Word: africa
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...Pimentel, a professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, that was published in 2005, found that organic farms produced just as much corn and soybeans as conventional farms. While they required more labor, the cost was more than offset by savings in commercial nitrogen, insecticides and herbicides. In Africa, where labor is cheap and capital scarce, the benefits would be magnified. According to Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, past green revolutions boosted production of wheat and rice at the expense of other food. Using land for cash crops, she argues, actually decreased total food production. "You're losing because...
...Spring onions serve as natural pest control. Legumes fix nitrogen to the soil. Cow manure produces biogas for the farm's stove. Farm owner Josephine Kizza says her project has introduced organic techniques to 180,000 Ugandan farmers. "In the Western countries, organic farming is expensive. But here in Africa, it is very cheap...
...ideal world, this is a face-off that would benefit Africa. For some farmers, commercial solutions - of the type promoted by Odiambo - will be the best way forward. Others might be better served by organic techniques. The key will be giving each grower the opportunity to make a comparison. So far, the more organized and better backed AGRA is the group getting its message...
AGRA, for its part, says it has learned the lessons of Asia's experience. Africa's farmlands are divided into small, impoverished plots and scattered across a diverse ecological landscape. What works just south of the Sahara is likely to be very different from what would be successful in the Ethiopian highlands or the Congolese tropics. Rather than try to impose a transition to large-scale, industrialized agriculture, AGRA is providing small-scale farmers with a variety of products for use in traditional planting. The idea, says Joe DeVries, director of AGRA's seed program, isn't to supplant existing...
DeVries says that organic techniques can be part of the solution, but won't be enough on their own. An American farm uses about 90 lb. (41 kg) of fertilizer per acre per year. In Africa, the average is a little more than 3 lb. (1.4 kg). "In some parts of the United States, overutilization of fertilizer may indeed have become an environmental problem," says DeVries. "In Africa we're seeing that underutilization is the problem." When degraded soil blows away, frustrated farmers turn to the forests for more land. A farmer applying as little as a coke-bottle...