Issue #26

Dear FRW readers,

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were not able to produce new stories for this edition of Farm Radio Weekly. Instead, we are pleased to bring you a review of some of our most relevant stories from Issues 1 and 2 of Farm Radio Weekly. These issues were published in December 2007, when FRW was very new and our readership was smaller. We hope all our readers – new and old – will find something interesting here!

In last week’s issue, we promised more stories about climate change and desertification, and you will find them here. From Issue 2, we have a story about how indigenous seed varieties that are well adapted to local climate conditions can help farmers cope with climate change. Also from Issue 2, we have a story about Kenyan farmers who learned a new technique to rehabilitate dry rangeland – using only their livestock and some creative cooperation.

From Issue 1, we bring you two of our favourite stories about innovative solutions to pest problems, big and small. You’ll want to revisit the story of farmers from Casamance, Senegal, who discovered that a few recycled materials could help keep white flies away; and look back at how the tiniest bee or chilli pepper can get elephants on the run.

And remember, you can always look back on past issues of FRW on our website: http://farmradio.org/english/weekly/. You can also use the website to send an article to a friend or invite a colleague to subscribe: http://www.farmradio.org/english/partners/fr_weekly_subscribe.asp. This week, we welcome our newest subscribers: Mukangayi Wikana, from Shinyalu Community radio in Kenya and Tegwendé Léonard Kinda, from Radio Voix des Lacs, in Burkina Faso.

Happy reading!

-The Farm Radio Weekly Team

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African Farm News in Review

1. Africa: Re-discovery of traditional crops helps farmers cope with climate change (Farm Radio Weekly)

2. Kenya: Controlled grazing can rehabilitate dry rangelands (Business Daily)

3. Senegal: Low cost white fly traps save mango crops (United Nations’ Integrated Regional Information Networks)

4. Africa: Tiny but powerful – bees and chilies can keep elephants away from crops (Various Sources)

Upcoming Events

-September 8-10, Highway Africa conference tackles citizen journalism

Radio Resource Bank

-Live from Africa: A Handbook for African Radio Journalists

Farm Radio Action

-Farm Radio International urges Canadian Prime Minister to commit to agriculture at G8 Summit

Farm Radio Script of the Week

-Does your community need a seed bank?

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Traditional crops such as millet, cowpeas, and sorghum can help farmers maintain food security in the face of climate change, experts told Farm Radio Weekly.

Joshua Mukusya is a farmer from the Machakos District of Kenya. Mamby Fofana is a natural resource management officer from Bamako, Mali. And Dr. Rachel Bezner Kerr is a Canadian researcher who spent 10 years working with farmers in the Mzimba District of Malawi. The three gathered in Ottawa, Canada recently as part of a forum on how African farmers are coping with climate change.

All three described how farmers in their areas are turning to traditional crops as rainfall patterns become increasingly erratic.

Crops like maize, which has been promoted since the time of colonial governments, require consistent rainfall. Traditional crops are typically more tolerant of variable rainfall patterns, making them a more reliable source of food.

Joshua Mukusya says that “when you grow millet, you are sure of a harvest.” He used to grow mostly maize on his seven-acre farm. Now he grows a variety of crops, including millet, cassava, and vegetables such as carrots and kale.

Mr. Mukusya says that millet is more reliable than maize because it is resistant to drought and does not attract weevils, a common maize pest. He also offered cowpeas as an example of a traditional crop that provides food security because it grows very quickly. After only two weeks of rain, you can eat the leaves of cowpeas. After a month, the peas themselves can be harvested. By contrast, maize can take more than eight weeks to grow.

Thousands of farmers in three districts of Kenya now take part in a movement begun by Mr. Mukusya to share traditional crop knowledge and seeds of traditional crops. He says he now feels more confident that his family will always have enough food.

Mamby Fofana comes from the Sahel, a region where farmers have long coped with a fragile climate prone to drought. He says that resilient traditional crops are growing in importance as rainy seasons are becoming more difficult to predict.

Traditional seeds are resistant to drought because they have adapted to regional soil and climate conditions over time, Mr. Fofana explained. He works with an NGO that encourages farmers to contribute their best traditional seed varieties to be multiplied and shared in community owned and operated seed banks.

Interest in re-discovering and sharing traditional seeds is also growing in northern Malawi, said Dr. Rachel Bezner Kerr. She works with farmers in the Mzimba District who mostly grew maize on their small plots of land.

Thousands of farmers in this district have recently begun intercropping legumes such as pigeon peas and groundnuts alongside their maize. There is also a movement among the farmers to bring back other traditional crops such a millet and sorghum. The farmers want to re-discover the crops that their grandmothers grew, Dr. Bezner Kerr said.

Many of these traditional crops bring added benefits, say the experts. They strengthen and fertilize the soil and can provide cover to other crops.
Click here to see the notes to broadcasters on traditional crops

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Farmers in the Laikipia District of Kenya are testing a simple and practical method of rehabilitating dry rangelands. The new strategy makes use of livestock’s ability to plough and fertilize pasturelands while they graze.

A 300-acre community ranch is home to a pilot project aimed at boosting the land’s fertility by carefully controlling the grazing of some 1,000 cattle and goats.

High concentrations of livestock are “bunched” together in small areas of pasture where their hooves break up soil and their manure provides fertilizer. This preparation makes the land more receptive to seeds that are dropped in the manure. It also helps the land absorb rainfall – a scarce resource in the Laikipia District.

When rain comes, the “bunched” animals are moved to a new plot, allowing pasture grasses to thrive on the previous plot.

The strategy was brought to the area by an American NGO called Holistic Management International. The organization promotes several methods which it calls low-tech solutions to climate change, both in the United States and in developing countries.

Ultimately, the goal of the controlled grazing process is to reclaim lands that have been degraded due to changing weather patterns and overgrazing. More fertile pastures should lead to healthier and better-fed livestock and a better livelihood for livestock owners.

While the project in Laikipia District is in the pilot phase, many community members have visited the ranch to obtain information on this method of land rehabilitation.
Click here to see the notes to broadcasters on controlled grazing

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Mango farmers in the Casamance region of Senegal are learning a low-cost method of trapping and killing a pest that has been devastating their crops.

Mango production became particularly important in the Casamance region following a civil conflict that left much of its farmland littered with mines. With the landmines yet to be removed, but mango orchards offer farmers an alternative. Mangoes require much less land than crops traditionally grown in the area, such as groundnuts, watermelons, and millet.

For the past four years, however, mango production in Casamance has been threatened by the white fly, which lays eggs in ripening fruit. The eggs hatch into maggots that cause the fruit to rot and fall to the ground. It’s a problem the farmers are now combating, with the help of government agricultural workers and aid organizations.

This past growing season, a simple but effective technology was tested. Attract-and-kill traps were made from recycled water bottles and a mix of methyl eugenol – a naturally occurring substance that attracts flies – and a pesticide that kills them. During the test, traps attracted and killed an estimated 60,000 flies each over 10 days.

The locally-made traps cost about 6 US dollars, or 4 Euros each. Imported traps, by comparison, sell for up to 27 US dollars, or 18 Euros, each.

The traps are a relief to farmers who were losing up to 90 per cent of their mango crops to the white fly.

Mango orchards are the primary source of income for many families, who are being hit by food shortages due to poor rains. They are also one of the few crops that grow well during the rainy season.

Ibou Goudiaby has five hectares of mango trees in the Casamance region. He says the new trap will allow farmers to recover their plantations, which are their only source of revenue until landmine removal is complete.

Government agriculture workers and aid organizations trained a group of farmers to use the new, low-cost white fly traps. Now these farmers are training other mango producers. They will need to start using the traps soon, as mango trees will start to flower in January.

Experts note that keeping plantations clean and free from debris is the first line of defense against the white fly. They also recommend that any fruit that falls from the tree be buried at least 50 centimetres under the ground, to prevent any larvae in the fruit from reaching the surface.
Click here to see the notes to broadcasters on Mango Fly Traps

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The sound of bees or the scent of chilies may be small annoyances to most people. But they may also be solutions to one great big problem faced by farmers in many African countries: elephants.

Since the 1980s, conservation efforts have brought African elephants back from the brink of extinction. It’s now estimated that more than half a million elephants roam the continent. And when the giant beasts enter farming communities, the results can be disastrous. They trample fields, eat crops, and can even destroy houses and raid grain silos.

Recently, a herd of elephants from a national park invaded the Bukonzo East district of Uganda. Several acres of crops were destroyed, leaving many families with no food. A local politician told a newspaper the elephants would be killed unless the wildlife authority took them away.

Meanwhile, researchers from Oxford University have been looking for methods to keep elephants away from farms without hurting them by exploiting something elephants naturally fear - bees.

During recent field trials in Kenya, the researchers found that a simple recording of angry bees will cause a herd of elephants to flee an area in about a minute. The research group is also developing a beehive fence. An elephant passing one of these fences would start bees flying and buzzing, scaring the invader away.

It is believed that elephants have learned to avoid bees because they can inflict painful stings inside their trunks.

It has also been discovered that elephants dislike capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers that makes them hot.

Studies conducted in South Africa have shown that a few rows of chilies around valuable crops can deter elephants from barging through. Even more effective are so-called “chili-dung bombs” promoted by the Elephant Pepper Development Trust in Cape Town. Composed of crushed chilies and animal dung, the bricks, or “bombs”, create a noxious smoke when lit and send elephants scampering away.
Click here to see the Notes to Broadcasters on Elephants

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The FRW staff enjoyed an exceptional opportunity, as we heard first-hand stories of African farmers adapting to climate change. Mr. Mukusya, Mr. Fofana, and Dr. Rachel Bezner Kerr were brought to Ottawa, Canada by a coalition of Canadian NGOs that are deeply concerned about how climate change is affecting the livelihoods of farmers across Africa. It was fascinating to learn about the effective (and often simple) techniques that farmers are using to ensure crop production in the face of increasingly unpredictable weather patterns.

Perhaps you would like to invite farmers in your area to share their experiences of adapting to climate change? Some questions you might ask as part of a call-in show or as research for a news piece are:
-what changes have farmers noticed in local weather patterns over the past several years (e.g. the time that the rainy season starts, the amount of rain that falls, the overall temperature, etc.)?
-have they made any changes to the kinds of crops that they plant or the time that they plant their crops in order to adapt to these climate changes?
-what sorts of soil and water management techniques are farmers using to cope with changing rain and temperature patterns?
-what measures are community groups taking to prepare for natural disasters such as droughts or floods?

If you develop a local news story – or have an idea for a local news story – on the subject of farmers adapting to climate change, we would love to hear about it! Please e-mail FRW editor Heather Miller at hmiller@farmradio.org to discuss how you can contribute an article to News in Review.

There are also a number of Farm Radio International scripts available on the subject of traditional crops and climate change. For example, you may wish to look at the script Choosing Crops for Drought-Prone Areas (Package 73, Script 3, January 2005) or even The Long Dry Season: A Tale of Greed and Resourcefulness, a 13-part radio drama produced and written by the African Radio Drama Association (Package 77, March 2006). Please also look for a script on fonio, a traditional grain from Western Africa, in the script package mailed to Farm Radio International partners this month.

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The article touches on a subject of interest and concern to almost all farmers – the regeneration of land that has become dry and infertile. It is estimated that some 12 million hectares of land become unusable each year. Causes include improper management, such as overgrazing, and climate change.

But as the example of controlled grazing or “bunching” demonstrates, there are practical ways that farmers can protect the fertility of their land, and even reclaim land that has been degraded. This subject was explored in the Farm Radio script Villagers use grazing system to protect their land (Package 45, Script 2, July 1997), as well as the radio drama The Long Dry Season: A Tale of Greed and Resourcefulness. You can also find numerous scripts on soil fertility and management by visiting Farm Radio International’s online archives, where scripts are sorted by subject: http://www.farmradio.org/english/radio-scripts/.

You may wish to find examples of what farmers in your area are doing to fight land degradation by:
-inviting farmers to call in and discuss their land management techniques
-speaking to farmers’ cooperatives or other agricultural experts who can explain land management techniques that have proven effective in your area.

For further information on land degradation and rehabilitation, you may find the following links useful:
-the home page for Holistic Management International: http://www.holisticmanagement.org/
-a search function on the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s website, which allows you to find NGOs working on the issue in most countries: http://www.unccd.int/ngo/accreditationDB/search.php .

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This story illustrates that simple, low-cost technologies can mean the difference between a bountiful crop and severe losses. It also demonstrates the resilience of a group of farmers against difficult odds. For every story such as this that is reported in the media, there are surely countless others that few people hear about. We would love to learn and share the stories of farmers in your area who have faced adversity with creativity and courage. Please e-mail FRW editor Heather Miller at hmiller@farmradio.org if you have a story that you would like to contribute to a future edition of FRW.

If you would like to generate discussion about these themes, perhaps during a call-in show, you might consider asking farmers questions such as:
-What pests try to attack their crops? What methods do farmers use to protect the crops? Are these methods affordable, accessible, and effective? Do any farmers’ organizations or other groups in your area facilitate knowledge sharing on pest management?
-If your area has suffered a conflict in recent years, how has it affected farmers? What have farmers done to rebuild their livelihoods and their communities?

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This is another example of how simple solutions can resolve the biggest of problems – even the problem of roaming elephants averaging 5,000 kilograms each. If you want to see for yourself how buzzing bees can make these massive beasts flee, check out a video clip on this site:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/08/animalbehaviour.worldnews

The last package of Farm Radio International scripts (Package 81) included four scripts that were developed at a scriptwriting workshop hosted by the Africa Rice Center (WARDA) in Benin earlier this year. Each of these scripts was designed to share information about a local agricultural innovation (A Local Plant Prevents Pest Damage to Stored Seeds; Powder of Little Pepper Protects Stored Rice; The Speaking Scarecrows; and New Technique Reduces Work Needed to Thin Millet; Package 81, Scripts 1-4, August 2007). When you hear about local innovations developed by farmers in your area, please share them with the FRW community by posting a comment to FRW’s online version or by e-mailing hmiller@farmradio.org.

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Thanks to social networking websites like Facebook and YouTube and instant messaging on cell phones, more people can not only consume journalism, but produce it. Welcome to the age of citizen journalism. But is it really journalism for citizens? Organisers of Highway Africa’s 2008 conference invite you to tackle these issues and more in South Africa this September.

Highway Africa, a partnership between Rhodes University and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), is dedicating this year’s conference to examining the surge of citizen journalism, from what it means to what technology best supports it, and how it can create new freedom of expression possibilities in Africa.

“Citizen Journalism, Journalism for Citizens” will also look at the challenges, such as the response of the traditional media, or how citizen journalism can affect the quality of journalism and the professionalism of trained reporters.

This year’s conference will be held from September 8-10, 2008 at Rhodes University in Grahamstown , South Africa. It is open to journalists, academics, bloggers, students, publishers and other interested media professionals.

A limited number of scholarships will be made available for participants who are unable to cover their costs. The application deadline is June 30th.
For more information, email: Highway Africa director Chris Kabwato at: c.kabwato@ru.ac.za or visit: http://www.highwayafrica.ru.ac.za or http://highwayafrica.wordpress.com/.

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The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has produced this extensive guide to radio journalism, which includes discussion on the role of journalism and practical information on preparing and airing new stories. The full handbook is available online at: http://iwpr.net/pdf/LiveFromAfricaPart1.pdf

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Farm Radio International, along with 13 other Canadian NGOs such as the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, Oxfam Canada, and USC Canada, signed a letter addressed to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, urging him to address the global food crisis at the next G8 summit, taking place in Hokkaido Toyako, Japan from July 7-9, 2008. The signatories are asking the Prime Minister to use the G8 summit gathering and subsequent international meetings to announce the following commitments: make agriculture a sector priority in Canadian aid, play a leadership role in the reform of the multilateral food/agriculture institutions, contribute to a supportive and non-threatening international trade environment, support the use of commodity agreements and food stocks to reduce price volatility, and avoid threats to food security posed by biofuel development.

To view the full letter, please click on the following link: g8_food-crisis-ngo-letter.pdf

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This week’s top story discussed the value of traditional crops and mentioned some methods that farmers use to preserve and promote traditional varieties. This week’s script, from Package 56, provides more detail about one of these methods – a community seed bank. The script explains that a community seed bank protects local crops, which may be rare or especially well adapted to local conditions, and is an emergency seed source if crops fail due to disease, pests, or bad weather.

You can also find this script online at:
http://www.farmradio.org/english/radio-scripts/56-5script_en.asp

If you air this script, you may wish to use the following companion scripts, as well. These describe how to organize people to participate in the bank, how to collect the seeds, and how to store the seeds in the
bank:
-“Starting a community seed bank” (Package 56, Script 6, July 2000)
-“Collecting seeds for a community seed bank” (Package 56, Script 7, July
2000)
-“Storing seeds in a community seed bank” (Package 56, Script 8, July 2000)

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