A current build up of locust populations in south-western Madagascar could turn into a plague and seriously endanger the livelihoods of 13 million people unless a new campaign is launched to contain the crop-devouring [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 21 June 2011

A current build up of locust populations in south-western Madagascar could turn into a plague and seriously endanger the livelihoods of 13 million people unless a new campaign is launched to contain the crop-devouring insects, FAO said today.

A bio pesticide used in 2010 prevented a locust upsurge escalating into a plague

According to latest estimates on the ground some 300 000 ha of locust-infested territory needs to be treated from November 2011 to May 2012 at a cost of $7.6 million.

“We must break the locust population dynamics in order to prevent further developments that could affect the island for years and seriously impact on the livelihoods of two thirds of the population, or 13 million people,” said FAO Locust Officer Annie Monard, who is coordinating anti-locust operations in Madagascar.

Locust upsurge

Since August 2010 FAO, together with the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and USAID has been helping the Malagasy Locust Control Centre (CNA) contain populations of Malagasy Migratory Locusts following an upsurge in March of last year.

After training and formation of national teams, anti-locust operations were concentrated in the months from October 2010 to April 2011, corresponding to the rainy season and the locust breeding period. Some 200 000 hectares (ha) infested by locusts were sprayed by helicopter while ground-based control measures were deployed over 27 000 ha and are continuing. 

The 2010-2011 campaign was based on a three-part action plan providing for: strengthening of national survey and control capacities; protection of human health and the environment; and evaluation of the campaign and of locust impact on food security.

Biopesticide

In addition to conventional pesticides, a bio pesticide based on a fungus that is lethal to locusts and grasshoppers was used for the first time on a large scale.

While such efforts prevented the 2010 locust upsurge escalating into a plague, with disastrous consequences on crops and livelihoods, weather and ecological conditions in the first half of this year triggered a renewed build up of locust populations over large parts of south-western Madagascar.

Funds, $7.6 million, are urgently needed to launch a new campaign of locust-infested territory treatment to coincide with the next rain and breeding period (November 2011-May 2012).

“We must respond quickly to this locust upsurge,” said Monard. “Preventive control is the best and most cost-effective way of dealing with locusts in a sustainable manner.”

In parallel with the emergency campaign, FAO is also about to start a two-year project funded by the French Development Agency AFD in order to help Madagascar prepare a longer-term locust contingency plan.

Source: FAO
Related articles: Crop-eating locusts swarm over Madagascar

Climate change will have major impacts on the availability of water for growing food and on crop productivity in the decades to come, warns a new FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 09 June 2011

Climate change will have major impacts on the availability of water for growing food and on crop productivity in the decades to come, warns a new FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] report.

Loss of glaciers will eventually impact the amount of surface water available for agriculture

‘Climate Change, Water, and Food Security’ is a comprehensive survey of existing scientific knowledge on the anticipated consequences of climate change for water use in agriculture.

These include reductions in river runoff and aquifer recharges in the Mediterranean and the semi-arid areas of the Americas, Australia and southern Africa — regions that are already water-stressed. In Asia, large areas of irrigated land that rely on snowmelt and mountain glaciers for water will also be affected, while heavily populated river deltas are at risk from a combination of reduced water flows, increased salinity, and rising sea levels.

Additional impacts described in the report:

An acceleration of the world’s hydrological cycle is anticipated as rising temperatures increase the rate of evaporation from land and sea. Rainfall will increase in the tropics and higher latitudes, but decrease in already dry semi-arid to mid-arid latitudes and in the interior of large continents. A greater frequency in droughts and floods will need to be planned for but already, water scarce areas of the world are expected to become drier and hotter.

Even though estimates of groundwater recharge under climate change cannot be made with any certainty, the increasing frequency of drought can be expected to encourage further development of available groundwater to buffer the production risk for farmers.

And the loss of glaciers – which support around 40 percent of the world’s irrigation — will eventually impact the amount of surface water available for agriculture in key producing basins

Increased temperatures will lengthen the growing season in northern temperate zones but will reduce the length almost everywhere else. Coupled with increased rates of evapotranspiration this will cause the yield potential and water productivity of crops to decline.

“Both the livelihoods of rural communities as well as the food security of city populations are at risk,” said FAO Assistant Director General for Natural Resources, Alexander Mueller. “But the rural poor, who are the most vulnerable, are likely to be disproportionately affected.”

Responding to the challenge

FAO’s report also looks at actions that can be taken by national policymakers, regional and local watershed authorities, and individual farmers to respond to these new challenges.

One key area requiring attention is improving the ability of countries to implement effective systems for ‘water accounting’ – the thorough measurement of water supplies, transfers, and transactions in order to inform decisions about how water resources  can be managed and used under increasing variability.

“Water accounting in most developing countries is very limited, and allocation procedures are non existent, ad hoc, or poorly developed,” the report says. “Helping developing countries acquire good water accounting practices and developing robust and flexible water allocations systems will be a first priority.”

At the farm level, growers can change their cropping patterns to allow earlier or later planting, reducing their water use and optimizing irrigation. Yields and productivity can be improved by shifting to soil moisture conservation practices, including zero- and minimum tillage. Planting deep-rooted crops would allow farmers to better exploit available soil moisture.

Mixed agroforestry systems also hold promise. These systems both sequester carbon and also offer additional benefits such as shade that reduces ground temperatures and evaporation, added wind protection, and improved soil conservation and water retention.

However, FAO’s report also stresses that small-scale producers in developing countries will face an uphill struggle in adopting such strategies.

“Farm size and access to capital set the limits for the scope and extent of adaptation and change at farm level,” it warns, noting that already today many developing world farms produce yields far below their agro-climatic potential.

Zooming in on hotspots

FAO also warns that far too little is known about how climate change impacts on water for agriculture will play out at the regional and sub-regional level, and where farmers will be most at risk.

“Greater precision and focus is needed to understand the nature, scope and location of climate change impacts on developing country water resources for agriculture,” the report says, adding: “Mapping vulnerability is a key task at national and regional levels.”

Source: FAO

WWF South Africa (The World Wide Fund for Nature) called for “all hands on deck” to address the key threats facing South Africa’s fisheries, this World Oceans Day.

Fishing techniques, such as trawling, directly [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 08 June 2011

WWF South Africa (The World Wide Fund for Nature) called for “all hands on deck” to address the key threats facing South Africa’s fisheries, this World Oceans Day.

Fishing techniques, such as trawling, directly impact marine habitats

“World Oceans Day is a good time to take stock of the state of South Africa’s fishing industry,” said Dr Samantha Petersen, WWF South Africa’s Senior Programme Manager: Marine. “Considering that South Africa’s coastal

communities are dependent upon the resources provided by the oceans for food security and livelihoods, it is vital that we address these issues.”

“Presently we are facing several key threats, but most significant is that of over-fishing. The demand for seafood is at an all-time high with 2009’s global per capita consumption at 17.2kg. The proportion of over-exploited or depleted fish stocks increased to 32% in 2008, bringing the proportion of global stocks fished to their limit or beyond to 85%.”

“Coupled with this is the fact that many fishing practises are wasteful and frequently unselective with an estimated 38.5 million tonnes globally, or 40.4% of the estimated total marine catch comprising of non-target species such as seabirds, turtles, sharks and other finfish. As many bycatch species are marine top predators, the unmonitored and uncontrolled discarding of these animals can have knock-on impacts on the functioning of marine ecosystems. Furthermore, many fishing techniques such as trawling, directly impact marine habitats.”

“Fortunately, South Africa has a long history of responsible fisheries management,” said Petersen.

“All is certainly not doom and gloom. WWF’s Sanlam Living Waters Programme works to ensure that there is adequate protection of our marine resources and environments through facilitating and supporting the implementation of an Ecosystems Approach to Fisheries. The aim of this Approach is to protect marine ecosystems, including their human components, as a whole. We also support the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as well as promoting Sustainable Fisheries.”

The WWF Sanlam Living Waters Partnership seeks to catalyse concerted action from government, the private sector and civil society around the sound management of our aquatic resources.

“Every seafood lover can contribute to the health of our oceans by making wise seafood choices,” said Petersen. “The Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) provides consumers with guidance on which seafood is an ocean friendly choice and which to avoid based on the health of that population and whether or not the fishing or farming method used is detrimental to the environment.”

Consumers can SMS the name of their seafood to the SASSI FishMS line on 079 499 8795 or visit the SASSI website at wwfsassi.co.za

Source: WWF

Oxfam called on Tuesday for an overhaul of the world’s food system, warning that in a couple of decades, millions more people would be gripped by hunger due to population growth and climate-hit harvests.

FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] will assist ten countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus to save up to 25 million hectares of cultivated farmland from a locust crisis. Locusts [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 23 May 2011

FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] will assist ten countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus to save up to 25 million hectares of cultivated farmland from a locust crisis. Locusts are a serious threat for agriculture, food security and livelihoods in both regions including adjacent areas of northern Afghanistan and the southern Russian Federation.

Moroccan locust - one of three locust pests in Central Asia

A five-year programme to develop national capacities and launch regional cooperation is about to start thanks to assistance from the United States of America. Support from other donors is expected soon.

Ten countries at risk

In all, ten countries are at risk: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. There are three locust pests in the region — Italian, Moroccan and Migratory locusts — which can attack all kinds of crops and plants.

“As borders are situated across the locust traditional habitats and breeding areas, when a country is facing locust infestations, it is more than likely that at least one neighboring country faces a similar situation,” said Annie Monard, FAO Locust Officer.

These migrant pests, able to fly up to 100 kilometres a day, are extremely opportunistic, adapting quickly to changing weather patterns, including those associated with climate change.

Central Asian and Caucasian countries made official requests to FAO for assistance in curbing locust outbreaks and related impact on food security and in developing transborder cooperation.

The FAO Locust Group initiated a process for assessing the needs and helping countries to improve national and regional locust management; a two-year project (2009-2011), funded through its Technical Cooperation Programme, contributed to this effort.

Together with the concerned countries, FAO then prepared a five-year programme for sustainable management of locust issues in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The programme is based on the key concepts of locust preventive control and is part of the locust component of the agency’s EMPRES Programme.

The programme promotes preparedness, early warning and early reaction. It also seeks to introduce new techniques for locust control using less environmentally hazardous pesticides, including bio-pesticides.

A major contribution to this programme was recently received from USAID ($1.6 million) and negotiations are underway with other donors such as the Russian Federation, France and Turkey, which indicated their willingness to support the approach.

Source: FAO

Drought from Paris, France to Paris, Texas has farmers and grain dealers looking upwards. The farmers are looking to the skies for rain and the dealers are wondering where rising grain prices are going [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 21 May 2011

Drought from Paris, France to Paris, Texas has farmers and grain dealers looking upwards. The farmers are looking to the skies for rain and the dealers are wondering where rising grain prices are going to stop.

Wheat belts show signs of irreversible drought damage

U.S. wheat prices are on their way to their biggest weekly gain and European benchmark wheat futures have jumped just under 30 percent in the past nine weeks as wheat belts on both sides of the Atlantic show signs of irreversible drought damage.

“We need Mother Nature’s help to save a crop, which whatever happens will be mediocre,” said a senior European trader, referring to France, the EU’s biggest wheat producer.

An unusually dry and hot spring in top EU wheat producers and severe dryness in U.S. states Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, have revived memories of the dry summer of 2010, which ravaged Russian and Ukrainian wheat harvests and choked off supplies from the key exporters.

Food security is a global concern and the UN’s food body has issued repeated warnings about food price inflation since last year’s Black Sea drought.

Rising food prices helped fuel the unrest which toppled the heads of Egypt and Tunisia earlier this year, triggering protests in many Arab countries.

Black Sea wheat may this year go some way to meeting lost production from EU and U.S. fields but governments and consumers anxious to secure reliable food supplies will be sensitive to anything that threatens the flow of grain.

“Clearly a return of Russia would relieve pressures on demand, at least temporarily, capping the wheat market’s upward trend, but the overall picture would still remain dominated by the drought and a still sturdy economic cycle,” said Franck Nicolas, head of global asset management at Natixis AM.

Russia, once the world’s third-largest wheat exporter, halted grain exports from mid-August last year, while Ukraine imposed export quotas, causing a grain vacuum which European and U.S. farmers happily filled.

In a reversal of fortunes, Russia’s crop has been developing in rather positive conditions so far this year, with slow snowmelt in the spring bringing abundant soil moisture, making international traders believe Moscow may gradually start exporting again this summer.

PARCHED EUROPE

Parts of central Europe had under 40 percent of their long-term average rainfall from February to April and drought in much of Europe looks set to continue with little relief until June at the earliest, forecasters say.

“From northern to central Europe, rainfall deficits have been remarkable in March and April,” said Meteo France analysts.

The drought has prompted the French government to impose curbs on water use in a third of the country – after Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said France was in a “situation of crisis” – and leading analysts to slash output forecasts.

Agritel analysts said this week they expected France’s soft wheat output to fall 11.5 percent this year to 31.7 million tonnes – while European traders bet on a harvest of 33-34 million tonnes after 35.6 million in 2010/11.

Strategie Grains was more conservative with an estimate closer to 35 million tonnes but the analyst said it could cut it further if the drought continued.

Unless sustained relief rainfall helps turn the situation around in June, this could potentially halve France’s soft wheat export potential to 6 or 7 million tonnes – a scenario that is worrying traditional north and west African clients.

In Germany, the EU’s second largest wheat producer, the Farm Cooperatives Association cut by 3.2 million tonnes its estimate of the country’s wheat harvest from last month, to 22.31 million tonnes, now down 7.2 percent on the year.

“The continued dryness in Germany means that we have reduced our (harvest) expectations in terms of both volume and quality,” said Germany’s largest flour mill VK Muehlen . “Wheat will remain expensive and flour will also remain expensive.”

U.S. “PRETTY BAD”

In the United States, the world’s top wheat exporter, the hard red winter (HRW) wheat crop is showing signs of distress.

The condition of HRW – a high-protein variety which accounts for nearly half of U.S. wheat exports – has steadily deteriorated throughout the spring in Texas, Oklahoma and in key production areas of Kansas, the top U.S. winter wheat state where production may be the smallest in 15 years.

“It is pretty bad,” said Kansas state climatologist Mary Knapp. “For a lot of these areas… the last significant rainfall was in July of last year.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on May 11 forecast that Kansas would harvest 261.8 million bushels of wheat this summer, down 27 percent year on year. The Texas and Oklahoma wheat crops are seen down more than 50 percent, causing the overall U.S. winter wheat crop to be estimated as the smallest in five years.

Meanwhile, the soft red winter (SRW) wheat belt in the eastern U.S. Midwest faces the opposite problem as excessive spring rains were likely to drag down crop quality while flooding destroyed thousands of acres just weeks from harvest.

“Quality-wise, we’re looking at a crop that has deteriorated tremendously due to all this rainfall. It’s looking like there will certainly be a lot more feed-quality wheat coming out of the soft red areas than we were thinking a month ago,” said Telvent DTN meteorologist Mike Palmerino.

But in drought-traumatised France grain farmer Pascal Seingier cannot see the clouds, let alone any silver lining.

“It’s all dry. We have had almost no rain in weeks and it’s now clear I will not have the same harvest as usual,” he told Reuters on a tour of French grain fields. “Usually Mother Nature repairs what it has broken but it won’t happen this year.”

- Reuters

The world’s rising temperature is slowing production of major food crops, and as global warming continues, the trend will significantly disrupt the economies of many countries and impair the health of their people, Stanford [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 06 May 2011

The world’s rising temperature is slowing production of major food crops, and as global warming continues, the trend will significantly disrupt the economies of many countries and impair the health of their people, Stanford researchers say.

A single degree increase in global temperature can result in a 5 percent drop in the world's production of corn

If the impact is to be averted, farmers in many parts of the world will have to change the types of crops they grow, and the planting of many crops – particularly corn and wheat – will have to be shifted to regions where they are not now grown.

The findings are the result of a detailed global study of climate change and its links to food production by the Stanford group, together with a Columbia University economist, who looked closely at the past 30 years of production for four of the world’s major food crops – corn, wheat, rice and soybeans.

Rice, soybeans stable

They found that only rice and soybean crops have remained relatively unaffected by climate change. But global corn production was nearly 4 percent lower than it might have been if that warming trend hadn’t existed, and the world’s wheat crop was 5.5 percent lower than normal. The decreased output may well be responsible for a 6 percent rise in global prices for those two food crops over the three decades, they found.

The exceptions were the United States, Canada and northern Mexico, where temperatures overall haven’t risen in the past 30 years, nor has production of the crops decreased. The economists say they couldn’t explain it.

“It appears as if farmers in North America got a pass on the first round of global warming,” said team leader David B. Lobell, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University, in a statement. “That was surprising, given how fast we see weather has been changing in agricultural areas around the world.”

In the online journal Science Express published Thursday, the researchers said they examined corn, wheat, rice and soybeans because they are a key signal for all the varied foods consumed by people around the world. They used computer modeling from widely available crop and climate data, and the report is complex and statistical, but its implications are clear: The warmer the world gets, the more threatened much of the food supply becomes.

Effects on health

Computer modeling shows that every increase of a single degree in global temperatures can result in a 5 percent drop in the world’s production of those crops, Lobell’s group reported.

In an e-mail interview, Lobell said there is no question that global warming is curbing crop production, which, in turn, is resulting in higher food prices. And that, he said, can have direct consequences to health.

The four crops he and his colleagues studied are humans’ most important sources of calories. “There are millions who spend a large part of their income on food, and a price increase would cause them to reduce food consumption,” he said.

Fewer calories could lead to more malnutrition and illness for those least able to pay for the food.

Worldwide temperatures have risen by less than a degree in the past 30 years, and as climate change continues, farmers will need to adapt by planting new crop varieties resistant to higher temperatures, and some crops will move to farmlands farther north, where temperatures are lower, the analysts say.

Working with Lobell on the analysis were Justin Costa-Roberts, a Stanford computer science graduate student, and Wolfram Schlenker, a Columbia agricultural economist.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

By: Aaron Maasho

More than two million Ethiopians are in need of food aid due to drought caused by one of the worst La Nina weather phenomenon in a decade, the United Nations said.

Farming is moving indoors, where the sun never shines, where rainfall is irrelevant and where the climate is always right.

Indoor rice field in Tokyo.

The perfect crop field could be inside [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 12 April 2011

Farming is moving indoors, where the sun never shines, where rainfall is irrelevant and where the climate is always right.

Indoor rice field in Tokyo.

The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert.

Advocates say this, or something like it, may be the answer to the world’s food problems.

“In order to keep a planet that’s worth living on, we have to change our methods,” says Gertjan Meeuws of PlantLab, a private research company.

The world is already having trouble feeding itself. Half the people on earth live in cities, and nearly half of those – about 3 billion – are hungry or malnourished.

Food prices, currently soaring, are buffeted by droughts, floods and the cost of energy required to plant, fertilise, harvest and transport produce.

And prices will only get more unstable. Climate change makes long-term crop planning uncertain.

Farmers in many parts of the world already are draining available water resources to the last drop.

And the world is getting more crowded: by mid-century, the global population will grow from 6.8 billion to 9 billion, the UN predicts.

To feed so many people may require expanding farmland at the expense of forests and wilderness, or finding ways to radically increase crop yields.

Growing process

Meeuws and three other Dutch bio-engineers have taken the concept of a greenhouse a step further, growing vegetables, herbs and house plants in enclosed and regulated environments where even natural light is excluded.

In their research station, strawberries, yellow peppers, basil and banana plants take on an eerie pink glow under red and blue bulbs of Light-Emitting Diodes, or LEDs.

Water trickles into the pans when needed and all excess is recycled and the temperature is kept constant.

Lights go on and off, simulating day and night, but according to the rhythm of the plant – which may be better at shorter cycles than 24 hours – rather than the rotation of the Earth.

In a larger “climate chamber” a few kilometres away, a nursery is nurturing cuttings of fittonia, a colourful house plant, in two layers of 70m² each. Blasts of mist keep the room humid and the temperature is similar to the plants’ native South America.

After the cuttings take root – the most sensitive stage in the growing process – they are wheeled into a greenhouse and the chamber is again used for rooting. The process cuts the required time to grow a mature plant to six weeks from 12 or more.

The Dutch researchers say they plan to build a commercial-sized building in the Netherlands of 1, 300m², with four separate levels of vegetation by the end of this year.

After that, they envision growing vegetables next to shopping malls, supermarkets or other food retailers.

- Sapa

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 27 February 2011

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia,” said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

We will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000

To feed all those mouths, “we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000,” said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable” if current trends continue, Clay said.

The swelling population will exacerbate problems, such as resource depletion, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.

But incomes are also expected to rise over the next 40 years — tripling globally and quintupling in developing nations — and add more strain to global food supplies.

People tend to move up the food chain as their incomes rise, consuming more meat than they might have when they made less money, the experts said.

It takes around seven pounds (3.4 kilograms) of grain to produce a pound of meat, and around three to four pounds of grain to produce a pound of cheese or eggs, experts told AFP.

“More people, more money, more consumption, but the same planet,” Clay told AFP, urging scientists and governments to start making changes now to how food is produced.

Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.

“For 20 years, there’s been very little investment in family planning, but there’s a return of interest now, partly because of the environmental factors like global warming and food prices,” said Bongaarts.

“We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning,” said Casterline.

- AFP