Sunday, April 24, 2011

Demonstrations relevant in improving food security-Daily Monitor:  - Insight |



Demonstrations relevant in improving food security

SHARE BOOKMARKPRINTEMAILRATING
DEMONSTRATORS: Can they really bring rain?
DEMONSTRATORS: Can they really bring rain?
By Mwambutsya Ndebesa

Posted Sunday, April 24 2011 at 00:00
There is currently an argument that demonstrations cannot bring rain. This is an argument to discount those who are demonstrating because of high food prices. Those of you who come from banana-producing areas in Uganda must be familiar with the case where two banana plantations, side by side on a similar piece of land, with similar weather and soil conditions and yet you find in one, the leaves look very green and fresh while in the other plot they are yellow and miserable. In fact you hear passersby euphemistically remarking that farmer A must be a rain maker.
The reality, however, is that farmer A has better banana husbandry, while farmer B has poor banana husbandry practices. The former probably weeds regularly, prunes and mulches his plantation and these good crop husbandry practices turn him into a rain maker.
No famine
The 1999 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, Amartya Sen asserts in his prize book, Development as Freedom, that there has never been a famine in a functioning democracy. That there is a connection between democratic political rights and the absence of famines.
On the other hand Sen argues that famines in some countries such as Ethiopia were a result of authoritarian political leadership. He argues that the existence of freedom of expression and media information spreads the possible penalty of famines to those in power and this threat is an incentive to those in power to prevent any threatening famine. Regime responsiveness is conditional to being democratic and patriotic.
The relevance of Sen’s argument here in Uganda would be that demonstrations as a form of expressing citizens’ concerns would waken up those in government to not only hear citizens’ voices but to listen to them and come up with better intervention measures against food insecurity, drought or no drought.
In this sense demonstrations will have brought rain, or irrigation, as an intervention measure will be embarked on rather than the latter remaining a song at every budget speech.
There have been numerous intervention measures by government to increase agricultural productivity in Uganda, but these have been poorly executed. These include PMA and Naads Programmes.
Agricultural productivity of major crops in Uganda has declined by sixty percent in the last ten years which, ironically, is the era of Naads. In general, agriculture in Uganda has been growing at a declining rate in the last eight years.
Productivity as measured by the value of total crop output per hectare has been declining according to the report of Naads itself.
Research analysis
Also according to the report of the Agricultural Sector Investment Plan 2009-2010 to 2013-2014, a comparative analysis of farm level and research station yields reveals a huge gap that should embarrass all those who claim to have been carrying out intervention measures to increase Agricultural productivity in Uganda.
For example, the yields on the peasant gardens, maize is 551 kg/ha while on the research station it is about 800kg/ha; coffee is 369kg/ha on the peasant farm while it is 3,500kg/ha on the research station. Beans is 356 kg/ha while on the research station it is about 800 kg/ha. Bananas the yield is 1,872 kg/ha on peasant farms while on the research station it is 4,500 kg/ha.
You can see the contrast between the actual productivity on peasant farms and the attainable potential if there were good practices like those on the experimental stations. The huge gap as demonstrated above shows how Uganda’s potential to produce food for home consumption and remain with a surplus to export is extremely high.
No government intervention
The missing element, however, is effective government intervention either through good food policies or effective policy implementation to improve agricultural productivity.
These policies to increase land, labour and crop productivity can avert the persistent food shortages. It is in this sense that demonstrations which waken up those in government and hold them politically accountable for food shortages is equated to “bringing rain”.
The picture in the fishing sector which is a potential source of food security is even worse than in crop husbandry. According to the same report, production potential estimates indicate that Uganda can produce 800,000 metric tonnes of fish, but current production is a mere 380,000 metric tonnes per annum due to the unsustainable and poor fish harvest practices. And the above miserable picture can easily have a turn-around when government institutes effective intervention measures.
Therefore demonstrations as a political method of expressing citizens’ concern is relevant to improve agricultural productivity and by extension food security. I am here assuming that those demonstrating have similar motives and reasons as the ones I have enumerated above. The demonstrators could be having other motives but that is beside the point here.
The point as Amartya Sen argues, is that constantly holding those in power accountable for the public actions or inactions can avert man-made food shortages which the government normally explains away as purely a natural cause.
Contain crop diseases
Agricultural productivity has also drastically declined due to disease out breaks especially those of bananas and coffee. Currently in some regions of Buganda and the West, some of these crops are almost completely wiped out. Now, can’t government come up with a viable policy to contain these diseases? If people demonstrate against lack of aggressive measures to contain these diseases, will government counter argue that demonstrations can’t stop these diseases?
Fish stocks are almost depleted from our lakes. Is it an act of nature or man’s failure? Fertiliser usage in Uganda is about one percent and is the lowest in the region. Is this an act of nature?
India used to have persistent famines but it has since had a green revolution through government’s effective intervention and this has made food shortages history in India.
It is not because the climate and weather of India has all of a sudden changed. The ‘rain’ of India that has brought about food security is government effective intervention in Agriculture. And remember India is the biggest democracy in the world.
The writer is a lecturer at Makerere University

Friday, April 15, 2011

Ethiopian Innovative food-aid scheme starving for funds-this magazine


 

When Ethiopia asked the world for food aid last October, former subsistence farmer Terefi Tekale was not among the 6.2 million people desperate for help. Though his family’s long-held plot in Ethiopia’s Konso region has done poorly in recent years—the soil is sterile, his corn stunted and his hillside eroded—an ambitious new development plan means Tekale is not without hope, or without food.
Managing Environmental Resources to Enable Transitions to More Sustainable Livelihoods Through Partnerships and Land Use Solidarity, or MERET-PLUS, is a joint project between the Ethiopian government and the United Nations’ World Food Programme. Through it, Tekale and thousands others are employed to plant rows of tiny trees, destined for hillside farms like his. The roots should stop erosion, and the fruit can be eaten, traded or sold. “Our whole livelihood now depends on this,” says Tekale.

Thanks to MERET-PLUS, dozens of seedling nurseries and other small-scale sites have sprung up across Ethiopia. The program pays participants in grain to make compost to refresh tired soils, build retaining walls to stop erosion, and ponds to catch rainwater. Tekale earns 135 kilograms of grain per month, which feeds his family, his wife’s family and her relatives.
Meanwhile, though, MERET-PLUS itself is going hungry. A 2009 WFP report says expected donor contributions to MERET-PLUS fell nearly 50 percent since 2007, a shortfall blamed on food price increases and the global economic meltdown. Of US$166 million promised for 2007–2011, MERET-PLUS officials now expect to receive US$75 million. Major donors are Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway and Russia.
WFP officer Arega Yirga won’t say which country is the weak funding link, but Canada claims to be doing its part. Denise Robichaud, media officer at the Canadian International Development Agency, says we met our 2006 commitment of $20 million. It’s of little comfort. The funding gap caused postponement of 260 planned projects in 2008, and only 76,000 people—of a planned 122,000—received grain payments.
This wasted potential frustrates Fisseha Gizachew, MERET-PLUS regional coordinator in Awassa, southern Ethiopia. “People are coming to us because they understand the problems they are facing,” he says, adding, at the same time, lost funding has his office waiting for grain promised by the WFP seven months ago.
He won’t be the only one. This year, lost funding will force over 45,000 Ethiopian farmers off work while their land degrades. Too bad; during that time thousands of retaining walls and catchment ponds could have been built—long-term investments that help Ethiopians help themselves.