El Niño may have devastating impact on Southern Africa’s harvests

NaijaAgroNet:

The quadruple of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have raised an alarm that El Niño may have devastating impact on Southern Africa’s harvests, reports NaijaAgroNet.

In a joint press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet, they also noted that Southern Africa is currently in the grip of an intense drought that has expanded and strengthened since the earliest stages of the 2015-2016 agricultural season, driven by one of the strongest El Niño events of the last 50 years.

They also noted that across large swathes of Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, and Madagascar, the current rainfall season has so far been the driest in the last 35 years. Agricultural areas in northern Namibia and southern Angola have also experienced high levels of water deficit.

Equally, NaijaAgroNet gathered that much of the southern African sub-region has consequently experienced significant delays in planting and very poor conditions for early crop development and pasture re-growth. In many areas, planting has not been possible due to 30 to 50 day delays in the onset of seasonal rains resulting in widespread crop failure.

Experts noted that although there has been some relief since mid-January in certain areas, the window of opportunity for the successful planting of crops under rain-fed conditions is nearly closed.

Seasonal forecasts from a variety of sources are unanimous in predicting a continuation of below-average rainfall and above-average temperatures across most of the region for the remainder of the growing season.

The combination of a poor 2014-2015 season, an extremely dry early season (October to December) and forecasts for continuing hot and drier-than-average conditions through mid-2016 suggest a scenario of extensive, regional-scale crop failure.

In addition, South Africa has issued a preliminary forecast of maize production for the coming harvest of 7.4 million tonnes, a drop of 25 percent from the already poor production levels of last season and 36 percent below the previous five-year average.

These conditions follow a 2014-2015 agricultural season that was similarly characterized by hot, dry conditions and a 23 percent drop in regional cereal production. This drop has increased the region’s vulnerability due to the depletion of regional cereal stocks and higher-than-average food prices, and has substantially increased food insecurity.

The numbers of the food insecure population are now increasing due to the current drought and high market prices. It is expected that the population in need of emergency food assistance and livelihood recovery support will increase significantly.

+Naija AgroNet 

... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology

Syrian farmers need donors’ support

NaijaAgroNet:

The Syrian farmers need donors’ support now than ever, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), NaijaAgroNet reports.

The United Nations Agriculture agency made this disclosure in a press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet on Friday in Rome, noting that with the war in Syria now approaching its sixth year, agricultural production has plummeted and food supplies are at an all-time low, pushing millions of people into hunger. 

“FAO today called on governments to provide a boost in funding targeted at helping farmers keep their lands in production to prevent the situation from deteriorating even further,” part of the statement read.

The agency's appeal comes ahead of a 4 February international donors' conference in London being convened by the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the United Nations to mobilize support for humanitarian work in Syria.

"The conflict has decimated the agriculture sector, which has had a major impact on food supplies and markets. Currently over half of Syrians remaining in the country are food insecure, with one in three people unable to afford basic foods," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

NaijaAgroNet recalls that as national food production has collapsed, food prices in Syria have soared with prices in some markets for wheat flour and rice jumping by as much as 300 percent and 650 percent, respectively, over the past 18 months.

... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology

Save & Grow adoption encourages ecosystem-based farming

NaijaAgroNet:

A new book from the stables of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has shown that eco-system-based farming has come of age, through the adoption of Save and Grow initiative, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The new FAO book launched Wednesday in Rome, takes a close look at how the world's major cereals maize, rice and wheat - which together account for an estimated 42.5 per cent of human calories and 37 per cent of our protein - can be grown in ways that respect and even leverage natural ecosystems. 

Drawing on case studies from around the planet, the new book illustrates how the "Save and Grow" approach to agriculture advocated by FAO is already being successfully employed to produce staple grains, pointing the way to a more sustainable future for farming and offering practical guidance on how the world can pursue its new sustainable development agenda.

"International commitments to eradicate poverty and tackle climate change require a paradigm shift towards a more sustainable and inclusive agriculture able to produce higher yields over the longer term," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

The two recent landmark global agreements, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - which require eradicating hunger and putting terrestrial ecosystems on a sound footing by 2030 - and the Paris Climate Change Agreement (COP21), only underscore the need for inclusive innovation in food systems, he adds. 

While the world's cereal harvests may be at record levels today, their productive base is increasingly precarious amid signs of groundwater depletion, environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity and other woes marking the end of the Green Revolution model. Meanwhile, global food production will need to grow by 60 percent - mostly on existing arable land and in the face of climate change  - to feed the future population in 2050,  making it all the more urgent for the smallholders who grow the majority of the world's crops to be enabled to do so more efficiently and in ways that don't further increase humanity's ecological debt.

Save and Grow is a broad-based approach to environmentally friendly, sustainable agriculture aimed at intensifying production, protecting and enhancing agriculture's natural resource base and reducing reliance on chemical inputs by tapping into the Earth's natural ecosystem processes, and to increase farmers' gross income. As such it is an approach intrinsically crafted to contribute to the SDGs and foster resilience to climate change.

Viable Save and Grow practices range from growing shade trees that shed their leaves when  adjacent maize crops most need sunlight, as tried with success in Malawi and Zambia, to scrapping tillage and leaving crop residues as soil surface mulch, a method applied on a massive scale by wheat farmers on the Kazakhstani steppe and increasingly by innovative slash-and-mulch practices adopted by farmers in the highlands of Central and South America. 

The time has now come for ideas that have proven themselves in farmers' fields to be upscaled in more ambitious national programmes, FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva says in the foreword to Save and Grow in Practice in Practice: A Guide to Sustainable Cereal Production, a book he described as "a contribution to creating the world we want."  

Isaac Oyimah/GEE
... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology

Cereal prices declined by 1.3% - FAO

NaijaAgroNet:

Cereal prices declined by 1.3 per cent in the month of December from its November value due to intensifying export competition among maize producers according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), reports NaijaAgroNet.

FAO in its Cereal Price Index made available to NaijaAgroNet said expectations of more wheat supplies entering world markets after Argentina removed export taxes was a major influencer, noting that the sub-index, which includes rice, shed 15.4 per cent on average during 2015 from the previous year. 

While the Dairy Price Index subsided 1.0 per cent in December, and over the year was 28.5 per cent below its average level in 2014, the sharpest decline of any food commodity, a press statement from FAO showed.

The Meat Price Index, however, dropped by 2.2 per cent in December, which was prompted by surging pork output in Europe and reduced U.S. demand for imported beef, pointing out that “Over the full year, meat was on average 15.1 cheaper than in 2014.”

Whereas the Vegetable Oil Price Index rose 2.1 per cent in December, pushed up by uncertainties regarding Brazil's soybean crop, but over 2015 as a whole was 19 per cent below the previous year.

Meanwhile, FAO's Sugar Price Index rose 0.6 per cent in December, but was on average 21 per cent lower in 2015 than the previous year.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE 
... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology

FAO food price index drops in December

NaijaAgroNet:

The Food and Agriculture Organisaiton (FAO) has disclosed that food prices dropped in the month of December 2015 due to dwindling global economic downturn, reports NaijaAgroNet.

FAO also said that abundant supplies and slow economic growth drive food prices down for the fourth consecutive year.

FAO's Food Price Index sighted by NaijaAgroNet showed that prices of major food commodities declined for the fourth year in a row in 2015, averaging 19.1 percent below their previous-year's levels, as the dwindling global economy also triggered sharp price falls from metals to energy markets, ending the year even lower, at 154.1 points during the month of December. 

In December, FAO said, the index declined a further 1.0 per cent from its revised November value, as falling prices for meat, dairy and cereals more than offset gains by sugar and vegetable oils.

"Abundant supplies in the face of a timid world demand and an appreciating dollar are the main reason for the general weakness that dominated food prices in 2015," said FAO senior economist Abdolreza Abbassian. 

The FAO Food Price Index is a trade-weighted index tracking international market prices for five key food commodity groups: major cereals, vegetable oils, dairy, meat and sugar.

 

... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology