News brief

Falling grain harvests and worldwide food shortages	Drought toxicity
Revised Pesticide Code stumbles on TRIPS	Where have all the flowers gone?
The long and the short and the tall	Too hot to set seed
Forging 'farmer power'	Tapping in to new technologies
Coffee - less for more?	Resisting cowpea stunt
Improving milk yields with better fodder	Wasting syndrome of pigs
Caterpillars affect coconuts in the Cook Islands	Evacuating a nation - Tuvalu admits defeat
Vegetable trail to Taiwan

Falling grain harvests and worldwide food shortages

Poor harvests worldwide for two consecutive years have been blamed on weak grain prices, drought and spreading water shortages. The lowest grain prices for two decades have discouraged farmers from investing in production-boosting measures with the result that the estimated world grain harvest for 2001 (1,841 million tons) will fall short of projected consumption by 54 million tons. Carry-over stocks are likely to fall to 22% of annual consumption, the lowest level in 20 years. Further poor harvests in 2002 could lead to rising grain prices and higher costs for bread, meat, milk, eggs and other products derived directly or indirectly from grain.

The food situation in Somalia is deteriorating due to another poor harvest, the lowest for seven years. Elsewhere in East Africa, pastoralists continue to rely on food assistance due to prolonged drought, while in southern Africa, emergency food assistance is to be provided in parts of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique where food shortages have also resulted from poor harvests. In Afghanistan, the food crisis continues and food shortages persist in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Food supply also remains tight in several other central Asian countries.

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Revised Pesticide Code stumbles on TRIPS

During the FAO Biennial Conference in November, governments rejected revisions to the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides. At issue was the interpretation of government obligations to protect manufacturers' data on health, the environment and the efficacy of products, from their competitors, although this issue is already covered by the TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement under the WTO. The International Code on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides has been in place since 1985, but the revised version included significant changes to the existing Code, which does not refer to obsolete pesticide stocks in developing countries, and recommended that the most toxic pesticides should not be used in developing countries. An objection by Argentina, supported by all Latin American countries, centred on the wording of TRIPS data, even though this recognises the pre-eminence of national legislation. According to Pesticide Action Network UK, which attended the meeting, the objection may have been prompted by Argentina's generic pesticide industry.
For more information email: barbaradinham@pan-uk.org

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The long and the short and the tall

Rice must be one of the most varied of cultivated food plants, from short (dwarf) varieties to metres-long 'floating' rice types. With the largest collection of rice in the world in its gene bank, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has spent more than a decade developing a new plant type (NPT) for irrigated production in south and south-east Asia. The aim has been to redesign what plant breeders call 'the plant architecture' in order to make it more vigorous, higher yielding and better able to resist pests and diseases. The latest yield data from 2001 dry season trials in China showed that the best performing NPT line (one of 42 tested) had a yield advantage over an existing modern variety of 1.7 t/ha. Another five lines showed a yield advantage of more than 1.0 t/ha. All these varieties also have resistance to some diseases and pests.
Email: d.macintosh@cgiar.org

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Forging 'farmer power'

Farmers' associations in southern Africa have formed The Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions, with a secretariat in Lusaka, Zambia. The objective is for SACAU to provide a stronger presence in lobbying and negotiations with international bodies such as the WTO; it is hoped that the new organisation will focus on the fundamental needs of small-scale farmers and lobby for the removal of tariffs and subsidies that favour farmers in OECD countries. The creation of SACAU coincides with depressed commodity markets, rocketing fuel costs, currency depreciation and a lack of confidence among farmers and investors, leading to a generally negative perception of the region's prospects. According to Union Chairman, David Hasluck, "The issue of land reform, complicated by the breakdown of the rule of law, criminality and personal security, has exacerbated the already fragile agricultural economies of the region, and is highlighted by the situation in Zimbabwe."

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Coffee - less for more?

Worldwide, coffee prices have fallen in recent years, except for beans of exceptional quality. In June 1999, UNDP started funding a small project in one village in Bolivia to improve the quality of the coffee they were producing. Starting with 600 hectares of low-productivity coffee bushes, the area grown has now expanded to include three other villages, covering some 4000 hectares. Low density planting is the most obvious difference with usual practice: instead of planting 10,000 coffee bushes per hectare, in the project area bushes are planted at only 1,500 per hectare. They are also interplanted with leguminous shade trees, which fix nitrogen and help stabilise the soil on the erosion-prone mountain slopes. Laboratory analyses show that coffee quality also depends on harvesting and handling of beans, so villagers were taught to select only those berries that were properly mature and to make collections every day throughout the harvesting period, with each day's cherries treated separately from those of the previous day. All diseased, broken or stained beans were to be removed by hand.

The results have been significant and Mojsa (delicious in the local language) coffee now commands double the average world price, giving growers a 100% gain over their previous income. With help from the Japanese and Bolivian Governments and various NGOs, the UNDP project has set up the Mojsa Coffee Foundation, which will be responsible for certifying the quality of beans, and three Colombian coffee experts are to train other villagers in the Mojsa coffee process. It has been estimated that this region alone could produce enough extra coffee to more than double both the country's coffee exports and small coffee growers' incomes.

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Improving milk yields with better fodder

A collaborative study by crop scientists, working with livestock researchers and socio-economists in southern India, has confirmed that plant diseases, which affect grain yield of crops, also affect the quantity and nutritive value of residues for use as cattle fodder. The study, funded by the UK Department for International Development, has shown that farmers earn significantly less when cattle are fed on diseased fodder, because of the poor quantity and quality of the milk produced. Results indicate that improvements in digestibility of only a single percentage unit could result in an increase in the value of milk, of 3-11%. Most commercial milk production in India takes place near towns and cities, where the majority of customers live and cattle feed consists mainly of sorghum and groundnut residue. However, the study revealed that a disparity exists between rich and poor: rich sorghum farmers are also those involved in milk sales whereas the poor (who own less livestock) depend on income from fodder. Conversely, groundnut farmers are involved with both milk and fodder sales although no commercial market exists for groundnut haulms and purchases are made only at the village level.
Email: r.bandyopadhyay@cgiar.org

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Caterpillars affect coconuts in the Cook Islands

Caterpillars of the coconut flat moth (Agonoxena argaula) have been identified on Rarotonga. Unhealthy and dying coconuts trees with dry leaves were first identified in October 2000 in the south-east of the island but coconut trees across much of the island are now affected. The Ministry of Agriculture for the Cook Islands has stepped up quarantine procedures on movement of coconut and ornamental palms in an effort to prevent the moth from spreading to other islands. Two parasitoids, Brachymeria sp. and Tichospilus distraeae, have been identified on Rarotonga by CAB International. The former is also recorded from other Pacific islands and, on average, has been found to parasitize 50% of the flat moth pupae.
For further information email: Cook Islands Research Division

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Vegetable trail to Taiwan

Thousands of samples of indigenous vegetables are being collected from Africa and Asia by the Taiwan-based Asian vegetable Research and Development Center, AVRDC. The plants are then assessed for their horticultural characteristics, tastes and nutritional values. So far nearly 3000 samples of over 70 species of indigenous vegetables have been collected from Bangladesh, Thailand and Vietnam, with funding from the Asian Development Bank. Meanwhile, AVRDC's Africa Regional Program (ARP), based in Tanzania, has completed a three-year project to study the production of African indigenous vegetables, funded by the Department for International Development in the UK (DFID). The project was able to improve the productivity of the vegetables through a landrace enhancement programme. Seeds are being purified and multiplied with the assistance of GTZ/BMZ of Germany, and production guides for African vegetables have been published on AVRDC's website: www.avrdc.org.tw

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Drought toxicity

Livestock, faced with pastures overgrazed and burned off by prolonged drought, have no alternative but to browse the remaining vegetation that has remained green and inviting-if not palatable. Such species as castor, solanum, lantana, crotalaria, and bracken are remarkably drought tolerant but they contain toxins that, if consumed, cause, vomiting, diarrhoea, other gastro-intestinal problems, liver damage and cancers. Such poisoning has come into prominence during recent droughts in East Africa and Dr Deo Olila, an expert on plant poisons at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Makerere University, Uganda, has observed that veterinary experts are aware that poisoning from drought-affected pasture is becoming more common. Dr Olila believes that there is a risk of plant toxins being passed to meat consumers, but Kenya is alone in the region in having initiated a project to study the safety of beef from cattle that have consumed poisonous plants.

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Where have all the flowers gone?

Kenya has overtaken Israel as the world's second largest producer of flowers after the Netherlands. Last year 500 million flowers from Kenya passed through the Aalsmeer Flower Auction (VBA) in the Netherlands. And in the UK, supermarket Tesco, has projected that Kenyan flowers will account for 32 percent of sales in 2002. Last year many growers in Kenya invested in increased acreages of small-flowered roses and summer flowers. They were also able to improve productivity, which raised output by 20 percent, and the quality of blooms exported. In response to the growing importance of Kenya as a supplier, VBA set up an office in Nairobi in March 2001, allowing existing and new suppliers to have direct access to information from VBA.
For more information see www.kenyaflowers.co.ke

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Too hot to set seed

Having found evidence that rising temperatures, linked with emissions of greenhouse gases, can damage the ability of major cereal crops (rice, maize and wheat), to flower and set seed, scientists now suggest that temperature rise will also significantly affect the growing of coffee and tea. At the latest round of climate change negotiations in Marrakech, Morocco in November, studies were quoted that indicate a reduction in cereal yield for each one degree C rise in temperature. The effect appears to occur when temperatures in the tropics rise above 30C during flowering. Heat damage has been noted in Cambodia and India, and IRRI has recorded average night temperatures 2.5 degrees higher than they were 50 years ago. Rising temperature could also force growers of coffee and tea to give up production or to move to higher, cooler elevations. But, in many situations, this would necessitate the clearing of forest land for the new plantings.
More information from: Patricia.Jacobs@unep.org

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Tapping in to new technologies

A regional rainwater-harvesting programme has been launched to ease the impact of recurrent drought among small scale farming communities in southern Africa. It is a joint initiative of the Mvula Trust of South Africa and the Disaster Mitigation for Sustainable Livelihoods Project, funded by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID). The focus of the programme is to influence community water supply policy and practice, and to disseminate rainwater-harvesting techniques in the region. The project, known as Partners Enhancing Resilience for Exposure to Risks (Peri-Peri), is a network of 18 organisations from Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. The network is preparing to publish a handbook about rainwater-harvesting, which will also cover the work and research of the southern African organisations involved.

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Resisting cowpea stunt

A cowpea, collected in a Brazilian market in 1978, has provided germplasm for breeding a variety that is resistant to cowpea stunt disease. Cowpeas rank among the top food crops worldwide, since they can tolerate poor, dry soils and the crop is grown on 1.5 million acres in the US alone, not only as a food crop but for silage and as a green manure. However stunt can cause up to 86 per cent losses in some commercial US cultivars. Cowpea stunt is caused by two viruses: cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) and blackeye cowpea mosaic virus (BICMV). Controlling the disease with pesticides is not economic and breeding stunt-resistant cowpeas has proved difficult in the past. But US Agricultural Research Service scientists at the Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit at Griffin, Georgia have developed the germplasm line GC-86L-98, which resists CMV, is immune to BICMV, and produces large, tasty white seeds.
Requests for seed can be emailed to ARS plant pathologist Graves Gillespie at s9gg@ars-grin.gov

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Wasting syndrome of pigs

The tongue-twistingly named Post-weaning multi-systemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) of pigs, first reported in Canada in 1991, has since manifested itself in major pig producing countries around the world. Resulting in impaired feed conversion, reduced growth rates and 5 to15 percent mortality, the economic effects are devastating. There is no effective cure and, although consistently associated with porcine circovirus 2 (PCV2) infection, PMWS cannot be reproduced by inoculation of PCV2 alone. However, there is now evidence that PMWS can result from infection by PCV2 in the face of an overwhelming challenge to the immune system; when pigs are weaned early (e.g. at three to four weeks ), the pig's immune system has to cope with a variety of infectious agents as a result of moving to new accommodation and mixing with other litters. A hypothesis posed in The Pig Journal Vol 48 is that some modern vaccines given to pigs may result in powerful antigenic challenges, which can lead to the immune system being overwhelmed in early-weaned pigs.
Further details of this research at: www.pighealth.com/circovirus.htm

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Evacuating a nation - Tuvalu admits defeat

The global rise in sea level has, for the first time in modern history, forced a low-lying island nation to admit defeat and plan an evacuation. The 11,000 people of Tuvalu now have the difficult task of finding a new home; already the governments of Australia and New Zealand have turned down their request to be resettled. However, the increasing loss of land to coastal erosion, and saltwater damage to drinking water sources and agricultural land, gives the Tuvaluans little option but to move. Their plight could be the start of a worrying pattern, and a problem to which the international community has yet to find a solution. Other low-lying island nations under threat include the Maldives, home to over 300,000 people, many of which are little more than two metres above sea level. This is a small number, however, compared to the millions of people who live on deltas and coastal floodplains in Bangladesh and China. Who will pay for the enormous resettlement programmes that seem certain to be needed is a crucial question, particularly when it is poor countries that suffer from climate changes that are linked to carbon dioxide emissions from the US and Europe.

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