The Skoog Farm Journal Recommends....

I'm really excited to have some recommendations from long-time supporter of Farm Blogs from Around the World, Lori Skoog at The Skoog Farm Journal.

Some of the blogs have already been recommended, but I'm delighted to have tracked down a second blog from Africa thanks to Lori.

Here are Lori's recommendations:


Ishtar News
Esther Garvi is part of the Eden Foundation in Niger. She and her family moved there from Sweden, over 24 years ago. They believe that "the key to prosperity for the poor lie in underexploited, edible trees and bushes - the "Lost Treasures of Eden."

Bedlam Farm Journal
Jon Katz, an author and photographer, writes daily posts on the happenings at his farm. His three dogs, Lenore, Rose and Izzy, are a very big part of his life.

Food, Fun & Farm Life in East Africa
Lynda and her family live on a very productive 3500 acre farm in East Africa. Her posts offer outstanding recipes and a National Geographic type view of her country, as well as her travels.

Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
Ree Drummond, a city girl, met and married a cattle rancher. In her blog, she posts fabulous photography, recipes, home and garden information and more. The government supports them in the care of a very large herd of mustangs that live on their land.

These last two recommendations from Lori are more horse focussed than farming, so I have not added them to the blog roll - this blog is about people involved in the production of food and natural fibres - but they are certainly interesting.

The Barb Wire
Tamara chronicles her explorations of the Barb horse and more. Her photographs are exceptional.

Dream Valley Ranch
This Ranch is located in Colorado, and the owners have very generously rescued 6 dogs and 5 horses. They are very dedicated to these animals.

A big ask I know, but if you can, please help me support my time on 'Farm Blogs from Around the World' by buying, reading and blogging/reviewing my book:

A Place in My Country: In Search of a Rural Dream

It's about urban downshifting to rural England (and a bit more).

I don't take any advertising on this site but your support would help me show my wife that this blog project is more than me just pursuing my obsessive interest in all things farming/gardening/smallholding!

Please support your local independent bookshop, but (yikes!)dare I say it...

A Place in My Country: In Search of a Rural Dream (Amazon.com)
A Place in My Country: In Search of a Rural Dream (Amazon.co.uk)

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Gunmen kill WFP worker, fighting rocks Mogadishu (IHT)

Gunmen kill WFP worker, fighting rocks Mogadishu
Reuters
Friday, October 17, 2008
By Ibrahim Mohamed and Abdi Sheikh
Gunmen shot dead a Somali man working for the United Nations' World Food Programme on Friday and fighting in the capital Mogadishu killed at least 14 people.
In the latest assassination in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation, men armed with pistols attacked the U.N. employee as he left a mosque in the central town of Merka.
"We were praying inside and then rushed to the scene," local man Ahmed Salad told Reuters. "We saw the WFP official was terribly wounded and bleeding from his chest."
A U.N. source named the dead man as Abdinasir Aden Muse. "We rushed him to Merka hospital where he died after a few minutes," the source said.
A WFP spokesman in Nairobi later confirmed that a senior assistant working for the programme had been killed in Merka, but did not name him.
The attack came hours after mortar duels in the capital killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens more.
Residents said Islamist insurgents fired artillery at a base in the city's K4 area used by Ugandan peacekeepers serving with a small African Union mission.
That prompted an exchange of mortar shells and heavy machine-gun fire that lasted for several hours.
"They attacked our defence position at K4 and we chased them ... There are no casualties from our side," said a spokesman for the AU force, AMISOM.
The peacekeepers have been targeted in a string of bombings and ambushes since the Islamists launched their rebellion early last year.
The fighting has killed nearly 10,000 civilians, and eight AU soldiers -- seven Ugandans and one Burundian. More than a million people have been displaced.
Hussein Aden, a grocer at Mogadishu's main Bakara Market, said he saw eight mutilated bodies after three mortar bombs detonated nearby.
"The first one landed in front of a shop killing four people and wounding four others who were busy buying vegetables," he said.
Another blew up four children when it dropped in front of their house, he said.
Hospital sources said six out of at least 35 civilians who were injured in the clashes later died.
Ethiopian soldiers are also in Somalia supporting its U.N.-backed interim government which has struggled to impose control in the face of the Iraq-style insurgency by the rebels.
On Thursday Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said the time for his forces to leave was fast approaching, but the soldiers would stay until all 8,000 of the planned AU peacekeepers were fully deployed.
There are currently about 3,000 troops from Uganda and Burundi operating in Mogadishu.
(Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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Stakes high for South African land reform (IHT)

Thursday, October 9, 2008
By Muchena Zigomo
For those seeking to redistribute South Africa's rich farmland among landless, poor blacks, there is an uncomfortably close reminder of the dangers of getting this sensitive task wrong: Zimbabwe.
More than a decade after the end of apartheid, poor blacks in South Africa are still waiting for farms promised to them by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which sees land redistribution as a cornerstone of black majority rule.
Farmers' groups say the delays are slowing investment in agriculture, stunting the sector's growth and hampering efforts to improve the lives of poor blacks, millions of whom still live in grim townships lacking basic services.
"It's a big issue, very serious, in other countries people have even died over these issues," said Motsepe Matlala, president of the National African Farmers' Union.
In Zimbabwe, about a dozen white farmers were shot dead and many others were beaten as war veterans violently seized white-owned commercial farms in 2000 as part of President Robert Mugabe's policy of land redistribution.
Critics say this policy ruined farming as many of the landless blacks had little or no experience in agriculture.
South Africa's target is ambitious: to hand over 30 percent of commercial farmland to blacks by 2014. With just six years to go, only 4 percent has been redistributed.
In August, the government shelved a controversial land bill, which would have given authorities wider powers to seize white-owned farms, after civic and farmers' groups branded it unconstitutional and a threat to farm investment.
Since then, Africa's biggest economy has been rocked by a political earthquake. The ANC forced former president Thabo Mbeki to resign last month, replacing him with Kgalema Motlanthe, who is expected to step down after elections in April.
ANC leader Jacob Zuma is expected to win that vote, and some critics of the land bill fear it will be reintroduced when he takes office. Zuma has said land reform has so far failed to combat rural poverty or promote rural development.
Analysts say the powerful COSATU trade union federation, which is allied to the ANC and the South African Communist Party and has called for speedy land reforms, may have more influence with Zuma than with Mbeki.
The question of land ownership in Africa is ever more pertinent as the continent finds favour among foreign investors seeking to buy up relatively cheap land to answer a growing need for food and energy security.
Governments and large investment funds are scouring the continent from dusty Sudan in the north to Zambia, seeking agricultural projects for investment, although the global financial crisis may slow the flow of funds in the near-term.
STUMBLING BLOCKS
South Africa has about 13 million hectares of arable land, producing about $50 million of farm goods each year. About 9 percent of the workforce is employed in agriculture, and it contributes just over 2 percent to gross domestic product.
"Agriculture is key to South Africa's development and obviously there would be an urgent need to deal with all the issues that will put the sector onto a high growth scenario path," said John Purchase, chief executive of the Agricultural Business Chamber.
"That includes the land reform programme and the sector's strategic plan, among other issues."
The government has long said the programme to give land back to people dispossessed under apartheid will be done in an orderly, legal and transparent manner.
"We have not moved in the way that the injured parties, the blacks, would have wanted us to move," Matlala said. "But we do appreciate that those who own the land may not let go of it willingly."
Many white farmers fear the kind of violence seen in Zimbabwe, while government officials say redistribution is being held up by soaring land costs that make it expensive to buy land from white owners under willing-buyer, willing-seller deals.
They also accuse white farmers of deliberately inflating prices, while landowners blame bureaucratic shortcomings for the slow progress in redistribution.
A Department of Agriculture website projected it would cost 94 billion rand ($10.3 billion) to transfer 30 percent of the land by 2014.
"The exorbitant and forever increasing land prices in South Africa continue to be the biggest challenge and impediment for both land redistribution and restitution," said Thozi Gwanya, director-general in the department of land affairs.
The government says it has bought agricultural land at an average cost of 4,000 rand per hectare. "And that average is increasing rapidly," Gwanya said.
The average cost for land used to grow sugar cane is about 55,000 rand per hectare, macadamia about 60,000 rand per hectare and vineyards about 100,000 rand per hectare.
NO QUICK FIX
Lourie Bosman, president of farmers' umbrella group AgriSA says the government needs to be more "level-headed" in its approach to the land reform issue.
"They must take it easy," he said. "There is a political outcry about land, but there is no quick fix to this problem."
There have already been protests. Residents of a small community in Ventersdorp, in the North West province, marched in early October to protest the slow pace of resettlement.
The leaders of the demonstration threatened to invade a piece of land in the area if their grievances were not met.
AgriSA has urged the state to consider other options including focussing more on partnerships between emerging black farmers and the white commercial farmers. Some white farmers have already begun training a new generation of black farmers.
"Some of these people are getting back land which they lost more than 50 years ago. They haven't been farming for all that time and they will need help," Matlala, of the National African Farmers' Union said.
Some white farmers blame the government for the delays in redistribution, saying they will sell if the price is right.
"It's a lie to say farmers are delaying the process," Bosman said. "We have more land in the open market than the government can buy."
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/10/09/africa/OUKWD-UK-AFRICA-LAND-SAFRICA.php

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Number of people needing [food] aid in Africa doubles (IHT)

Reuters
Thursday, September 18, 2008
LONDON: The number of people living "on the edge of emergency" in Africa has nearly doubled to 220 million in just two years, a leading charity said on Thursday.
CARE International said emergency aid to the impoverished and strife-ridden continent continued to arrive too late, was short-term and policies were targeted too heavily on saving lives rather than building resilience in the population.
"The world's inaction on food emergencies has proved costly and it is the world's poorest people -- stripped of enough to eat -- who are paying the price," said Geoffrey Dennis, the charity's chief executive.
"Governments, the U.N., donors and aid agencies must take this opportunity to deliver the long-term structural reforms to the aid system that will protect the most vulnerable from emergency and build their resilience to food price rises, drought and other shocks."
CARE's report "Living on the Edge of Emergency -- Paying the Price of Inaction" is timed to coincide with a summit in New York next week dedicated to the fight against poverty -- one of the key Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for 2015.
It called for donors to fulfil existing aid commitments and then add some, focus on disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, food production and support for the poorest and make emergency aid and long-term development better coordinated.
It also highlighted the more recently emerged threats to security and welfare that have added to older woes.
Prices of staple foods have surged by an average of 83 percent in the past three years, climate change has already hit some of the poorest -- and therefore less resilient -- countries, biofuels have replaced food crops and increasing urbanization has compounded the problems.
"It is a disgrace that, despite warnings, money is still being spent in the wrong ways," said Dennis.
"Leaders at the MDG meeting must ensure that the aid system can rise to the challenge of the global food crisis or they will measure the cost in billions of wasted emergency funds and the suffering of millions of people pushed to and beyond the edge of yet more needless emergencies."
(Reporting by Jeremy Lovell)
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/09/18/europe/OUKWD-UK-AFRICA-AID.php





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Zero Tillage Farming

Two farms on Farm Blogs from Around the World that I know of are 'zero tillage farmers', Morenvale in Australia and Food, Fun and Farm Life in East Africa.


Not knowing much about this, I asked Lynda at Food, Fun and Farm Life in East Africa if she could drop me a line about this.


"Zero Tillage," Lynda wrote back, "basically means planting your crop without any form of cultivation whatsoever –you plant directly in to the earth/untouched residue plant matter (organic matter) left over from the previous season. This in turn conserves soil moisture and also allows the natural organisms in the soil to function and the soil eventually returns to a more “natural” state, which also sees a reduction in things like soil compaction.It can be likened – in it’s simplest form - to mulching your garden flowerbeds, but only on a much bigger scale!"

A Zero Tillage Planter in action

"My husband first tried Minimum Tillage farming in 2006 and quickly switched over to Zero Tillage farming as he found it to be the most effective of the two methods for him personally. He has found it to increase his yields and decrease his operating costs, when compared to “conventional” planting which involves cultivation of the soil beforehand."

A field of wheat just planted using the Zero Tillage method

There is more information on Zero Tillage, and how Lynda's husband was amongst the first farmers in Tanzania to practice Zero Tillage (also referred to as Zero Til), at Food, Fun and Farm Life in East Africa.

My thanks to Lynda at Food, Fun and Farm Life in East Africa.









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Dwindling forests pose a severe threat to Kenya (IHT)

NAROK, Kenya: Joseph Nkolia, a Maasai goatherd, pointed dismissively at two shallow pools, the only water in a parched stream west of the Kenyan town of Narok.
"It rained yesterday and look at it," he said. "Two years ago it used to flow strongly through here. Now I often have to get a lorry to bring water from Narok for us and our animals, and it costs a lot." His flock went by without bothering to drink the scant brown water.
The stream is a tributary of the Ewaso Ngiro, one of 12 rivers fed from the Mau Complex, the biggest Kenyan forest and a vital water collection basin in the west of the country.
Destruction of the woodland by rampant illegal settlement, logging and charcoal burning threatens severe damage to the Kenyan economy with an impact on energy, tourism, agriculture and water supplies for cities and industry.
A familiar Kenyan saga of corruption, illegal land grabs and the use of state resources to buy votes has destroyed a quarter of the 400,000-hectare, or 988,000-acre, forest in the past decade, with an impact that may be felt as far away as Egypt.

The Mau was broken into 22 blocks by human settlement over the past century but the real destruction began in 1997, when large plots were given away by the government of former President Daniel arap Moi to win votes in an election.
"My life will be completely ruined if I cannot get water for us and our livestock, our land will turn into a desert. We will all die," said another Maasai, Moses Mundati, standing on sunbaked ground that the Ewaso Ngiro once flowed across. As he spoke, people brought yellow containers to gather water from the narrowed river beside him.
But if the saga is familiar, the recent reaction is not.
Kenya's new coalition government set up a task force in July to reverse the destruction of the forest, which the United Nations Environment Program says could cost the tourism, tea and energy sectors alone at least $300 million.
"Such an extensive and ongoing destruction of a key natural asset for the country is nothing less than a national emergency," Prime Minister Raila Odinga said.
So drastic is the problem, the inauguration of the 60-megawatt Sondu Miriu hydroelectric project in western Kenya has been delayed because of inadequate water flow. The $260 million Japanese-financed project was designed to depend on water from the Mau and has only a small storage reservoir.
As high oil prices push Kenya to look for alternative energy, experts say water from the Mau, if it is preserved, could generate nearly 60 percent of current national capacity.
Lake Nakuru, center of a popular game park, and Lake Natron in Tanzania, breeding ground for the Rift Valley's famous flamingos, are both receding. "If we don't take action, in 10 years Lake Nakuru will be gone," said Francis Nkako, head of the local development authority.
The rivers fed by the forest's giant moisture reservoir and generation of rain also supply Lake Victoria, source of the Nile, and two other Kenyan lakes.
Revenue from tea, a leading export for Kenya, has declined while tourism, is also under threat, after already suffering a 23 percent drop because of a bloody post-election crisis earlier this year.
"This is destabilizing the environment to such an extent that it has a huge impact on economic development at a national level," said Christian Lambrechts, a forestry expert with the UN Environment Program. "It is basically a suicide process."
The government stance changed drastically this year when first the finance minister, John Michuki, and then Odinga, the prime minister, were flown over the forest. Officials say they were shocked by the huge scars in once densely wooded areas.
Officials say Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki - bitter rivals until their power-sharing deal ended the political crisis - are united on the issue. But saving the forest is likely to be painful: Lambrechts estimates there are 25,000 squatters in the forest.
"We are not going to go anywhere," said Nicodemus Yegon, one of thousands of people living in the southern Maasai Mau block who say they have title deeds to land in what officials say is protected forest. "When God descends, he will find us here."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/03/business/forest.php

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Senegalese farm shows benefits of targeted aid (IHT)

DJILAKH, Senegal: Less than a year ago, the land around this small village was parched bush pasture studded with thick-trunked, knobby baobab trees.
But over the last six months, ground pockmarked with anthills that lay hard and idle during the nine-month dry season has blossomed through irrigation into a small but thriving commercial farm, thanks to an aid project financed by Spain.
Trained and assisted by Spanish agriculture experts, 100 peasant farmers and their families have become international exporters of melons to supermarkets in Spain and Britain in a commercial arrangement with a private Spanish farm company.
"Now there's money in the village," said Amy Diouf, her baby son strapped to her back, as she stood in fields crossed with plastic irrigation tubes that drip-feed moisture to crops planted at Djilakh farm, which is southeast of Dakar, the capital.
International aid experts meeting this week in Accra, Ghana, will debate how best the billions of dollars of foreign aid pledged to help the developing world should be handled to have a direct impact on the poor, like African peasant farmers.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/01/business/melon.php

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Foodfunfarm Blog in Tanzania (Safflower, Wheat, Seed beans)

I am attempting to provide basic information by each recommended blog (location; acreage; stock, crops and fibres raised) to make it easier for people to find the sort of blog that interests them.

If you are linked on Farm Blogs from Around the World, but if this information isn't next to your link, please do drop me a line, and I will edit your link.

www.foodfunfarm.blogspot.com dropped me a line about their blog and farm, and I've edited their link accordingly.

Here's what Ivan and Lynda had to say about www.foodfunfarm.blogspot.com

The farm is situated in the Western foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro (Africa's highest peak) in Tanzania, East Africa.

The farm is 3500 acres in. size and we practice dry land farming - nothing is irrigated & we are one of the first farms in the area to practice zero tillage.

We grow the following 3 crops:

• Wheat (for supply to the local Tanzanian flour market/bakeries);


• safflower (the oil is extracted, pumped into huge bags that fill a whole container - think box wine ! - & is shipped by sea to the USA)


• seed beans (for export to Holland, also by sea). Beans have been successfully grown on the farm for around 35 years now.

It is still Winter here in East Africa and we are busy with our bean harvest. Our beans are grown for export to Holland as seed beans and are all picked and sorted by hand to avoid damage and to ensure a top quality product.

Seed beans being removed from their pods by local labour

We provide work for some 120 people during this time -all of whom are local subsistence farmers from the surrounding villages and otherwise have no other source of income.

We also let them take all the remaining bean 'hay' (pods etc) home to feed their livestock, for which they are very grateful as during the dry season when grazing is scarce, this can very often make the difference between life and death when it comes to their livestock herds. (Here in Africa, a family's wealth is judged by how many cattle and goats they own.)

Wheat being harvested.

We finished our wheat harvest about a month ago.

This photo was taken from our front veranda of a field being harvested right in front of the farm house.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY KIND PERMISSION OF http://www.foodfunfarm.blogspot.com/

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New Blog: Food, Fun & Farm Life In East Africa

So much for my holiday, a change of plans; going next week.

Which is good because I can post about Food, Fun & Farm Life In East Africa ( http://www.foodfunfarm.blogspot.com/ )

I was put onto this fascinating African farm blog by an email I received from the lady who runs it, Lynda Hayes from the foothills of Kilimanjaro, East Africa.

There she lives on a remote 3500 acre farm in Tanzania. She and her husband Ivan grow wheat (for the local market), seed beans (for export to Holland) & safflower (for oil, exported to the USA).

Several of her blog posts regularly include info on the crops they are growing and challenges they may be facing with drought/crop disease etc.

Lynda also writes about their busy planting and harvesting seasons, and the Zero Tillage method of farming (they are amongst the first farmers in the country to introduce this method) and the equipment they use for this.

Lynda's blog is updated daily and is all about farm life, gardening, pets and what life is generally like in Tanzania.

She also includes many local East and South African recipes, and all Lynda's blog posts contain photographs taken by her.

Lynda is originally from Zimbabwe & "after an 11 year career in the hospitality industry (running lodges & camps) in both South Africa and Tanzania... breathing, living & sleeping food .... I got married, started a family & moved to a remote 3500 acre farm in the foothills of Kilimanjaro, with my husband, daughter, loyal staff & an assortment of rescued pets. This blog is about my day-to-day life on the farm ... what I cook, my recipes, pets, gardening & Tanzanian life in general. So welcome - or "Karibu" as we say here ... come & sit at my kitchen table for a while, and I'll make you a nice cuppa tea and we can talk about ... food, fun and farm life !"




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African cotton farmers hope for trade breakthrough

OUAGADOUGOU: While besuited government officials slug it out at world trade talks in Geneva this week, African peasant farmers watching their cotton plants grow hope any deal will allow them to farm their way out of poverty.Subsidies that encourage farmers to grow more cotton in rich countries like the United States are blamed for flooding the market and depressing world prices in recent years, making it harder for poor farmers in Africa to make ends meet."It is the growers at the bottom who suffer," said Seydou Ouedraogo, who grows cotton near Leo, some 200 km (125 miles) south of Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou."We just want to be treated equally. It is our only source of income, and only cotton can lift us out of poverty. This is unfair competition," Ouedraogo said.At this time of year, the cotton plants here are still small, standing 20-30 cm (1-foot) tall. Their broad green leaves standing out against the rich, dark earth which has soaked up the seasonal rains of the past couple of months.
Burkina Faso, West Africa's top cotton producer, is a leading member of the Cotton-4, or "C-4" group, which has pressed World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiators to include extra restrictions on cotton subsidies in any final trade deal.The group, which also includes Mali, Benin and Chad, has had some success. Negotiators in Geneva are discussing a draft that would cut U.S. cotton subsidies by 82.2 percent -- more than the 60 percent cut proposed for other similar farm subsidies.Washington has paid out $2 billion (1 billion pounds) to $4 billion a year in subsidies in recent years to the 25,000 U.S. cotton farmers who export 80 percent of their output and account for 40 percent of cotton traded internationally around the world.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/24/africa/OUKWD-UK-TRADE-WTO-COTTON.php



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4.6 million Ethiopians urgently need food aid, Unicef says

Published: June 26, 2008, IHT

GENEVA: Some 4.6 million people in Ethiopia are facing severe malnutrition as a result of drought and lack of food, the United Nations warned Thursday in an appeal for nearly $50 million in emergency aid.
"Children are already dying, adults as yet are not," Hilde Johnson, deputy director of Unicef, said in an interview in Geneva after a visit to Ethiopia, adding that the situation threatens to deteriorate in the two to three months before the next harvest is due.
Officials have emphasized that Ethiopia does not face the kind of famine that killed around a million people in the 1980s but Johnson, who met Prime Minister Meles Zanawi, said he "100 percent shares our concerns."
The government estimates that 4.6 million people need food aid, up from 2.2 million in April, and that 75,000 children are suffering severe or acute malnutrition, Johnson said.
Even in areas where food is available, recent dramatic price hikes have pushed the cost beyond the reach of many people, Johnson said. "People are saying we have no food at home," she reported.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/26/africa/26ethiopia.php

Cocoa prices at over 20-year high

LONDON/NEW YORK: Cocoa prices surged to their highest level in over 20 years on Wednesday, adding extra pressure to global food prices, after reports of a possible supply squeeze in the world's top grower, Ivory Coast.
A report by independent analyst Hans Kilian, seen as bullish on Ivorian supplies, was the initial trigger for a fund and investor-driven surge in U.S. futures to a 28-year high of $3,122 a tonne.
In London, benchmark second-month cocoa futures hit a 22-year peak of 1,682 pounds a tonne, before closing at 1,658 pounds, up 33 in brisk volume of 5,641 lots.
Analysts said cocoa prices could rise further due to robust global demand and a tight supply outlook.
"We haven't been at these nose-bleed prices in years," said Ralph Preston, futures analyst with HeritageWestFutures.com in San Diego. "Especially with that fundamental news coming out, that's going to really light a fire under this."
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/06/18/business/OUKBS-UK-COCOA.php




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