State of the World 2011: Innovative ways hunger can be eradicated

Almost one billion people around the globe are undernourished. State of the World 2011 brings a touch of hope and optimism to this harsh reality. The report celebrates the creativity of small-scale farmers and survive-or-die innovations that have potential for big-scale impact. The report leaves us optimistic that a viable roadmap to global food security [...]

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The return of ‘Afro-optimism’

For the first time since the seventies experts agree on Africa’s promising growth prospects and potential to become a major investment frontier – though risks still abound. Here are some of key factors to watch in 2011. The continent has grown at an average of five percent per year since 2000. Demonstrating an unexpected macroeconomic [...]

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Cassava combating rural hunger in Zambia

In Zambia, local scientists have successfully developed four new, early-maturing and high-yielding cassava cultivars in an ambitious research project conducted in the cassava-rich Luapula Province, under the ongoing Root and Tuber Improvement Programme (RTIP). Experts say the laboratory-tested and field-proven cultivars – with their advantages of halved maturity time and increased production output over the [...]

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Study sends agriculture warning to Africa

Agricultural research produced in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation concluded last week that Africa should stop relying on just a handful of crops. Agricultural experts welcomed the research’s findings that agro-ecological systems could feed much of the world, but some expressed concern that the research was a smokescreen to minimise criticism against [...]

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Kenya must not submit to the scramble for Africa’s land resources

In December 2008, there was talk about Kenya leasing more than 100 000 hectares of land on the Tana River Delta to Qatar. Local activists lobbied hard against the move. If such plans get implemented, Kenya will have joined a rising number of African countries such as Ethiopia and Madagascar, which have faced large scale [...]

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Agriculture in Africa is set to grow; but continent’s infrastructure curbs food production

Between 1997 and 1999, about 228-million hectares, or just 22%, of sub- Saharan Africa’s arable land was in use. On present estimates, by 2030 that figure will rise to 300-million hectares, or just 28% of the total. There is clearly room for Africa to grow more food. “The big constraint is infrastructure,” says Nick Vink, [...]

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Informal cross-border food trade

FEWS NET has released its latest report on informal cross border food trade among selected countries in southern Africa. This study covers observed monthly trends, as well as current marketing year cumulative informal trade flows in maize, rice and beans at selected border points in the DRC, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. [...]

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Zimbabwe to start commodity exchange, ending monopoly

Zimbabwe opened a commodities exchange to end the state monopoly on grain trading. The nation effectively closed its Agricultural Commodities Exchange in 2001 when Mugabe gave the state-owned Grain Marketing Board a monopoly on the trade of corn and wheat. The new commodities exchange, which will be managed by the state, banks and farmers’ unions, [...]

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Farm employment plummets 27.1%

The number of people employed on commercial farms has dropped by 271%, according to the latest South Africa Survey, published by the South African Institute of Race Relations in Johannesburg. The biggest drop in the number of farmworkers was in Mpumalanga Province, where it declined by 45%. The change was probably an indication that agriculture [...]

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Drought and food price increases spark fears of violence

The ongoing drought in different parts of Africa may threaten food security, fuelling spread of riots over food price increases, economists have warned. People in Algeria and Tunisia last month protested over food costs, sparking fears among governments that had experienced unrest in 2008′s hunger crisis. Prices of foodstuffs are rising due to reduced supply [...]

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