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Vol.2,No.2 |
As published in June 2000 in the "General-Anzeiger", a German newspaper, development institutions are currently reorganised to join and co-ordinate their activities under a single 'roof' called ZIZ (Zentrum für Internationale Zusammenarbeit / Centre for International Co-operation). The main institutions to be coordinated by the BMZ are DSE, CDG (Carl-Duisberg-Gesellschaft), DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and GTZ . This process is taking place on the background of decreasing governmental budgets.
Within this context, development activities are re-organised so that the various tasks are devided efficiently.
Mr Heinz Bühler (DSE) is emphasising in the article two main focuses of the DSE:
With regard to the latter point, he points out NECOFA as a pilot project to integrate the Internet into development work. He describes the chances of the Internet as a medium to increase learning and exchange of information as "revolutionary" although it could not replace traditional seminars and direct human contact.
A radio broadcast at Deutschlandfunk
(German National Public Radio) with
Odour Cornel Ouma (NECOFA-Kenya)
and Stephen Osingo
by Thomas Breulmann
Eupener Strasse 12, 50933 Köln, Germany
Email: Thomas.Breulmann@freenet.de
Yes, that's right, Thomas Breulmann agrees. But, may be, life is not that easy:
It's called "NECOFA". This organisation wants to promote ecological farming in Nigeria, Cameroun, and in five east african countries.
Many small scale farmes do not realize the full natural potential of the soil. Mineral fertilizers or pesticides, or so, they very often cannot use: external input is too expensive. But: Ecologically adapted farming-techniques could, within a very short period, more than double the production, Oduor Cornel Ouma says, from the kenyan section of Necofa.
If we target these farmers, and probably increase and improve the production by threefold...
(OCO)... there is a problem between the point of information and where it is supposed to be used.
One does actually know quite a lot about eco-farming. But the knowledge is not where it is supposed to be used. The main problem is missing information-transfer.
Knowledge, which is not dessemenated, is not really knowlegde, Ouma says. But: you cannot walk and walk, visit tenthousands of villages, to collect knowledge, to work on it and to desseminate it. It's impossible. This is why Oduor Ouma wants to use the internet. - Ok, okay. But isn't this a bit nutty? Isn't this an enormous jump?? A too enormous jump???- It will pay:
(OCO)...but we believe that the effects or the influence of that, is going to outway the investment...
NECOFA actually knows why they say so. It's just stupid to believe, that small scale farmes traditionally know all about ways of farming, adapted to the environment. The opposite is more true: old knowledge got lost, new knowledge does not reach to the farmers. And there is no exchange of experiences amongst the farmers.
(OCO) One problem for the poor people, farmers, is the enormous deficiency in information transfer amongst themselves.
Let me give you an example: Lifestock breeders, who are rich enough, do buy food concentrates (pellets?) to increase milk production. They do not know, that they could also increase milk production using the calliandra tree. While in some neighbouring country, the tree might be known for many many years, and succesfully used.
The lack of knowledge amongst the rural population is not only very helpful for pellet-sellers. So called "traders" can make big deals with the non-informed farmers. In the villages, on the country, no one knows about markets. No one knows about prices in town.
(OCO) They don't know who want's what at a good price....
Which means: the trader pays ridiculous prices, he is exploiting the farmers, Ouma says.
Ok, the huge farms, producing for export, they have their own boards, they are well informed, they are connected to the markets via internet, Stephen Osingo says, he is from Southern Kenya.
(SO) Coffee farmers, tea farmers, cash crop farmers, they have their own boards...
But in those areas, where there are mainly small scale farms, telephone facilities are poor, if there are any, flow of information is moderate, and it's only one-way, there are extension services .
(SO) ...information is mainly through extension services, there are vehicles who move through the communities.
Access to mutual (interactive) information is a basic need: in order to survive, in the very sense of this word - and also to generate income. - Still, of course, Oduor Ouma does not want to put a computer to every single household.
(OCO) We are going to establish a community ressource center ...
He wants to teach individuals, from the local population, in using computers and the internet. Via a central community resource centre, the specialists will provide information, interactive information, to the local farmers, on all the issues, concerning adapted, environmental friendly, ecological farming, and also on markets and prices.
And, in order to avoid mistakes others had made before, Ouma will put the internet-facilities mainly in the hands of women. Women and women groups are considered to be the real promoters of progress in Kenya. - Up to now, free and easy access to information, as a basic need, is still just a dream. But, Ouma says, in the hands of women, this dream gets it's chance to become true. Only what you are giving to the mother, they say in Kenya, you also give to the child.
END
An overview of the 13th International Scientific Conference IFOAM 2000
by Asfaw Tihune (NECOFA-Ethiopia)
The Conference was held ,28/o8/2000-31/08/2000, in Switzerland, Basel. A number of pre/post conference events were integrated in it, lasting from 21 August up to 2 September 2000.more than 1000 participants,180 of them with about 50 contributions from 105 countries took part. Organic farming farmers, researchers, certifiers, professionals of different fields, importers/exporters, university lecturers and students, staffs of GOs and NGOs were the participants.
Main organizers were IFOAM and FiBL(The Research Institute of Organic Agriculture) while the sponsors of IFOAM 2000 were sixteen in number of which two are German based(Hipp Gmbh+Co, Pfaffenhofen and Foundation of Ecology and Agriculture).
Participants from Third World countries and Eastern European countries were sponsored by DEZA(Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation).The biggest majority of the sponsors are Swiss based.
Grouped into the following ten main topics:
General Features
Main Features
Internally, there exists a strong challenge regarding certification, labeling and standards. These issues were discussed on sessions, workshops and on a panel discussions. The forums were all hotbeds. Criticisms and complaints regarding these issues were the characteristics of these forums. The policies of IFOAM and external certifiers suffered from sharp criticisms. The following comment from a Mexican presenter on one of the sessions suffice quoting to give the general view of the discussions on these issues:
"... it looks like the old times of the 18th and 19th centuries when the Europeans looked abroad for more land and new opportunities. I often compare the EU certifiers as the new breed of missionaries and settlers ... we can not keep in being silent.... We have to get back on basics how to safeguard Mother Earth for the next generations and how to produce good and safe food in abundance for every one and not only for the happy few. Organic and social issues belong together. Supporting good food is a right for all the inhabitants of Mother Earth and not only for the happy few."
Development cooperation: Organic farming or Genetic Engineering against the Hunger in the world" was another topic of a public panel discussion. The dialogue between the panelists and comments from the participants have once more exposed the retrogressive out comes of GM and GE; That conventional agriculture could not check hunger and food industry, that GE has knelt in front of the World Food Challenge.
GE is said to have destroyed biodiversity, aimed to create dependence, is deployed because of ignorance; that GM crops are new organisms that have never existed in nature, etc. Based on these social, economic and ecological repercussions of GE, the participants sounded that development cooperation whose source is public fund and subsidy should never be allotted to genetic engineering.
by Richard Mwanakulya
I must break the silence after a long time since we last met during the ecofarming training workshop Ethiopia. A lot has happened ever since. I did not have time to discuss our specific ecofarming strategies in Tanzania with my colleague Mr. Kassim. However while we were in Addis Ababa we did agree to begin at the grassroot level before moving upwards.
Immediately I arrived back in Iringa, the region in Tanzania where I work, I met the Chief Technica] Adviser of the Natural Resources Conservation and Landuse Management Programme abbreviated HIMA programme and informed him on what transpired in Ethiopia. He was very much interested in the concept of ecofarming. The programme is composed of 5 semi-autonomous projects, one of which I work with. All projects promote something called 'organic fanning' which essentially has a lot in common with ecofarming.
I wrote a report on my training workshop in Ethiopia and presented it at an inter-project agricultural technical meeting. The meeting was very much moved at what I brought from Ethiopia particularly the technology part. They agreed on the validity of the concept particularly at this time and that both methodologies and technologies should be tried out.
In Tanzania there is an association, of which individual HIMA projects are members, which in many ways is similar to our version of ecofarming network. This association, in Kiswahili, is called Kilimo Hai Tanzania (KIHATA). KIHATA literally means Living Agriculture in Tanzania. The association promotes similar technologies which fit well with ecofarming. It has been easy to fit ecofarming concepts with KIHATAs concept.
It was not easy to change the extension methodology that was in use at the time I came back from Ethiopia. Side by side two extension methodologies, the Training and Visit (T&V) system executed the National Extension Programme (NAEP) and the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) executed HIMA programme were in use in the region. The former was the official government methodology and being largely top-down in approach, made the introduction of participatory ecofarming techniques rather difficult initially particularly on the part of the extension workers who considered themselves know-all. Therefore the so called participatory methodologies that are being used are a variant of both. The problem with the T&V is that it has a lot of 'packages'. Looking at the methodologies that were being used two main weaknesses could be noted. The first is that too many technologies were introduced in each of the selected villages. The second is that no trouble was taken to decide on the appropriateness of a technology (i.e. those that meet very strongly felt needs and those that do not take long to yield benefits). We decided to pursue the methodology part rather gradually while keeping the two weaknesses in mind. It was difficult to correct the weaknesses at the beginning but slowly the idea began to sink in.
One of the important extension methodology is the promotion of farmer extensionists. The prograrm decided to take this approach very strongly and currently in many villages there are farmer extensionists who we call paraproffessionals.
In most of the villages in the programme the leading problem mentioned by most villagers is low farm fertility. Therefore it was decided to experiment with soil improvement technologies.
Two technologies which were felt to be very appropriate to the villages are the green manure I cover crops and in-row tillage technologies. With green manure technologies, the first task was to get the good species. For the conditions in the region it was felt necessary to start with velvet beans (Mucuna pruriens), jack beans (Canavalia ensiformis) and Tephrosia vogellii as these plants had a great potential to add large amounts of fixed nitrogen to the soil. We got few T. vogellii seeds and multiplied them during the 1999 cropping season. Farmers though did not like Tephrosia as it attained similar height as maize which is the leading crop in the region, still they planted it on their boundaries. It was not possible to get velvet and jack beans.
I discussed the problem of getting the seeds with the programme authorities and was assured that if seed sources were found the programme would be ready to pay. I then communicated with Mr. Roland Bunch by e-mail to get information on the sources of the green manure plant seeds. I got a reply after 7 months in which he apologised that he had been away for a long time outside his work station. He therefore wanted the whole list again and I sent him using the same e-mail address. Todate I have never received the reply. I also communicated with a participant from Ghana who had told me about the availability of the seeds in that country. She promised me a few seeds of mucuna so that we could multiply. Again todate I have never heard anything.
We then decided strongly to hunt for the local sources of the seeds. We visited a zonal research station and were lucky to get a few velvet bean seeds from a researcher who had privately kept them. They were sufficient to cover three 5 x 10 metre experimental plots. We could not get jack bean seeds. The research officer advised us to try lablab beans (Lablab purpureum) for the semi-arid areas. Earlier on we had contacted Dr. Otsyna of ICRAF in Shinyanga region of Tanzania but we could not get the sources of the seeds. We finally managed to get a good amount of lablab bean seeds.
During the 2000 cropping season farmers with the help of extension staff set experimental plots on green manure in 5 villages and for in-row tillage in 2 villages. Although the results were not spectacular in the first year, the farmers are of the opinion all signs point to the fact that there may be immense benefits from the technologies in the years to come. Farmers will continue with the experiments in the 2001 cropping season.
Our philosophy is to have ecofarming methodologies and technologies effectively taking root and then continue to network. This is why a particularly Tanzania-wide ecofarming network has not been formed because there exist similar bodies with which to work closely and also people need to see the methodology and technologies working before they accept the concept. Our future plan is to continue with the experimentation and finally launch the ecofarming network in Tanzania as well as work closely with KIHATA and probably absorb it into the ecofarming network.
Richard Mwanakulya
Natural Resource Conservation and Landuse Management Project
P.O.Box 103
Mafinga, Tanzania
e-mail: himamuf@twiga.com
Telephone: (255) 0262772243
Facsimile: (255) 0262772243