Hunger-Undernutrition Blog

Afghanistan's Ag Sector a Thicket of Challenges

 A Guest Blog By Captain Peter Shinn, of the Iowa National Guard's 734th Agri-Business Development Team

As the Iowa National Guard’s 734^th Agri-Business Development Team makes final preparations before deployment to Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, it seems worthwhile to take stock of some of the basic challenges facing the ADT, which aims to protect the people of Afghanistan by improving the ability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to feed its citizens.

The simple fact is that Afghanistan is extremely underdeveloped. A country profile produced by the Library of Congress in August 2008 describes well the issues facing the people of Afghanistan, and those who want to help them. Literacy rates are low. Four years ago, less than half the men and little more than 10% of women in Afghanistan could read and write.  While that figure has certainly improved since then, it’s a given that some, and perhaps most, of the Afghan farmers we plan to reach out to will be unable to utilize written ag-education materials.

Progress on rebuilding Afghanistan’s university system has been slow. In the meantime, there are few native Afghan agronomists, soil specialists or veterinarians. Several of the land grant universities that have partnered with the National Guard’s ADTs have expressed a desire to have more students from Afghanistan come to the their agricultural colleges for training. But that pipeline of ag students from Afghanistan to the U.S. has not yet been fully established.

That lack of homegrown expertise has serious consequences. An Afghan farmer may dig up the roots of his crops to feed his livestock, leaving no organic material in the soil, which decreases fertility and increases erosion. Basic veterinary services for livestock, while increasing, are still rare. Animal diseases the developed world largely has under control, like rabies, are endemic in Afghanistan.

Wheat is Afghanistan’s staple legal crop. USDA estimates wheat yields for the 2010-2011 crop year in Afghanistan at nearly 24 bushels per acre (1.61 metric tons per hectare). To put this in context, USDA projects U.S. wheat yields this year at nearly 45 bushels per acre (3.01 metric tons per acre). If USDA’s projections for Afghanistan’s wheat production in the year ahead are realized, it would be down from the current crop year’s yield of just over 25 bushels per acre (1.7 metric tons per hectare), but still well above the 2008-2009 crop year, when Afghan wheat production managed to average only around 14 bushels per acre (.94 metric tons per hectare).

The reason for this wild swing in production can be explained in one word: water.  Two years ago, as graphically illustrated by the maps above, Afghanistan’s wheat production was slashed by drought. And even when rainfall is abundant, in many locations in Afghanistan there is no way to capture or direct the flow of water to crops or people. Completely aside from the issue of irrigation, the Library of Congress report points out fully half of Afghanistan’s roughly 32 million citizens do not have access to potable water. It is no exaggeration to say water issues are among the most important Iowa’s ADT will face.

These few paragraphs barely scratch the surface of the agricultural problems confronting the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and its Coalition partners.  And it would be easy to get discouraged. But there is no better organization to take on the challenge of improving Afghanistan’s agriculture sector than America’s National Guard. And there’s no better U.S. state to form and send an ADT than Iowa, which is among the most agriculturally abundant in America.

But what is the National Guard? How does it differ from other components of the U.S. Armed Forces? Why does it matter if National Guard units are the ones forming Agri-Business Development Teams in Afghanistan? I’ll answer those questions in my next post.

Reaching the Unreachable: How Smallholder Farmers Can Achieve Financial Sustainability in Africa

Guest blog by Emily Riemer, Opportunity International

“Opportunity International’s microloans and savings accounts are enabling a legion of [smallholder] farmers across Africa to obtain the better seeds and fertilizer vital to producing harvests big enough to feed their families and perhaps yield a surplus for added income,” says Roger Thurow, author of Enough: Why the World’s Poor Starve in an Age of Plenty and Senior Fellow on Global Agriculture and Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Thurow is highlighting both the opportunity and the challenge: 65% of sub-Saharan Africa works in the agricultural sector, but the industry receives only four percent of official development assistance. Opportunity International is working to bring financial sustainability and self-reliance to the world’s most economically marginalized people, most of whom are smallholder farmers and their families.

Opportunity’s agricultural finance products are crucial to the financial liquidity of smallholder farmers, who may not otherwise be able to pay for expenses during the growing season. Loans, combined with insurance products, help to provide a household safety net: weather-index crop insurance, where available, protects against the risk of excessive or deficit rainfall, and credit life insurance is included in all loans. Opportunity also encourages agricultural clients to take advantage of savings products to protect the security of their capital. Without this support, farmers may turn to other strategies to make ends meet. In some cases, farmers are forced to short-sell their harvest, getting on average only 40% of its value, or they turn to loan sharks for credit.

Opportunity is taking action to help transform farmers from subsistence growers to cash crop producers, which has the potential to move families out of poverty and feed a continent. Through a $16 million joint grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The MasterCard Foundation, Opportunity has launched an agricultural finance program to provide 1.4 million people in Africa, including 90,000 smallholder farmers, with access to financial tools like savings accounts. Already a success story in Malawi, Opportunity is enacting the program in Ghana, and expects to introduce it to clients in Rwanda and Mozambique within the next two years.

Farming in sub-Saharan Africa is a tough business. That’s why Opportunity has developed strategies to mitigate the risks inherent in providing financial products in rural areas with undeveloped markets and farming techniques, poor infrastructure and little credit history. Opportunity staff members visit all clients, administering questionnaires to create profiles of their family size and crop composition. They also use GPS mapping to determine exact land size in order to arrive at accurate and appropriate loan amounts. Opportunity manages the entire value chain, developing strategic partnerships with agribusinesses, farmers groups and associations with other partners. Throughout the process, farmers are equipped with training and market linkages that can help improve crop productivity and household income.

To learn more about how farmers in sub-Saharan Africa can achieve financial independence, attend Opportunity’s Microfinance Conference in Washington, D.C., Oct. 8-9, 2010. Roger Thurow will be speaking, as well as John Magnay, Opportunity’s senior agricultural advisor, who’ll discuss the details of agricultural finance in Africa. You’ll meet a number of financial and global poverty experts and learn more about how the microfinance movement helps alleviate hunger and poverty. For more information on the conference, visit the Microfinance Conference page at opportunity.org.

The Very Visible Army - Meet the Agri-Business Development Team

    A guest blog by Capt. Peter Shinn of the Iowa National Guard's 734th Agri-Business Development Team. 

Physical security doesn’t mean much without food security. Governments that cannot provide physical security to their citizens lack legitimacy. The same is true of governments that cannot provide some degree of food security. This simple concept is the basis for the National Guard’s Agri-Business Development Team initiative. The National Guard began sending the ADTs to Afghanistan in early 2008, well before there was a shift in U.S. policy emphasis from Iraq. It happened because the National Guard saw the need to focus on improving Afghanistan’s agriculture infrastructure as part of a larger strategy for achieving our political objectives there.

The ADTs are working. In some cases, it’s because the ADTs are a long-term presence. The Missouri National Guard, for example, will soon send it’s fourth ADT since early 2008. And each Missouri ADT has gone to the same province, Nangahar, meaning there’s continuity of effort and a degree of trust between the people of Nangahar and the Missouri team. The Missouri ADT members wear a unit patch on their uniforms that has a bear prominently displayed on it. Among the people of Nangahar, that patch has come to represent the “Missouri tribe.”

The long-term nature of Missouri’s commitment to the ADT concept means the fourth Missouri team is now able to focus on helping Afghan agricultural extension agents better do their jobs. This enhances the legitimacy of the Afghan government, and at the same time, improves the productivity of Afghan farmers.

In other cases, the ADTs are being used as an agricultural quick reaction force. An example is an incident earlier this month in Kunar province, when the California ADT rolled into a village after it had been cleared of insurgents.  The California team helped the residents recover, prepare for the next round of planting, and repair the local irrigation system.  That’s providing for physical and food security.

The ADT concept is vital to achieving victory in Afghanistan, if victory in Afghanistan means a physically secure population served by a responsive, legitimate government that is, at least, not hostile toward the United States. It’s just not possible to achieve our goals if we don’t help the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan feed its citizens. The ADTs are doing exactly that.

The ADT concept is not extremely well-known, so here are some facts of interest:

-       All ADTs are National Guard units from individual states

-       All ADT members are volunteers

-       ADTs are a key component of America’s counterinsurgency strategy

-       ADT units consist of 58 to 70 Service Members

-       ADT units are Joint, staffed by National Guard Soldiers and Airmen

-       ADTs spend one year in Afghanistan before being replaced by another ADT

-       The National Guard is uniquely suited to conduct the ADT mission

o   ADT members are selected on their civilian agricultural expertise

o   ADT members include agronomists, farmers, veterinarians, and others

-       States that have sent ADTs include Missouri (the first), Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, California and Nevada.

-       Other states have committed to sending ADTs in the future

 The challenges facing any ADT are immense, because the challenges facing Afghanistan’s agricultural and food sector are immense. I’ll give some perspective on that in my next post. In the meantime, for those who are interested in the ADT concept, the National Guard Bureau has an excellent website with news from the various ADTs. And you can follow the Iowa National Guard’s 734^th Agri-Business Development Team on our Facebook page.

The Hidden Army

  

 

A guest blog by Sharon Norton, Director of Development for The Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition

Traditionally, capacity building, especially in the non-profit sector, often deals with internally-focused activities associated with developing and improving the organization and its effectiveness in the here and now.  What is often neglected, however, is an external focus to this activity.

What that means is that in our pursuit of eradicating hunger and malnutrition we must also highly prioritize and resource the development of strategies and action plans that will allow each of us to pass the baton onto the next generation of hunger fighters who will be ready and able to end world hunger and global food insecurity in the years ahead.

The Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition just completed a research project with youth in the United States to determine the best way to pass that baton to the next generation. The good news is that there is an enormous hidden army out there comprised of teens with a rapidly developing social conscience, a relatively wide global perspective and huge desire to help.  They recognize that global hunger exists.  What they don’t know is exactly how they can help-- thus the need for externally-focused capacity building.

What that means for our organization is largely shifting our capacity building activities on creating and nurturing the hothouse where this able-bodied group of teens can become aware of global hunger issues, learn how to innovate and create solutions that can make a measurable impact.  We ultimately want to empower them to take actions that will result in sustainable solutions to fighting hunger.

Like it or not, the reality is that we need to “sell” this idea to this group just like any other product they might purchase.  The issue of world hunger is competing with many other important social issues and bona fide personal concerns among this age group.  For this reason, we must find ways to make this issue resonate personally so they are challenged and inspired, but also arm them with the insight and know-how they need now so they can make rapid and real advances on fighting world hunger in the very near future.

This is the real organizational effectiveness we need to bring to the forefront. The development of this hidden army of future hunger fighters is the efficient and effective solution to ending hidden hunger and global food insecurity to countless children and families worldwide.

 

Let's All Eat Fish: A Model of Sustainability

 
Wailos Nzalayaluma stands in front of the fish pond he dug with the help of his neighbor.

Photos by Dave Anderson

Guest blog by Donna Stokes, Heifer International

Hunger and poverty organizations often talk about the challenge of sustainability—of continuing to lift up families and communities long after the aid work ends. Heifer International’s Pass on the Gift model, where recipients of donated animals become donors themselves when they share training and animal offspring with someone else in need, offers a unique solution. One Heifer project in Tanzania presents a sparkling example.

The road to Wailos Nzalayaluma’s home in Mambi Village in southern Tanzania is rutted and slick with puddles and mud. A makeshift bridge of tree limbs across a particularly rough section is where Wailos first met Nicholas Mwakabele, his neighbor and Heifer International fish farmer.

Wailos, whose last name translates to “I’m feeling hungry” in Swahili, is blind. He stopped on the bridge to beg Nicholas for some fish for his evening meal. “Nicholas told me, ‘If I give you some fish today, you will be back tomorrow for more,’ ” Wailos said. “He advised me to get my family to help me to build my own fish pond, and he would then supply me with fingerlings so I could begin raising my own fish.”

Nicholas, who received training and fingerlings from Heifer Tanzania in 2003, by this spring had trained more than 240 families among 11 neighboring villages in how to raise Nile tilapia for home nutrition and sale. He has donated tens of thousands of fingerlings to help others get started in fish farming.

Among them is Wailos. Nicholas saw how Wailos, though blind, negotiated the rugged terrain by feeling his way with his feet and so believed he could handle the fish business. What he didn’t know was that Wailos would dig the pond himself, too impatient to wait for busy relatives to assist. When Nicholas saw Wailos had been digging the pond alone, he stopped by now and then to offer guidance and help him straighten out the corners.

Wailos now raises his own fish and is able to help provide for his family. He’s saving money from the sale of fish to improve his tiny thatch-roofed home. He is amazed, and extremely grateful, that a busy, successful neighbor would take the time to teach a disabled man how to provide for himself.

“My favorite part of the work is training other people,” Nicholas said. “I want other people to be as prosperous as I am.”

What does your favorite organization do to encourage sustainability?

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Donna Stokes is the managing editor for Heifer International’s World Ark magazine. Learn about Heifer camel projects in Tanzania and hear more from Wailos and Nicholas in upcoming issues of the magazine here. For more information about Heifer, visit www.heifer.org.

Nicholas Mwakabele, left, continues to help neighbor and friend Wailos Nzalayaluma raise Nile tilapia at his farm in Mambi Village, Tanzania.

The G8 Invests in Women and Children

A guest blog by Asma Lateef, Director Bread for the World Institute

At their annual summit, held this time in Muskoka, Canada, on June 25-26, 2010, G-8 leaders reaffirmed their commitment to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. They also launched the new “Muskoka Initiative,” an effort that will invest $5 billion over five years in maternal and child health, focusing on MDGs 4 (child mortality) and 5 (maternal health). Nearly 9 million children die before their fifth birthday from preventable and treatable causes, and women in developing countries are 100 times more likely to die in childbirth than women in developed countries. The Muskoka Initiative’s focus on improving health systems and supporting key interventions during pregnancy through early childhood is vital.

A third of all deaths of children younger than five are related to hunger and malnutrition.  The G-8 leaders’ Declaration mentioned the connection to malnutrition by reaffirming the 2009 G-8 Summit’s L’Aquila Food Security Initiative to reduce hunger by boosting the agricultural productivity of smallholder farmers and taking steps to reduce malnutrition. The Muskoka Initiative must be closely coordinated with the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative. Given the devastating impact of malnutrition on maternal and child mortality, a lot could be done to scale up evidence-based maternal and child nutrition interventions through the Muskoka Initiative itself, focusing on the critical window during pregnancy and the first two years of life. This is an opportunity that should not be missed. 

Both the Muskoka Initiative and the L’Aquila Initiative depend on world leaders living up to their commitments. For the first time since the G-8 made commitments at its 2005 Summit in Gleneagles to double aid both to Africa and globally by 2010, the G-8 leaders’ declaration from Muskoka left out any specific reference to these pledges. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the G-8 are off track on both targets, especially the Africa target. Also, only $6.5 billion has been disbursed or allocated towards the $22 billion pledged in L’Aquila to be made available by 2012. Without the political will to follow through on aid commitments, progress toward the MDGs will continue to be slow and uneven, and these initiatives -- which are all urgently needed -- will be left to compete for precious resources with other important priorities.

The Obama administration has demonstrated real leadership in the area of global hunger, launching its global hunger and food security initiative Feed the Future and garnering support for the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative. It needs to work with its G-8 partners to make sure that promises are kept. The Muskoka Accountability Report is a good first step, but a report alone cannot deliver on promises.

The administration has also launched its Global Health Initiative, GHI, which complements the Muskoka Initiative’s focus on strengthening health systems and reaching women and children. The administration should now work with Congress to make sure that Feed the Future and the GHI have congressional backing and are funded at the requested levels.   

While it is clear that G-8 leaders are preoccupied with deficits, it is also clear that deficits will not be substantially affected by these aid commitments, which represent a minute and shrinking portion of the budgets of G-8 countries. It is equally clear that the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of poor people, particularly women and young children, hang in the balance.