When mautam struck Mizoram last during 1959, the unofficial figure for the death toll was between 10,000 and 15,000
A bamboo shoot flowers only once during its lifetime, after which the plant dies. Gregarious flowering – when large clumps of the plant spread over a vast area bloom simultaneously – occurs every 48 years or so, a phenomenon nothing short of a mystery. The last cycle had a disastrous impact on the hills. This time, the cycle is due to peak in 2007.
The Mizos – heavily dependent on the plant as they are – suddenly find themselves deprived of their resource during this lean period. The worst is the outbreak of famine, triggered by rodents who undergo population explosion after feeding themselves on the bamboo flowers. Descending upon the standing agricultural crop, the rats devour everything, causing an acute shortage of food.
A task force has been set up for super-fast implementation of the bamboo development programme, harvest and utilisation before the peak of mautam in 2007.
It has formulated a strategy for harvesting, marketing for local industries and export. Bamboo is superior to wood in several ways. It is the fastest-growing plant in the world. A number of new shoots appear every year which mature in about three-four years’ time. It has high tensile strength, flexibility and excellent rigidity and is also easy to process. Its grains are straight and can be split into thin strips using a simple tool and woven into a variety of things including furniture and articles of daily use. The Mizos are to be trained in scientific management of bamboo forests with emphasis on employment generation. The next few years are crucial, for they would tell if the wonder grass is really wonderful.
Point Source
PracticalSustenance.Net

It was recently disclosed that Nigeria spends about N280 billion or the equivalent of $2 billion annually on the importation of basic food items like sugar, rice, wheat, milk and vegetable oil. It is also on record that, Nigeria is the 4th largest importer of wheat from the United States of America, about 1,842 metric tonnes are imported annually. Similarly, Nigeria leads in the global importation says the Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research.
In the area of yam production, Nigeria produce some 6 million metric tonnes annually and more than 50 percent of world total output but Nigeria exports only 5 percent of this amount. It is equally sad to note that, between 25 to 40 percent of farm produce are lost annually because of limited silos for shortage as well as low development of agro-allied industries. It is a well known fact that in the 60’s, Malaysia came to Nigeria to get palm oil seedlings, today, Malaysia is the largest producer of palm oil and they make about $11 billion annually. Ditto Cote d’Ivoire which is the largest producer of cocoa and the third largest producer of coffee in the world.
It is on record that presently, agriculture employs about 70 percent of active labour force in the country. It is also instructive to observe that between 1962-68, the first post-independence National Development Plan was predicated on agriculture and agricultural development in all its ramifications in the country.
It has been projected that by year 2005, Nigeria should be able to produce 5 million tonnes of rice while it should also be able to produce 1 million hectares from vegetable oil. But in the case of rice, out of 90,000 hectares of irrigable land used, only 10,000 hectares is presently being put into use. It is also on record that agriculture accounts for 32 percent of the GDP in the country in 1998, and agriculture also accounts for 35.2 percent of the labour force in 1998..
Point Source
PracticalSustenance.Net

Swazi maize farmers are blaming World Food Programme (WFP) aid for their inability to sell their produce, despite evidence that record high maize prices coupled with increased poverty are undermining consumers’ ability to purchase the national staple food. “Local maize millers are now at one-third of normal milling capacity as a result of a sharp reduction in maize meal sales, a factor which may be attributed to the increase in the volume of food aid in the form of maize and rice that the country is presently receiving from foreign donors. The Swazi maize industry is the verge of collapsing!” said W.H. Meyer, chairman of the Maize Marketing Advisory Committee, in full-page adverts in Swazi newspapers.
The statement reported the recommendation of maize growers that until local stocks have been depleted, the government should no longer issue import permits to food aid organisations seeking to bring maize or rice into Swaziland. “In order to assist the country’s drought and HIV/AIDS victims, donors should source the food supplies locally, in order to avoid harming the Swazi maize industry,” the statement said. The maize growers claim that the country’s major commercial millers and maize traders are on the verge of retrenching hundreds of employees or closing down operations completely “as a result of the disproportionate amount of food aid that is displacing commercially distributed maize”.
National Disaster Relief Task Force chairman Ben Nsibandze disputed the growers’ claims: “There is no surplus of maize in Swaziland – we are growing only a fraction of our needs. Unfortunately, what is grown has been priced beyond the ability of most food buyers to purchase,” he said. “It is the policy of the World Food Programme to purchase locally whenever possible,” an official with the agency’s regional headquarters in South Africa said. The government’s Central Statistics Office, which tracks food commodity prices in its consumer price index, noted that the price of locally produced maize sold by the National Maize Corporation at the end of last year’s harvest was R1,500 (US $230) per mt – double the price of maize on the South African Futures Exchange, listed at around R750 per mt. “If we haven’t purchased maize locally, it is because the price is much higher than what we could buy elsewhere. There’s nothing to stop us from buying locally if the stocks exist, and the price is right,” Sarah Laughton, WFP’s emergency relief coordinator in Swaziland said.
By January 2004, when this year’s harvest has been exhausted, WFP will be feeding an estimated 245,000 people, or about a quarter of the population. WFP’s regional office in South Africa procures maize from foreign sources for Swaziland and, despite transportation costs into the landlocked kingdom, importing maize is cheaper than purchasing the local product. Food aid workers also dispute the maize growers’ contention that there is a surplus of maize in Swaziland. The kingdom is facing its fifth consecutive year of diminished harvests.
There is some good news. The FAO/WFP crop assessment survey indicated a maize crop yield of 6 percent more than last year. While this is still one-third below the average for the last five years, a greater supply will help to drive prices down slightly. “Area planted to maize was estimated to be 19 percent more than last year,” said the report, which predicted a decline in maize prices during the upcoming marketing year due to relatively better domestic production and an anticipated good maize harvest in neighbouring South Africa, Swaziland’s main food supplier.
Point Source
PracticalSustenance.Net

FOOD security is the sine qua non of human existence. Without food nothing happens, no economic endeavour, no science or engineering, no music or literature, not even, in a year of famine, procreation.
Since 1974, the year of the Henry Kissinger-sponsored World Food Conference, called at a time of catastrophic food shortages, there has been immense progress on the journey towards providing food for all, even though the world remains a long way from fulfiling the great ambition of the conference’s final declaration that “within a decade no child will go to bed hungry, no family will fear for its next day’s bread, and no human being’s future and capacities will be stunted by malnutrition.”
Hundreds of millions of people who were suffering from malnutrition in the 1970s are now eating two square meals a day despite the rapid onward march of population growth. Yet rightly last week the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation signaled a major alert: for the first time in many years, it said, the numbers of hungry are beginning to rise again. In some countries — in Africa in particular but also most worryingly in India, a country which hitherto has made phenomenal progress in feeding its people — the numbers of hungry are going up. Even in China where the numbers keep falling the rate of improvement has slowed.
The FAO latest estimate is that there are around 798 million malnourished people in the world. In the most recent four years for which figures are available (1997 to 2001) the number of hungry has increased by 19 million, wiping out almost half of the decrease of 37 million achieved in the five years previous to that.
Point Source
PracticalSustenance.Net

Women achieve wonders as they turn their hand to carob molasses production
The creation and development of the Ain Ebel Agricultural Products Manufacturing Cooperative (APMC) in southern Lebanon is an ideal example of hardship and need giving rise to ingenuity and unexpected results. “During the occupation we were cut off from the outside world for two to three weeks at a time,” said Mary Maroun, head of the APMC. “Under these conditions we learned the importance of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.” According to Maroun, she and several other women in her village heard about a training program in Bint Jbeil and decided to participate out of curiosity. The training was part of a rural development project organized by the YMCA and funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The program taught the women the basics of agricultural manufacturing, food bacteria, production processes and how to work as a group. Market research, marketing and accounting were also part of the package.

“The abundance of carob trees, which require little maintenance, led us to the production of molasses,” said Maroun. “Finally we were able to get the project running thanks to research, trial and error, and the invaluable instruction of a seasoned manufacturer from the South.” The Ain Ebel APMC jump-started its activities with the aid of land grants from the local municipality, and the Jesuits donated the building. USAID/YMCA provided funding for equipment. Maroun explained that in earlier carob molasses production, the carob fruit was crushed by hand-operated stone mills and then soaked in water. The mixture was then boiled to produce the molasses.

The production chain at the APMC is fully automated. The raw carob, delivered in 50-kilogram bags, is poured into a hopper and taken to the grinder via a conveyer belt. The output, transferred to a wire mesh separator by air suction, is sorted into four categories, including one for the seeds. Although they are not used in the molasses manufacturing process, carob seeds have commercial value. They are used in the production of medicines, hormones, cosmetics and as a sweetener that can be safely consumed by diabetics.

The crushed carob pieces are placed in stainless steel vats for soaking, with the smaller pieces on top so the system acts as a natural filter. After 12 hours, the juice is emptied into the boiler via a special conduit at the bottom. The remaining residue is pressed to extract every drop of the valuable liquid. The juice is then boiled to produce the familiar thick black molasses. A refractometer ensures that the viscosity of the product is within the correct range. After cooling, the molasses is poured into jars.

“Our molasses is 100 percent natural, only carob and water,” said Maroun. “Quality is our prime concern and our product satisfies all international norms, including those of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
Molasses is not the sole product of APMC. A large solar dryer on the roof produces organic sun-dried tomatoes, as well as dried apples, figs and cherries. The center is also equipped with a fish smoker and the necessary equipment for manufacturing jams.

PracticalSustenance.Net

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

Just a little bit below the top 6 feet of ground – an area ecologists have studied extensively – is a large layer of naturally occurring nitrate. Nobody knew it was there. Nobody knows why it has stayed in the ground, instead of being taken up by plants as a key nutrient.

“We were drilling at the Nevada Test Site looking for a different chemical, and there was this very strange (instrument registration) peak,” said Michelle Walvoord, who was a graduate student at New Mexico Tech when she made the discovery. “I was very surprised when we learned there was a large inventory of nitrate there,” said Walvoord, now a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “I thought for sure somebody else must have noticed it before, but we did a lot of background checking, and nobody had.”

The discovery is significant because nitrate is also a common groundwater pollutant. As she studied the phenomenon, Walvoord learned conventional irrigation methods in agriculture – not more advanced drip irrigation systems – push the layer of naturally occurring nitrate deeper into the ground until it mixes into the water table. The U.S. Geological Survey studied three desert areas in Nevada to see how the nitrate behaved. In an area that had been irrigated for about 100 years, the nitrate had dropped all the way into the water table 100 meters beneath the ground.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

Farmers and peasant groups around the world are pressing the concept of ‘food sovereignty’ as a challenge to the World Trade Organisation’s agriculture policies, which they say push millions of small farmers off their land and lead to food insecurity. Described by the international farmers network Via Campesina as ”the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture; (and) to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade”, food sovereignty, its proponents say, is the only way to alleviate poverty and achieve sustainable development in the developing world.
The People’s Food Sovereignty network, a coalition of non-governmental organisations and movements from the North and South, released a Food and Agriculture statement on its website demanding that ”governments remove agriculture and food from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and establish an alternative international framework for the sustainable production and trade of food and agriculture”.
Point Source
PracticalSustenance.Net

Action by Churches Together (ACT) – Switzerland
ACT Appeal: Famine Recovery & Mitigation, REVISION 1, Malawi
Geneva – The Malawi appeal has been revised to include a proposal for the Churches Action in Relief and Development (CARD) which was meant to form part of the original appeal issued on 23 September, 2003. However, CARD were still working on some issues that delayed the issuance of their proposal. Like in the previous appeal AFMW-22, CARD will continue to work in Nsanje district and this time proposes to assist 25,000 households facing critical food shortages with relief food. It will also target 2,000 under-five children with supplementary feeding with a dry ration of Likuni Phala, a nutrient rich food made from Soya. CARD will also aim to assist 10,000 families with agricultural inputs especially seeds. This will assist the target communities to recover from the hunger situation and hopefully re-attain their levels of self-sufficiency. Attention will also be given to families affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic within the target communities of Nsanje. CARD intervention in the appeal will be 5 months.
Please kindly send your contributions to the following ACT bank account:
Account Number – 240-432629.60A (USD)
Account Name: ACT – Action by Churches Together
UBS SA
PO Box 2600
1211 Geneva 2
SWITZERLAND
ACT is a worldwide network of churches and related agencies meeting human need through coordinated emergency response. The ACT Coordinating Office is based with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Switzerland.
Point Source
PracticalSustenance.Net

This time of year, most of the Western world is focusing on holiday indulgences: how many presents to buy, how many lights and candles to festoon the home, and how many sweets and feasts to offer family and friends. However, for many people in drought-stricken Africa, food and water will be in perilously short supply this season. So short, in fact, that some people in Ethiopia are already making the grass pea—a cousin of the sweet pea—a dietary staple.

Although that sounds benign, it could be dangerous. Ordinarily, herders plant this legume as forage for their livestock. And in small quantities, the grass peas—the plant’s seeds—are safe ingredients of recipes of cuisines from Afghan to Chinese. As such, the legume serves as a low-cost base for stews, breads, and gruel. However, when eaten to excess—as happens in arid Ethiopia and many other regions of the world when drought persists—grass-pea consumption may lead to permanent paralysis because the seeds contain an unusual neurotoxin.

PracticalSustenance.Net

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

The government of Pakistan is getting ready to lift the ban on Indian wheat import as the country faces a shortfall of one million tons this year. “Islamabad will allow purchase of 0.1 million tons wheat from India to meet the country’s requirements and offset the adverse impact of anticipated crisis due to less than expected production in 2003-04,” official sources said. A senior official in MINFAL said that keeping in view the recent thaw in Pak-India ties, the government was all set to allow import of wheat from India that was hitherto banned. Wheat importers are constantly demanding of the government to allow wheat import from India as it would be acquired from the neighbouring state at very low rates as compared to the other countries due to inflated international prices.
Point Source