Edited by Peggy Polk
Starting from scratch: the greening of Eritrea
New sugar cane cutter/planter lightens the workload
Ephemeral fever: time to reckon with its not-so-ephemeral effects
Why waste hay? try a tripod
The alpine farmer as conservationist
Broken hopes in Madagascar
Ridding "rodent heaven" of rats: pest control in the hen house
New hope for a shrinking sea
The life, death - and resurrection - of the Haitian pig
In brief
FAO in action
Ridge on ridge, the rugged, inhospitable highlands of Eritrea stretch in all directions, the red land scarred by sharp peaks, deep ravines and jagged craters. Narrow valleys snake among mountains; the occasional dusty road winds its way into nothing: a barren landscape, almost lunar.
But some vegetation does exist. Bushes, mostly acacia, line the main gorges and branch out into smaller gullies, like green veins in a skeletal leaf. Here and there, near villages, are rows of trees, and the glint of sun on the water of a small dam. Contour lines of terracing, almost like Asian paddy fields though not so green, are sometimes visible.
The "greening of Eritrea" has begun. It may seem a daunting project - but so was the idea of independence three decades ago, when Eritreans started their liberation struggle. At the time, few would have bet on their success, yet they had effectively achieved their goal by 1991. In elections two years later, 99.8 per cent of electors voted for independence, and the birth of the new state was officially proclaimed on 24 May 1993.
The country wasted no time tackling its serious environmental problems, worsened through decades of neglect by the pre-independence regime. Only months after their initial liberation in May 1991, Eritreans threw their energies into a vast tree-planting operation. Altogether, they planted some 27 million trees in 1992, mostly eucalyptus and leucaena. There are also new junipers and olives on the eastern escarpment that descends precipitously from the highlands to the Red Sea coastal plain, a drop of 2 000 metres.
Mebrahtu Iyassu, a war veteran who trained in soil sciences at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands and is now head of Land Resources and Environment in the Department of Agriculture, oversees the tree-planting operations from his offices in Asmara, the capital. "There was a failure rate of some 20 per cent the first year," he said. "However, this year we replanted those as well as another 23 235 000 trees. That makes a total of nearly 45 million trees in less than two years.
Tree nurseries and terracing
"To do this we set up 50 tree nurseries in 1992, and we now have 80 in all parts of the country. They are looked after by forest guards, who distribute seedlings to the local population and are responsible for protection measures. We are planting both indigenous and exotic species and are doing our best to obtain seeds from our neighbors Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan. Our reforestation program also involves terrace construction, of course. In 1992, our people built 42 kilometres of terraces, while in 1993, in less than half the year, a further 102 470 km have been constructed."
Thirty years of warfare and nearly fifteen of drought, along with depredations of locusts and army worm, wrought havoc on Eritrean agriculture, and it will take many years to win the battle against soil erosion. "We would never be able to succeed unless we had the participation of our people," Iyassu said.
"And the extent to which they take part depends on their culture and perceived needs. For example, in our highlands, people are only too aware of the lack of wood for construction and fuel, and they participate willingly in the programs."
Some 200 000 men and women are taking part, Iyassu said, but the subsistence level is so low they can't work on a voluntary basis. "In the first year, we paid people for their work by food that was supplied by the World Food Programme (WFP)," he said. "However, this year we are paying them half in cash, as we saw they are already able to produce 50 per cent of their food needs. We worry about creating dependency because self-reliance has been our motto all through our struggle."
The government has also embarked on training courses. It organizes 10-day seminars for 30 people at a time and over the last two years has trained 1 227 farmers in soil conservation and forestry. "It's a good start," Iyassu said, "but, of course, it is never enough."
The situation is different in the lowlands, where the people are mostly agropastoralists and still partly nomadic. "It is true that it is more difficult to get them aware of the need for planting trees to fight against desertification," Iyassu said. "This is natural, given their culture and traditional living style. But it is relatively easy to involve them in water programs. In 1992, we managed to construct 17 earth dams, 20 ponds and 41 hand-dug wells in different parts of the country. We have also built diversion dams in the Sahel province in the north, Barka in the west and Semhar in the east. In 1993, we had planned to construct 43 earth dams and 59 ponds, but this depended on receiving machinery that had been promised us last year as an emergency contribution for food production. Unfortunately, the machines have still not turned up although I gather they recently arrived at the port of Massawa so I hope we can soon start operating them."
Amdom Kiflemariam, another war veteran, heads the Agricultural Research and Training Centre on the outskirts of Asmara, working with a deputy who trained in the former Soviet Union. The centre has assembled a meticulously ordered agricultural library, gene bank, soil laboratory and entomology section, some of them housed in shipping containers decorated with patterns of leaves. "We used to make our experiments in those containers during the struggle," Kiflemariam said. "We had to camouflage them to protect ourselves from air attack. Then, when we were able to finally move into our capital it was relatively easy to load them onto trucks and bring them here. We are attached to those containers that have seen us through difficult times, and besides, we think they are beautiful."
Julia Rossetti
Planting sugar cane has always been arduous, labor-intensive work, and most attempts to mechanize the operation have had their drawbacks. But the Indian Institute of Sugar Cane Research at Lucknow has developed an innovative all-in-one cutter-planter that may be of great help to sugar cane growers.
The IISR two-row cutter-planter, mounted on a 35-horsepower tractor, consists of furrow-opening tillage discs and sub-units that perform sett cutting, fertilizing and chemical dispensing, soil covering and pressing operations in a single pass of the tractor.
Here's how it works:
Tilling - The discs provide important advantages. Dragging-type furrow openers may not work in hard, sticky or relatively dry soil, but discs can scour well in almost-all types of soil and moisture conditions. They have been adjusted to yield a well-tilled, pronounced and smooth V-shaped furrow.
Cutting - The cutting unit takes full seed cane of any shape and size. It cuts setts 38 centimetres long and guides 36 setts to each 10 metres of the furrow.
Dispensing - Fertilizer is dispensed through a metering unit, and gamma BHC is sprayed in the furrow through nozzles.
Covering and pressing - The setts in the furrow are covered with loose soil, compacted with the help of a tamping roller.
The slip is minimal, and the utility index of a prime mover is increased. Other data provided extensive tests at the IISR farm include:
|
· Field capacity |
0.25 hectare per hour |
|
· Number of workers needed |
6 |
|
· Field efficiency |
60 per cent |
|
· Price |
Approximately US$350 |
For further information contact: Director, Indian Institute of Sugar Cane Research, Lucknow 226002, India.
Tel. 91-522-52572 or 61673, fax 91.522-52073, telex 535-309.
Already widespread in the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, China and Australasia, ephemeral fever could be about to make its debut in Europe, where - despite its seemingly innocuous name - the influenza-like disease of dairy cattle and buffalo would deal a serious setback to milk production. In the developing countries themselves, where authorities are often preoccupied with efforts to protect herds from other dangers, scientists warn that ephemeral fever may also be causing greater losses than realized.
Sometimes known as three-day sickness, the malady's effects include stunted growth, lowered milk output and problems with livestock fertility. Most zebu breeds in Africa and Asia are relatively resistant to the infection, as are water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), which show a milder clinical syndrome. But European Friesian or Holstein type cattle imported to improve milk production in Africa, the Middle East and China over the past 20 to 30 years are highly susceptible.
First meeting
Researchers gathered at the first-ever international meeting on ephemeral fever, held recently in Beijing, warned that animal health authorities in developing countries - who give priority to fighting rinderpest, trypanosomiasis or contagious bovine pleuropneumonia - should not downplay ephemeral fever's significance.
The disease is caused by a Rhabdovirus, a virus distantly related to rabies, which is transmitted by biting insects - probably midges of the genus Culicoides. Mosquitoes are also believed involved in transmission, but not enough is known about the precise roles these insects play in maintaining and propagating the disease.
When an epidemic of ephemeral fever breaks out, up to 90 per cent of the animal population shows clinical signs in six to eight weeks. In parts of Africa, severe epidemics are often associated with periodic cycles of wet years. Where the disease is endemic, two to 20 per cent of cases occur almost every year.
Infected cattle suffer fever of 41°C or higher, usually for three days. They lose appetite, and milk yield drops or ceases entirely. The fever also causes discharges from the eyes and nose and locomotory disturbances, which may take the form of lameness in one or more limbs and muscle weakness. Often sick cattle are unable to stand, sometimes for as long as three to 10 days.
Taurine cattle breeds like the Holstein, which are particularly susceptible, show severe clinical signs. Many develop a hypocalcaemia (calcium deficiency) clinically indistinguishable from milk fever. Animals that are in full production, have the largest body frame and are in the best physical condition are usually more severely affected than poorer, thinner specimens: bulls suffer much more than one- to two-year-old cattle. Mortality directly caused by the virus is usually but not always low - two to five per cent. But mortality occurs in the most valuable animals in the herd and its significance is greater than the percentage would seem to indicate.
The biggest economic consequences are the loss of milk production and depression of growth rate. Farmers, who have made a considerable investment in expensive taurine animals, often maintain them in high-cost production systems to supply urban centres with fresh milk. An epidemic of ephemeral fever can cause production to drop to 40 to 50 per cent of the herd norm for four to eight weeks. And the effects of the fever linger. Production may never return to more than 70 to 80 per cent of what was expected during the remainder of lactation.
The effect on consumers is also dramatic when milk production fails for a six-week to two-month period, as has happened in Cairo and China.
Losses in growing beef animals are less obvious but nonetheless serious. The growth rates of heavy, well-fed animals in good condition, which are always the most severely affected, are depressed for many weeks. There is transient infertility, with some foetal loss in the early periods of pregnancy and some abortions later. Bulls are infertile for a period of up to six weeks. In a recent outbreak in Egypt, this caused considerable losses. Under range or pastoral conditions, there are additional losses due to predation of weakened animals.
Good news/bad news
At the Beijing meeting, scientists led by Dr. T. St. George of the Long Pocket Laboratory in Queensland discussed progress in fighting the disease. The good news was that they have found anti-inflammatory drugs reduce the severity of the clinical signs if cattle are treated early in the disease. Chinese veterinarians have developed a vaccine which gives promising results. The bad news was that the Chinese scientists have identified epidemic ephemeral fever as far north as the 44th parallel.
The significance of the extension to the 44th parallel is enormous. Hitherto, a natural biological barrier has existed between the 36th-and 38th-degree parallels north, beyond which ephemeral fever, African horse sickness and other Culicoides-transmitted virus diseases did not occur. The spread of ephemeral fever beyond the barrier may be an early result of global warming, or it may be that transient local climate conditions favored the insect vectors (carriers) active in that part of China. Whatever the explanation, there are important, wider implications for Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
If ephemeral fever increases its range to the 44th parallel across Asia and into Europe, millions more cattle would be exposed to the disease - and all cattle would more than likely be highly susceptible to the virus. The economic effects of periodic epidemics of ephemeral fever extending as far north as the 44th parallel right across Europe would be considerable if scientists do not devote more attention to fighting the disease.
Control of vectors that transmit ephemeral fever presents practical problems, because they can occur in very large numbers. Vaccination of target animals is better, but vaccines now available are not entirely satisfactory. Most are expensive, and many are poorish immunogens, requiring at least two injections to promote any significant level of immunity. That is why they have not been widely used in Africa and Asia although they have been used in Japan and China.
Better vaccines are needed, possibly following the lead of scientists working with rabies who have characterized the immunogenic glycoprotein of rabies, and deliver it successfully to protect animals in a pox virus vehicle. The same could be attempted with ephemeral fever, and its value as an immunogen could be tested for incorporation into a capripox or other carrier system.
Modern molecular biologists have all the technological expertise they need to overcome the scientific problems involved. And intervention strategies like vaccination are economically justified today in Africa, the Middle East, Australia, China, Japan and other parts of Asia, where quite large populations of susceptible cattle breeds and their crosses are found.
The possibility that within the next 20 to 30 years, Europe could share the problems caused by ephemeral fever should give world animal health authorities added impetus to make new vaccines and understand more of the virus-vector biology of a disease that does matter.
F. Glyn Davies
Traditional, hand-hewn hay tripods, long used by European smallholders as a cheap and relatively easy way to dry a hay crop for storage, can be useful in developing countries, where population pressure is forcing a switch from pasture grazing to the kind of zero-graze livestock systems that put a premium on intensive fodder-making.
In contrast to the simplicity of tripods, mechanical silage-making requires expensive labor and equipment to chop the crop finely enough to obtain good compaction. Conventional baling or stacking, though less costly, can also be risky if the weather changes. Tripods should be more practical than either method for small farmers, whose labor-intensive operations can include the time and care needed to load hay racks.
When the logic of this thesis was tested during the rains in Kenya recently, it stood Up well, and FAO Feed Resources experts later agreed that tripod use makes sense.
Many advantages Hanging hay on tripods keeps the crop off the ground, prevents soil moisture from rising and permits the flow of air so the crop can dry during periods between rains. Most of the rain that falls runs off the crop due to the arrangement of the stems, and once the hay is partly dried it does not re-absorb water. The drops remain on the surface of the leaves and stems and evaporate quickly when the weather clears.
The method has many advantages. Faster drying outs the loss of soluble carbohydrates that provide energy to cattle from the 8 to 20 per cent range to 3 to 4 per cent, and also saves the carotenoid Vitamin A percursors and Vitamin B1. It can prevent leaching of nitrogen and minerals and development of fungus caused by rain or dew. The limited handling of the hay - compared to turning it over several times when drying it on the soil - prevents loss of leaves, which usually provide the most nutrition thanks to their higher nitrogen, mineral and vitamin content When drying has to take place over a longer period of time than with conventional haymaking, the tripod prevents crop deterioration.
Pasture crops best suited for field drying include grasses like Cenchrus ciliaris (Blue buffel grass) or Chloris gayana (Rhodes grass) and such legumes as Lablab purpureus (Egyptian bean), Macrotyloma uniform (Horse gram), Phaseolus lathyroides and Stylosanthes humilis.
Drying alfalfa in East Africa
Tripods worked well in East Africa recently during a season of exceptional rainfall, when a surplus of alfalfa (lucerne) was going to become over-mature before use. The tripods were made from withies, or softwood prunings (see Figure); the crop was cut by hand, and he bundles were folded over the branches as In the photograph. Drying took 12 days.
During the drying period, there was one shower each day with an average rainfall of 10 millimetres, followed by periods of sunshine but little wind. During the daily rain, some water penetrated to the inner layers but evaporated as soon as drying conditions returned, as did the heavy dew that covered the outer layers each morning. The inner layers remained green for several days as the drying progressed naturally from the outer layers to the inner.
Once dry, the crop had a sweet smell with no trace of the mustiness it would have collected had it been lying on the ground under conventional haymaking techniques. The outermost layers turned brown from the effects of sun and rain, but the inner layers, particularly the leaves, remained green.
The hay was transported to the barn for storage at midday after the dew had evaporated and before the rain had fallen, taking care not to lose leaves.
As the accompanying diagram shows, tripods are easy to construct. Although this haying method requires more labor for cutting and loading the crop, less labor is needed to transport it to the barn because the dried hay is more dense than the fresh crop. What is crucial to success is the rainfall pattern and the drying power of the air between rains.
T.B. Muckle
Farmers are often accused of mining the land they work, causing irreparable damage by overcultivating and overgrazing. But this is certainly not true in the Alps. During the more than 1000 years people have farmed along the Alpine arc stretching from France across Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria and Slovenia, they've learned to balance nature's needs with their own economic requirements - because it was in their interest to do so.
"It's a simple matter of survival," says Philippe Morier-Jenoud. A mountain ecologist, Morier-Jenoud was born and raised in the quaint village of Rossinière, located in an Alpine district of Switzerland known as the Pays d'Enhaut (High Country). "Over the centuries," he says, "mountain farmers have learned to look after their land while respecting the laws of nature. Otherwise they would never survive. If a farmer does not respect the carrying capacity of his pastures or if he harvests too much wood, soil erosion, landslides or avalanches might wipe him out."
But now this equilibrium between farmer and nature is threatened in the Swiss Alps by technology, traffic, tourism and sports. Intensified agricultural techniques doom the rich diversity of Alpine flora and fauna. Watercourses change and slopes are destabilized as forests are cleared to build ski runs, resorts and roads. The air is polluted by the millions of cars and trucks that roar down Swiss highways every year, many in transit between France and Italy. One thing has not changed. Switzerland's farmers are as crucial to the Alpine equation today as at any time in their long history.
Cattle are the mainstay of Alpine farming. They were introduced to altitudes above 1 000 metres by monks, who in the 10th century began colonizing the more remote valleys. From them evolved a simple form of agriculture adapted to the slope of the meadows and contours of the fields carved from the forested mountainsides. The monks and lay farmers who followed rotated hardy crops like rye and barley while putting their cattle to pasture on "alpages" that gradually crept higher on the mountainsides until the Alps had been transformed into a mosaic of forest, meadows and high pastures.
Milking "white gold"
In the 14th century, mountain farmers realized they were milking "white gold" from their cows. Pasturing on lush Alpine grasses, the cows produced an abundance of milk that could be easily stored and transported if turned into cheese. By 1312, the valley of the Sarine, where Rossinière is situated, had a cheese market centred at Gruyère. By the end of the 16th century, rounds of Swiss mountain cheese were being exported to Geneva, Zurich, Lyons, Paris and Frankfurt. Today, they are sold worldwide.
Cheese-making became the economic base for Alpine farmers, transforming their way of life - and the landscape. The annual cycle of agricultural activity centred around dairy herds. Pastures were regularly groomed to eliminate unwanted bushes and inedible plants. Each spring, the previous summer's manure would be spread to enrich the soil. In early August, meadows were mowed to produce fodder for winter.
Distinct varieties of flora and fauna moved into the pastures and meadows. Today they are still populated by birds like the red-crested shrike, hoopoe and small owl, which have disappeared from the plain, and by rare kinds of orchids, butterflies and medicinal plants such as arnica, calendula, alchemille alpine, thyme, gentiane, millpertuis and plantain.
In the late 19th century, two factors combined to threaten the labors of 900 years. The forests became timber mines, supplying wood for heating, building and the expansion of Europe's railroad network. And the great surge in industrialization caused entire farm families to migrate from the mountains to the cities.
Risk of erosion
The delicate Alpine mosaic created over almost a millennium had tamed nature's excesses, giving a new equilibrium. Now people discovered that if they did not maintain their labors they risked a cascade of natural calamities. "Once a pasture is abandoned, there is an intermediary period before it returns to a forested state, when the tall uncut grasses become more slippery than regularly mowed grass," says Pierre Hunkeler, secretary of the Vaudois Nature Protection League. "With unkept pastures the possibility of erosion increases dramatically. Depending on the degree of the slope, this leads to a danger of avalanches and mud slides." Erosion set in with a fury toward the end of the 19th century. The effects were so terrible that in 1902, Switzerland passed a law protecting its forests.
One-quarter of Switzerland is still covered by Alpine pastures and meadows. If properly used, they have up to 70 different sorts of grasses and flowers growing in them. If too intensively exploited, they degrade and become erosion-prone.
"Pastures have to be carefully managed for long-term results," explains Ami Nicolet, a farmer from Yvorne. "Manure must be spread each year and the bad plants uprooted. Otherwise the land deteriorates very fast. Pastures are biological workshops. They must be kept in good working order to maintain a healthy mountain agriculture. They are only ours in trust as we must pass them on to our children."
Nicolet puts his herd to pasture on the mountains around Leysin, a tourist resort located high above the eastern end of Lake Geneva. He and his family move their 30 cows up to the pastures each year in mid-June. With the early frosts of October they bring them down again to the lower slopes around Yvorne. The Nicolet family has been practising this kind of transhumance for 30 generations.
Changing patterns
But Nicolet is the first to admit that over the last 20 years farming methods have changed again and economic patterns have shifted. The recession of the 1960s caused more mountain pastures to be abandoned, and the farmers who remained were forced to produce more. The Swiss government subsidized road-building throughout the Alps to promote tourism and give work to mountain people.
One result is that practically all cowherders' chalets are accessible by road. "Now farmers go to the high pastures each summer with their families. Making cheese, once the domain of male cowherders, has become a family occupation," Morier-Jenoud says. "Many chalets have generators and electric milking machines, motorized manure spreaders, hay mowers and bailers and large electrically cooled milk basins for skimming off the cream. With Alpine roads, a farmer no longer needs to engage extra seasonal help. He can manage both his mountain pastures and fields in the lowlands simultaneously, going up and down between the high pastures and main farm in the valley in the same day."
Morier-Jenoud is aware that modern technology is a mixed blessing and wants to see the use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides regulated. But he believes mountain farmers are naturally protective of their environment. "Twenty years after saturating the plain with chemical fertilizers, the salesmen came to the mountains with their 'fast fertilizers.' The higher up the mountainside you go with these chemical mixtures, the more devastating their effect. They produce wonders for two years, and then they kill diversity. If there are 70 plant species in a pasture, seven or eight will thrive on fast fertilizers and kill off the rest. It takes years to re-establish the balance. Farmers were quick to recognize the danger," he says.
In the 1970s, the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature and the local branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) created a biological label and brand name for ecologically benign products - Bourgeon, French for the buds on a tree branch. "The farmers of the Pays d'Enhaut prefer to use traditional processes for making cheese. They refrain from employing certain types of fertilizers and insecticides in order to market their cheese under the Bourgeon label. This enables them to sell their product at a premium," Morier-Jenoud says.
Swiss authorities recognize that while some intensification of mountain agriculture is required for farmers to keep in business, the use of chemicals must be limited. But they've learned that too much legislation tends to irritate farmers and produce top-heavy bureaucracies. The answer is a new self-regulating instrument currently in use in 10 of the 23 cantons with the highest percentage of Alpine pastures. It is a simple contract between the canton and the farmer. The farmer voluntarily agrees to refrain from using over-intensive methods and potent chemicals and, in return, receives a modest annual subsidy.
This system, pioneered by the Swiss League for Nature Protection, has been successful. It leaves to the farmer to decide whether to resist the fast returns promised by over-intensive use of his land, thereby maintaining the soil for the benefit of future generations, or risk being wiped off the mountainside by the angry forces of nature.
Robert Hutchison
In the middle of the road a squatting man leans over a pothole, scooping up water with a tin can and pouring it into a plastic pail. Further on, three children slowly and carefully collect water from holes in a track where eroding tar has left a pattern that looks like torn lace. It has rained the night before, and that is providential in this dry region of southern Madagascar between Tuléar and Ranohira where there are no rivers, no wells and no springs.
The 482 000 people living in the nine most disinherited districts of Madagascar are the poorest of the poor, surviving on kernels of corn, but they have hopes for a better future. They don't yet know that their hopes will probably be dashed. Due to budget constraints, the water pipeline they've been hoping for likely won't be built.
The UN Development Programme was forced in June to cut its budget for Africa by a quarter. UNDP field workers have been informed and are appealing the decision, but if they lose some 30 micro-projects will be cancelled with US$1.1 million in investments lost. Fifteen schools won't be rehabilitated, 10 health centres won't be built and 25 wells won't be dug. Water purification systems and three small dams will be cancelled as will five cattle vaccination centres, six markets and two forest rehabilitation projects. Nearly 300 000 days of work and thousands of permanent jobs will be lost.
And the children will continue to drink the water from the holes in the track.
Dominique Hoeltgen
When people designed poultry houses, they unintentionally created a near-perfect environment for rats, as well as birds. Offering food, water and shelter, the hen house is a virtual "rodent heaven," to which pests migrate from nearby fields and buildings. Once on the premises, their high reproductive rates and the absence of natural predators prompt a population explosion. In India, for example, 196 rodents were retrieved per 1 105 square feet of floor area in one poultry complex (nearly five per square foot) and 292 rodents per 3 600 square feet in another; in California 3 000 rats per 30 000 square feet - and in Kuwait 8 738 mice were counted on a single poultry farm.
Figure
Table 1
|
Disease |
Agent |
Rodents implicated |
|
Fowl typhoid |
Bacteria |
Rats |
|
Avian paratyphoid* |
Bacteria |
Rats, mice |
|
Salmonellosis* |
Bacteria |
Various rodents |
|
Pseudotuberculosis |
Bacteria |
Various rodents |
|
Fowl cholera |
Bacteria |
Rats, mice |
|
Erysipelas |
Bacteria |
Mice |
|
Newcastle disease* |
Virus |
Rats |
|
Laryngotracheitis |
Virus |
Rats |
|
Ornithosis* |
Virus |
Rats, mice |
|
Toxoplasmosis* |
Protozoa |
Various rodents |
|
Coccidiosis |
Protozoa |
Rats, mice |
* Can also be transmitted to man by rodents and chicks;
The results of such infestations, for farmers, are pernicious: rodents prey on birds, gnaw and weaken structures, and transmit diseases to bird and farmer alike. Fortunately, there are ways of coping with the problem, and poultry raisers in developing countries should know them. The first step is to examine the pest and analyse the problem.
Meeting the enemy
Three species of commensal rodents predominate on poultry farms: the roof rat (Rattus rattus), also called the ship, black or house rat; the Norway rat (R. norvegicus), and the house mouse (Mus musculus). Wild species of rodents that invade poultry farms are the Indian mole rat (Bandicota bengalensis), Indian gerbil (Tatera indica), soft-furred field rat (R. meltada), also in India, B. bengalensis in Thailand, Apodemus agrarius in Denmark and Meriones sp. in Kuwait. The populations of wild species fluctuate according to the food and harborage available, predator numbers, agricultural operations and environmental factors like rainfall, flooding and temperature in the fields around the farm.
By their burrowing, nibbling, gnawing, feeding, defecation, urination and extensive nocturnal movements, rodents disturb the farm environment and damage poultry production and health. They kill chicks, attack older birds, causing scarring and injury that affect poultry feeding, growth and egglaying, and damage eggs in storage.
Rodents are also formidable competitors for feed, which accounts for about 50 to 75 per cent of the total running cost of a poultry farm. They prefer to eat the best items - the cereal grains - and what they don't eat, they often spoil, spilling and contaminating feed and ruining the bags in which it is transported and stored. With less feed left for poultry, the birds' feeding, growth and egg and meat production suffer.
Rodents also cause severe damage to buildings, wooden doors, windows, insulation and electric wiring. The extensive burrowing of the Norway rat and some field species can undermine foundations and floors. The roof rat attacks not only thatched grass and wooden roofs but also modern polystene and plastic foam insulations.
Rodents transmit sometimes deadly diseases to poultry (Table 1) and - directly or indirectly - to humans. They cost farmers millions of dollars a year in losses and expensive chemotherapy and vaccination of flocks. Some outbreaks decimate a flock, while chronic diseases lower production and quality. The higher the rodent density, the more vulnerable farm workers become. Several die from rodent-borne Weil's disease every year. The N.D. virus of the Newcastle (Ranikhet) disease infects man as well as livestock although its symptoms in man are entirely different from those in birds. Bacterial food poisoning infections like Salmonella sp. are transmitted to man through infected eggs and meat.
Rodent control is more difficult on poultry farms than other livestock operations. No single method is 100 per cent effective, and all are short-lived because the abundance of food and shelter help rodent populations build up again rapidly. What works best is integrated rodent management.
Fighting back
Few poultry houses are designed to keep out rodents - especially in developing countries. Lacking facilities and funds, farmers do not make regular repairs or provide rodent-proof storage for feed and eggs, and they let ground waste material accumulate. When a poultry house has a soiled floor and a thatched roof, it also has a large rodent population.
Table 2
|
Efficacy of rodenticide baitings in poultry farms | |||
|
Rodenticide |
Concentration |
Bait material |
Efficacy (percentage) |
|
Zinc phosphide |
2.0 |
Poultry feed |
100 |
|
|
2.0 |
Millet 2% sugar + 2% oil |
80-100 |
|
Warfarin |
0.25 |
Liquid bait |
45-50 |
|
|
0.25 |
Ready-to-use bait |
11-32 |
|
Brodifacoum |
0.005 |
48% wheat flour + 48% maize flour + 2% sugar + 2% groundnut oil |
56-97 |
|
|
0.005 |
Ready-to-use bait |
34-100 |
|
|
0.005 |
Jhangora (Ecinocloa frumentacea) |
|
|
Bromadiolone |
0.0005 |
Rice flour + pulses + oil + sugar |
70 |
|
|
0.005 |
Same as above |
84-87 |
|
|
0.005 |
48% wheat flour + 48% maize flour +, 2% groundnut oil + 2% sugar |
89 |
|
Bromethalin |
0005 |
65% corn meal + 25% rolled oats + 5% sugar + 5% corn oil+ 2% sugar |
31-100 |
|
Zinc phosphide trap |
2.0 |
Millet + 2% oil+ 2% sugar (follow-up after seven days) |
88.07 |
|
Zinc phosphide-zinc phosphide |
2.0 |
Millet + 2% sugar + 2% oil (follow-up after 54 days) |
93 |
|
Brodifacoum-brodifacoum |
0.005 |
46% wheat flour + 48% maize flour + 2% sugar + 2% groudnut oil (follow-up after seven days) |
89 |
Well-maintained rodent-proofing should include blocking or plugging all unnecessary openings, sealing cracks in walls and floors with mixtures of concrete and cement or mortar, installing metallic sheeting around the edges of wooden doors and windows, and storing feed in metallic bins or gunny bags stacked on pallets in rodent-proof rooms.
Good sanitation reduces the sources of food, water and shelter for rodents. Pests are discouraged when the farmer clears away anything in which they can rest, hide and build nests, regularly disposes of garbage and sewage and removes weeds and grasses in and around the farm. The remaining rodents can be trapped or poisoned.
Trapping is the safest and most convenient active control technique. Live-capture devices like the Sherman, Wonder and box-type traps can cut the rodent population by 65 per cent and more. Cumulative-catch Wonder and box traps can catch several rats at a time, especially roof rats, which live in social groups. Other traps have their limitations. Kill traps such as snap and glue traps can kill birds as well as rodents and cannot be used in chick and layer houses under the deep litter system of rearing birds. Glue traps are generally better at capturing mice than rats.
Success depends on the season, the number of traps set out and whether the rats have already had experience that makes them trapshy. Trapping also works better. when there is a large rodent population than when there are only a few scattered rats and mice. Setting out many traps for a few days catches more rodents than a few traps for many days.
Using chemical rodenticides is risky because most are toxic to poultry as well as rodents. Birds pecking on the carcasses of rats poisoned with zinc phosphide will also be poisoned, and rats may spill and spread poison baits in feed stores and poultry houses. Birds as well as rodents eat cereals, which makes it difficult to find rodenticide baits that will attract only pests. Paraffin rodent, bait locks, in which cereal baits are embedded in paraffin wax, may keep out the birds, but study is needed to determine whether they will attract all species of rodents and how birds will respond to paraffin-bound rodenticide baits that rats may spread.
The best way to poison rodents is to put the rodenticide in closed bait boxes, which keep the bait from spilling, contaminating poultry feed and spreading. They also attract more rats to the poison bait than do the hazardous, unprotected bait traps.
When to bait
Tests of rodenticides in different bait formulations (Table 2) show that when food in the forms of hoppers, eggs and chicks is abundant, rodents are less apt to consume poison. Rat control operations work best when birds have been sold, the poultry house empty and the rodents are at their most active.
Acute toxicants like zinc phosphide result in quicker knockdown of rodent population than anti-coagulants like warfarin, brodifacoum and bromadiolone. They act rapidly after a single feeding, and the farmer can retrieve the carcasses of the dead rats easily at predictable times. Anti-coagulants take three to 15 days to kill so that most rats die in concealed places, and finding their carcasses is more difficult. Some act only after the rodents have fed on them for several days in succession, so an acute poison like zinc phosphide is best when rodents are abundant and competing food makes it difficult to get them to the baits.
Two per cent zinc phosphide in powdered or small grain (like millet) baits are 80 to 100 per cent successful and reasonably safe. Pre-baiting with poison-free baits for several days increases the chances of success. To avoid bait- or poison-shyness, a course of zinc phosphide bait treatments should be attempted only once every two to three months.
Second generation anti-coagulant rodenticides like brodifacoum and bromadiolone also kill 50 to 100 per cent of rodents after a single feed, and Vitamin K provides an antidote when needed. But the rodents begin to die only after three to five days of poisoning.
Whichever method the farmer chooses to kill large populations of rodents-trapping or baiting - he should switch to another to catch the remaining trap- or bait-shy rodents.
(Editor's note: The leaves of Gliricidia sepium, a fast-growing leguminous tree widespread in the tropics, are also an effective anti-coagulant poison that kills rodents and insects but is not toxic to livestock or humans. For more information see Ceres No. 140, pp. 9-10.)
C.S. Malhi and V.R. Parshad
Drs. Malhi and Parshad are zoologists at Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana, India, associated with the All India Coordinated Research. Project on Rodent Control.
Five former Soviet republics have joined forces with the World Bank to mount an enormous agricultural development program aimed at confronting one of the worst environmental disasters of the century - a legacy of drastically mistaken Communist agricultural planning. Meeting in Washington earlier this year, representatives of the affected republics, donors and global development agencies agreed to undertake a high-priority project to save the Aral Sea and arrest the spread of deserts around its relentlessly shrinking shores.
Reclaiming the inland sea will require collaboration by scientists of many disciplines and cost billions of dollars. But the know-how exists, and investment capital should not present an insurmountable problem for the Central Asian countries. Although Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are economically underdeveloped and desperately poor, they hold vast untapped reserves of oil and natural gas that promise a wealthy future.
Although the Aral Sea project is probably the largest and most crucial effort of its kind in the former Soviet bloc, it is not unique. Research and development in desert reclamation and arid land management are of major concern in countries where free discussion of local environmental disasters often caused by greed and industrial mismanagement was suppressed until recently. So much importance is attached to the subject throughout the region that when a symposium on soil resilience was held recently in Budapest, it was the Hungarian head of state who opened it.
The Aral Sea, once the world's fourth largest lake, has been shrinking since the early 1960s when the Soviets began diverting water from two rivers flowing into it to irrigate cotton and rice fields. The water level has dropped by about 15 metres, salinity has tripled to 30 grams per litre and the surface area of the lake has shrunk from 68 000 square kilometres to about 37 000.
Disaster spreads
As the ground water level of the shore dropped the process of desertification began, affecting hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of land once designated by Soviet planners for intensive agricultural production. The dried lake bottom became a source of salt and dust storms. Herbicides and pesticides washed into the water over the years ended up in the air, posing a health hazard of catastrophic proportions. The spreading disaster is blamed for significant recent increases in the incidence of leukaemia and liver and kidney diseases and the highest mortality rate ever registered in the 35 million population affected by the crisis. As huge lakelands, bogs and forests in the river deltas dried up, hundreds of species of animals that once thrived in them disappeared. The Aral Sea used to support a productive fishing industry, but only one of its 14 species of fish survives today - and it is not commercially useful.
Perestroika began bringing environmental concern out into the open, and before its collapse, the Soviet Union commissioned missions to the stricken area by the United Nations Environment (UNEP) and Development (UNDP) Programmes. The rescue plan now under preparation is based on the experts' conclusions. Their reports also laid the foundation for a broad new regional accord, which has made the international project possible.
The Washington meeting produced agreement on the need to prepare an environmental assistance program aimed at stabilizing the water levels of the Aral Sea, planning and managing the water resources of the affected rivers and building the scientific, economic, social and administrative institutions essential for sustained progress. The program will also include short-term schemes to improve the living conditions of the local population. FAO, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other top research and training institutions will be called on for assistance. Initial investment may well come from the recently established Global Environment Facility, and generous development assistance is expected from countries as far afield as New Zealand and Canada.
Jaroslav Valek, a UNEP specialist who has studied the Aral Sea region since 1990, says soil salinization is the most urgent problem. The furrow irrigation systems used on cotton farms in the basin saturated the soil, dissolved salts and brought them to the surface. When the surface water evaporated, the salts were left on the soil and became more and more concentrated with each inundation. Rains then washed the salts into the sea's tributaries.
Different crops and irrigation techniques could prevent further salinization. New cotton hybrids have been tried with some success in countries like Zimbabwe, where good cotton is grown in relatively dry areas, and one hybrid developed by Soviet scientists requires only two periods of irrigation per year rather than the four needed by the varieties most often planted now. New irrigation systems would be more costly but offer great improvement. Micro-irrigation, which carries a small amount of water to the base of each plant, uses less water and avoids unnecessary soil saturation.
But Valek says the real key to progress lies in institutional reform. The Soviet-run collective and state farms of the region were traditionally paid for water used rather than water conserved, and enterprises building irrigation canals were remunerated according to the volume of earth they removed. This created an incentive for canal-building and water consumption. In some cases, canals were built but the agricultural developments they were intended to serve never materialized. The canals are still there, carrying precious water flowing into the desert - monuments to a monumental mistake.
Thomas Land
Between 1978 and 1982, every domestic pig on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola - which includes both Haiti and the Dominican Republic - was killed to prevent an Outbreak of African swine fever from spreading to the rest of the Americas. The slaughter, insisted upon by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), ended the outbreak - but it also rendered an old-fashioned breed of pig, unique to the island, extinct.
This spelled disaster for peasant farmers. They not only lost their well-adapted local pigs, but the modern breeds brought in on the advice of the USDA to replace them failed to thrive on peasant farms.
Then a group of French scientists saved the day. By crossing traditional breeds from three continents, they have re-created a peasant pig, which is doing well in Haiti and will soon be introduced to the Dominicans.
Incurable disease
African swine fever - an incurable, highly contagious viral disease endemic to Africa and occasional in Europe, but absent from the Americas - was accidentally unleashed on Hispaniola in 1978 when pigs in the Dominican Republic ate pork scraps from a meal served on a flight from Europe. The fever spread rapidly across the island, and pig producers in the U.S., Mexico and Canada feared it would reach the mainland.
If it gained a foothold it could have cost US$560 million in the U.S. alone. It might have taken a decade to wipe out the fever, while farmers lost US$300 million a year in pork exports. To avert this disaster, the USDA, in agreement with the two island governments, undertook to eradicate the virus.
In Europe, outbreaks of African swine fever are controlled by isolating and | slaughtering infected herds, but the USDA decided it was necessary to slaughter every pig on the island to be sure the virus was gone. The impact was enormous. Pigs in Hispaniola, as in many developing countries, are a "bank" for the poorest farmers. They eat scraps and turn them into meat. They produce piglets the farmers can sell to pay school fees or raise money for a wedding. And in Haiti, the sacrifice of a black pig is central to the Vaudou religion.
People tried to hide their pigs from the slaughtering teams. Haitians tell of women who stuck hollow breathing-straws up a pig's nostrils and buried it. Dominicans mourned the loss of the traditional pork dishes at Christmas. The slaughter left a scar on everyone's memory.
The impact went further than the loss of the money and protein pigs supplied for rural people. Farmers in Haiti had no more use for the mangoes that had served as pig-feed. Needing a new source of money, they sold their mango trees as charcoal, which added to Haiti's already extreme deforestation. Farmers replaced their pigs with goats, which nibbled young trees, exacerbating deforestation still more.
The USDA, working with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), an arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), pledged to give Hispaniola back its pigs. Officials promised even better pigs than Hispaniola had had before - and that was the problem.
The original pigs of Hispaniola were descendants of medieval European breeds carried by pirates who preyed on colonial shipping in the 17th century. The pigs that escaped the pirates' barbecues were little and tough. They could eat the high-fibre, low-calorie food available on peasant farms and live off their fat when food was scarce. The USDA decided to replace them with the big, efficient products of modern breeding - the Yorkshires, Hampshires and Durocs that are familiar throughout Europe and North America. They are very efficient at converting feed into meat, but this efficiency has a price. The big modern pigs must be fed rich food that is low in fibre and high in calories if they are to thrive. They need regular washing, clean water, and housing with washable flooring. They need medicines. All that is beyond the means of poor farmers on Hispaniola.
The new arrivals fared differently in the two countries. In the more prosperous Dominican Republic, more than half the farmers could afford the housing and feed the new pigs needed. With all pig diseases wiped out along with African swine fever, the wealthier Dominican farmers emerged with healthy, modern stock.
But in Haiti, nearly all former pig owners were too poor to buy special pig-feed or medicines. It was surprising that any of the grimmels, as the Haitians called the white American pigs, survived, but of the 400 000 pigs the IICA brought into or bred in Haiti between 1980 and 1986, about half did. They and their descendants are now owned by the few Haitians, such as schoolteachers or tradespeople, who can afford them.
Measuring around the new Haitian breed's girth gives a rough estimate of weight
No help to the poor
The poorest Dominicans and most Haitians still had no pigs.
Then in 1983, French livestock experts working in Haiti decided to re-invent the old-fashioned pig of Hispaniola. They proposed to the Haitian government a cross of three breeds. The new breed would be half descended from the Guadeloupe pig, a piratical cousin of the old Haitian pigs. The other half would be a mix of two breeds, the ancient Gascon pig of France, which might also have been among the pirates' stock, and the Chinese Meishan. The experts were especially excited by the Meishan, which is extremely prolific. It is ready for breeding when it is three months old rather than the usual seven months, and it produces 18 piglets per litter compared to the 14 of most modern breeds and the two or three of the old Haitian pigs. It has more teats for feeding its brood and can thrive under the hard conditions of subsistence farms.
Initially, the Haitian government and the USDA were reluctant to admit French pigs, fearing they might carry European diseases - perhaps even more African swine fever. So scientists working for the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) delivered piglets by Caesarean section and maintained them in germ-free conditions. The scientists built a germ-free breeding barn at Tomassin near Port-au-Prince, and in 1986, they brought in germ-free piglets of Guadeloupe and crossed Gascon-Meishan descent. By 1987, they were ready to distribute Guadeloupe-Gascon-Meishan pigs to Haitians.
Farmers were ecstatic. Not only did the little creatures look like the pigs they had before, they also produced more piglets - an average of 5.6 per litter even when malnourished, thanks to the Meishan's influence. Best of all, they were black. Pigs could once again be used in Vaudou ceremony.
Descendants of the French pigs now account for 250 000 of the 650 000 pigs in Haiti. The pigs were even more successful than the numbers indicate. The IICA brought in or bred three times as many grimmels as the French did during their breeding program, and yet there are now only 1.6 times as many grimmels as French pigs in Haiti.
The French scientists plan to introduce the breed to the Dominican Republic soon. They will cross it with the only pig on Hispaniola untouched by the fever - the cimarron. Like Hispaniola's lost breed, the cimarron escaped the pirates, but remained wild in dense mountain forests. The cimarron will add to the genetic variation in Hispaniola's pigs, which is already considerably greater than it was before the plague struck.
Debora MacKenzie
· Le Rif, a lively new monthly publication devoted to Algerian agriculture and rural life, has made its appearance in the form of a tabloid newspaper. The first issue included articles on the "possibilities and limits" of cereal production in the North African country, a "demystification" of poultry farming and the nutritional value of lentils as the "beefsteak of the poor," a study of Saharan soil and a three-page history of Algeria in comic strip form. The price is 10 DA an issue. For subscriptions contact: Le Rif, 8 rue Bensegar Mohamed Cherif, BP 613, Constantine, Algeria. Tel. (213-4) 940055 or 943868.
· A new mammal discovered in Vietnam's Vu Quang Nature Reserve last year is so unlike any other known creature that it has been given a genus of its own. It is the Vu Quang ox Pseudoryx nghetinhensis in the family Bovidae, which includes cattle, goats, antelopes and goat-antelopes. This is the first new genus of a large mammal to be discovered in 50 years. Although it looks like the Arabian oryx, DNA analysis has shown the mammal is more closely related to oxen. Since a joint Vietnam Ministry of Forestry/World Wildlife Fund (WWF) team first recovered three sets of the animal's horns, Vietnamese foresters have found another 20 specimens, including three complete skins. Scientists believe several hundred of the oxen still survive in the nature reserve near northern Vietnam's border with Laos.
· Mikhail Gorbachev has gone green. With the help of a US$1.5 million grant from the Netherlands, the former Soviet leader has set up the International Green Cross (IGC) to create new energy in the environmental movement and encourage "decisive action by world leaders" on environmental issues. Launched in Japan, IGC will operate out of Geneva, the Hague and Moscow. "My conviction is that the state of the environment should have absolute priority above all the other problems facing us today," Gorbachev said. "We need an environmental revolution."
· Horse logging is still a good idea - even in highly industrialized countries, according to Prof. P.F.J. Abeels of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Horses, he says, can carry out thinnings and other silvicultural treatments at reasonable cost while minimizing damage to the soil and trees still standing. In a paper describing the equipment and techniques for horse logging, Abeels writes that design, application and maintenance of the harness are crucial, and so is training of the horses. Many of the principles he states could also apply to oxen and elephants. For a copy of the report write to: Prof. P.F.J. Abeels, Unité de Génie Rural, Faculté des Sciences Agronomiques, Université Catholique de Louvain, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
· The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) is paying tribute to a Colombian scientist by naming a new variety of disease-resistant bean after him. CIAT said the Secretariat of Natural Resources in; Honduras is releasing the experimental line DOR 482 as the Don Silvio bean to honor Silvio H. Orozco on his retirement from CIAT. The red bean has a high yield. resists the bean golden mosaic virus that is a threat to beans in Central America, matures early and tolerates bacterial blight. Orozco, an agronomist and bean breeder from Colombia's Cauca Valley, worked on the prize-winning CIAT project that has produced a series of DOR varieties resistant to bean golden mosaic project for Central America.
· Belgium has become the first European Community country with an environmental tax. The Belgian government is taxing sales of eco-unfriendly packaging, including disposable items like bottles, paper, plastic razors and batteries. Chemical manufacturers and other affected industries called the tax a catastrophe, but the government noted that half of all household garbage comes from packaging. Its aim is to make manufacturers think twice about how they present their products.
· Indian farmers are making money out of weeds they used to spend thousands of rupees to destroy. The magazine Panos reports that farmers in Uttar Pradesh weave baskets out of the stems of the lantana weed to package the bumper harvests of tomatoes they have been producing since building bunds and sinking wells in the barren Tejpura area of the Jhansi District. There is no competition from wooden crates because the district is treeless, so a family of three can earn US$4 to $5 a day by turning out 25 baskets a day for the tomato-growers.
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FAO CONFERENCE CONVENES |
The 27th session of the FAO Conference, meeting at FAO headquarters in Rome, November 6-25, has as its first order of business the election of a new director-general to succeed Edouard Saouma of Lebanon, who is stepping down after serving three six-year terms starting in 1975. Other agenda items include approval of a Program of Work and Budget for 1994-95 and a Medium-Term Plan for 1994-99, admission of new members to the 159-nation Organization and discussion of major trends and policies in food and agriculture. The Conference, which meets biennially, is FAO's governing body. |
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FAO STUDY LOOKS TO FUTURE |
FAO originally issued its global study, Agriculture: Toward 2000, in 1987. An updated and amplified edition in five languages, carrying the study through the first decade of the coming millennium, has been prepared for presentation to the FAO Conference. In Agriculture: Toward 2010, FAO explores the prospects for world food and agriculture, including fisheries and forestry, over the next 20 years from the standpoint of two major issues: food security and sustainability. In the view of the document's author, FAO economist Nikos Alexandratos, the world as a whole has made progress toward food security, but undernutrition remains because poverty prevents people from buying enough food and it is not reaching all the hungry. Some 800 million people - 15 per cent of the world population and 20 per cent of the population of all developing countries - suffer from chronic undernutrition. In sub-Saharan Africa it is 37 per cent and in individual countries the percentage is still higher. There appears little prospect of improvement before 2010. For further information, contact: FAO Distribution and Sales Section, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy. |
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CHECKING THE CONSEQUENCES |
It took massive spraying of pesticides to control locust plagues and grasshopper infestations in West and North Africa during the 1980s. The cure has worked imperfectly, but at what cost to the environment? Will the chemicals have disastrous long-term effects on the ecosystems of the Sahel in general and on natural enemies of locusts and grasshoppers in particular? FAO and the Crop Protection Directorate of Senegal are winding up an ecotoxicological research program (ECLO/SEN/003/NET) that seeks to answer those questions. The LOCUSTOX Project began in October 1990 with funding of US$1.6 million from the Netherlands. By developing screening methods for environmental risk analysis in African conditions, the project sought to establish the level of environmental stress from which the Sahelian ecosystem cannot be expected to recover and to recommend the types and dosages of specific pesticides that are least harmful to the system. |
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HELP FOR THE HIGGLERS |
A project in Jamaica (GCPP/JAM/016/NET) is helping hillside farmers and itinerant peddlars, known as higglers and runners, to reap greater gains from the harvest. The project involves 700 farmers and up to 100 small traders in the upper watershed of the Rio Minho in Clarendon Parish of Central Jamaica. The aim is to reduce loss between harvesting and marketing and to improve handling and marketing by better storage, transport and packaging of the vegetables and other local crops. |
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CROSSING CONTINENTS |
In a new departure in FAO's People's Participation Program (PPP), a PPP group in Zambia arranged to travel to Asia to exchange notes with members of a PPP project in Sri Lanka. PPP projects are designed to demonstrate the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of a bottom-up, small-group approach to building self-help organizations for small farmers. Exchanging visits helps PPP groups work out common problems, but this is the first attempt to build PPP links between regions. The Zambia project, begun in 1983, covers three districts in the isolated Western Province and reaches 2 298 farmers in 200 self-help groups with a strong focus on women and food production. The project in Sri Lanka began a year later in three districts of the Central and Northwest provinces and covers 2 220 farmers in 220 groups. It includes such income-generating activities as food processing and handicrafts. |
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COMPUTERIZED PLANNING |
FAO's Policy Analysis Division is offering a new computerized system for agricultural planning and policy analysis at government level. Called K2, it is an expanded version of the widely used Computerized System for Agricultural Population Planning Assistance and Training (CAPPA), developed by FAO in the mid-1980s. Like CAPPA, K2 will provide a flexible framework for organizing and analysing agricultural statistics and constructing scenarios simulating alternative policies in specific country situations. But it also will serve as a tool for economic simulation and diagnosis and for evaluating the impact of policies on the sustainability of agriculture and natural resources. The K2 software will be available in early 1994. For further information, contact: F. Viciani, Chief, Training Service, Policy Analysis Division, FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy. |
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LAND USE IN BOTSWANA |
An FAO/UNDP project under way in Botswana (BOT/91/001) is helping the southern African country to make better use of its land. Because information and technology were not reaching farmers, Botswana's crop and livestock productivity had been low. Its land had become vulnerable to drought, its soils and vegetation degraded and its rural people - who make up 75 per cent of the population - condemned to poverty. The project, which will run to the end of 1996, takes a bottom-up, cross-disciplinary approach to the problem. It offers workshops for district decision-makers and extension agents and channels research findings to the farmers' groups most likely to benefit. And, through land use planning, it is opening up opportunities for investment projects and for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to help rural communities implement programs designed to improve their lives. |
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IMPROVING ARUBA'S CATCH |
The government of Aruba in the Caribbean wants to develop its fishing industry, and an FAO/UNDP project (ARU/90/002/01/12) is helping by providing the resource, economic and technical data the island state needs to draw up a plan. A fisheries economist/planner and a master fisherman have been assigned to work in Aruba for 18 months, recommending fishing gear for use on underexploited fishing grounds, demonstrating the effectiveness of the gear and teaching local fishermen how to use it. They will also decide what boats and gear are needed to exploit the pelagic fishery in the rougher waters within Aruba's economic exclusion zone (EEZ). |
