News brief
China running dry
credit: FAO/F Botts
China has set ambitious plans to drastically reduce water use in domestic agriculture. The move has been prompted by the country's worst drought in half-a-century, which has affected over ten million hectares of crops nationwide - mostly wheat production in the north. The government announced tough targets in February 2009 to reduce the amount of water needed in farming and industry by 60 per cent by 2020. Agriculture currently accounts for two-thirds of the country's water use and industrial pollution has added to widespread water shortages. The announcement means that, given the projected growth rate of the Chinese economy over the next decade, water use will effectively have to remain at current levels, despite increasing demand for meat, which requires significantly more water than crop production.
GM genes cut loose in Mexico
After years of controversy, the dispute over whether genes from genetically modified (GM) crops are able to contaminate non-GM varieties appears to have been settled - yes, they can. A study by scientists at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City has supported an earlier, widely-condemned study that claimed transgenic crops can infiltrate traditional crops through cross-pollination. The new study found that in 2,000 samples taken from non-GM corn fields in Mexico's central Oaxaca region, about one per cent contained transgenes. The GM material is most likely to have entered the country in seed from neighbouring United States, which then became mixed with local planting material.
Caterpillars on the march in Liberia...
credit: Liberian Ministry of Agriculture/MOA
A pest that infested agricultural land in Liberia, triggering a national emergency, has now been formally identified as caterpillars of the Achae catocaloides moth. In the worst outbreak in three decades, the caterpillars affected around 500,000 people in the West African state, along its border with Guinea, damaging coffee, cocoa, plantain and banana crops as well as polluting water supplies and causing the evacuation of over 100 villages. The dry season infestation meant that staple, wet season food crops such as maize, rice, sorghum and millet were largely unaffected.
The Liberian government and FAO are now in discussion over ways to contain the outbreak. Given that the caterpillars pupate above ground under fallen leaves, means that collection and disposal of cocoons is one simple and potentially effective control measure.
...while cold snap wrecks crops in Guinea
Record cold temperatures have destroyed crops in north-central Guinea. Potato, tomato, pepper, onion and banana plants were all seriously affected in five districts in the region as temperatures plummeted to near-freezing during the week-long cold snap in late January. Livestock were also badly affected, with the stress induced by the low temperatures causing over 1,000 spontaneous abortions in some sheep and goat herds. Some adult animals also died, as well as many poultry. The region usually experiences 'cold' periods during the dry season, but with temperatures normally no lower than around 12 degrees Celsius.
Bye-bye bird flu?
The days of avian flu could be numbered after US scientists successfully created antibodies that attack the virus in laboratory tests. Teams at Harvard Medical School and Burnham Institute for Medical Research engineered the antibodies to fight-off multiple influenza strains in mice, including the highly-contagious H5N1. Until now, development of an H5N1 vaccine has proven elusive due to the constantly mutating nature of the virus.
The findings came as Nepal suffered another outbreak of H5N1 in Jhapa District, 500km southeast of the capital Kathmandu, just a week after the government announced it had contained an earlier occurrence in the same area by culling nearly 30,000 birds. It has since imposed quarantine at border areas and a nationwide ban on the transportation of poultry while it plans a three-month monitoring campaign. The H5N1 virus has also been responsible for over 400 human fatalities worldwide, since it was first discovered in humans in Hong Kong in 1997, but it will not be known for several years whether the new antibodies are effective in humans.
Gaza's farms stripped bare
credit: FAO
Citizens of the troubled Gaza Strip face widespread shortages of nutritious, locally-produced, affordable food after many farms in the tiny Middle East enclave were completely destroyed during the recent Israeli offensive. About 13,000 families, who depend on farming, herding or fishing, have suffered losses of land, livestock and other capital. Food production in the region has already been crippled by the 18-month-long border closure with Israel, which has restricted the availability of agricultural inputs and hampered exports. FAO has initiated a programme of emergency aid, distributing packages of seeds, seedlings, fertiliser, feed and veterinary kits, as well as helping repair damaged greenhouses, and irrigation systems.
Storing up trouble in the EU?
The notorious milk 'lakes' and butter 'mountains' of the European Union in the 1970s and 1980s may make a comeback. The then vast stockpiles of subsidised agricultural produce were widely blamed for suppressing world prices of various agricultural products, with critics arguing it amounted to a damaging form of trade protectionism that made it hard for producers in low-income countries to compete. While the reserves have since been run down, a new EU scheme to help support Europe's farmers will involve the organisation buying up over 30,000 tonnes of butter and more than 100,000 tonnes of milk. There are fears that the move could trigger a wave of retaliatory 'beggar-my-neighbour' policies in other countries - particularly the United States and New Zealand - as they try to protect their own producers.
Bumper rice yields - but prices remain high
credit: IRIN
Global rice production for 2008 is expected to rise to a record 683 million tonnes, an increase of 3.5 per cent on the previous year, FAO has reported. Producers in Africa are expecting yields to rise by as much as 18 per cent, and international emergency stockpiles of the grain are also expected to be replenished by 8 per cent to 118 million tonnes. One of the reasons for the rise is that many governments encouraged more planting to take advantage of high prices and to ensure adequate domestic supplies while food prices were at record highs in 2007-8. Favourable weather in many rice-growing regions has also helped increase yields in spite of high fuel and fertiliser prices.
Despite this, many of the 2.5 billion people around the world, who rely on the staple grain, might still face food insecurity due to prices remaining 80 per cent higher than in 2007. The global economic downturn is expected to affect the poorest countries where spending power will be hit hard by falling incomes and job losses.
Boost for African seed producers
The Gates Foundation has joined forces with a consortium of public and private donors to improve cocoa and cashew production in sub-Saharan Africa. The US foundation has awarded US$23m to the World Cocoa Foundation to part-fund a five-year initiative. Thjs aims to help 200,000 smallscale producers in Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Cote d'Ivoire to double their incomes from cocoa by 2013. It has also contributed US$25m to a cashew initiative to be led by German development organisation GTZ , focusing on improving cashew processing facilities in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique and Benin. It is hoped the project will help some 150,000 cashew farmers add value and benefit from higher export revenues. Other public and private partners will be involved to strengthen market chains between African producers and processors and markets in South Asia.
Turkana in trouble
credit: IRIN
The Turkana region in northern Kenya will face a "full-scale emergency" if the March rains fail, David Lotiang, a councillor for Turkana Central has warned. Severely impacted by long-term drought, insecurity, alarming malnutrition rates, water scarcity and high food prices, the most vulnerable already need food relief to survive. A spokesman from WFP has said that needs assessments are occurring and that they would scale up their operations accordingly.
Severe food shortages have been caused by failing rains in 2007 and 2008 which resulted in poor harvests. Poor livestock health, caused by declining quality and quantity of vegetation cover and diseases such as PPR, has seen livestock prices plummet and millions of animals die. This was compounded by the post-election violence in January 2008 which caused an influx of displaced people and a drop in food imports reaching the region, forcing up the price of food. According to the Turkana District drought management officer, Geoffrey Kaituko, blanket feeding across Turkana could become necessary if the rains fail again.
Rust-free wheat gives up its secret
A global team of researchers has uncovered the DNA sequence of a gene found in wheat varieties that confers resistance to three deadly fungal diseases: leaf rust, stripe rust and powdery mildew. The discovery will strengthen the efforts of crop scientists in breeding rust-resistant wheat lines. Breeding strategies have focussed on incorporating a type of gene known as a 'major' resistance gene, against the fungal diseases, but the resistance conferred can be short-lived, particularly if the disease mutates.
The newly-mapped resistance gene, Lr34, is one of a type of genes that work across different rust races, giving a much more sustainable resistance to disease. By identifying a precise DNA marker for Lr34, the research team has also enabled the development of experimental varieties of wheat that are free of the gene, allowing breeders to test the efficacy of other genes of its type, and perhaps develop a wholly different kind of resistance. More info.
March 2009
