A hive with a view: The apiculturist of the Opéra
Eco-tuna: Mexican catch spares dolphins
GATT's effect on rice: Plus ca change?
United nations environment programme joins ranks of CGIAR sponsors
A clash of cultures
Living fences last longer
Careful control: IPM in China
FAO in action
Edited by Kate Dunn
It's a run-of-the-mill beehive with a queen and 30 000 workers and drones. But this is a hive with a view - of the Seine, the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral. Only the toniest of addresses for these bees, whose hive sits on the roof of the Paris Opéra!
How sweet it is, up on the roof of the Paris Opéra (Photo by Adilson Felix)
This honey of a hive was all Jean Paucton's idea. He works backstage at the Opera-Bastille where he is in charge of the furniture. While other Parisians might divert themselves with wine-tasting and art appreciation sessions, this city boy under-took a beginner's course in apiculture. So what if he was living in the centre of (arguably) the world's greatest city? So what if he didn't even have a backyard, let alone fields of flowers with which to sweeten his combs?
How sweet it is, up on the roof of the Paris Opéra (Photo by Adilson Felix)
"I didn't have a place in the country where I could put up a beehive, so I put it somewhere where there was some fresh air and where I could keep an eye on it," said Paucton.
Without asking anyone's permission, Paucton installed a small hive and his first swarm of bees on the Opéra rooftop. He wondered whether the workers (sexually underdeveloped females) would manage to find nectar and pollen in such a densely populated city. "When I returned a week later the hive was al- ready dripping with honey," says Paucton, who is now known as the Beekeeper of the Opéra.
Paucton climbs to the Opéra rooftop three times a week at lunch-time. He puts on proper attire - a straw hat and a veil - and lights up a "smoker" to quell the bees.
At first glance, downtown Paris is not a place to get a bee humming. But from a bee's eye view, it's a honeypot. Opéra-based bees can gather nectar and pollen in a three-kilometre radius that includes the 47 hectares of the Père-Lachaise cemetery.
Worker bees scour tree-lined avenues and flower-lined balconies for blossoms. They gather nectar, a sugar solution which is 80 per cent water, and turn it into honey (17 per cent water). They also collect pollen, which provides essential proteins for rearing young bees.
The Apis melliflera gather nectar from such a variety of blossoms that Opéra honey is richer-tasting than sunflower or canola honey. Some people find the taste too strong. "Some people hate it and say it tastes of bubble gum," sighed Paucton.
Paucton learned about beekeeping at the Jardin du Luxembourg, the public park behind the French Senate. Parisians have been studying beekeeping here for the past 137 years. They are told city bees are two to three times more productive than their country cousins.
In cities, bees do not have to fear their most common predators: skunks, bears and mice. Unlike bees living in agricultural areas, the city bees are not hit with insecticides. The most important factor, however, is the weather. Large cities tend to be two or three degrees warmer than outlying areas. City flowers bloom earlier in the season. And bees, which only go to work when the outside temperature is above eight degrees, spend more time out of the hive. "They can go to work earlier in the morning and re- turn later at night," says André Lemaire, who teaches beekeeping at the Jardin du Luxembourg.
He fears the French countryside will one day have to "import" its bees from the city. In some rural areas the ongoing modernization of agriculture is having an adverse effect on bees. Cattle are now fed fermented grass rather than hay, which favored the growth of wild flowers.
In many areas, deciduous trees are often replaced by faster-growing coniferous trees, not all of which can host the plant-sucking insects that produce or trigger the production of honeydew. Honeydew is another elixir which bees turn into honey.
"In France, we used to have a very sweet white honey called Gâtinais honey," said Lemaire. "Today that honey has to be imported from Canada," because white clover has virtually vanished from the Gâtinais, a farming area on the out- skirts of Paris.
Paucton's honey sells at Fauchon, a renowned fine-food store whose clientele likely dozes in the Opéra under their favorite hive during performances by the cream of France's cultural elite. A 125- gram jar of Paris-Opera honey will set you back US$12, not so much considering one is paying for the work of thousands of insects rubbing shoulders with Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Paucton himself does not do it for the money. All he really wants is an excuse to escape from his fourth-level basement workspace and climb to the Opera rooftop at lunchtime for some fresh aria.
Michel Arseneault
Michel Arseneault is a Canadian journalist and sweet tooth based in Paris.
Mexican tuna fishermen and exporters are hoping their recent success in reducing the number of dolphins they catch in their tuna nets will mean the end of a U.S. embargo on tuna imports.
The Ecologist Party of Mexico, the Inter-American Commission on Tropical Tuna and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences all support Mexico's assertion it has successfully reduced the slaughter of dolphins by Mexican fishermen. That slaughter, though inadvertent, has been part of the expansion of the tuna industry in the last decade and led environmentalists to rally to defend the dolphins. The question is, if the U.S. embargo is raised, will the fishing industry continue with expensive practices which reduce the dolphin kill in their tuna harvest?
Dying together
Scientists have yet to discover why a certain dolphin species, the oriental spinner (Stenella longirostris), travels with schools of tuna, in the same seas, following the same routes. This extraordinary characteristic has brought death to many of these mammals during tuna fishing, especially in the eastern Pacific. Fishing technologies developed in the last few decades made it easier to catch vast quantities of tuna, and with them their swimming mates. For example, a new type of net known as the purse seine boosted the world tuna catch to approximately three million annual tons - at the same time as it greatly increased dolphin mortality rates.
The Mexican government was not sitting idly by while the slaughter of dolphins grew in tandem with the tuna industry. Fifteen years ago, Mexico successfully urged the Inter-American Commission on Tropical Tuna (CIAT) to study the association between tuna and dolphins, in hopes of diminishing the dolphin kill.
In 1990 the government prohibited nocturnal fishing and the use of explosives in the industry, and made mandatory the use of a device called a "Medina cloth" to prevent the dolphins from getting stuck in the nets. It also made mandatory the so-called "retrograde manoeuvre" which requires a boat to shift into reverse after throwing the net, in order to form a channel through which the accidentally captured dolphins can escape, aided by fishermen from a dinghy.
Of course, greed was often more influential than the law, especially as the government had no way to enforce the latter in the vast Mexican fishing zones, which extend over two oceans. The accidental death rate of dolphins in the Mexican fishing industry exceeded the maximum 15 per thousand established by Mexican law. This failure to comply with fishing regulations, and the persistently high rate of accidental dolphin deaths during tuna fishing finally led in September 1991 to the U.S. embargo on Mexican tuna and tuna products. Other countries were influenced by the embargo and Mexico's tuna trade sank like a stone.
Per capita tuna consumption (in kilograms)
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Il Tonno contenuto in questa confezione ZAROTTI, è pescato alla canna anzichè nella classica "Mattanza". Questo metodo di pesca ha due grandi vantaggi: · evita colpi ed ammaccature ai tonni, preservandone la qualità delle carni. · tutela l'ambiente marino e non nuoce ai delfini. Dai pescherecci, una volta individualo grazie all'aiuto dei gabbiani un branco di tonni, i pescatori catturano il pesce con le lenze, azionate con movimenti precisi ed antichissmi. Tutte le sere i pescherecci rientrano in porto per scaricare il tonno pescato nella giornata, che viene immediatamente lavorato a mano, senza essere congelato. Cosi nasce il tonno ZAROTTI un prodotto di qualità eccezionale. |
Before the embargo, 80 per cent of Mexico's tuna production was exported, primarily to the United States and some European countries, particularly Italy. In 1987 Italy consumed more than a third of the 140 000 tons of tuna caught that year in Mexico. However, the long arm of the U.S. embargo strangled Mexico's overseas markets as well.
The validity of the embargo was the subject of intense legal disputes and political discussion. At one point the Mexican tuna industry even insinuated its U.S. competitors had petitioned for this judicial measure. Independent of speculations on this point, the fact was Mexico had lost its principal tuna market. Thus the country was faced with the problem of totally modifying not only its fishing methods, but the commercialization of the product as well.
In an eco-sales pitch, an Italian canner claims its tuna is caught without endangering dolphins
Dolphin defence
The Mexican government had to take urgent measures to save the sector and in September 1991 Mexico introduced the Ensenada Code. This code set limits on accidental dolphin deaths during tuna fishing. It punished with imprisonment those who trapped dolphins (voluntarily or through negligence) in numbers exceeding those limits. It gave support to research in alternatives to the purse seine and required that all tuna fishing- boats go out with independent observers to control against accidental capture of dolphins. (The observers are chosen after a rigorous check of their back- grounds to ascertain their independence from the industry; they are paid by the industry.)
The measure was successful. The accidental death rate of these mammals dropped to 0.3 per thousand. All Mexican tuna boats now go out with an international and a national observer on a regular basis. Tins of tuna can proudly and definitively state on their labels that the contents have almost no association with dolphins.
This is good news for dolphin and fisherman alike. The Mexican tuna industry believes the embargo can no longer be justified and so it will be lifted in 1995. It may be more difficult to sustain the embargo under the new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which reduces or eliminates trade barriers between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.
Having reduced its dolphin catch to 0.3 per thousand, Mexico continues to intensify protection measures to reach the goal of a totally dolphin-free tuna catch. The government has set in motion a program under which all the players in the fishing industry are involved in re- designing fishing equipment and techniques. The goal is to make those techniques and equipment compatible with the protection of biological diversity, and of attaining and respecting maximum sustainable yield.
The new Fishing Law, published in 1992, gives priority to the conservation of resources and sets rules of conduct for responsible fishing - fishing that preserves both commercial species and those endangered by accidental trapping. This gives new hope for the future of dolphins and sea tortoises (which are accidentally trapped during shrimp fishing).
There are those who are pessimistic about the Mexican fishing industry's commitment to its dolphin-saving measures. The Ecologist Party, for example, is generally very critical of the national fisheries policy, but has had to accept the industry has reduced its inadvertent dolphin catch. However, a party spokesman said he was concerned fishermen would return to their old ways of catching tuna and, by implication, dolphins, as soon as the U.S. embargo was lifted.
The embargo's drastic effect on exports led the industry to seek other markets, and found them within Mexico's own borders where rising incomes mean more spending on protein. Domestic consumption of fish is now at 14.4 kg per person per year, and both government and the private sector are working to increase the variety of available species and improve product image to further boost internal consumption.
The greatest efforts were made in sales of tuna. Domestic consumption rose from 90 000 metric tons in 1991 to 120 000 in 1993, buffering the disastrous effects of the diminished export market. Thanks to this promotion, the figures for tuna export versus domestic consumption were inverted. Until the time of the embargo, 80 per cent of all tuna was destined for foreign markets. Now, 80 per cent is consumed domestically, yet total tuna-type catches diminished by only seven per cent compared to figures from the year before the embargo.
Ana Teresa CattaneoAna Teresa Cattaneo is a Mexican journalist based in Rome.
By Chan Ling Yap
Fierce battles were fought over agriculture during the seven years of the Uruguay Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), whose implementation begins this year. Many expect the accord to bring a new era of free trade through the opening of protected markets and reduction of export subsidies.
Those expectations may not be fully realistic. Indeed, the question remains whether the agreement, to be administered by the new World Trade Organization (WTO), really offers a panacea to the problems ahead in the trade of essential food commodities.
Trade in rice is one of the most significant examples of the fact that, despite the rhetoric surrounding the Uruguay Round, major food commodity exporting nations continue to use trade mechanisms to promote exports and limit imports.
Marking the beginning of the new era of free trade, 1994 ended and 1995 began with the world's two largest exporters - Thailand and the United States - increasing their subsidies on rice exports. The U.S. restarted its Export Enhancement Program sales on rice in September 1994 with export subsidies ranging from US$12 to $87.50 per ton. Thailand followed suit in November with subsidies equivalent to US$10 per ton on rice exports. Rice exports from both countries soared in this period.
Opens the door
The surge in export subsidies may be just a swan- song before countries get in line for the long march toward reducing agricultural support and distortions in trade. After all, the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement is only just getting under way in 1995. The more important issue is its longer- term implications for the world rice economy.
The new trade Agreement has succeeded in opening, at least partially, the door in Japan's and the Re- public of Korea's markets for rice. Both countries are steeped in a tradition where rice is all important both as food and for its high political and cultural-profile, and allowing imports has been a very painful decision.
Under the Agreement, four per cent of Japan's rice needs will be met by imports in 1995; that amount rises to eight per cent in the year 2000. Initially the Republic of Korea will import one per cent of its consumption requirement, rising to four per cent in 2004.
These percentages, however, are calculated on the quantity office consumed in the base year (1986-88), but people in both countries are now eating less rice and turning to other foods - since 1986-88, five kilos less per person per annum in Japan and 10 kilos per caput less in the Republic of Korea.
With people losing their appetite for rice, and imports set to rise over the next five years, there will likely be growing pressure to reduce taxpayer-subsidized domestic production in these two countries. This may not happen easily, however, gives the economic and political importance of rice and its farmers and the insecurity nations feet when forced to relinquish the pursuit of self-sufficiency.
At the same time Japan has agreed to commitments in the Uruguay Round, a farm reform program has been approved to help its farmers cope with tougher foreign competition. This program includes speeding up improvements to infrastructure and farmland in rural communities and the extension of interest-free loans to first-time farmers. Moreover, a provision exists for the government to collect a hefty mark-up (292 yen per kilogram) on sales of imported rice, which will put up the price of cheap imports to consumers.
Liberalizing with one hand, protecting with the other: Japan is not alone in these double acts. This year Thailand will allow private traders to import up to 237 863 tons office but will at the same time impose an import duty of 30 per cent on such imports, thereby discouraging imports.
One key goal of the Uruguay Round was to turn trade barriers such as import prohibitions, import quotas and government monopoly of trade into tariffs. That has been done - with a vengeance. Most countries have adopted high import tariffs on rice, in some cases running to three-digit levels, which in effect discourage rice imports. This remains true even allowing for the commitments to reduce tariffs over the next several years. Hence, the Uruguay Round Agreement has brought about some fundamental change in international trade, in that it has opened up some traditional rice markets, but its overall impact, especially on production, is likely to be small.
Nice theory
Theoretically, the removal of trade restrictions and distortions will enable countries to adjust freely to supply and demand in the world market and to respond to price changes. Thus liberalizing trade will also encourage countries to produce commodities where they have advantages in terms of cost and efficiency.
But the continued use of trade mechanisms such as high import tariffs is almost inevitable. For many countries, removing distortions in international trade in rice is not as important as assuring food self-sufficiency. To do that, they have to keep farmers down on the farm.
Farmers are shifting out of rice production en masse in search of more lucrative and stable earnings. Over the past decade in China, about three million hectares of rice paddy have been converted to other uses. In other rapidly growing economies of Asia, such as India, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia a similar phenomenon is taking place, as incomes from cultivating cash crops and industrial employment become much higher than those from growing rice.
For some of these countries, a substantial reduction of import duties on rice would invite an influx of cheaper rice imports which would depress farm prices. Reduction of support to production would mean higher costs for farmers. Both measures would result in an even greater migration of rural labor and reduced cultivation.
Growing rice is a long-term investment. The ease with which farmers and countries are assumed to respond to free interplay of market forces just does not exist. Moreover, fluctuations in international rice prices are more a result of drastic changes in the level of output influenced by the variability of weather.
Farmers who have moved out of rice farming to take on alternative employment do not return easily to their farms. In many countries, the abandonment of rice farming is tantamount to breaking up a culture that represents a source of food, employment, income and a cohesive force uniting families.
We need only look at China. In China, some 120 million tons of rice are consumed annually. The volume of rice available on the international market, however, hovers around 15 to 16 million tons. For such a country, where little possibility exists for it to buy any substantial proportion of its rice requirements from external sources, the pursuit of rice self-sufficiency would be important even if the cost of producing rice were very high in comparison with other countries.
Chan Ling Yap is FAO's senior rice commodity specialist.
In a move indicating a shift toward greater emphasis on the environment and sustainability in rural development, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has become the fourth co-sponsor of an international network of agricultural research centres.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is the world's largest inter- national agricultural research consortium. Its 16 individual research centres spread around the world investigate ways to improve crop and livestock production by breeding higher-yielding plants and animals, and by finding new ways of farming in difficult climates and soils.
However, the CGIAR has been criticized as having a narrow, technical approach that ignores small farmers; for promoting crops requiring heavy doses of fertilizer and pesticide; for not getting the results of its research out into extension services and into farmers' hands.
UNEP became the fourth co-sponsor of the CG system at a ministerial level in Lucerne, Switzerland, in February. It joins CG system's other sponsors: the World Bank (which chairs the CGIAR), FAO and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). A total of 45 public and private sector donors fund the system, with most funds coming from government aid budgets.
"New orientation, governance and financing arrangements" were endorsed at the meeting, and will include greater involvement by developing countries in the CG's governance. Before the Lucerne meeting, eight developing countries were CG members; this has now increased to 12, with Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Iran and Kenya becoming members. This is seen as a step toward more equitable North-South ownership of the system. All but three CGIAR institutions are based in the South.
This step should mean stronger links between CG institutions and national agricultural programs. Overall, the changes indicate the CGIAR has been paying attention to criticism from such non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) and Genetic Resource Action International (GRAIN).
Delegates to the meeting asked CG scientists to "address more forcefully issues of water scarcity, soil and nutrient management." "The Lucerne meeting has provided us with a framework for intensified international collaboration in agricultural research to promote sustainable agriculture for food security," said the CG chairman, World Bank vice-president Ismail Serageldin.
NGOs working in rural development were not so sure. A week after the meeting, 20 international NGOs voiced concern about the outcome of the Lucerne meeting. They said in a joint statement the CG meeting "could not agree on firm proposals for a genuine renewal of the CGIAR system. Instead it contented itself with a repetition of cosmetic generalities... There was no consideration of outstanding policy issues such as intellectual property rights or the flow of benefits of CGIAR research results to the industrialized donor countries."
A committee has been set up to improve relations between the CG system and non-governmental organizations.
In a "declaration and action program" participants at the Lucerne meeting committed themselves "to maintain the real value of the level of support and wherever possible to increase it." In the immediate future, funding is therefore likely to stay around its current level of US$270 million a year, with the World Bank contributing $40 million a year.
Several CGIAR members indicated at the meeting they would in- crease their contributions to fund agricultural research that emphasizes poverty alleviation. Donors are also more likely to "target" their funds for specific projects, although they will have to build in a certain amount of money for overheads. Donors indicated they prefer this approach as they know exactly what they're funding.
John MadeleyJohn Madeley is a British journalist writing on agriculture and development.
The Karimojong and the Iteso aren't exactly kissing cousins
It's hot. It's dry. The dust-laden wind hits an old woman whose kin is scaled and withered. The wash of dust makes her blink with difficulty.
"My children! Water, water! What can I do, an old woman like me?" she laments as she falls to her knees in a mixed gesture of greeting and begging. "People will all die here because of the lack of water," she says, as much a statement of fact as a prophecy she prays will not come true.
In Uganda's northeastern Teso region, 400 km from the capital Kampala, the Iteso people struggle to cultivate their land despite the dry spells which become longer, year after year. Misery loves company, so it is said, but not when that misery means heightened competition for distressfully low water supplies and rare green pasturage.
Next door to the Iteso cultivators live their cousins, the Karimojong who are nomadic pastoralists. The two speak related dialects but don't see the world the same way, given the different economic modes of life each has chosen: sedentary farming versus nomadic livestock raising.
The differences turned into open hostility in the 1980s after the Karimojong raided cattle kept by the Iteso. It worsened when drought and famine hit the region in 1993-94, killing 6 000 people. The brunt of the disaster was born by those in Karamoja, and it pushed the pastoralists outward in search of water: into Teso and the nearby districts of Kitgum, Lira, Mbale and Kapchorwa.
The way the Karimojong see it, the Iteso are in the way of the pastoralists' nomadic wanderings, competing for traditional Karimojong water supplies. The Iteso see the Karimojong as gun-toting criminals so ignorant of civilization they sometimes can be seen working naked among their animals.
Armed by Amin
The Karimojong were first armed in 1979 during the Tanzanian invasion that led to the dictator Idi Amin's fall from power. Amin's soldiers abandoned a garrison in Karimojong country, and the arms fell into the pastoralists' hands. Between 1987 and 1989, the Iteso herds were virtually cleaned out due to Karimojong raids and the larger armed struggle between the forces of President Yoweri Museveni and his Iteso opponents.
Many Iteso blamed the 1994 famine on the Karimojong who took their oxen, making it impossible for the Iteso to maintain their farm production and grow enough to store for emergencies. Before the oxen were rustled, a typical home in Teso had three granaries storing millet, sorghum, groundnuts and dried sweet potato chips. Today few have even one granary.
Not that things were easy for the Karimojong. Water and grass are life to a people trailing thousands of cattle and hundreds of goats and sheep. A group of pastoralists told a reporter last February that since July 1993, their homeland had not experienced a drop of rain. A young Karimojong drew the most chilling parallel. "It is becoming the Sahara Desert."
The Karimojong moved into swamps in Teso where "drought-resistant" water and pastures existed. Although the Iteso thought they saw some advantages in having the Karimojong nearby, particularly in terms of the availability of milk and animals for purchase, they were more nervous than welcoming. They were irritated by the large Karimojong herds which trampled their land, endangering its fertility by ex- posing the topsoil to erosion.
"Why do they keep so many cattle which cannot be sustained by the available grass and water?" complained one cultivator. "We can't do anything because they carry guns," said Okello Faustino, a local civic leader.
A Karimojong elder (Photo by Laura Mulenga)
Karimojong leader Nicholas Lomilo defended the size of his men's herds. "Cattle is food, if drought comes what will you eat? You sell the cattle for food."
The Karimojong do not buy the argument that their herds have increased beyond the carrying capacity of their land. "It is a lie," said one young hawk-eyed pastoralist. He argued the Karamoja grazing lands are so large that one would not be able to travel their breadth in two months. "The only problem in Karamoja is water," he said, echoing his comrades.
The Karimojong didn't sound the least worried about the reception they were getting from the Iteso. "I like this land, there is water and it is fertile," said one. Several said that even if rains returned to Karamoja they would remain in the land of the cultivators. The suggestion was very controversial because the cultivators were grudgingly hosting them. To be more precise, they could not do much to get rid of the armed pastoralists.
"People do not want the Karimojong to remain because they rustled our cows. It is like one taking away your wife, then bringing her back to make love in your house," said Michael Erigu, a local council chairman. He was echoing the general belief among the Iteso that the cows the Karimojong paraded around were the ones they had rustled from Teso.
In furious retort, some youthful pastoralist warriors claimed one of their men had been tricked by a cultivator friend who robbed and murdered him. The cultivators in turn argued the pastoralist had not died, but was recovering in hospital. Into this mess of recriminations the president sent his negotiators to soothe the fevered tempers of cultivator and pastoralist.
The situation, though difficult, is not impossible. "If the Karimojong are disarmed they can remain in Teso," said one cultivator.
In February 1994 President Museveni gave the armed pastoralists in Teso a two-week deadline to disarm. They did not, but the rains came and the pastoralists slowly re- treated back to the border area between the two regions. The resulting harvest was a good one.
The pastoralists may have gone, but drought will return and so will they, in all likelihood. As Museveni continues his efforts to pacify the country, he has promised some development for the Karimojong region, whose residents feel ignored by all other than missionaries. "There are no schools, no hospitals, no roads," said one pastoralist.
Long years of government promises to turn the Karimojong region green have left some Karimojong cynical. "Our plan is to excavate 260 dams, two for each parish," promised Museveni in a letter to local leaders and elders in northern Uganda in March 1994.
It was a plan mooted years ago, before the arrival of Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) to power in 1986. It has long been part of the NRM's Ten-Point Program for developing the country.
The program has largely gathered dust as the country gasps under the burden of its debt owed to international bankers who somehow saw fit to lend to Amin, Obote, Okello and others now decried as responsible for crimes against Ugandan society.
Museveni was quick to acknowledge the limitations to his plan. Donors put too many conditions on project loans which were accepted "by our weak officials," he said. "Funds were diverted away from water development into other areas like community sensitization and tree planting." The officials the president had in mind are those of the Karamoja Development Agency (KDA), NRM's brain-child born in 1987 to give the region "emergency treatment."
But KDA officials have often come under fire for operating by "remote control" from Kampala's bullet-scarred office towers rather than braving the sun, dust and flies among real, live Karimojong pastoralists.
The KDA officials, on the other hand, see their "charges" as hard nuts to crack. "They are difficult and xenophobic toward outsiders," said one. He said the Karimojong have too many cattle, in the thousands, and when they all come to a dam for water, they reduce the nearby pasturage to dust. The dam cannot support the cattle without pasturage, and therefore the whole initiative is defeated.
The Karimojong, however, con- tend their input has been ignored by top-down decision-makers. They want sprawling dam designs for easy watering of their animals. They also want the dams sunk near the Teso border areas where, ac- cording to them, there is a fertile water catchment belt.
Whatever their arguments with politicians and bureaucrats, the pastoralists are clear about their basic problem. "If government can give us water, then we can do anything," said Lomilo. "Government can't make grass grow; only water will."
Francis Onapito-EkomoloitFrancis Onapito-Ekomoloit is a sub-editor with The Monitor newspaper in Kampala and has undertaken research on the Karimojong for the Panos Institute in London.
Living fences - rows of trees or shrubs planted together to form a barrier - can be good for crops and animals alike: they can mark boundaries, separate fields, keep animals from straying, form windbreaks, and/or support vines. They last longer than other types of fences and can be made with materials already on the farm, decreasing costs. Rather than cut down trees to make a fence, wise farmers plant more trees.
A living fence is good for the soil: when tree leaves fall, they form a mulch on the earth's surface, con- serving soil moisture and decreasing weed growth. Pruning yields small branches which can be used as compost, while a tree's deep roots can bring nitrogen and other nutrients in the soil up to the surface where shallow-rooted plants can reach them. If the tree is leguminous, as are several species of the genus Prosopus, more nitrogen is made available, increasing crop yield and saving money otherwise spent on inorganic nitrogen fertilizer.
The foliage of some trees can be mixed in as a supplement with animal feed, and grazing animals like to munch leaves right off the fence. However, caution is advised with some tree species - such as Gliricidia sepium or Leucaena leucocephala, whose leaves can be toxic to live- stock if fed in too-large doses.
Some species of live fence trees have leaves, flowers and buds fit for human consumption. The flowers, pods and roots of the moringa tree (Moringa oleifera), for instance, can be eaten by people. And of course any extra produce can be sold. Living fences are also a convenient source of fire- wood.
Of course, there are disadvantages to living fences, too. For instance, the trees may grow to be too big, and pruning may be a lot of work. They may shade crops, or compete with them for nutrients, water and root space. For these reasons, fences need to be well- planned and regularly controlled.
Making a fence
One way to make a living fence is to grow trees in lines and then attach wire, wrapped to prevent it from cut- ting into bark, between them. Plant fresh cuttings (5 to 20 cm in diameter) wherever you would put posts for a regular fence. It's best to wait until the sprouted cuttings are firmly established before attaching any fence wire, and preferable not to attach wire at all until they have grown at least to pole diameter. A temporary fence of local plant materials such as bamboo poles, can be erected first, with the developing live fence inside the temporary barrier protected from overgrazing by goats or other livestock.
Planting banana trees in Senegal, with a "living fence" in the background (FAO photo by R. Faidutti)
If some of the trees die, replace them. Help the posts sprout by filling the post holes with good soil and keeping the plants moist, if you live where the rainfall is irregular.
Trees or shrubs that make good boundary markers and livestock fences when grown close together include papaya, banana, leucaena (L. leucocephela), moringa (M. oleifera), and casuarina (Casuarina spp.)
A popular legume to use as a living fence is G. sepium, a small tree that can be grown from either cuttings or seed. It produces a narrow fence with a broad crown. The young leaves, flowers and buds are often cooked as vegetables.
Izote or yucca (Yucca elephantipes) has a long life, and can be grown easily from cuttings, although it is quite slow-growing. In Central America, cut- tings of the plant are planted close together. As they grow, the spine-tipped leaves make a dense wall that is very hard to get through. The flowers are edible.
Leucaena is a small, nitrogen-fixing tree used effectively to keep grazing sheep from straying. The equally popular moringa thrives even in dry weather and grows especially quickly the first year. Planted from closely spaced seed, a moringa fence can be pruned to provide leaves for people or animals to eat. The flowers taste similar to radishes, the pods are delicious vegetables, the roots make a substitute for horse-radish when blended with vinegar, and the crushed, dried seeds can purify water when properly processed.
The above-mentioned species are popular as living fences, but many local species may be just as useful, and better adapted to local environmental conditions.
- adapted from "The living fence: its role on the small farm," a Technical Note published by ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization). For more information or to order seeds for some of the trees mentioned (gliricidia, moringa and leucaena), contact: ECHO, 17430 Durrance Rd., North Fort Myers, FL 33917, U.S.A.
Further reading:
"The ABCs of MPTs," in Ceres No. 133, pp. 38-43.
"Living fences help to protect gardens," in Letter No. 67, Summer 1992, published by Food Gardens Foundation, P.O. Box 41250, Craighall, Johannesburg 2024, South Africa.
"Living fences: Somali farmers adopt an agro-forestry technology," in Agroforestry Today, Vol. 3, No. 1, January-March 1991 published by ICRAF, P.O. Box 30677, Nairobi, Kenya.
"Live fencing," in The Permaculture Activist, No. 23, published by Permaculture Activist, P.O. Box 3630, Kailua-Kona HI 96745, U.S.A.
"Living fences," in Agroforestry Today, Vol. 2, No. 1, January-March 1990, published by ICRAF, P.O. Box 30677, Nairobi, Kenya.
"Live trees for fence posts," in IRETA's South Pacific Agricultural News, Vol. 3, No. 7, July 1985, published by the Institute for Research, Extension & Training in Agriculture, USP/SOA, Private Bag, Apia, W. Samoa.
The new, sustainable Green Revolution is taking hold in Asia. In the next few years in China alone, more than a million farmers are to be officially trained in an environmentally respectful pest management approach that is key to the agricultural strategy of the 1990s.
In the Green Revolution of the 1960s, crop yields exploded thanks to liberal use of expensive chemical insecticides and fertilizers, but those yield gains proved unsustainable. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is now gaining support worldwide as the sensible way to handle pests and disease. IPM implies a number of approaches, particularly dependence on the natural predators of crop pests to reduce pest numbers, and a more intelligent, spare use of chemicals.
IPM is not as easy as dousing fields with chemicals, but over time is less costly to man and the environment. As well, governments, agronomists and farmers have had to accept that high yields dependent on insecticides are less and less sustain- able as wily pests mutate genetically to overcome the effects of the chemicals, and return to devastate harvests.
In fact, the governments of India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam have recently decreed IPM is now their official pest control strategy for rice production, and have reduced or cancelled subsidies for pesticides. (Admittedly, the latter may have as much to do with the influence of structural adjustment programs which push for an end to farm subsidies, as with belief in IPM.)
Half a million trained
Xiong Meiqiu is one of the half-million Asian farmers who have already been trained in IPM methods within the last decade under a program organized by FAO and national governments in the region. Like many other women in eastern China's Jiangxi Province, Xiong tills a small rice paddy by herself while her husband works off the farm. She used to do what her neighbors did: spray insecticides and apply fertilizer regardless of the condition of her fields. Not only did this waste time and money, it also damaged her crops.
She is now an avid practitioner and proselytizer of IPM, having been trained in IPM approaches in 1989. At the FAO training classes she learned which insects are harmful and which are helpful; when and how to apply insecticides; and the value of using insecticides with low toxicity. The course also emphasized proper use of water, and fertilizer to ensure optimum yield. "I would gladly take part in such training classes, even ,if I had to pay for them," she says.
Rice is the most important staple for more than 750 million Chinese, and in 1993 China produced 188 million tons of it - more than any other country. However, rice diseases and pests threaten high and stable yields and consequently the income of Chinese farmers. Rice crop losses to pests can be as high as 15 per cent. Indiscriminate use of insecticides to control pests has led to insecticide resistance, environmental pollution and danger to human and animal health. Clearly a new approach was needed.
Experiments on integrated prevention and control of rice diseases and pests were organized in nine rice-producing provinces in south China in the early 1980s. Complete IPM packages were developed on the basis of local cultivation practices, emphasizing multi-layer prevention. From 1983 to 1987, the State Science Commission allocated some 500 000 yuan (US$58 823) for information campaigns about the new techniques. The Chinese efforts interested FAO officials, and a fact- finding team was sent to China in 1988.
That year China was invited to join an FAO project known as Inter-Country Programs for the Development and Application of IPM in Rice in South and Southeast Asia. The FAO project had begun in 1980, with financial support from the Australian government and the government of the Netherlands and from the Arab Gulf Fund. When China agreed to participate, the Australian government contributed US$250 000 to support Chinese rice growers' efforts to safeguard their crops.
China's General Station of Plant Protection (GSPP) decided to spend the grant money to set up training programs for farmers in IPM applications for rice production. The first programs were in parts of five provinces: Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui and Sichuan. In 1990, training was extended to 14 more counties in these provinces, and to Jiangsu, Zhenjiang and Guangdon provinces and the Shanghai Municipality. During the 1989-90 period, nearly 160 000 farmers from over 2 000 Chinese villages received IPM training.
As farmers become familiar with IPM, they are able to greatly reduce the amount of pesticides, aware particularly of the harmful effects of highly toxic compounds, and they learn to tell the difference between their crops' "enemies" and "friends." For instance, in Hunan Province there were two to four times as many spiders in the rice fields of trained farmers in 1990 as there were in the fields of untrained farmers. Spiders help farmers by eating harmful insects.
Trained farmers also obtain superior economic returns. Compared with untrained farmers, a trained farmer's household produces more than seven per cent more rice and saves roughly a third in pesticides in rice cultivation. It is estimated the 50 000 farmers participating in the program earned an additional nine million yuan (US$1.1 million), so FAO's investment of US$250 000 in the project bred a 400 per cent return.
Encouraged by these results, the Ministry of Agriculture has set up a national steering committee for the comprehensive prevention and control of diseases and insect pests to protect the nation's rice crops and increase profits. The committee conducts IPM tests, gives demonstrations and makes appraisals.
Millions trained, millions saved
For the third phase of the FAO project (1993-97), China has been granted an additional US$510 000 from the Australian government. Part of that money was spent in 1993 to set up a national training class in Ningxiang county of Hunan Province, to train 40 instructors, one each for the plant protection stations of the 10 provinces now taking part in the project, and one each for the 30 project counties. Organizers hope to train 1 700 instructors, who in turn will train more than one million farmers in IPM techniques in the next few years. This is expected to yield 280 million yuan (US$33 million) in profits on crops and savings on pesticides.
The IPM program is clearly very important to the rice growers of China, but it may founder without sufficient support. "We need more international assistance, as well as stronger government participation in our project. A shortage of funds has hindered our efforts to promote IPM training," said Liang Diyun, a plant protection agency official.
On her small paddy in Jiangxi Province, Xiong Meiqiu bears witness to the program's success. The numbers are there; IPM has already proved effective on a large scale. And all the other rice growers throughout the country who labor to feed China's 1.2 billion people certainly deserve all the help they can get.
Zhao Qinghua,
with files from Ceres staffZhao Qinghua is a journalist with China Features.
Rome - July-August 95 - No. 82
A FIRST: NGOs ADVISE FAO ON FORESTRY...
FAO has "an unparalleled opportunity to build bridges with all interest groups which seek to influence the future directions for forestry," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf during the 12th session of the FAO Committee on Forestry (COFO), in Rome in March. To widen the discussion, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were invited for the first time to meet with FAO staff in Rome prior to the COFO session, as were representatives of industry. Those discussions informed both the COFO meeting of permanent representatives to FAO, and the ministerial meeting which followed.
FAO is charged with UN system-wide responsibility for facilitation of the follow-up to the UN Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED, also known as the Rio Earth Summit).
Noted the Director-General: "During the coming decades, large areas of forests, mostly in Africa and Latin America, will be destroyed to provide wood, to construct roads or to make room for crops and livestock. In the process, much biological diversity, the capacity to provide environmental and recreational services and to produce a wide array of forest products will be lost, many indigenous people may be moved away from their natural homes. Rapidly growing populations and poverty are important driving forces and neither of these respond to quick fixes."
...AND ON FISHERIES
Similarly, FAO prefaced the 21st session of the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) with a special meeting with NGOs working in preservation of fish resources. The meetings coincided with a very public fight this spring between Canada and Spain over fish resources in international waters. That dispute high-lighted the urgency for international action on preservation and sensible harvesting of those resources.
"Unless the international community copes with the twin problems of overfishing and overcapacity (of fishing fleets), world per caput fish consumption will fall over the next 15 years," according to the recently released FAO publication The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture. In 1993 the world harvest of fish and shellfish from "capture" fisheries and aquaculture reached a record level of 101.42 million metric tons, over the previous year's harvest of 100.11 million mt. One-third of that amount is turned into fish meal used, ironically, to feed fish in aquaculture fish farms as well as livestock. Another 27 million metric tons are wasted each year - termed "incidental bycatches" discarded at sea. More than two-thirds of fish stocks around the world are considered "fully exploited, overfished, depleted or rebuilding", according to the FAO Fisheries Department.
SAUDI CITRUS FARMS SAVE WATER
It is not a mirage: citrus trees are dropping oranges, mandarins, grapefruit, lemons and limes on 2 020 hectares of southwestern Saudi Arabia, keeping 1500 Bedouin employed in permanent settlements and reducing the country's need to import these essential foods. The Najran region of Saudi Arabia has been the beneficiary of three phases of an FAO project to establish the National Centre for Horticultural Research and Development. The project started in 1981; the latest phase is UTFN/SAU/006, and ends in mid-1996.
In the early 1980s, Najran fields of wheat, field vegetables, fodder, date palms, grapes and some fruits were generally flood irrigated. A large amount of water was lost through infiltration into sandy soils.
Agricultural practices were generally less than ideal. Farmers were not trained in citrus-growing, considering it too long-term an investment, compared with the quick return on vegetables and field crops. NCHRD extension and training programs overcame this disinterest and lack of knowledge, as well as introducing micro-irrigation. Over 80 per cent of citrus grown in Najran is under drip irrigation, because growers using the latter received their citrus seedlings free, while those using surface irrigation had to pay for seedlings. Production of citrus in Najran is now estimated at 14 000 tons, and is expected to reach 75 000 tons in the year 2000 and 123 000 tons by 2005.
