scenario," said Professor Watson. "We have to look at all the technologies, policies and practices, all forms of bio-tech, including GM."

"We need to have trials in the UK, and to make them open and transparent," Professor Watson added. "We'd have to protect them, to stop them getting trashed. There are a whole range of situations in which science can play a very important role. We'll need seeds which are more temperature- and pest-tolerant."

The suggestion that the Government should resume trials of GM crops, which halted in 2008, has generated criticism from environmental campaigners who point out that the growth of herbicide-resistant GM crops in countries such as Argentina and the US has seen dramatic increases in pesticide use and created pesticide-resistant "super-weeds>"

"If the Government does make the mistake of approving new field trials, then they should prepare themselves for the response of local communities, who will be worried about the risks that these crops pose," said Clare Oxborrow, senior food campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "The issues that applied a few years ago still apply. The risks of contamination have not been addressed; nor have any health and safety concerns."

A 2008 trial by Leeds University, in which potatoes were genetically modified to resist a parasitic worm, provoked anger from local residents and was destroyed by environmentalists. In addition to environmental fears about loss of bio-diversity and harm to other crops, consumers are also concerned about the possible health risks posed by GM food.

A study conducted by Eurobarometer in 2008 which surveyed 25,000 EU citizens found that 61 per cent thought that animal cloning was morally wrong. Meanwhile, a Gallup poll in 2005 found that 54 per cent of Britons were opposed to bio-technology in food production.

Professor Watson acknowledged that the subject is controversial. "It is similar to nuclear power," he said. "We have to look at all the risks and benefits, real and perceived, and tell the public what we are trying to achieve."

In 2008, however, Professor Watson led a study for the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, of which he is the director, which found that GM foods are likely to play only a small role in feeding the world's poor. The report highlighted that the "assessment of the technology lags behind its development".

The chief scientist's comments add weight to the claims of the Royal Society which last month argued that GM crops will prove important in preventing future food shortages. The controversial report called for a 10-year research programme, in which £200m a year would be spent on science that improves crops and sustainable crop management – including research into GM crops.

However, Professor Watson emphasised that GM foods could only play one part in solving a world food crisis, stressing that improving farming in developing countries is also vital. He recommends ending farming subsidies in developed countries, which would make the price of food produced in developing nations more competitive. He also spoke of the need to improve infrastructure, such as loans for farmers, and improve African farmers' education.

The Independent

Only ten percent of Africa’s potential crop land is irrigated

2009-11-20T13:24:00.003Z

Only ten percent of Africa’s potential crop land is irrigated compared with 26 and 44 percent in India and China respectively, according to crop scientist at Uganda’s Makerere University.

Crop scientists at the University said farmers in Africa do not irrigate their crops even during dry seasons, leading to poor yields.

If farmers want to cope with the changing climatic conditions especially droughts, they should adopt irrigation. Irrigating crops during droughts, even for scientifically improved crops, is important in case farmers want to achieve good yields.

Over the last 30 years, irrigation in Africa has increased by 1.2 per cent per year and now it is below one per cent per year. Irrigated land in Africa comprises 13.4 hectares and this is mainly in Egypt, they said.

This is the reason Egypt, a desert country, feeds countries in Africa including Uganda through exporting some of its farm products.

Most crops grown in Africa, particularly in Uganda need water, making irrigation necessary. Farmers here need to be sensitized about the importance of irrigation especially during this era of climate change, they added.

Farmers needs to use channel irrigation because this system is there to prevent deficit in food supply especially in times of drought. Biotechnologically-modified crops need irrigation as well but if we have the drought-resistant crops, then we shall need less water.

However, these irrigation systems are very expensive to maintain by an ordinary farmer and that is why the government has to come in and help them if we are to prioritise agriculture," he said.

A number of African countries including Uganda have engaged their scientists to conduct research on biotech crops by using tools such as tissue culture, finger printing and genetic engineering where DNA from a different specie is transferred to another to create a genetically modified organism.

This technology has created precise genetic products which are herbicide tolerant, drought, pest and disease resistant, and are of enhanced nutrition value for staple foods.

However, some societies in Africa have not welcomed the idea of the genetically modified crops because they believe they are toxic and therefore dangerous to human life.

However, crop scientists say that for Africa to adopt these new biotech varities, the research must be conducted by knowledgeable scientists who will be able to come up with valuable products.

Commodity Online

Brazil to invest $6 billion in Mozambique biofuels

2009-11-20T13:18:00.003Z

by Fred Katerere

Mozambique has signed two accords with Brazil for a $6 billion investment in biofuel exploration, the daily independent O Pais reported, citing António de Godoy, chairperson of the Brazilian confederation of biofuel companies Arranjo Produtivo Local do Alcool (APLA).

Some of the biofuels produced from sugar cane will be exported to Brazil to cut its dependence on petroleum based fuels, de Godoy told the Maputo-based newspaper.

About $256 million has been invested in the Mozambique biofuels sector covering 83,000 hectares, according to Roberto Albino, the director of agriculture promotion centre Centro de Promoção da Agricultura.

Bloomberg

EU close to cutting tariffs on non-ACP bananas in WTO deal

2009-11-18T09:47:00.004Z

European trade leaders are on the verge of agreeing to significant cuts in tariffs on bananas imported from outside the African and Caribbean region, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

"We are hopeful we can initial an agreement this week," the source said, commenting on a deal which would end a long-running dispute with exporters in Latin America, who do not benefit from the preferential tariffs granted to African competitors.

"We have to agree what will happen with regard to the Doha round on tropical fruits," said the source, confirming a Reuters report about an imminent deal on the world's longest-running trade dispute earlier this month.

"We are hopeful that an agreement on bananas will give a momentum for a positive result for world trade," he added.

Reuters

Can GM rice fill the world's shortfall?

2009-11-17T07:17:00.003Z

by Matt Cawood

Genetically modified (GM) crops are not the only answer to Asia’s looming food deficit, but multinational crop technology company Syngenta argues that they must be part of the mix.

Syngenta made the case for GM technology to journalists in Bangkok two weeks ago, as part of a broader effort to open Asian government doors that have so far remained closed to genetically modified food crops.

Among the Asian nations, only India and China and The Philippines have embraced the technology, with India planting around 7.6 million hectares of cotton in 2009.

The Philippines is the only Asian country to date to introduce a GM grain crop, planting about 400,000ha of maize in 2008.

Syngenta believes it is time for the barriers against GM to come down, so that biotechnology companies can confidently invest in GM research ahead of the looming food crisis.

“Given the projected increase in population and with less land and water available, we will need all available agricultural technologies, including biotechnology, to meet the current and projected global demand for food, feed, fiber, and biofuels,” said Peter Pickering, Syngenta’s head of seeds for the Asia Pacific. “GM is not the only solution, but it is an extremely powerful one.”

In Asia, the urgency to grow more food from less land and water makes it likely that GM rice will be eventually grown on a broad scale.

The influential International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has thrown its weight behind the GM rice push, running its own GM research programs and collaborations with private companies. IRRI expects that the first GM rice, the famous “Golden Rice” engineered to synthesise Vitamin A, could be grown in Bangladesh and the Philippines by 2012.

Vitamin A deficiency is reported to affect about 124 million people in Africa and Asia. It is estimated to cause about one million deaths a year and 500,000 cases of blindness.

Golden Rice carries genes from the daffodil and a soil bacteria which allow it to synthesise beta-carotene, an inactive organic form of Vitamin A. Rice can synthesise beta-carotene in its leaves, but the modification carries that ability through to the rice grain.

Syngenta donated several of its patented technologies to the Golden Rice project for humanitarian purposes, with other biotech companies also making contributions—gestures that have done little to mollify Greenpeace’s concerns that Golden Rice is a Trojan Horse being used to soften resistance to GM.

Outside Golden Rice, production traits like water and nitrogen use efficiency, and tolerance to salinity and flooding, are early targets of GM rice research.

Syngenta is not working on specific rice products, Mr Pickering said, but rather on understanding general traits that protect plants from stress.

“Our early stage research into drought resistance may result in traits that could be utilised in rice,” he said. “Syngenta also has input trait technology such as herbicide and insect resistance which could also be incorporated.”

Improving yield, an all-important outcome if the goal of “more from less” is to be met, is in Mr Pickering’s analysis not simply about increasing grain number or volume but helping the seed to “deliver its genetic potential.”

“We believe that global rice yields could be increased from the current average of around four tonnes per hectare to around six tonnes/ha, using existing technology,” Mr Pickering said.

At Syngenta’s Philippines research facility, yields have sometimes reached four times the global average using existing technology and management.

“This emphasises the point that the key to improving productivity lies in the adoption of existing and new technology, and that biotechnology forms just one part of the complete farmer toolbox.”

IRRI Media Relations manager Sophie Clayton told the Bangkok media workshop that transforming rice from a relatively inefficient C3 plant to a more water efficient, nitrogen efficient C4 plants is also on the IRRI research agenda.

Meanwhile, there are other low-hanging fruit in the quest to deliver an extra 8-10 million tonnes of rice to Asia each year, Ms Clayton said.

Post-harvest losses from inefficient threshing, storage and milling currently accounts for up to 25 per cent physical losses between farm and rice consumer—offering a substantial boost to Asia’s food supply if those losses can be recaptured.

* Matthew Cawood was a guest of Syngenta in Bangkok

Farm Online

Rwanda targets 20 million litres of biofuel per annum in three years

2009-11-16T13:44:00.004Z

Rwanda has signed on two foreign companies to start producing 20 million litres of biofuel annually from jatropha plants in three years time, the minister for energy said.

The UK-based Eco Positive and Eco-fuel Global LLC from the United States on Sunday agreed to invest $250 million in the growth of jatropha curcas, whose seeds yield oil.

"This investment will benefit Rwandans in terms of green development, preventing land erosion, create employment and more environmentally-friendly transport," Energy Minister Albert Butare said. "It is a significant step forward in giving our nation greater energy security essential to our economic success."

The central African country fully relies on fuel imports through the Kenyan or Tanzanian ports, which often creates shortages. Rwanda imports some 160 million litres of fuel annually and the biofuel project will produce about 13 percent of total fuel consumed, he said.

Butare sought to dispel fears that using 10,000 hectares for jatropha would be too much for the tiny, densely populated country and affect food security.

"This has been marginal land which is less or not productive at all for agriculture. They will first increase the quality of the land before they start growing the crop," he said. "It will have no direct impact on agriculture production since it was not being used at all."

Rwanda already has successfully implemented a pilot bio-diesel project by the Institute of Scientific Research and Technology currently producing 2,000 litres daily from Jatropha.

Reuters

China is sending its farming expertise to Mozambique

2009-11-16T08:37:00.003Z

China is sending its farming expertise to Mozambique in a drive to increase the African country's agricultural productivity.

The Chinese Agricultural Technology Research and Transfer Centre is being built on a 52-hectare plot near the Umbeluzi Agricultural Station, close to the capital Maputo. It will open in early 2010. The centre's aim is to improve farming methods and yields through the training of Mozambican scientists and farmers. Chinese experts will introduce seeds from maize, rice, vegetables and fruit, and researchers will test them for climatic suitability to Mozambique. Animal husbandry will also come under scrutiny.

The centre, funded with US$55 million, is the first of ten Africa-based agricultural technology centres promised in 2007 by Chinese president Hu Jintao. China has pledged to help modernise the Mozambican agricultural sector and aims to increase rice production five-fold, from 100,000 to 500,000 tonnes a year.

Patricio Sande, president of the Scientific Research Association of Mozambique, says the centre will use scientific research to speed up agricultural development in Mozambique. It will complement the government's vision to transform agriculture into a productive, high-value market-oriented sector, he adds. Many of Mozambique's exports are agricultural products.

"When we talk about combating poverty, we are mainly looking to agricultural development," says Sande.

China is increasingly seeking new investment opportunities in Africa's agricultural sector, with Chinese financiers focusing on Angola, Malawi, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe among other countries, says Martyn Davies, chief executive officer of research and strategy company, Frontier Advisory.

Chris Alden, a China-Africa relations expert from the South African Institute of International Affairs, says the new centre will ultimately help China meet its domestic food demands by buying some of the produce while raising incomes in Mozambique and providing the country with a source of foreign currency.

"In this sense, it is mutually beneficial - the classic tag line to China's engagement with African countries and one which I think in this case holds," Alden said.

George Marechera, an agriculture business specialist for the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, says Mozambique will benefit from the centre only if it embraces the technologies on offer.

Moreover, the centre's training and expertise will be transferred to other regions only if scientists, farmers and agro-processors from across the country participate in the programme.

"The government should be part of the development so it is sustainable once the Chinese leave," Marechera said.

SciDev.Net.

Zimbabwe launches inputs subsidy

2009-11-16T00:06:00.004Z

The Zimbabwe government has established a farming inputs subsidy scheme that will see a 50kg bag of fertilizer selling for US$7 while maize and sorghum seed will both be available at less than US$1 per kg.

The subsidy will benefit communal, A1, old resettlement and small-scale farmers who did not get any inputs under the Government and Food and Agriculture Organisation-run support scheme.
However, limits will be placed on the quantities an individual can buy.

Grain Marketing Board communications manager Mrs Muriel Zemura said the subsidised inputs were already available at their countrywide depot network.

"Farmers under Category A are communal and they will buy a maximum of 50kg of Compound D and ammonium nitrate fertilizers and 10kg of maize seed or 5kg of sorghum seed," she said.

Category B covers of A1, old resettlement and small-scale farmers who will buy a maximum of 150kg of compound D, 100kg of ammonium nitrate, and 20kg of maize seed or 5kg of sorghum seed at the subsidised prices.

Mrs Zemura said the 50kg bag of fertilizer costs US$7, maize seed had been pegged at 52 US cents a kg, with sorghum seed going for 30 US cents a kg.

It is understood that the subsidy came into being after protracted inter-ministerial negotiations over the past weeks. Sources said the Ministry of Agriculture had "fought a huge battle to get Treasury to release the money for the subsidy." The sources said the matter was finalised following a meeting between Agriculture Minister Joseph Made and Finance Minister Tendai Biti.

The Government-FAO Smallholder Emergency Support Programme brings together 16 donors and 35 non-governmental organisations.

Of the 1 301 988 national communal households, 691 686 households are to receive inputs in the form of seeds, fertilizers and extension assistance from the 35 organisations who received funding from donors.

Distribution of the inputs under the FAO programme is underway in most parts of the country.
Committees at national, provincial, district and ward/village level will oversee the distribution of inputs. Targeted households include those headed by children, women, the elderly, the disabled or the chronically-ill in communal and old resettlement areas.

US$70 million was raised towards this end out of a targeted US$142,52 million. Coverage of the programme in provinces ranges from 41 percent to 65 percent while the national average is 53 percent.

The 2009/10 summer cropping season has also seen the Government mobilising US$210 million for inputs.

Meanwhile, a local seed producer has said it has dispatched seed to GMB depots under Government’s US$210 million scheme.

Pioneer Seeds national sales manager Mr Manasa David Makasi said his company had sent 2 121 tonnes of maize seed to GMB depots in Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Manicaland, Midlands and Masvingo provinces.

"We want to ensure that farmers get the correct varieties for their agro-ecological regions," he said.

The Herald

2009-11-15T23:06:00.002Z

1.Unease over jatropha claims grows in Mozambique

2.WTO banana deal emerging

3.Food security: Is Monsanto the answer or the problem?

4.Is Africa selling out its farmers for foreign investment?

5.Irrigation helps Zambian farmers boost food production

6.Madagascar's vanilla industry hits slump

7.Jatropha has promising future but has been over-hyped

8.Drought may reduce Uganda coffee exports

9.The acromonius debate over the future of food

10.Oil palm genome research to help increase yields

11.UN attempts to slow the new scramble for African farmland

Unease over jatropha claims grows in Mozambique

2009-11-15T17:24:00.004Z

Nico Strydom probably knows as much as anyone about jatropha, the poisonous tree whose oily black seeds just might sprout a green energy revolution. But, as the soft-spoken forester admits during a tour of his jatropha fields in central Mozambique, that's not saying much.

"There's a lot of research that needs to be done. Jatropha is a relatively new plant," says Strydom. He looks out over the 10-month-old, 1,000-hectare farm he runs for Sun Biofuels, a British-based company that hopes jatropha will turn African farmland into a fuel source for the 21st century. "If anybody tells you he's an expert on jatropha, he's a liar," he adds.

That knowledge gap is causing some nervousness in Mozambique, an impoverished country with a history of civil war and natural disaster that has made it vulnerable to food shortages. Jatropha enthusiasts say the plant can grow almost anywhere, yielding high outputs of cleaner, renewable energy, without taking quality farmland away from food crops. But sceptics question those claims and argue Mozambique should not grow an inedible biofuel crop when it still struggles to feed all its people.

Indeed, the debate goes beyond Mozambique. The United Nations says the world's food supply needs to grow 70 percent in the next four decades to feed a population expected to reach 9.1 billion. With the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation meeting next week in Rome for a summit on food security, the rest of the world, too, is raising questions about the best uses of farmland in an age when technology and the need for green energy have created tension between food and fuel.

Jatropha is native to the Americas and was long considered a noxious weed, until recent interest in biofuels focused new attention on the plant. The tree produces yellow pods with several seeds inside that, when pressed and processed, yield about 35 percent of their weight in oil. Mixed with traditional fossil fuels, that oil can power cars, trucks and, as an Air New Zealand test flight demonstrated last year, commercial jets.

Companies like Sun Biofuels also say the plant has the power to create jobs and energy independence in developing countries like Mozambique - a vision the government has enthusiastically embraced with plans to dedicate up to 20 percent of arable land to biofuels.

But some farmers and environmentalists aren't convinced. In August, five months after the Mozambican government adopted its biofuels policy, two organisations released a study called "Jatropha! A Socio-economic Pitfall for Mozambique." In it, the groups Environmental Justice and the National Union of Peasants question what they say are "myths" propagated by the jatropha industry and government officials. "Almost all of jatropha planted in Mozambique has been on arable land, with fertilisers and pesticides," the report says. "Jatropha is planted in direct replacement of food crops," it adds. "Given that around 87 percent of Mozambicans are subsistence farmers ... major concerns arise when one considers the plan to encourage (them) to plant large amounts of jatropha."

"It's not like they say, that it can grow anywhere, on any land," says Elias Timosse Panganai, a farmer in the village of Manhane, in central Mozambique, whose family tried unsuccessfully to grow jatropha. "With all that work we did we didn't receive anything. Not even a cent."

Strydom acknowledges there have been "wild claims" about jatropha's invulnerability that may have been over-hyped. But he says there needs to be more research before writing off jatropha. "There's a lot of emotion around jatropha, there's a lot of emotion around biofuels in general. I would prefer to work with facts," he says. "One can, I believe, come to a workable solution."

The Times

WTO banana deal emerging

2009-11-15T17:23:00.004Z

An end is in sight to the world's longest-running trade dispute, involving bananas, and a deal could be in place by the end of the year, senior European and Latin American trade negotiators said. Settling the banana dispute would be a fillip for the World Trade Organisation, whose long-running Doha round to free up global commerce, like other trade negotiations, has at times been held hostage by the decades-old row.

Cesar Montano Huerta, the top diplomat at the WTO mission of Ecuador, the world's biggest banana exporter, said officials were negotiating intensively and even hoped to clinch a deal in the next couple of weeks. The deal, which could be reached before the WTO's ministerial conference starting November 30, would see the European Union cutting tariffs on bananas for suppliers in Latin America and elsewhere. In return the Latin Americans would drop outstanding challenges to the EU at the WTO, and Brussels would provide compensation to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, mainly former British, French and Portuguese colonies, who would lose their preferential access to the European market. The detailed terms are likely to resemble an agreement almost reached in July last year on the fringes of a meeting of trade ministers seeking a breakthrough on the Doha talks.

Reuters

Food security: Is Monsanto the answer or the problem?

2009-11-12T07:27:00.004Z

by Carey Gillam

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, had only months to live when he received a visit from an old friend, Rob Fraley, chief of technology for Monsanto Co.

Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work increasing food production in starving areas of the globe, welcomed Fraley to his Dallas home, where the two men sipped coffee and tea and discussed a subject dear to their hearts: the future of agriculture and the latest challenges of feeding the human race.

Fraley, who first met Borlaug 20 years earlier, when they served as founding board members for an agricultural group that works with developing nations, said he showed his friend photos of new types of corn that Monsanto was developing. Using biotechnology and genetic transfers, Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, hoped to create a corn variety that could grow well in dry conditions, even in drought-prone Africa, helping to alleviate hunger and poverty -- and fatten its bottom line.

"We were showing him some of the pictures of the drought-tolerant corn," Fraley recalled. "You could see his eyes were starting to well up, and I said, 'Norm, what's wrong?' He said, 'Rob, I've made it all the way through the Green Revolution. I don't think I'm going to make it through the gene revolution.'"

The topic of Fraley's final conversation with his friend that day underscored the unfolding of a modern era of global agriculture. In this new paradigm, traditional plant breeding is giving way to the high-tech tools of rich corporations like Monsanto, which are playing an increasingly powerful role in determining how and what the world eats. It is also generating controversy, as critics continue to question the safety of biotech crops, and fear increasing control of the global food supply by giant corporations.

Still, few dispute that something needs to be done. The United Nations has said that food production must double by 2050 to meet the demand of the world's growing population and that innovative strategies are needed to combat hunger and malnutrition that already afflict more than 1 billion people.

Amid this dire outlook, St. Louis, Missouri-based Monsanto -- along with its biggest corporate rivals, charitable foundations, public researchers and others -- is forming a loose coalition of interests instigating a second Green Revolution. "What we do builds on what he started," Fraley said of Borlaug, who died in September at the age of 95.

GENE JUGGLING

Founded in 1901 as a maker of saccharine, Monsanto has undergone several evolutions of its own. The company spends an estimated $2 million a day on agriculture research and development -- more than any other company. It employs about 400 scientists in four St. Louis-area research facilities, applying an array of new technologies to plant genetics, with a goal of doubling yields in major crops, such as corn and soybeans, between now and 2030.

"If we do that successfully, it won't just be good for Monsanto, it will be good for the world," Fraley said.

As it positions itself to be a leader in advancing a global fight against hunger, Monsanto has started working with nonprofit organizations in poor nations, donating research and genetics to help needy farmers.

The moves run parallel to Monsanto's commercial sales of high-priced seeds and agricultural chemicals to farmers in wealthy nations, which has made the company a darling of Wall Street and helped it post record net sales of $11.7 billion and net income of $2.1 billion for fiscal 2009.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and governments around the world are encouraging Monsanto -- as well as rivals DuPont, Dow Chemical, BASF and other corporate interests -- to work with academics, foundations and public institutions on how to increase food production globally.

Drought-tolerant crops, particularly corn, are high on the agenda amid concerns about a changing climate. Improved wheat is also a major goal.

Corn and wheat account for about 40 percent of the world's food and 25 percent of calories consumed in developing countries, and millions of people get more than half of their daily calories from corn and wheat alone, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.

"We want to encourage the private sector to help shape research. These are important issues for all Americans and the world," said Roger Beachy, President Barack Obama's newly appointed director of the U.S. National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Critics say the nonprofit work is a way for Monsanto to get even the world's poorest farmers hooked on pricey patented seed technology. But Monsanto and biotech supporters say it is the only way to grow enough food to feed a world population expected to hit 9.4 billion by 2050.

"Global ag production must grow by 70 percent by 2050, and it will have to come out of increased yields because there is only a minimal amount of new land that can be put into production without environmental problems," said Mary Boote, executive director of an industry group called the Truth About Trade and Technology. "Biotechnology has to be one of the tools we use."

MAIZE FOR AFRICA

Monsanto's humanitarian work in Mexico, Africa, India and elsewhere is still in the early stages. One of its largest projects is participation in the development of a type of maize -- a major food source for 300 million Africans -- that grows better in drought-prone areas of the continent.

"Drought is at the top of the list as a challenge for farmers there," said Natalie DiNicola, director of global development partnerships for Monsanto.

Monsanto is working with African researchers in a partnership launched in March 2008 with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Howard Buffett Foundation. The company is donating some of its genetic "markers" and other breeding resources. Five African nations -- Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania -- are testing sites.

The work comes at a time of "tremendous need" for African farmers, who sometimes suffer complete crop failures due to drought, said Daniel Mataruka, executive director of the Kenya-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation.

"The strategy of the whole project is to ensure there is yield stability ... that there is some kind of yield," Mataruka said.

Along with helping poor farmers obtain better seeds, the project is also educating and assisting them in proper use of fertilizers and land management. While Monsanto's short-term goal is "global good," the company hopes that eventually the farmers it helps will become commercial customers.

"There is an absolute need to help these farmers ... make them more food-secure and help them climb out of poverty," said DiNicola. "We would hope that projects like this one and others are going to lift them out of poverty enough that someday the market is working and they can become customers for us."

The company's work on drought-tolerant crops for African farmers dovetails with research for a commercial drought-tolerant corn that Monsanto hopes to have on the market by 2012. Racing rival DuPont, which also is developing a drought-tolerant corn, Monsanto is experimenting with a number of gene combinations to stimulate greater photosynthesis, improve root structures, and enhance other characteristics so the transgenic corn can yield more kernels with less water.

DARK HISTORY

But even as Monsanto steps up its humanitarian efforts, the company faces a host of hurdles, not the least of which is its own image. Dubbed "Mon-Satan" by some detractors, the company has garnered criticism for many of its products, policies and promises -- and its humanitarian effort is no different.

"Monsanto is merely trying to hide its profit motive behind a mask of altruism," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a private advocacy group. "Monsanto has a long history of putting profit before the welfare of people and communities."

Before it turned to seed technology, Monsanto was primarily a purveyor of chemicals, including the infamous Agent Orange herbicide blamed for widespread health problems during its use by the military in the Vietnam War.

Then there was Alabama, where the company operated a plant making polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Monsanto closed the plant in 1971, before PCBs were banned for being linked to a range of health problems. But thousands of residents living near the plant alleged their health and homes were ruined by PCB contamination and sued Monsanto. The company spun off its chemical assets related to the litigation, but ultimately was hit with $600 million in damages.

Monsanto has also faced criticism over its Roundup herbicide, which it continues to sell today, although profits are waning. Roundup is the world's top-selling weed killer, but critics charge that its widespread use has prompted the emergence around the world of "super weeds." They also contend Roundup residue in plants and in the soil can be harmful.

The company also has been accused of falsely representing the product as environmentally friendly. France's highest court last month found that Monsanto had engaged in false advertising for claiming its herbicide was biodegradable. Monsanto said the ruling did not question the safety of its herbicides, or their customer benefits, and was merely about the "use and possible interpretation of language in a specific advertisement."

Critics say that, just as Monsanto insisted that its chemicals were safe, the company claims its genetically engineered crops are safe. Many consumer and environmental groups around the world say disrupting DNA in plants is harmful to human health and disruptive to nature. Monsanto's products are banned in many parts of Europe and elsewhere.

The U.S. government does not independently test genetically modified crops for safety, and researchers differ on whether there might be negative health consequences to animals and people.

Monsanto says legitimate science supports its position that its products are safe, and officials say pressing needs for sustainable agriculture and higher-yielding harvests make old arguments over genetic modification obsolete.

But Monsanto-bashing is not limited to what its detractors call "Frankenfood." Even critics who aren't against biotech crops say Monsanto has gained a monopoly in the seed industry, charging farmers exorbitant prices and stalking and suing producers who don't pay up.

"Monsanto has demonstrated itself to be greedy and they have a credibility problem," said Fred Stockes, executive director of the Organization for Competitive Markets, a nonprofit group focused on ensuring competitive agricultural markets. "Now they are trying to cast themselves as a leader in the Green Revolution. That rings very hollow."

Monsanto has acknowledged the U.S. Justice Department has been asking questions about its role in the seed industry amid allegations about its market dominance, but the company has said such criticism is without merit.

Given its history, Monsanto's motives are likely to be questioned again and again. "All we can do is look at the past and see what they've done so far, and the balance sheet on Monsanto does not give you lots of reasons for hope," says Michael Pollan, an author of several books on food and agricultural practices.

HIGH-TECH TOOLS

But, for all its controversies, Monsanto continues to dominate the marketplace and its technological advancements in key crops are winning over more and more farmers.

As the leader of the nascent biotech crop movement -- Monsanto launched the world's first genetically modified crop in 1996 -- it has used a variety of techniques over the years to tinker with the genes of crops, transferring genes between species of plants, animals and other organisms.

The current "tool" of choice is an agrobacterium that has the ability to transfer DNA between itself and plants. To genetically alter corn, researchers insert desired DNA from a different plant species or organism into the agrobacterium and then combine that in a petri dish with corn cells. Thousands of these tiny starter cells line Monsanto's laboratory shelves, accomplishing in minutes breeding that previously took months or years to achieve.

"We are in the golden age of the biological sciences," said Robert Thompson, a professor of agricultural policy at the University of Illinois, who is familiar with Monsanto's work. "Genetic engineering significantly increases the efficiency of research."

The company's labs also sport "near-infrared" technology, using laser light to scan soybean seeds and gauge soy content and other characteristics. And a newly patented set of seed "chippers" is being used to rapidly trim flecks of soybean and corn seeds and mechanically position them for testing, so that, throughout the system, Monsanto scientists can glean results from 100,000 seeds a day.

The company hopes its work will be further bolstered through an investment announced in August in Pacific Biosciences of California for development of a new DNA sequencing system for genetic analysis.

Monsanto also is opening its first research center in China as a base for collaborations with Chinese scientists. The company said on November 4 that the Beijing research center would focus on early-stage bioinformatics and genomics research. It adds to the company's research centers in the United States, Brazil and India.

"We're entering a really phenomenal decade," said Robert Reiter, Monsanto's vice president of breeding technology. "We see a line of sight to really advance to new levels of (food) productivity." The company has started taking this message directly to the countryside, hauling a mobile technology unit by semi-trailer from farm town to farm town around the United States to educate farmers about the future of seed technology.

Supporters of biotech crops say education is key to overcoming criticisms and expanding the world's food supply.

"We have to at least double food production, and technology can make a big contribution. If we don't do it, the downside is huge," said Clive James, director of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, which was founded by Borlaug and helps promote and track usage of biotech crops.

"The best promise that the world has ... is to combine the best of conventional technology with the best of biotechnology so we can feed the world tomorrow," said James.

International Business Times

Is Africa selling out its farmers for foreign investment?

2009-11-12T07:24:00.004Z

by Barry Malone and Ed Cropley

For centuries, farmers like Berhanu Gudina have eked out a living in Ethiopia's central lowlands, tending tiny plots of maize, wheat or barley amid the vastness of the lush green plains.

Now, they find themselves working cheek by jowl with high-tech commercial farms stretching over thousands of hectares tilled by state-of-the-art tractors -- and owned and operated by foreigners.

With memories of Ethiopia's devastating 1984 famine still fresh in the minds of its leaders, the government has been enticing well-heeled foreigners to invest in the nation's underperforming agriculture sector. It is part of an economic development push they say will help the Horn of Africa nation ensure it has enough food for its 80 million people.

Many small Ethopian farmers do not share their leaders' enthusiasm for the policy, eyeing the outsiders with a suspicion that has crept across Africa as millions of hectares have been placed, with varying degrees of transparency, in foreign hands.

"Now we see Indians coming, Chinese coming. Before, we were just Ethiopian," 54-year-old Gudina said in Bako, a small farming town 280 km (170 miles) west of Addis Ababa. "What do they want here? The same as the British in Kenya? To steal everything? Our government is selling our country to the Asians so they can make money for themselves."

Xenophobia aside, a number of organizations -- including the foundation started by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates -- argue that Africa should support its own farmers.

"Instead of African countries giving away their best lands, they should invest in their own farmers," said Akin Adesina, vice president of the Nairobi-based Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). "What's needed is a small-holder, farmer-based revolution. African land should not be up for garage sale."

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Both sides of the debate agree on this much: a stark reality -- underlined by last year's food price crisis -- looms large over Ethiopia and beyond. The world is in danger of running out of food. By 2050, when its population is likely to be more than 9 billion, up from 6 billion now, the world's food production needs to increase by 70 percent, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

In Africa, which for a variety of reasons was bypassed by the Green Revolution that transformed India and China in the 1960s and 1970s, the numbers are even more bleak. The continent's population is set to double from 1 billion now. In all, the FAO says, feeding those extra mouths is going to take $83 billion in investment every year for the next four decades, increasing both the amount of cultivated land and how much it produces. The estimated investment for Africa alone is $11 billion a year.

For deeply impoverished Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa's second-most populous nation after Nigeria, even a fraction of those sums is unthinkable. Yet with 111 million hectares -- nearly twice the area of Texas -- within its borders, the answer, in the government's eyes, is simple: Lease 'spare' land to wealthy outsiders to get them to grow the food. One unfortunate consequence of that thinking is Gudina and his little plot of maize are painted as part of the problem, rather than a potential solution.

"The small-scale farmers are not producing the quality they should, because they don't have the technology," said Esayas Kebede, head of the Agricultural Investment Agency, a body founded only in February but already talking about offering foreign farmers 3 million hectares in the next two years. "There are 12 million households in Ethiopia. We can't afford to give new technology to all of them," he said, sitting in an office adorned with maps showing possible sites for commercial farms.

Indian agro-conglomerate Karuturi Global, whose involvement in Ethiopia so far has been exporting cut-flowers to Europe, has taken the hint, branching out into food production with a sprawling maize farm in Bako. Unlike with similar land deals elsewhere in Africa, the company insists crops will be exported only after demand is met in Ethiopia -- where 6.2 million people are said to be in need of emergency food aid because of poor seasonal rains.

"Our main aim is to feed the Ethiopian people," said Karuturi's Ethiopia general manager, Hanumatha Rao, sitting under an awning at the Bako farm as hundreds of laborers harvested maize in the fields stretching up nearby hillsides. "Whatever we produce will go to the stomachs of the Ethiopian people before it goes to the international market."

ANOTHER AFRICAN REVOLUTION

While many governments have been busy courting foreigners, in most cases from Asia or the Middle East, to increase Africa's food output, small farmers like Gudina are not totally without friends.

An initiative backed by the Melinda and Bill Gates and Rockefeller foundations is aiming to kick-start an African Green Revolution, carefully avoiding the pitfalls that had engulfed previous such attempts.

In particular, Africa boasts a dazzling array of soil types, climates and crops that have defied the one-size-fits-all solution of better seed, fertilizer and irrigation that worked in Asia half a century ago. Its perennial tendency to corruption and official incompetence has also played its part in keeping average grain yields on the continent at just 1.2 tons per hectare, compared with 3.5 tons in Europe and 5.5 tons in the United States.

AGRA's Adesina says sub-Saharan governments are slowly realizing the importance of small farmers, who account for 70 percent of the region's population and 60 percent of its agricultural output. But he urges governments to make good on a pledge six years ago to raise farm spending to 10 percent of their national budgets.

For its part, AGRA is pouring money into research institutes from Burkina Faso in the west to Tanzania in the east to breed higher yielding and more drought- and pest-resistant strains of everything from maize and cassava to sorghum and sweet potato.

"We've been studying African agriculture for several decades and the message we keep getting back from farmers is: 'It's the seeds, stupid,'" said Joseph DeVries, director of AGRA's seed improvement division. "What you're planting is what you're harvesting."

As yet, the work -- carefully packaged as "Africans working for an African solution" -- involves only conventional breeding techniques, such as cross-pollination and hybridization, as genetically modified seeds remain prohibitively expensive for farmers subsisting on one or two dollars a day.

However, AGRA does not rule out a future role for GM food crops, a stance that has stoked fears it will inadvertently pave the way for U.S. seed companies into the continent beyond South Africa, the only country that allows widespread commercial use. It also accepts a need for chemical soil additives -- a source of concern to environmentalists -- although it stresses the importance of "judicious and efficient use of fertilizer and more intensive use of organic matter."

After 10 years of research, DeVries said, AGRA has developed, among other things, a cassava variety with double its previous yield and a hybrid sorghum strain that is producing 3 to 3.5 tons per hectare, compared with 1 ton before. It is also giving grants to rural shop-keepers to try to create seed distribution networks in countries that remain too small or inaccessible to attract interest from established commercial suppliers.

"There's huge demand for these new varieties, but there's just not nearly enough investment. It's logistics, and it's also capital," DeVries said.

CASH FOR CROPS

As ever in Africa, money -- or, rather, a lack of it -- is a major problem. According to AGRA's Adesina, only 1 percent of private capital on the continent is made available to farming, due to banks' concerns about loan collateral and a reluctance to deal with farmers who in many cases are barely literate.

However, the Green Revolution push has begun to attract some serious financial players.

With AGRA providing $10 million in loan guarantees, South Africa's Standard Bank, the continent's biggest bank, has earmarked $100 million over three years for small farmers in Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. The pilot scheme suggests the bank is buying an argument slowly gaining traction: That Africa, a continent more renowned for war, famine and disasters, could and should evolve into the breadbasket of the world.

With less than 25 percent of Africa's potential arable land under cultivation, according to many estimates, and its current levels of yield at rock-bottom, it is a compelling, if distant, vision.

"The first step is improving the efficiency of small farmers in Africa," said Jacques Taylor, head of Standard Bank's agricultural banking arm in Johannesburg, seat of the gold on which most of South Africa's wealth has so far been based. "Can we get them to increase their yields from just over 1 ton to 3 tons to 5 tons? That's possible. It's not a dream. It's a reality."

LAND-GRABS AND GM'S TROJAN HORSE?

Even though Standard Bank says it is keen to expand the funding, if all goes well, there is a very long way to go before such financing makes a dent in the $11 billion the FAO says has to be invested in Africa each year.

"Do we need more of this? For sure. $100 million is really a drop in the ocean when you look at the funding needs," Taylor said. "But we'd like to think this is a step in the right direction."

As such, it seems inevitable Africa will have to adopt a dual-track approach to its looming food crisis -- rolling out the red carpet for more Karuturis, but also making life easier for Berhanu Gudina and his colleagues in central Ethiopia.

While it is hard to fault the thinking behind either strategy, critics of both abound.

Across the continent, foreign deals have been condemned as "land-grabs" negotiated between barely accountable administrations and outside companies or governments who care little about poverty or development.

In one notable case, in Madagascar, a little-reported million-hectare deal with South Korean conglomerate Daewoo contributed heavily to a successful popular uprising in March against President Marc Ravalomanana.

Elsewhere, from Sudan and its numerous Gulf farmer-investors, to Republic of Congo and a group of white South African commercial farmers, to Ethiopia and its Indians, land has become a hot political potato. The prevailing view outside governments is that the little guys are being forced to make way for the mega-deal.

"It cannot just descend on them from the sky. It has to be done in consultation with the people who occupy the land," said Ethiopian opposition leader Bulcha Demeksa. "But the government is not doing that. It is just going ahead and signing agreement after agreement with the foreigners."

Similarly, AGRA's detractors look to unintended consequences of India's Green Revolution -- particularly the environmental damage caused by widespread fertilizer use and drying up of water tables -- to argue Africa should look before it leaps.

Furthermore, says Mariam Myatt of the Johannesburg-based African Center for Biosafety, if India's experience is anything to go by, a Green Revolution would leave Africa's farmers as dependent on banks and seed and fertilizer companies as they are now on seasonal rains.

"The Green Revolution, under the guise of solving hunger in Africa, is nothing more than a push for a parasitic corporate-controlled chemical system of agriculture," she said.

With Bill Gates also pumping funding into biotech research at bodies such as the African Agriculture Technology Foundation, Myatt said, AGRA might end up as the unwitting Trojan horse that eases GM crops -- and Western corporate interests -- into Africa.

"It will go a long way toward laying the groundwork for the entry of private fertilizer and agrochemical companies and seed companies and, more particularly, GM seed companies."

Reuters

Irrigation helps Zambian farmers boost food production

2009-11-10T21:39:00.003Z

by Sanday Kabange Chogo

There’s strength in numbers, at least for 150 of Chanyanya’s farmers. They’ve formed a cooperative that has leased part of its land to Infraco, a company specializing in agricultural infrastructure. That includes trenches and electric pumps to draw water from the nearby Kafue River for irrigation. InfraCo also provides seeds, fertilizers and basic management to the farmers, who own about a quarter of the 60 irrigated hectares. They grow maize, wheat, vegetables, and soybean for their families and sell what’s left on the domestic market.

InfraCo uses the rest of the irrigated land for commercial farming for export. Profits are invested back into the project. “We expect benefits in terms of the community [like] healthcare and education. Of the profits that we get, 20% we shall plough back to expand our project, then the other 20% we shall plough back into the community -- building a high school, healthcare, whatever. Then 60% will go in our pockets ," says Maurice Hikapulwe area councilor for Chikupi ward in Chanyanya. Members of the Chinyanya CooperativeAccording to Hikapulwe the initiative has helped rural communities around Chanyanya village become self-reliant.

The project, which started in October 2008, is in its pilot phase. InfraCo hopes to replicate the project soon in other parts of Africa. Since the launch of the project in October 2008, residents of Chanyanya and other surrounding villages, such as Chainsi and Chikupi, have supported the project according to Chrispine Mvula manager of the Chanyanya Smallholders Society.

“People are very happy because they have seen what they have not seen before. But with Members of the cooperative with irrigation equipment that maize which we have, they have enough to take them throughout this year. So the issues of the relief foods from the government, I think that is history now, in this community,” explains Myula.

Once all the invested capital and machinery is repaid to InfaCo, the farmers will own the company. After 20 years of growing and selling crops on the land the farmers were not using, InfraCo will have paid for all the equipment and provided the working capital for both the commercial and co-operative sides of the project.

InfraCo is a donor-funded company specializing in infrastructure development in Africa and South Asia. It helps developers of private sector infrastructure by providing much of the initial costs of early development.

VOA

Madagascar's vanilla industry hits slump

2009-11-10T21:07:00.003Z

by Nicolas Brulliard

On a recent steamy morning, Simon Vanombelona was clearing his vanilla field to

make way for a rice paddy. “If the quantity is sufficient I’ll eat first and then build some stocks,” said the 49-year-old Vanombelona. So severe is the price slump for vanilla in northeastern Madagascar, which is home to the best vanilla in the world, that growers are focusing on subsistence crops at the expense of vanilla beans that just a few years ago fetched several hundred dollars a kilo. Now local farmers say they only get about $5 a kilo for the fruit of their very arduous labor.

The wild fluctuations in prices are primarily the result of exacerbated cycles of supply and demand. When prices shoot up as they did in the early 2000s, growers respond by planting more vanilla but because a vanilla plant takes three years to produce its first pods the timing is often tricky. Growing in tropical areas, vanilla is also vulnerable to cyclones and disease, the effect of which is often amplified by speculators leading to extreme variations in prices. At the moment, prices are exceptionally low because vanilla brokers — taking advantage of cheap vanilla and the fact that vanilla beans can be preserved in warehouses for several years — have been stocking up.

“There have been excess stocks of vanilla beans really for the better part of the last three of four years,” said Rick Brownell, vice president of vanilla products at Virginia Dare, a New York-based company that has manufactured vanilla products for more than 80 years. “There is very little risk in writing forward contracts for vanilla beans and even for the end product, vanilla extracts and flavors at this point. The price can only go higher. It really can’t go any lower.”

The vanilla vine is a plant from the orchid family that is native to Mexico. Originally, the plant couldn’t be grown anywhere else because it was pollinated by a species of bees endemic to Mexico. When it was discovered in the mid-19th century that the plant could be pollinated by hand, it was exported to other tropical regions of the world and is now successfully cultivated in places as diverse as Indonesia, India, Uganda and Papua New Guinea.

Madagascar, the world’s fourth largest island, has proved particularly well suited for the culture of vanilla and has become the world’s largest producer of the spice. The warm climate is propitious, and local farmers have perfected the art of growing vanilla, which requires the right amount of shade, elaborate pruning and frequent weeding around the plant. Madagascar's vanilla is highly prized because it is the richest in vanillin, the compound that gives vanilla its distinctive flavor and smell.

The pods are harvested green and have to be dried for at least six months before they can be exported. Companies such as Virginia Dare then make the vanilla extract that is used in beverages, ice creams, yoghurts and perfumes.

Historically, vanilla has been a very valuable commodity. To prevent the common theft of vanilla pods right before harvest time, some growers mark their pods the way ranchers mark their cows, with intricate designs that remain identifiable after the curing process.

Vanilla theft became a particularly lucrative crime in the early 2000s when demand exceeding production led to prices reaching $400 or $500 a kilo. The high prices proved a boon for the local economy when newly rich vanilla growers raided the region’s auto dealers and electronics stores, even leaving tips to merchants.

Scared by the ballooning prices, some vanilla consumers resorted to using synthetic vanilla, which, along with excess production, contributed to a sudden and sharp fall in prices.

“Vanillin is vanillin. Synthetic or nature-made it’s still the same,” said Daphna Havkin Frenkel, director of research and development at Bakto Flavors LLC and a visiting scientist at Rutgers University. “Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.”

To make matters worse, the government's attempts to control the price for vanilla has backfired. A government decree this summer that set a minimum price of $27 a kilo for vanilla ready for export has brought the industry here to a standstill, local vanilla exporters said. The measure, probably intended to bring economic relief to struggling vanilla farmers, has had an opposite effect.

Claude Andreas, the head of a local vanilla industry group, said the minimum price is much too high for the current market. As a result, Madagascar’s vanilla exporters, who are not authorized to sell below $27, are not buying vanilla from local growers to replenish their stocks. The majority of vanilla exporters have written to Madagascar’s trade minister to repeal the decree because they fear competitors will take away Madagascar’s market share by undercutting the minimum price.

“They won’t buy it for $27,” Andreas said of vanilla brokers, “because they can buy it for $25 in Indonesia.”

Global Post

Jatropha has promising future but has been over-hyped

2009-11-10T20:59:00.005Z

by Kirk Haney

Imagine if corn were the size of your pinky finger and tomatoes were no larger than marbles. Now imagine the impact that would have on our global food supply.

The reality is, that’s the size they were before selective breeding and genetic enhancement. Today, we have the opportunity to achieve a similar evolution in jatropha that could drastically impact our supply of renewable energy.

The true promise of jatropha comes from unlocking its potential through breeding and genetics, employing proper agronomic practices, and developing a value chain that creates a viable global marketplace.

Unfortunately, many early adopters have pursued strategies that turned a blind eye to the unique characteristics of the plant, setting unrealistic expectations before proper research and crop improvements had taken place.

Jatropha is a non-edible plant that produces seeds containing high amounts of sustainable, low cost oil. Because it is non-edible, it does not compete with global food supplies, and can be effectively harvested on abandoned land that is considered undesirable for food crops.

Most importantly, it is undomesticated. And, until recently, it had never been planted on a large scale. These are critical factors to consider when reviewing recent efforts to plant and harvest the crop, as well as its future commercial opportunities.

Jatropha curcas has long been recognized by indigenous cultures as a source for cooking and heating oil and for its various medicinal properties. Its oil can also be used for sustainable bio-based materials and petroleum substitutes including biodiesel, chemicals and jet fuel. Its overall greenhouse gas emissions are 70 percent less than traditional petroleum.

In 2007, governments and businesses in Europe, India, Africa and South East Asia quickly jumped onto the jatropha bandwagon, emphasizing its ability to grow anywhere with little to no irrigation or agronomic management while producing high quantities of oil. Estimates of yields varied greatly, most based on little knowledge or research into how it would respond at plantation scale.

As quickly as the hype regarding jatropha escalated in 2007, it came back down to earth. Jatropha’s emergence was stalled by cumbersome community-based farming models using inferior strains of jatropha planted in climates and on land that were not optimal for the crop. Adequate supply chains had not been established. As a result, producers and growers fell woefully short of their ambitious targets.

Jatropha did not fail, but the business models did. Jatropha remains one of the most sustainable and commercially viable feedstocks available when the entire value is taken into consideration—from land costs and impacts to the quantity and quality of oil. Unfortunately, jatropha had similar fates of other early technologies: over-hype and missed expectations.

Understanding the unique characteristics of jatropha—its opportunities and limitations—is a critical component of any successful jatropha project. Through research and evaluation of recent failures of others, we now see that three key elements are necessary for the success of jatropha:

Crop improvement
Proven plantation management practices
Creation of a viable supply chain

First, location and climate are critical factors impacting yield. The "Jatropha Belt," a band of latitude where the species is found today, is located between 30 degrees North and 35 degrees South, both tropical and subtropical areas. This geographical belt includes considerable variation in climate and seasonality, which is partly responsible for the range of results and expectations experienced to date. Not all conditions in Jatropha’s wide geographic band are ideal for cultivation.

Additionally, it’s important to realize the fact that jatropha has not yet been domesticated results in variable production levels. Variability is found in the size of the trees, the number of seeds per tree at maturity (five years after planting) and the oil content of the seeds. The process of domestication, which eliminates plant variability, has just been started for the crop.

The characteristics of jatropha are ideally suited to rapid improvements through breeding and genetics. It’s a fast growing plant yielding seed-bearing fruit within nine months of planting. It produces separate male and female flowers—a critical asset for accelerated breeding—and can be propagated through cuttings, also called clones.

Through its Genetic Resource Center, SG Biofuels has assembled a large, diverse library of jatropha genetic materials—the necessary foundation of any crop improvement program. The company has already identified desirable traits focusing on yield, vigor, fruit and seed size, pest resistance, cold-tolerance and improved water efficiency.

Based on experience with other crops, the genetic improvement of jatropha through traditional plant breeding could increase yields 50 percent to 100 percent, and quite possibly much higher. By way of comparison, yield of the rubber tree was increased by 400 percent through similar breeding efforts. The use of biotechnology could increase the yield even more, while decreasing agronomic inputs.

Finally, experienced agronomists agree that a scientific approach to professional plantation management can also dramatically improve growth and yield, as well. For example, growth and yield can be improved by fertilization with nitrogen, phosphate, potassium and micronutrients, irrigation and pruning. Optimization of these inputs maximizes yields while minimizing costs.

As an undomesticated crop planted in appropriate soils with proper management, jatropha can currently produce crude plant oil with a cost of less than $1.50 per gallon. With genetic improvements, including plant breeding and responsible genetic engineering, we can produce jatropha crude oil for less than $1 per gallon.

Lowering the cost of feedstock, which comprises 70 percent to 80 percent of the biofuel production cost, will unlock value in the entire biofuels value chain. In a sector where demand will continue to exceed supply, raw material suppliers have a significant advantage in the marketplace.

By enabling growers to produce feedstock at a lower cost while both learning from and overcoming the challenges experienced by previous efforts, we can realize the promise of jatropha as a low-cost, sustainably produced plant oil on the global market.

The developmental process of jatropha as a sustainable energy crop remains in its infancy. However, we have the very real opportunity to achieve a quantum leap in yield, profitability, and short-term commercialization.

Kirk Haney is the CEO of SG Biofuels, a sustainable plant oil company with operations in San Diego, Calif., and Latin America. Haney has held senior and executive management positions for 3Com, ArrowPoint Communications, Cisco Systems, and Green Millennium.

Cleantech

Drought may reduce Uganda coffee exports

2009-11-10T20:58:00.003Z

by Fred Ojambo

Coffee exports from Uganda, Africa’s biggest producer of the robusta variety, may decline by more than 1.9 percent in the 2009-10 season because of drought, the National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises said.

Shipments in the season, which started on Oct. 1 and ends on Sept. 30, may fall below 3 million 60-kilogram (132-pound) bags from 3.06 million bags last season, Joseph Nkandu, the executive director at Nucafe, an advocacy group for coffee farmers, said in an interview in the capital, Kampala. This forecast is lower than that of 3.3 million to 3.4 million bags made by the state-run Uganda Coffee Development Authority on Oct. 12. “This year’s drought affected all growing regions,” he said. “In Masaka, which is the biggest producer, many coffee trees have wilted.”

The East African country experienced a prolonged drought earlier this year, which the agriculture ministry attributes to climate change. Uganda is Africa’s second-biggest producer of coffee, after Ethiopia. Robusta accounts for about 85 percent of the nation’s annual output with the country earning $291.29 million from the crop last season compared with $388.4 million 3.2 million bags in 2007-08 because of a drop in volume and global prices, the agency said.

Uganda should embrace the shade-tree coffee-growing method and reduce irrigation to save water resources, Nkandu said, as this “would help preserve moisture in the soil. We are asking government to come to our aid to reverse the negative trend.”

Fresh planting and improving farm management are helping the East African country boost its coffee output, according to the authority. Coffee wilt disease as well as old and less productive trees cut exports to a 14-year low of 1.96 million bags in 2005-06 from a high of more than 4 million bags in 1997- 98, according to the authority.

The disease, which was first detected in the country in 1993, has destroyed about 150 million coffee trees, or 52 percent of the total robusta trees Uganda had in 1993. The country also grows the arabica variety, which hasn’t suffered the brunt of the disease.

The authority distributed 86 million trees for replanting from 1994 to 2007, which has helped reverse the decline, according to the authority.

Bloomberg

The acromonius debate over the future of food

2009-11-10T20:57:00.003Z

by Claudia Parsons, Russell Blinch and Svetlana Kovalyova

At first glance, Giuseppe Oglio's farm near Milan looks like it's suffering from neglect. Weeds run rampant amid the rice fields and clover grows unchecked around his millet crop.

Oglio, a third generation farmer eschews modern farming techniques -- chemicals, fertilizers, heavy machinery -- in favor of a purely natural approach. It is not just ecological, he says, but profitable, and he believes his system can be replicated in starving regions of the globe.

Nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 km) away, in laboratories in St. Louis, Missouri, hundreds of scientists at the world's biggest seed company, Monsanto, also want to feed the world, only their tools of choice are laser beams and petri dishes.

Monsanto, a leader in agricultural biotechnology, spends about $2 million a day on scientific research that aims to improve on Mother Nature, and is positioning itself as a key player in the fight against hunger.

The Italian farmer and the U.S. multinational represent the two extremes in an increasingly acrimonious debate over the future of food.

Everybody wants to end hunger, but just how to do so is a divisive question that pits environmentalists against anti-poverty campaigners, big business against consumers and rich countries against poor.

The food fight takes place at a time when experts on both sides agree on one thing -- the number of empty bellies around the world will only grow unless there is major intervention now.

A combination of the food crisis and the global economic downturn has catapulted the number of hungry people in the world to more than 1 billion. The United Nations says world food output must grow by 70 percent over the next four decades to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people by 2050.

International leaders are gathering in Rome next week for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's World Summit on Food Security and will hear competing arguments over how best to tackle the problem. One of the fiercest disputes will be over the relative importance of science versus social and economic reforms to empower small farmers to grow more with existing technology.

"LISTEN TO NATURE"

Much of Europe has moved away from an agricultural system of small farms to mass commercial farming, but Italy still retains a base of family farmers who produce everything from olives to mozzarella cheese.

Oglio is one of them. A charismatic 40-year-old, he dropped out of an agricultural school after growing disillusioned with the farming methods being taught there. Today, he lets nature run its course as he grows cereals and legumes on his small family farm in Belcreda di Gambolo, about 20 miles (30 km) southwest of Milan.

He does not use any chemical, or even natural fertilisers or pesticides. He does not weed his fields. "All you need to do is observe nature, listen to it, do what nature suggests and it will take care of everything," he said.

His fields, in a low-lying plain that has a long history of growing rice used for risotto, replicate patterns found in nature. For example, clover and millet grow together, feeding each other with necessary minerals.

Oglio said his farm is eco-sustainable. He has slashed operating costs by eliminating expensive commercial products like herbicides and by reducing the use of agricultural machinery to a minimum. Such cheap and low-maintenance farming could be adopted in Africa and other regions hit by poverty and hunger, he said.

"Natural farming will not save the world. But it can feed poor families," he said.

But it's unlikely it can do so on the scale that most experts believe is necessary. And therein lies the rub. Affluent consumers may prefer the Oglios of the world to the Monsantos, but their skittishness about high-tech agriculture is making it more difficult to grapple with the mounting crisis over the lack of food.

LEARNING FROM THE PAST

The last time the world faced such dire predictions of famine was before the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when countries like India and China transformed their agricultural systems to become self-sufficient in food. They did so by harnessing plant-breeding technology to raise yields on rice, wheat and other staple crops.

Through massive state investment in hybrid rice, China, the world's most populous country, raised its yields from two tonnes per hectare in the 1960s to more than 10 tonnes per hectare by 2004. Chinese scientists seek further gains -- 13.5 tonnes per hectare by 2015, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which cites China's rice program as one of the true success stories in agricultural development in a study out this week (Nov. 12) called "Millions Fed."

To be sure, the Green Revolution had its downsides -- environmental damage, to name one. In India, for example, water tables are drying up and the soil has been degraded by pesticide and fertilisers. The movement also contributed to the rise of big commercial farms at the expense of small holders, fueling resentment from its early days at what critics see as the "corporatisation" of food.

But millions of people were saved from starvation, and the movement's architect, Norman Borlaug, received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.

With their populations soaring, however, India and China -- not to mention most of Africa -- still face challenges, especially as climate change exacerbates environmental problems that have already slowed growth in food production.

IFPRI, part of a global network of agricultural research centers, said last month lower yields due to climate change would cut "calorie availability" for the average consumer in a developing country in 2050 by 7 percent, compared with 2000.

Higher temperatures reduce crop yields while encouraging pests and plant diseases. For almost all crops, South Asia would experience the largest declines in yields. IFPRI said rice output in the region would be 14 percent lower than if there were no climate change.

"India sorely needs another Green Revolution," said Kushagra Nayan Bajaj, joint managing director of Bajaj Hinduthan, India's top sugar producer, which is importing raw sugar after a drought hit the domestic cane crop.

But a second green revolution would face a strong counterinsurgency, even in a place like India that benefited so profoundly from the first one.

"The point is that chemicals destroy the sustainability of productivity in the long run ... Yes, a second green revolution is indeed very essential -- the very need of the hour. But it should not be the same kind of green revolution that the first was," said P.C. Kesavan, a fellow at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, set up by the father of India's Green Revolution.

Economists and scientists in India are demanding a raft of policy initiatives, including allowing genetic engineering, which its proponents argue does the same job as traditional plant hybridization, only quicker and more efficiently.

India has so far allowed GM seeds only for cotton, which has boosted productivity, but suggestions of allowing such seeds for edible crops have always evoked strong protests.

CRADLE OF CORN

It's a similar story in Mexico, where Borlaug started his pioneering research in the 1940s at the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program. Mexico issued permits last month for the first time for farmers to grow genetically modified corn.

Considered by many the cradle of corn, Mexico is home to more than 10,000 varieties, used to make the classic tortilla, a staple of the Mexican diet. Corn was first planted in Mexico as many as 9,000 years ago and the grain was adapted by Spanish conquerors in the early 1500s and eventually spread to the rest of the world.

Mexico faces the same dilemmas over GM corn as do many developing countries -- balancing consumer fears with the need to grow more food.

"We see corn as our cultural heritage, our legacy. For us it's not just a question of food, but about conserving our traditions," said Celerino Tlacotempa, who works for an organization of native Nahuatl farmers in the southern mountains of Guerrero state.

"With genetically modified seeds we will lose our varieties of colored corn. There will be no more purple corn, black corn, white corn," Tlacotempa said. "Above all, we will be condemned to buy seeds from companies like Monsanto. It's not sustainable. It's a real risk for the wellbeing of these communities."

At the same time, other Mexican farmers in the north of the country have been cultivating GM seeds smuggled over the border from the United States for some time, attracted by the crops' greater resilience to drought and pests and higher yields.

Tomas Lumpkin, director of CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center that Borlaug started in Mexico, said the country now imports about half of the corn it consumes. With climate change and other pressures, he said, it was vital to raise production using all tools available.

"It is a much more complex and difficult world than Borlaug faced, but we have much more powerful tools than he had, and we need to start testing those and deploying those," he said.

"GMOs are just another set of tools in the toolbox, but we need to be able to use those tools," Lumpkin said. "If we could deploy those varieties so that the farmer in the developing world has the same powerful seed as the farmer in Iowa, why should they be handicapped?"

Reuters

Oil palm genome research to help increase yields

2009-11-10T20:47:00.005Z

by Emma Ritch

A consortium including the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) and St. Louis, Mo.-based Orion Genomics announced they sequenced and assembled three oil palm genomes in an ongoing project to find ways to increase yield, protect against disease, and strengthen plants against environmental stress.

The three oil palm genomes came from two oil palm species: E. oleifera, which is native to South America, and E. guineensis, which originates in Africa.

E. guineensis is more widely planted in Malaysia because of its high productivity, but E. oleifera offers increased resistance to disease and oil with higher quantities of unsaturated fats.

The group says its work provides a comprehensive genetic blueprint that could blend the benefits of the two species of the plant, increasing yields and productivity for the growing food and biodiesel markets.

The potential benefits of genome sequencing also prompted La Jolla, Calif.-based Synthetic Genomics to partner with Malaysia's Asiatic Centre for Genome Technology on research of oil palm genomes for biofuel feedstocks.

The consortium announcing the findings said their work is unique because it provides comprehensive genetic and transcriptional maps that could help oil palm researchers as they seek to understand the genes responsible for yield, disease resistance and resistance to environmental stress.

The group also included St. Louis-based MOgene, The Genome Center at Washington University, South Korea-based Macrogen, and Adelaide, Australia-based GeneWorks.

MPOB, Orion and MOgene also announced plans to study the epigenetic makeup of oil palm in 2010 in an effort to improve yields.

Last week, researchers from Duke University, Stanford University and Brazil unveiled two studies that examined the genome structures of biofuel yeasts in order to increasing ethanol production.

Cleantech

UN attempts to slow the new scramble for African farmland

2009-11-08T12:15:00.002Z

by Daniel Howden

More than 50 heads of state will gather for a summit later this month to look at ways of policing the extraordinary "land grab" that has seen richer countries buy up at least 20 million hectares of farmland in Africa in the last 18 months. The United Nations is drawing up a "code of conduct" in an effort to slow what's been described as a new scramble for Africa, while agriculture experts are calling for a new global watchdog and aid agencies are appealing for a moratorium on new deals.

Countries including the Gulf States, China, South Korea and a host of private investors and sovereign wealth funds have provoked serious concerns internationally with a string of aggressive and often secretive deals for large tracts of arable land on the world's hungriest continent.

David Hallam, the deputy director of the trade and markets division at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and one of the experts drafting the code, said yesterday that the "principles are agreed" and he expected leaders to make a joint statement at a summit in Rome in a fortnight's time. "It's going to bring these deals into focus and make people think about what's going on," he told The Independent.

According to FAO figures the recent wave of land acquisitions is equivalent to one-tenth of the entire area already farmed in Africa, or twice the arable land in Germany.

The code is expected to try and break the secrecy surrounding these deals and ensure locals' rights are not being trampled by big corporations or governments and that Africans' food security is not further threatened. "In the worst cases it's fair to say we are looking at neo-colonialism," said Dr Hallam.

In the last year Saudi Arabia has added to huge holdings in Sudan with a $100 million deal for land in famine stricken Ethiopia; Qatar has begun acquiring 40,000 hectares in Kenya's Tana River Delta to grow fruit and vegetables despite a drought that sees the UN feeding four million Kenyans; China has added to its huge holdings in Zimbabwe and Algeria; and Egypt has leased 2 million acres of land from Uganda to grow corn and wheat.

The deal that really brought the phenomenon to the surface was the Madagascar government's decision to lease 1.3 million hectares, or half the island's arable land, to the South Korean giants Daewoo for 99 years for biofuel plantations. When it was revealed that Daewoo would pay nothing for the land and would instead barter it for infrastructure projects, president Marc Ravalomanana's administration became the first to be toppled over "land grabbing". The deal has been scrapped.

The scramble has its roots in last year's food crisis, which saw a huge spike in the price of staples and food protectionism, where countries slapped export bans on rice and other foodstuffs. Food was not only more expensive, it was unavailable. Then came the oil price rises. "Oil-rich and water-poor countries suddenly became interested in securing their long-term food supplies," said Ruth Meinzen-Dick, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington.

"Many of these deals were quite secretive and there was no clear benefit for the people living in these areas."

Added to these factors was the historic switch from food to fuel, driven by US subsidies for corn-based ethanol and hasty moves by the EU to set targets to switch from fossil fuels to bio-fuels which have since been reversed.

The IFPRI is calling for a watchdog "with teeth" to ensure that there is "informed consent" in poorer countries where land is being leased, as well as respect for African customary law, which is supposed to protect the traditional rights of smallholders.

Meinzen-Dick advocates a system that would ensure that in times of shortage there would be restrictions on the amount of food exported from foreign-owned land.

The irony is that the current trend could be a win-win situation as everyone is agreed that Africa is in dire need of investment: foreign aid and domestic spending on agriculture has dipped alarmingly in the last two decades.

The London-based International Institute for Environment and Development rejects the "land grab" analysis as too "simplistic". In a recent report the think-tank argued that there can be an upside if the investments are structured to create "new opportunities".

The report does warn that too much of the land being signed away is "high value" and that African governments are pushing through deals under the pretence that common land is "unused".

Speaking at an FAO event in Washington earlier this year Chido Makunike, a Zimbabwean agricultural consultant, explained: "In Africa, far from being perceived as a mere economic resource land has cultural, sentimental, and political meanings, and represents one of the strongest symbols of dispossession during the colonial era."

The Independent

2009-11-08T03:43:00.002Z

1.South African farmers scramble to adapt to climate change

2.Senegalese NGO plants 34 million mangrove trees

3.Ban on Somali livestock by Saudi Arabia lifted

4.Malawi faces declining fish stocks

5.Zimbabwe police confiscate counterfeit maize seed

6.Malawi tobacco sales drop

7.Senegal youth shun farming

8.Senegal's groundnut production in freefall

9.Climate change is worsening food insecurity

10.Arab bank to step up support for African agriculture

11.South African regulatory rejection of GM potato proves controversial

12.Is the fight against hunger a security issue?

13.New international code may limit size of foreign farm investments

14.Ugandan coffee exports rise

15.Moroccan wheat output may jump to record levels

16.Ivory Coast unions suspend cocoa-industry strikes

17.Urban farming increasingly being encouraged

18.Global food company to assist small-scale cocoa farmers

19.New South African farmers lobby for more state financial support

20.Devastating drought alters life for Kenya nomads

21.Ethiopia to develop biofuels

22.Inadequate storage facilities result in big losses for Ivory Coast farmers

23.International beer brewer to increase number of African raw material farmer-suppliers

South African farmers scramble to adapt to climate change

2009-11-08T02:06:00.004Z

by Anton Ferreira

Freak hail storms in Cape Town, decades of drought in the Karoo and dead gardens along the Garden Route ... South Africa is withering under climate change. While the world's leaders bicker at international conferences over who is to blame for global warming, farmers are scrambling to adapt to an uncharted future of harsh weather that could shrivel their fruit and wipe out their wheat.

Already apple farmers around Grabouw and Elgin in the Western Cape, who need cold winters for optimal production, are struggling to produce export-quality fruit because of rising temperatures.

"If you just have a couple of days that go above a critical temperature, you get sunburn in these export apples," said Guy Midgley, head of the climate-change unit at the SA National Biodiversity Institute.He said scientists knew "with a high degree of confidence" that temperatures have warmed in much of South Africa over the past 30 years. "The Western Cape, much of the coastal regions and, to a certain extent, the interior have warmed significantly."

In Durbanville on the outskirts of Cape Town, wine and grain farmers are counting the cost of a storm that pelted their crops with hailstones the size of golf balls late last month. One of the farmers, Kosie Loubser, said the storm was unprecedented in the 80 years his family had owned the farm. "We've been having very strange weather recently. It rains at the wrong time, and our grain doesn't ripen properly."

Porchia Adams, spokesman for the farmers' organisation Agri Western Cape, said: "The drought in the southern Cape is strange as well. They haven't had enough rain in a couple of years, which is very uncommon. And the Karoo drought has lasted for about 30 years."

Farmers have contributed to global warming through the use of nitrogen fertilisers that produce greenhouse gases as they break down. Now many of them accept that they will have to change their ways as temperatures rise, evaporation increases and rain becomes more unpredictable.

"All of us should be concerned about it and do what we can," said Flip Nel, who farms 300ha of vegetables on the banks of the Limpopo.He sells his produce to Woolworths, which this week launched a "farming for the future" initiative aimed at persuading the 500 or so farmers who supply it to cut the use of chemicals and water by building healthy soils through compost and earth-friendly cultivation methods.

"It's quite shrewd," said Mark Botha, an ecologist with the environmental group WWF. "Woolworths are going to be massively reducing their risk in 10 years' time by having a supply base that's got far more sustainable farms that are less vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change and pest outbreaks."

According to Botha, agriculture generated 18% of greenhouse gases and farm irrigation accounted for 70% of South Africa's water consumption.

The Times

Senegalese NGO plants 34 million mangrove trees

2009-11-06T17:53:00.003Z

A Senegalese environmental NGO announced on November 6 Friday that it had planted 34 million mangrove trees in three months in a project largely financed by French dairy giant Danone to offset its carbon footprint.

According to the environmental organisation Oceanium some 34 million mangrove seedlings were planted between August and November, 27 million in Senegal's southern Casamance region and 7 million in the Saloum river delta. Over 78,000 volunteers from 323 villages participated in the massive planting campaign.

"To my knowledge it is the first time ever that (over) 30 million trees have been planted in three months," Oceanium's president Haidar El Ali said.

Mangrove trees and shrubs form characteristic forests in saline coastal areas in the tropics and the subtropics.

In Senegal, the distinctive mangrove landscape is under threat and in the southern Casamance region the mangrove forests shrank to half their original size in the last 30 years.

The mangroves have an important place in Senegal's ecosystem. Without the mangrove forests the water becomes too salty to grow rice, a staple food for the Senegalese, fish die and the soil becomes exhausted.

French dairy giant Danone paid for the planting of the majority of the seedling, 30 million plants, Oceanium said.

"Danone wanted to compensate the carbon emission from its Evian business. They want to offset what they cannot reduce" in terms of carbon emissions, Jean Goepp of Oceanium told AFP.

He added that scientists are currently studying how much of the carbon emissions can be offset in the 5,000 hectares of mangrove seedlings planted due to Danone's 700,000-euro (one-million-dollar) investment.

AFP