Issue #25

Welcome to all!

As regular FRW readers know, we sometimes focus an edition around a particular issue of importance to farmers, often coinciding with a United Nations designated day. Over the next two editions of FRW, we will explore the issue of desertification, and the related issue of climate change.

June 17 is World Day to Combat Desertification. Desertification, defined as land degradation in arid and semi-arid areas, can directly affect farmers by making farmland unusable or less productive. Climate change – marked by conditions such as rising temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns – makes the agricultural situation even worse in these areas.

This week, we look at how some Nigerien farmers on the frontlines of desertification and climate change are guarding their lands by planting and protecting trees. We also have a story from Joshua Kyalimpa, our correspondent in Kampala, about a Ugandan company that is being honoured as a pioneer in sustainable energy use. By creating a low-tech solar dryers and marketing local dried fruit, Fruits of the Nile has improved the livelihoods of hundreds of farmers with minimal use of fossil fuels.

In the Radio Resource Bank, you’ll find links to a fascinating resource created by the United Nations Environment Programme – an atlas of satellite photos that graphically illustrate how climate change and desertification have changed the landscape of the African continent over the past 30 years. And, in the Farm Radio Action section, you’ll learn how the leader of a Nigerian women farmers’ group captured the attention of international businesspeople by describing the effects of climate change in her area.

For our newest African subscriber – Moussa Sodea Sylvestre, from radio Sawtu Linjiila, in Cameroun – we offer a special welcome, and hope that this edition provides an intriguing glimpse of what FRW has to offer. For a fuller picture, be sure to visit the FRW website (http://farmradio.org/english/weekly/) to post comments and discuss this week’s issue with other FRW community members. We also welcome all of our new and ongoing subscribers from other parts of the world!

Stay tuned for next week’s edition of FRW, where we will feature more stories of small-scale farmers facing climate change and desertification, and the adaptation techniques that help them cope.

Happy reading!

-The Farm Radio Weekly Team

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African Farm News in Review
1. Niger: Farmers plant trees to slow desert’s advance (Various Sources)

2. Uganda: The fruits of innovation – Ugandan company wins green energy award (by Joshua Kyalimpa, for Farm Radio Weekly, in Kampala, Uganda)

Upcoming Events

-August 1, 2008: Deadline for submissions to Commonwealth Broadcasting Association awards

Radio Resource Bank

-UNEP publishes Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment

Farm Radio Action

-Farm Radio collaborator talks to international business leaders about climate change

Farm Radio Script of the Week

-Rehabilitating degraded land: Planting trees in pits

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Ibrahim Danjimo is a Nigerien farmer in his 40s. He has been working the sandy, rocky soil of his small village since he was a child. Some 20 years ago, Mr. Danjimo began to realize that the trees were disappearing. The Sahelian winds blew strongly across his land. The sand dunes threatened to engulf his hut. His water well dried up.

During the 1970s and 80s, a severe drought combined with a population explosion and destructive agricultural practices stripped bare vast expanses of land. The desert seemed determined to swallow everything.

Mr. Danjimo and some other farmers from the Guidan Bakoye village in Niger took a decision that seemed radical at the time. They would no longer rip young trees out of their fields before planting seeds, as their families had done for generations. Instead, they protected the trees, and carefully ploughed around them when sowing millet, sorghum, peanuts, and beans.

Over time, more and more Nigeriens came to value and plant trees, and some of the effects of desertification were reversed. Ibrahim Idy is a Nigerien farmer in the Zinder region. Some 20 baobab trees grow in his field. Mr. Idy sells the leaves and fruit of the baobab, earning about 300 American dollars, or 200 Euros, each year. He used these extra earnings to buy a motorized water pump to irrigate his cabbage and lettuce plants. As a result, his children do not have to gather as much water for the farm, and Mr. Idy can afford to send them to school.

Dr. Mahamane Larwanou is an agroforestry expert at the L’Université de Niamey in Niger. He believes that the more trees are grown in Niger, the better people will be able to adapt to climate change. He says that, by planting trees, farmers can take control and limit the impact of changes on their land. For example, planting trees can help prevent crop destruction and floods because tree roots hold water in the ground, preventing it from running off across rocky, barren fields and creating gullies.

To this end, a company called Tree Nation is asking people to fund the planting of trees in Dosso, Niger. According to the company’s website, it’s as easy as choosing a tree, buying it online, and naming it. The cost? It depends on which tree you buy. A Senegalese acacia tree costs 10 Euros, or about 15 American dollars, while a baobab tree costs 75 Euros, or 115 American dollars. Tree Nation says it will work closely with local communities, nurseries, and organisations to ensure the best possible environment for the trees to grow. Tree Nation hopes to plant 8 million trees in Niger, as part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Billion Tree Campaign. So far, they’ve planted a little over 31,000.

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Not long ago, Dorothy Mugabe had more bananas than she knew what to do with. Ms. Mugabe grows bananas, along with coffee and plantain, on her 20-acre farm in the Lyantonde District of central Uganda. At times, her banana harvest was so abundant that she could not sell it fast enough. Some of the fruit would go to waste.It was a problem faced by many Ugandan fruit and vegetable farmers. Poor transportation infrastructure makes it hard to ship fresh produce to distant markets. And since the country has no glass manufacturing or canning facilities, there are few opportunities to preserve fruits and vegetables.

This is where the innovation and entrepreneurship of Ugandan Angelo Ndyaguma and Brit Adam Brett came in. The pair established Fruits of the Nile – a company that harnessed the power of the sun and changed the lives of many Ugandans. Now the company has been recognized as a global pioneer for its use of solar energy, being named a finalist for the prestigious Ashden Awards for sustainable energy.

Angelo Ndyaguma is co-founder of Fruits of the Nile. He spoke to Farm Radio from London, England, where the grand prize for green energy will be awarded this week. Mr. Ndyaguma explained that his company began by creating easy-to-construct solar dryers. The drying racks are created with local timber. Locally available mosquito netting protects the fruit from bugs. A special plastic wrap, which filters out harsh UV rays and keeps fruit from turning black as it dries, is the only imported element in the dryers.

The pair held a series of workshops for local farmers, showing them how to use the solar dryers and prepare dried fruit to meet market standards. Farmers can purchase solar dryers at cost and access small loans to pay for them.

Today, 700 farmers from villages across south, southwest, and central Uganda supply fresh fruit for solar dryer operations. Dried bananas, pineapples, papaya, and chillies from Fruits of the Nile are sold within Uganda and shipped to Europe.

Ms. Mugabe dries between 200 and 300 kilograms of bananas for Fruits of the Nile each month. This bounty of dried fruit earns her about 750,000 Uganda shillings, the equivalent of about 500 American dollars or 300 Euros. The farmer boasts that this income allows her to care for five children and send them all to school.

Mr. Ndyaguma and his business partner are reaping sweet rewards as well. As one of only seven international finalists for the global green energy award, his company will receive a prize of 20,000 British pounds, the equivalent of 65 million Ugandan shillings (almost 40,000 American dollars or 25,000 Euros). One of the finalists will be named “energy champion” and receive a grand prize of 40,000 British pounds.

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As this story demonstrates, the battle against desertification has not been lost. Efforts such as afforestation are underway to protect arable land and rehabilitate desertified land. But, according to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, desertification continues to be one of the environmental changes posing the greatest potential threat to the survival of the poor. This suggests that soil conservation efforts must continue. You may view the UN Convention to Combat Desertification here: http://www.unccd.int/.

Recently, the United Nations Environment Programme published an atlas illustrating environmental change on the African continent. Satellite photos taken of the province of Tahoua, Niger, in 1975 and again in 2005 show that between 10 and 20 times more trees are growing now than in the 1970s. This improvement is the result of tremendous efforts by local farmers to plant and protect trees.

You can visit the Tahoua Province page of the atlas to see the increase in green space yourself: http://na.unep.net/digital_atlas2/webatlas.php?id=356. For more information on Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, and to learn about environmental change in your country, scroll down to the Radio Resource Bank.

Here are some other resources that may interest you:

-The NGO SOS Sahel has many projects to fight desertification, operating in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Sudan. One of the organization’s goals is to assist the people of the Sahel to take charge of all aspects of development. According to Blaise Soyir Some, a director of SOS Sahel International Burkina Faso, “a good project to combat desertification has to take into account the region’s socio-cultural factors. The participation of local actors at every stage of a project, from conception to final evaluation, is indispensable.” SOS Sahel offers a plethora of information on desertification, including practical and proven methods to combat desertification, on its website (in French only): http://www.sossahel.org/la_desertification.

One of SOS Sahel’s ongoing projects in Senegal is the planting of a strip of trees called filaos (to learn more about the filao tree, visit this website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuarina_equisetifolia). These trees are intended to protect crops from gradual silting, which was caused by overexploitation of groundwater and destructive horticultural practices by vegetable farmers. To read more about this project (in French only), visit: http://www.sossahel.org/nos_actions/actions_en_cours/filaos_senegal.

-The United Nations Environment Programme has also launched the Billion Tree Campaign, with the goal of planting one tree for every person on earth by the end of 2009. The project was launched in 2006, in response to environmental challenges such as global warming, biodiversity loss, and inaccessibility of potable water. To learn more about this project, please visit: http://www.unep.org/BILLIONTREECAMPAIGN/. The company Tree Nation, which was mentioned in this article, and the organization Green Belt Movement (http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/), are both part of this initiative.

Finally, the following Farm Radio International scripts deal with the subject of desertification:
-“Stop your land from turning to desert” (Package 42, Script 6, December 1996)
-A 13-part radio drama entitled “The long dry season: A tale of greed and resourcefulness” (Package 77, March 2006)
-“Stone lines reduce erosion” (Package 43, Script 8, March 1997)

-“Make drylands productive with planting pits” (Package 41, Script 1, September 1996)

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For its innovative practices in promoting solar fruit drying, Uganda’s Fruits of the Nile became one of only seven finalists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America for this year’s Ashden Awards. Sometimes known as the “global green energy awards,” the Ashen Awards celebrate low-tech energy projects. Sarah Butler-Sloss, founder and chair of the awards, had this to say about the finalists: “[They] show how providing communities and individuals with appropriate forms of sustainable energy can transform their lives and lift them out of poverty, while at the same time reducing carbon emissions.”
Two other African organizations were honoured as finalists for their work with cookstoves. The Gaia Association of Ethiopia provided ethanol-burning stoves to 1,780 refugee families who have fled Somalia and are living in camps in Ethiopia. Ethanol for the stoves is produced from locally available molasses, a sugar by-product. In this case, the use of ethanol eliminates the need for women to spend long hours collecting firewood, a practice that puts the women at risk of physical attack, and causes deforestation. The Kisangani Smith Group of Tanzania, meanwhile, developed two types of fuel-efficient stoves. One replaces the widespread use of charcoal by burning sawdust, a waste product that is readily available in the Njombe region of Tanzania. The other is an improved wood-burner designed for rural residents.

You can find out more about this year’s finalists and previous winners at the Ashden Awards’ website: http://www.ashdenawards.org/.
To find out more about Fruits of the Nile and Tropical Wholefoods (its parent company, which began in Uganda), visit: http://www.tropicalwholefoods.co.uk/.

You may also wish to review these Farm Radio International scripts, which discuss other kinds of solar drying techniques and alternative cookstoves:
-“Three fishing ladies with a message about solar dryers” (Package 79, Script 6, November 2006)
-“An alternative fuel source: Make charcoal briquettes from banana peels” (Package 76, Script 5, October 2005)
-“Improved cookstoves make life easier for women” (Package 73, Script 2, January 2005)

Finally, you may wish to research a story about alternative energy sources used in your broadcast area:
-What alternatives to traditional wood burning stoves do people use to cook food?
-What alternative power sources are used to prepare fruits and vegetables for storage?
-Have there been any initiatives to transform waste products from agriculture or other industries into fuel?
-Have any local businesses developed new technologies to make use of alternative energy sources?

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The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association invites submissions of radio and television programs on human rights, development, science, and other topics, for its annual awards.

Applications can be team or individual entries and all programs or projects should have been broadcast for the first time or completed between August 2007 and July 2008. Program entries may be in any language but they must be subtitled in English for television entries. Radio programs in languages other than English must be sent with a clear text in English explaining the concept of the program and its impact.

Completed forms with DVD for television programs and CD for radio programs should reach the CBA Secretariat by August 1, 2008. CBA members and affiliates can send one entry free in each category.
For more details about the award, including specific award categories and details on how to enter, visit: http://www.cba.org.uk/awards_and_competitions/2009_CBA_Awards.php. For information on how to become a CBA member, visit: http://www.cba.org.uk/membership/index.php.

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Some of the most dramatic environmental changes to take place on the African continent, from the shrinking of Mount Kilimanjaro’s glaciers to the drying up of Lake Chad, have been well publicized – but what do they actually look like? Satellite images documenting these changes, and dozens of other shifts in Africa’s landscape, have been compiled in Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, which was recently published by the United Nation’s Environment Programme. The atlas features “before and after” satellite images taken in 100 locations in every country in Africa, over 35 years. The pictures document environmental degradation, such as disappearing glaciers in Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains and widening corridors of deforestation in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The positive results of environmental initiatives, such as the expansion of wetlands resulting from a restoration project in Diawling National Park, Mauritania, and the protection of forests in Liberia’s Sapo National Park, are also graphically illustrated.

-To search for “before and after” satellite photos by country or theme, follow this link:
http://na.unep.net/AfricaAtlas/.
-For a media release describing some of the most significant changes to the African landscape, go to: http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=538&ArticleID=5834&l=en.
-To download the full report of Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, in English or French, visit: http://www.unep.org/dewa/africa/AfricaAtlas/.

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In an air-conditioned conference room in Montreal, Canada, images of climate change in extreme locations – the Sahel desert and Arctic Circle – became vividly clear. Participants in The International Economic Forum of the Americas saw and heard how farmers in Nigeria plant seeds in drylands, no longer able to predict when the rainy season will come. They also heard how many experienced hunters in northern Alaska have lost their lives as a result of unexpected changes to ice conditions.

Salamatu Garba, Coordinator for the Women Farmers’ Advancement Network (WOFAN) in Nigeria, spoke (via audio recording) of the challenges faced by women in the Sahel. Though farmers have been coaxing crops from the drylands for generations, in recent years, the rains have become unpredictable, and sometimes arrive as a series of storms that flood the land. Ms. Garba explained that these conditions are especially challenging for women, as both farmers and traditional water gatherers.

Ms. Garba’s organization is collaborating with the African Radio Drama Association, Farm Radio International, and the International Development Research Centre, to create a radio drama that weaves practical information on adaptation techniques into a scintillating soap opera. Tips on using quick-germinating and fast-maturing grain varieties, methods to preserve and rehabilitate soil, and techniques for harvesting and storing water, will be included in the 26-part drama.

In northern Alaska, rising temperatures are creating different challenges, requiring very different adaptation techniques. Patricia Cochran, Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, explained that some 85 per cent of communities are built on the coast, and hundreds will have to be re-located as the sea level rises. Ms. Cochran emphasized that, while the effects of climate change are devastating to people living in extreme locations, these people are experts at adaptation, and their input will be vital to developing coping methods. John M.R. Stone, Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, also spoke to the group, stressing the importance of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are the cause of these disruptive climate changes.

For more information on the climate change radio drama, please see “‘Climate Change Adaptation Goes Soap!’ – Workshop for new radio drama held in Abuja,” from FRW Issue 5.

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This week’s news story from Niger looked at how farmers are preventing desertification and mitigating the effects of climate change on their land by planting trees. Making trees grow on degraded land does require some special attention.

This script describes a simple, low-cost technique to return nutrients to degraded soil, preparing land for trees and other crops.You can also view this script, from Farm Radio International Package 68, online at: http://www.farmradio.org/english/radio-scripts/68-3script_en.asp.

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