Agroforestry in temperate climes

This blog came out of the (short) walk I did two weeks ago (see last blog). It seemed to merit its own space.

I tend to think of agroforestry as a tropical thing: vanilla pods being wound up coconut trees, while coffee and cassava mature in the shade. OK - perhaps I am mixing my agro-ecosystems up here – but you get the picture! On a recent walk in Belgium, I came across agroforestry in action in the temperate north – a place where I wouldn’t expect it.

It was an orchard on the estate of the Hulp Chateau where they were growing rare and endangered varieties of fruit trees. The powers of globalization - sucking in exports from European countries where labour is cheaper – and wanting uniform products delivered on specific dates - means that Belgium has lost 80% of its orchards and the apple and pear varieties grown have been decimated. This site is preserving those species endangered by hyper-commercialization - but actually does much more.

It marries conserving rare apple and pear (and other fruit) trees with a low intensity grazing regime. As such it has a number of synergies. The cows keep the grass short (no need for spraying agrochemicals or mechanical controls) and also fertilize the soil – recycling its nutrients. Having grass cover prevents soil and nutrient erosion.

It was a real treat to see this lovely, vibrant, orchard with the cows grazing contently underneath the canopies of the trees. So different from the tightly packed rows of miniaturised trees (bred thus for easier picking) standing on bare soil - that pass for orchards these days. It’s a shame that there was no visible sales point. I’m sure the juices from this orchard taste delicious.

Such approaches don’t need to rely on CSOs or NGOs. Driving down the back roads from Halle to Bruxelles earlier in the summer I passed a farm where there were cows grazing and chickens pecking in an orchard. I did a three point turn and went back to find the farmyard. ‘Can you sell me a chicken?’ (I fancied an organic roast that weekend) No, they don’t sell them (they probably keep them for themselves and their neighbours). But they did have potatoes and eggs for sale. Ah well that’s good enough. A ‘tortilla á la paysan’ was on the cards. It was good to see traditional farming practices still in place 20km outside of Bruxelles – and no – they weren’t organic - it was just the way they learned, and like, to farm!

Travels in Asia: week 11: Kampot / Kep

This one has taken more than a week to write:

Kampot: A (French colonial) provincial capital. One could almost imagine walking onto a set for Camus' 'l'etranger', except its not so dusty. But it was incredibly hot. And as soon as you left town and hit the dirt roads it got very very dusty. The river meant cool breezes in the morning and evening but stepping but in the afternoon was hotter than anywhere than had been in SE Asia. I'd been there four days and hardly seen anything out of walking distance from my hotel. A bout of (sort of) flu) (one of my fellow hotel guests helped greatly by asking me if I had ever had dengue fever) and a batch of work put paid to that. So I decided to slip it all into one day and do the 'grand tour.' The problem was that the grand tours on offer are designed for two or more people, so I had to discussion to get a reasonable price.

My taxi driver picked me up at 0845 and we headed for our first stop, the salt fields just outside Kampot. This is one of the poorest communities in the area (some people at my hotel were working at schools so had an idea of the social geography) and it felt kind of wrong and awkward to just turn up and take photos and not put anything into the community. Harvesting salt seems like very hard work, is largely seasonal and the workers have very little control over 'the means of production'

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We then went onto visit an impressive (though not easily photogenic) limestone cave and an impressive pepper and durian plantation. Kampot used to be world famous in France for its pepper production and retains that reputation today. It actually has a geographic designation - presumably dating back from colonial times.

The best (and worst) bit of the day was driving along all the back roads looking at the smallholder agriculture as we went by. My tuc tuc driver was into food and every time we passed a new crop he told me what it was. This evolved into a kind of game with me trying to pre-empt him. He didn’t know the English for marrow and there were a couple of squashes (growing on trellises) that we didn’t recognise. At a couple of points we stopped the tuc tuc and went out into the field to have a closer look.

We passed morning glory (two varieties: the wild local one that grows in ditches. and the cultivated Chinese variety), maize, tomatoes sugar cane, chillies and lettuces. People were obviously growing these on a market gardening scale rather than just for home consumption. There were pigs, ducks, chickens and cattle (though the later looked very malnourished). The blessing of water became obvious. Settlements with irrigation had their second paddy crop planted, had green and fertile plots, more livestock and the villages were more densely inhabited with better quality buildings. Water – source of all life. Everywhere we went to children screamed out ‘hello, hello’ at see a farang pass.

But the journey was also a curse in that the roads were dusty and bumpy and I was felling a bit weak after my bout of flu and didn’t appreciate being flung around in the back of the carriage. So I was kind of glad when we got to our destination: Kep. Famous for its crabs and beaches. It was once the Cannes of Cambodia and its tree lined white chalk beaches are probably the most beautiful I have ever seen – anywhere - ever. It also feels like a ghost town. Being the Cambodian bourgeoisie’s favourite watering hole the Khymer Rouge were particularly ruthless in razing it to the ground. There are burnt out villas and vacant sea front lots all over the pace. Perhaps the beauty of the place makes it all the more poignant. The beach was quite simply the most beautiful that my pinkies have ever squeaked on. I was tempted to spend a few days there – but the ghosts of the past seemed too close and to still infect the town. One day I hope it will arise from the ashes It surely has the potential to be one of the finest resorts in South east Asia

Knowledge systems part 2

Back to work this week – although there is more admin to do than actual work. There’s one journal article to edit – about the factors that influence Ethiopian farmers decisions to adopt improved varieties of potatoes (IVs). The formal research system spends a lot of resources developing new higher yielding and disease resistant potatoes– but only 23% of farmers in the survey have adopted them – and only then on a small scale (on some 20% of the land that they use for growing potatoes). So why such a low adoption rate? The factors are complicated but they include the perception that the IVs require adopting more difficult management practices but mostly that there is more market demand for the local varieties, which have better stewing qualities. I have heard the same stories in relation to maize in east Africa – where farmers prefer the flavour texture and colour of traditional varieties. (With maize the issue of hybrid varieties – which need to be purchased every year - and the need to purchase more inputs also play a role).

So what are the implications of this? The Ethiopian Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) is largely driven by the goals of food security – which means increasing yields and disease resistance. Farmers want a market for their produce – and the two sets of goals are not well-aligned. One solution to the problem suggested by the authors is to involve farmers more in the AKIS, making it more participatory than at present, so that farmers’ voices influence development objectives and research priorities. They also suggest that the AKIS makes more use of mobile phone technology (>66% of these farmers have a mobile!) to communicate their messages.

Farm visits

One of the lovely things about going to agricultural conferences is the field trip. On this trip we visited a 100 ha goat farm, making cheese and selling goat meat, a therapy farm where monks from the Benedictine tradition make organic herb tea mixtures and a 1000 ha farm rebuilding on the abandoned infrastructure of a soviet collective farm. All organic of course. Afterwards we were treated to a feast and folklore evening.

The goat farm runs 500 goats on about 100 ha of land. The goats free range and the farm grows on the male kids to six months when they are slaughtered for meat (many farms will kill the male goats at birth). They try to let the goats display as natural behaviour as possible including not dehorning or them or castrating the male ones. (This is an important principle in organic farming - which is not just about not using pesticides or fertilisers). They also keep a few geese around the goat sheds which help control some parasites that affect the goats. I've heard of companion planting before (see below) but never companion herding!

Our second visit was to a therapy farm in the heart of the forest. Its a newly established venture though, judging by the age of the apple trees in the orchard, the land has been cultivated for some time. Here the monks and the people in their programme (with drug or alcohol addictions who want to - but don't very often- go clean) grow about fifty varieties of herbs and gather about the same amount (plus wild mushrooms) from the surrounding forest. They produce tea mixes, organically certified and apparently quite a well known brand name in Lithuania. Two things of interest (to me) from this visit: one was their use of companion planting (see second photo) using hosters to attract slugs away from their strawberry patch. This made me think that the Benedictines have several hundred years worth of gardening knowledge (predating industrial farming) and were one of the earliest groups of literate people in Western society. Their written texts will go back 500 years, so I bet that they have a few organic techniques tucked away in their libraries (research project anyone??). The second interesting feature was their solar drier. While they purposefully cultivate their gardens manually, they are not against employing modern technology in their processing. This dryer - with a surface area of 1400 square metres generates almost 50Kwh of electricity and is used to dry the herbs. Probes, sensors and software are used to set the system to get the tea mixtures down to the desired level of humidity - at which point the system is turned off (it probably turns itself off) and a new batch is loaded. An interesting mix of tradition and high-tech - and a delicious lunch to follow.

Our final farm visit was to an industrial scale organic farm, based on the ruins of an old soviet collective farm. They've renovated parts of the infrastructure and got some rather state of the art farming kit (see second photo), courtesy of European Rural Development funding. They have 1000 ha (technically two farms of 500 ha each as the Lithuanian government has just passed a law forbidding farms larger than 500 ha in an effort to prevent land grabbing/speculation/consolidation) where they grow buckwheat and peas in a simple rotation (on very sandy soil) - which are largely exported. With such modern equipment they must be the envy of the neighbours - which is probably why they have had to resort to putting a chain link fence around their diesel tanks and installing two very fierce Rottweilers to guard it. I guess that solves the problem of a 'leaking' diesel tank

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We ended the day at a village just a kilometre or so from this farm. All clapperboard houses and pretty gardens, a nationally recognised cultural monument. A night of feasting and folklore was arranged in their village hall a garage converted into the village hall for the night. They proudly showed a film about their local village traditions (weaving, singing and folk music, traditional baking, a communal sauna, bath-house etc). We were treated to a wonderful display of folklore traditions dancing and singing and a feast of local foods (preceded by speeches by the local mayor, district development co-ordinator, head of cultural affairs etc., etc. etc.). The village clearly pulled out all the stops to make 100 or so guests representing most European countries feel welcome.

The film about the village that we were shown at the start of the evening also spoke proudly about the modernisation of their village which has a clinic, a library with books and a fire engine, yet as the evening wore on and mother nature exerted her call, it also became clear that the village lacked flush toilets as one had to use a wooden outhouse. (I suspect it also lacks piped water as every house had it's own working well). Ecological indeed, but perhaps uncomfortable in the freezing depths of winter. While not unused to using dry toilets it came as surprise to me to be in a village less than two hours drive from a modern European capital city where facilities that most Europeans take for granted are not available. Lithuania experiences a double brain drain - from the rural areas to the cities and then from the cities to other European countries (it has lost more than 10% of its population to migration in the past twenty years). One wonders how many of the boys and girls who put on the dancing display for us this evening will still be in the village in five years time.

Knowledge systems

I recently edited a special edition of Farming Matters on the subject of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). This is a new way of growing rice that relies on leaving more space between the individual plants enabling them to create more and stronger tillers and roots and be much more efficient in their uptake of water and nutrients and solar radiation. It also uses using a wet/dry irrigation regime (as opposed to flooding the paddy fields permanently with water). I don’t want to explain the whole agronomic system here – interested readers can read more about it here. The result is a crop that is far more resilient to droughts, pests and diseases. It is also interesting for farmers because it means buying less seed, using less irrigation water and can give higher yields: a doubling to tripling of yields is not uncommon and Sumant Kumar, a peasant farmer in Bihar State, India, recently achieved a world record of 22.4 tons /hectare of paddy yield using the system. Of course there are downsides to it to. It is very labour intensive during the planting season – when the plants have to be individually transplanted from a nursery (instead of broadcasting seed), it’s complicated to learn and it runs against practices that farmers have employed for generations, if not millennia. Farmers need to see the system in practice to be convinced of its value and that means some farmers need to be willing to be pioneers - experimenting with and showing it off on their own farms (or parts of them).

That issue of Farming Matters was full of success stories from around the world – which makes one think that SRI could be highly interesting from the point of view of addressing world hunger. The more so since rice is staple crop in many of the countries with a high level of malnourished people (including India, the country with numerically the most malnourished people). What is interesting to me is the role that knowledge systems have played in this process. SRI was invented by Henri de Laulanié, a French pastor working in Madagascar in the 1960s (some say he might have learnt it somewhere else). It has mostly been disseminated and supported by NGOs and farmers organisations – and is now practiced in most rice producing countries around the world.

The letters page (which is twice as long as usual) in the forthcoming issue of Farming Matters contains a somewhat heated debate about the role that the official agricultural institutes (particular the CGIAR and IRRI) have supported, been indifferent to or actually tried to suppress this new technology. It’s hard as an outsider to know the full facts of the case – but it is impossible to ignore the rivalry between formal and informal knowledge sectors. The latter accuses the former of ignoring or suppressing a system that doesn’t conform with received knowledge and the theoretically understand mechanisms about what promotes plant growth, while some in the formal knowledge system argue that the claims made for SR are insufficiently documented (and by implication perhaps exaggerated).

SRI does not rely on high yielding varieties (hybrids or GMOs and does not require high levels of fertiliser input. These were the factors that were responsible for the high levels of growth in yields during the Green Revolution (until they hit diminishing levels of returns – both in terms of yields and profits – because of the rising costs of inputs). But, years later, these are the factors that the formal agriculture knowledge institutes continue to focus on. SRI seems to work on different principles, though these are still little understood- but the idea is that phenotype characteristics play a bigger role than genotype ones (which have dominated research for more than forty years). This could suggest a need for a fundamental rethink (a ‘paradigm shift’) in the focus of agricultural research. The debate suggests that reluctance to engage in such a paradigm shift could mean that formal knowledge institutes are impeding progress.

Yet this paradigm shift needs not only to be intellectual but also institutional and this for perhaps three reasons. First there is a huge difference between agricultural praxis on research stations and that in farmers’ fields. The former are well equipped with machinery, access to seed, other inputs, credit and are knowledge intensive. Such resources are rarely available in sufficient quantities or at the appropriate time to resource poor farmers in ‘low potential’ areas: the ones who are closest to drifting into poverty and malnutrition in bad years – and thus those who most need support if global hunger is to be effectively addressed. (There is a tendency for knowledge institutes to focus on well-endowed farmers in high potential areas – as it is assumed that these farmers have the highest growth potential and thus can contribute more to the aggregate global food supply).

Second, the priorities of researchers and of farmers are very different. Even the most idealistic researcher dedicated to using his/her knowledge to feeding (or saving in some other way) the world soon learns the reality that career progress is largely (if not exclusively) based on the number (and ‘citation index’) of peer reviewed journal articles. This is what builds their reputation and more pragmatically a large determinant of future funding for them and their departments / institutions future funding. But research has to be repeatable and testable to be credible and it is much easier to repeat and test research in the lab-like conditions of a research station than in the field where all sorts of exogenous factors can disrupt the experiment. In this sense it is less attractive for researchers to engage in devising undertaking the context specific research that development agencies say is necessary to address hunger issues. Different farming communities work in very different ecological, economic and cultural situations. These situations may change from year to year. Also farming communities are rarely homogenous – there are different groups within them: men/women farmers with sufficient/limited access to land water or credit and those who are interested in farming and those who do it as a default occupation as there are few other options. So to work in such situations researchers not only need to know the technical aspects of agronomy – but the anthropological ones concerning the structure and values of the community(ies) they are working with. This takes time and involves a lot of communication and trust building, something that generally can’t be achieved within a 2-3 project funding window.

I’m not sure which of these is the critical factor (if there is one single critical factor). Expanding the training of researchers so it is broader and less focused on technical aspects, revising the criteria for evaluating researchers professional development and having longer funding periods could all help to reduce the large gap that currently exists between knowledge systems and farming praxis. Addressing these issues seems fundamental if we are to make more progress in reducing the hunger and poverty experienced by many marginal farming communities and giving them a chance to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. It is not just a case of throwing more money at the agricultural knowledge system (however chronically underfunded it may have been in recent years).

Thinking about food

As the day rolls to a close I am starting to think about food and what’s for supper. I fancy a trawl at the supermarket and loading up on indulgences. But I have already overspent this month and there are some eggs and mushrooms in the fridge, some home grown potatoes (red and white) that a friend gifted me last time I was in Wageningen and a couple of chicken breasts and some fish steaks in the deep freeze, together with some ice cream. I won’t go hungry.

Other people’s realities are different. Much of my work focuses upon farming, agriculture and food security and contrasts the ‘haves’ with the ‘have-nots.’  I‘d like to quote three articles that have crossed my desk in recent months.

1.     The “global food crisis” is often presented as a shortage of food in relation to a growing population, yet such a simplistic definition pays little attention to the origins, perpetuation and deepening of the crisis. A more detailed observation shows that this “crisis” is in fact a paradox: millions of people experience hunger and are malnourished, while the world’s agriculture systems have the capacity of producing enough food for more than 12 billion people (Tristan Partridge – article in the forthcoming edition [2011/3] of Farming Matters -ILEIA).

2.        Industrial livestock production demands more concentrated feed and this requires intensive fertilisation which damages the climate. This further exacerbates the global food situation, since arable land is being used to cultivate animal feed rather than food for people: 40 percent of the world's grain harvest is fed to livestock, while one sixth of the world’s population goes hungry. (Anita Idel – forthcoming in article in Ecology and Farming - 2011 no.4)

3.       The food system has created a society where we have 1.5 billion hungry and malnourished people and an equal number of obese and overweight people.  People have been recently complaining about increases in food prices – but the reality is that in the west only 8% of average family incomes go on food.  One report recently suggested that it might be as low as 3% in Switzerland (Interview with Hans Herring - Ecology and Farming - 2011 no.3). 

 Three clear messages – all of which can be backed up by exhaustive scientific evidence:

1. the world produces enough food to feed everybody
2. much of that food goes to feed livestock for protein rich diets
3. obesity (largely as result of b)  is as much of a problem as hunger.

I think I’ll gladly eat those eggs, mushrooms and potatoes tonight and tomorrow maybe hit the onions, miso and lentils.  Individual responsibility is one step but we also need collective action to realign our global food system - and that is much harder to mobilise. How do we get there????

This seems a particularly appropriate post as the photo at the top of the page was taken from the roof of the FAO (United Nations' Organisation for Food and Agriculture) HQ in Rome.

  

Keep the lantern bright - keep food upon the table

I have been composing a blog (more of an essay really) about food and values. It's on about the third draft. Then today I saw this short documentary about slave labour on the Costa del Sol - it's where our winter fresh vegetables and salads com from. Fair Trade anyone?

Organic spirit?

I recently saw this product in my local supermarket. It looks 'green' - organic compost with all the moisture taken out. You buy a 600g block and can rehydrate it to make 9-10 litres of compost - clearly saving transport costs (and GHG emissions). But it is made from coconut husks - which means it comes from somewhere (sub) tropical. One of the potential problems with export led organic agriculture in the tropics is the danger of mining nutrients from fragile soils. Organic farming works by (re)cycling nutrients - as opposed to importing synthetic ones. If you are exporting nutrients you also need to import them (e.g. through grazing livestock or using the right kind of trees or shrubs that can tap into nutrients locked deeper in the soil that would otherwise be unavailable). To start exporting humus as secondary product (presumably after the coconuts) seems to fundamentally undermine this principal and to jeopardise the sustainability of the farm ecosystem.

On serendipity

Last week I finally got to the bottom of the jar of sun dried tomatoes that has been sitting in my fridge for well.. a long time. It seemed a pity to throw all the oil away so I put the jar next to my stove. A day or so later I deceided on an omelette - plain and simple and to cook it in oil infused with tomatoes. The result? One of the tastiest omelettes I ever eaten - simple, light, fluffy, yet imbued with the unmistakeable taste of mediteranean tomatoes. Who says gourmet cooking always costs time and money?

The Road to Copenhagen continued

Here's a link to the conference in the Hague about adaptation to global warming that I went to last month (the plenary session report is written by yours truly). At this moment I am hoping and praying that world leaders will come to realise that the common cause is greater than narrow sectarian interests (see Sarah's comment on my last blog entry for what could so easily be achieved).

Much of my work in the past year has been focused on climate change and, to a lesser extent policy and scientific input into Copenhagen, and so I feel a strong emotional attachment to the outcome of these negotiations. I don't think that a global conference has ever attracted so much attention and I also have an intuitive feeling that if these talks break down (and there is no commitment to producing a plan b) that the legitimacy of the whole system of global governance will lose its legitimacy. This could have major knock-on repercussions.

Today I read readers' comments on the Guardian about the negotiations and realised how few readers of this, one of the UK's most progressive mainstream newspaper, have any sense of optimism in the possibilities of global governance. So many readers believe that the world system can't be changed. I agree with them that there are huge inequalities in the world - but unless we are prepared to start addressing them through responding to this common threat, then we have no future on this planet. A society that does not believe that it has a future rapidly falls apart and, as the best placard I saw from Copenhagen says, there is no planet b.

Chance took me took another conference in the Hague this week, this time in the press rooms of the Dutch Government. This one was to celebrate 25 years of LEISA an organisation I have had the pleasure to work with, on and off, for more than seven years. LEISA has been documenting practices in Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture for twenty five years and advocating the use of approaches that are locally relevant (culturally, ecologically and economically). Such approaches are often more productive, and acceptable to small scale farmers, than high-tech intensive farming methods, which are often unaffordable to small farmers, harm ecosystem functioning and often fail under sub-optimal productive conditions. After the ballyhoo at Copenhagen about emission targets and adaptation funding dies down, the real work of adapting the world's food systems to the effects of climate change will begin. Hopefully there will be some money to help this process. Agriculture is responsible for something like 30% of global CO2 emissions (when one takes upstream and downstream effects, such as fertiliser production and distribution into account) and is the economic sector that will have to make the biggest changes to adapt to climate change. In Uganda the 'coffee line' (the altitude at which it is economically feasible / possible to grow coffee) is moving upwards in response to increased temperatures). In Nepal the same true is true for apple trees. Such changes will bring about local resource conflicts and endanger world food supplies (similar stories could be told about staples such as rice, maize and wheat- though these are more related to the lack of agricultural biodiversity bought about by reliance on just a few hybrid varieties). Our civilisation, and its values, rely on agriculture - to feed all the fashion and web designers, counsellors and even firemen and doctors who make up our societies today. LEISA and its followers are a good starting point for establishing a people and planet friendly agriculture.

Possibly more on this topic to follow but I have a pressing deadline ahead.

Feed the world, feed yourself

Blogging has fallen way by the wayside recently. There’s lots of reasons for that – but the main one has been that I’ve been out of my depth with a writing project. Last November I was commissioned to write a report about the huge challenges that climate change and the global food price spike pose for African smallholder farmers. The commission fit with my strategy of trying to do at least one intellectually challenging project a year- and one that directly contributed to the common weal.

It went pear-shaped from the very beginning. The week after I signed the contract the pound collapsed by about 30% against the Euro. Despite professing willingness my contractors couldn’t find the extra funding for me to attend a state of the art conference in Addis Abada (not a “jolly” – though I have never been to that part of the world- but a chance to get engaged with the networks of people engaged in these discussions). I also realised I was dealing with a group of stakeholders with quite divergent views about the opportunities for addressing these challenges and that it was important to see them all. So in middle of December I did a whistle stop tour, traveling the length and breadth of England, on cold, wet and windy days, to visit all the stakeholders to catch their takes, their experiences and key messages. We had a stakeholder meeting in March in which the terms of reference were rewritten and some additional funding offered.

I realized how out of my depth I was in terms of the nuances of emphasis of what the donor community should be doing, the role of NGOs and lobby groups, the extent to which African governments and international research and finance institutes are contributing to solutions or just perpetuating their own budget lines and legitimacy. The world of development aid is a complicated one, full of organizations innovating and /or trying to justify their existence. Add on to that the whole world of UN joint task forces, private philanthropists (e.g. the Gates Foundation whose African budget now exceeds that of USAID) and pan-African initiatives (which also often reflect very different views- with those of say South Africa and Nigeria being very different from those of, say, Chad or Mali) and the whole framework of organizations seeking to address climate change.

I hit information overload. For a few weeks I was unable to process all this information into a coherent set of arguments. And, because my livelihood is dependent on producing a coherent report, this created a second level of stress – about how to pay the bills this (last and next) month. At the insistence of my line manager I submitted a second draft today. It only contains 80% of what I think should be in it – but there is a huge sense of relief about getting another set of eyes to look at it – criticize it if need be –and getting the project finished. I feel I have gone well beyond what I was paid to do – but when I am doing something that I think is going to help save the planet (and/or maintain my intellectual reputation) I go well beyond the bounds of what is reasonable effort (possibly more about self exploitation and how to avoid it to follow later).

This past month I have canceled a lot (not all) of my social engagements because of the stress this project engendered. These next two weeks I am going to chill a bit- do some light editing work – catch up with some admin, some of those missed engagements and try to live up to my goal of spending at least an hour a day outside of buildings and urban spaces.
It's the end of semester here in Wageningen. it feels the same way for me too. Feel like I have submitted an (unfinished) PhD. It's a useful reminder of what many of my clients must go through before they submit texts to me.

Days in the life

I recently joined one of the local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Schemes, de Nieuwe Ronde. You pay an annual subscription (175E or so per adult) and can harvest whatever you want of the in-season vegetables, fruits and herbs that they have available. I volunteered here one afternoon a week over the first two summers that I was in Wageningen- so this feels like a bit of a homecoming. This year I will probably only help occasionally - but it will be healthy to get out of town and into the garden once a week or so and get back in tune with what is seasonally available.

In the first weeks of May there was only asparagus, spinach and rhubarb - but over the coming weeks more delights will come on stream. Harvesting requires a little more organisation than picking bags from the shelves at the supermarket. You need at least two carrier bags; one for the leafy crops, another for the root crops (if you mix the two you spend ages washing the soil off the leafy crops) and some plastic boxes if you want to harvest berries. A sharp knife helps gets a good clean cut on leaf crops. I also like to take my camera and record the changing seasons. This week was a school holiday so there was an informal scarecrow making workshop too.

It's good to rekindle a feel for where one's food comes from, to pull potatoes out of the ground, pick strawberries and wait for the first leeks. It ties me back into a sense of seasonality and reverence for nature, providing a welcome contrast to living a life mediated by portals and browsers. More photos and maybe some seasonal recipes to follow in the coming months.





Wednesday nights is open platform at one of the bars in the ground floor of the student flats. The talent (musical) there is usually of a very high class, the clientele (and performers) very international and English is the language of choice (which makes for a much more relaxing evening out). These Filipino guys (below) play almost note perfect version of Beatles' ballads. And when the evenings over the drummer doesn't need a van (or to be sober) to get his kit home- he just loads into a bakfiets (a sort of delivery trike) and cycles home

Keep the lantern bright, keep food upon the table

These last weeks I have been occupied with writing - professionally - and this has sucked out any energy that I might have for whimsical blogging, about the weather or why my local flock of geese should be served with ASBOs. I'm preparing a research / advocacy document for a group of UK NGOs involved in promoting smallholder farming in Africa. It's extremely bizarre to be writing about such things when snow is falling from the sky. It's hard to get my head around drought when it hardly ever stops raining or snowing, or around hunger when the biggest challenge of my shopping week is getting my hands on some fresh coriander at this time of year.

The development world is very introverted and has its own internal discourses and a whole range of acronyms. I often feel like an outsider trying to get my head around the names, mandates and aspirations of all the intergovernmental (and non governmental) advisory committees and the hundreds of agencies and think tanks, with varying degrees of influence, different positions and constituencies.

There's a bit of a battle going on in the development community these days, particularly over the future of farming in Africa. There is widespread acceptance that substantially more resources need to be focused on African agriculture. These resources will probably materialise - after decades of shameful neglect. What is at stake is how they should be spent.

There are those who argue that a massive increase in productivity is required to feed the billion or so hungry Africans and that the best way to achieve this is by intensifying production through conventional means (high yielding varieties - including drought resistant GMOs- fertilizers, stronger market linkages etc.). This implies focusing on areas (and groups) that show high potential. Others, (including my clients) argue that using "off-the-shelf" technologies will not solve the problems of hunger and poverty, which can only be effectively addressed by strategies that build on local capacity, both ecological and social. Indigenous knowledge, farmer experimentation and empowerment, agroecology and conservation and organic agriculture are the key words for this group. And of course there are also numerous intermediate positions.

It's a fast moving debate. Last week Shivaji Pandey, the Director of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation's (FAO) Plant Production and Protection Division (PPPD) endorsed Conservation Agriculture (CA) as an essential tool in the world’s struggle to meet the growing demand for food and feed, alleviate poverty and protect natural resources. This week the United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) strongly endorsed organic agriculture as one of the most promising options for Africa to meet these challenges. (Do you see what I mean about the abundance of acronyms in development discourses? Will anyone sign up to Treaty On the Non -Proliferation of Acronyms? It could be known as TONPA).

One aspect of the speech by the Secretary-General of UNCTAD, Supachai Panitchpakdi, who launched this briefing is worth sharing. He said "A billion people in Africa go to bed hungry every night - a sign of the permanent food crisis facing the continent. How can a world that raises millions of dollars to rescue financial institutions tolerate such a situation?" How indeed? There's two questions there. One is how we tolerate it. The other is what we can do to change it.

My first step to changing it was to go higher tech, to install Skype on my PC and to make it work. I needed some information for this report from a contact in Zimbabwe and the e mails were not getting through. There is a slight feeling of dislocation between cause and effect.

Feed the world

Kofi Anin was in town today to open the new academic year at the University - the ex UN Secretary General himself. A huge publicity coup for a small town with an agricultural university. There were cops and broadcast vehicles and all the media circus you might expect . He was giving a talk about food, agriculture and development. I didn't get an invite (obviously I should network harder), but then neither did any of the friends I called who do work for the university - invites were restricted for the elite of professors and upper tier of administrators.
I want to find out what he said about food and agriculture. There is quite a war of brains going on about how the world can feed itself. Sustainable agriculture or GM foods? That war goes on in the university too. Is the future of food going to rest in the hands of a few multinationals or in learning with poor peasant farmers about how to improve their productivity? What' s the official line this year and what are the grassroots feelings?

Special offers

I notice that there are a lot of special offers on crates of beer in Dutch supermarkets this week. I suspect that they and the breweries went into over purchase / production mode last week in their enthusiasm to meet demand for another (rare) ocurrence of Dutch binge drinking. I also noticed this week that the students are looking remarkably shaky on their bikes in the morning. But this is the end of the academic year so perhaps that's not so unusual.

I recently discovered that a new Lidl store has opened close to Wageningen. Normally I avoid discounters, but Lidl also do quality, especially their beer and bread. They are a German chain and these are two of the things Germans do best. I hesitate about buying their meat because I suspect it is hugely factory farmed. One of the more tempting product lines that they offer is musky squid. How can any red-blooded fella turn his nose up at that? It was good with sweetcorn, peppers and pasta. But - last night I didn't wash the dishes before I went to bed and this morning I had a 9.00 appointment and I came home this evening to find my kitchen smelling like a whorehouse after a "buy one, get one free" offer.

Other good things at Lidl? Well they had goose breast- which is really rare to see in the NL - and perhaps I should have laid in one or two for my next seduction dinner (whenever that may occur) although I didn't because the possibilities at the moment seem quite limited. And their Valdepenas (at about 3 Euro a bottle) is very drinkable.

My god, I have just done a blog about shopping. Next week I'll be comparing Gucci with Versace (not). BTW. If you want to offend a Dutchman this week offer to buy him a (triple)vodka.

Ch-ch-ch- changes

Today I wrote one of the mst difficult letters (e-mails) of my life. A few months ago a leading publishing house invited me (a propos de rien) to submit a proposal for a book (on organic farming –OF). I was deeply, deeply flattered. It was something I had been looking for for seven years or more. But I was also quite perturbed, it would mean a lot of (almost certainly unpaid) solitary work behind a PC and in libraries, unless I could rustle up some substantial funding from somewhere (and I found my track record with funding proposals to be less than re-assuring).

So I have prevaricated for the past several months (probably much to the annoyance of said acquisitions editor – my apologies). Several times I have told friends that I am going to turn the offer down. On other occasions I have sought to enlist the interest of potential co-contributors. Confusion reigned in my head - mostly about what I want to do with my life and how I can create value with it.

One of the main reasons I came to the NL some six years was with the idea of furthering my career as an advocate /researcher for OF in meeting development objectives in the South. The NL (and particularly Wageningen) seemed to offer larger and much more accessible networks for doing this than I was able to access in the UK. The topic is (and remains) an issue that I am passionate about. For the first 2-3 years of my time in the NL being involved in OF research remained an elusive but seemingly attainable goal, providing something like 25-30% of my work / income. The remainder (albeit the majority) I regarded as a platform for building on this work, much as an aspiring actor waits on tables whle waiting for his break..

Over time the balance shifted. I stated to feel exploited in my OF research. The OF projects were always too short – too geared toward justifying some institutional position and always grossly under-funded. It felt like I was always doing good will work at below market rates to secure a good reputation. Time and time again. In the meantime I began to find out how marketable my English language skills were. I started to find myself in the enviable position of people beating a path to my door to offer me work. That’s never happened to me before. I like being in demand. It changed my sense of self worth. Over time, I rented an office space to separate my work from home life, took a company name and a separate business bank account.

The transition from being a researcher to an entrepreneurial language worker was a slow one and involved an almost indiscernible shift in internal and external priorities. Today feels like a watershed. I feel I have made a definitive shift from one camp to the other. Three years ago I would have been prepared to chain myself to a computer for 500-1000 hours over the next year to eighteen months to have a free hand to write a book that might change people’s perceptions about the potential of OF in meeting the development needs of Southern countries. Partly I would have been motivated by a sense of the nobility of being a researcher. My ego would also have played a role: being published, cited, being invited to conferences etc. Nowadays I have become much more instrumental – that doesn’t mean more cynical or less idealistic. I simply want to spend less of my time toiling behind a computer.

Tonight I am asking myself whether my six years in the Netherlands has turned me from an idealist into a pragmatist? And if so, is that a good or a bad thing? Will I regret turning the opportunity to try to change the global development agenda through writing (yet another) book? Or would the personal (opportunity) cost have been too high? If writing and thinking are not the best ways for me to effect change in the world then where can I direct my focus so as to be a force for good?

For the next few days (or maybe even weeks) I am going to have to work hard in grappling with these questions. Even more so I have to embrace my decision – and its implications- rather than regret it. People say that when one door closes another one opens. I’ve generally found that to be true – but every time one closes a door without seeing further down the corridor it involves a big leap of faith. This time more than most.

Richness in diversity

It's common to grumble (though not necessarily on a blog) about one's work - too much, tight deadlines - or if you work for yourself - not enough coming in. I thought I would mark a change by saying how much I am enjoying my work at the moment. I have a number of projects on different subjects (economics, participatory development, natural history and tropical forest management) written with different styles (academic journals, annual reports, PhDs). When I have enough of one author or topic I can switch to another - (I have found out that my good attention span is about two and half hours after which it is more productive to go and do something else). My research interest in ecological farming taught me that one of its benefits is diversity - in maintaining environmental conditions, reducing vulnerability to pests, drought or to market price fluctuations. But diversity also has a social aspect. It is good for people to vary their routine, to be able to switch from pruning trees in the morning to weeding the maize in the afternoon. It keeps us interested in what we do - (as opposed to having to sow fifty hectares of cotton before the next new moon). My one gripe is that there are so many projects coming through my office at the moment that I have very little time for blue sky activities (in either sense of the term). So I have decided to set aside a week soon to do nothing else and will - appropriately enough - be going to the Festival of Diversity in Bonn, staged to coincide with the Convention of Biological Diversity and the Protocol on Biosafety - international meetings that will have a huge influence on the rights of farmers and governments of poor countries to manage their own biological resources. Let’s hope the arguments in favour of diversity prove stronger than those for uniformity.

Food on the table

I came across box schemes very early. Largely because I happened to live in a Welsh town where one of the first UK schemes was set up. Very quickly I became a loyal customer (well I fancied the farmer) and then an agent – building up a customer base of 10-20 boxes a week and earning myself free veg -using this new fangled e-mail technology (it was very new fangled in 1994). Finding customers in a University agricultural department with a strong organics group was not so difficult. Two years ago I met one of my first ‘clients’ at a Soil Association conference. He had recently bought his own organic farm in the north-east of Scotland –Jeez I can think of better places to farm but its nice that these small things can take such deep roots.

I digress. I’ve been a customer of box schemes on and off (mostly on) for some 15 years now. I love them. Here’s this weeks’ bag (contents: one bag of winterpostelijn, three white onions, two fennels, three apples, four bananas and two beetroots).

Why do I like these schemes so much?

Firstly they train me away from being too price sensitive: I pay, in this case, €8, for most of my week’s fruit and vegetables. Second, they get me to experiment with vegetables that I wouldn’t otherwise buy and keep me out of the habit of buying the same old favourites. This is a little bit like having a garden (without getting my hands dirty) - using food that is in season and when it comes around. It serves as an inspiration of new ways to deal with food and develop a new relationship with it (OK my relationship with beetroots is always, at best, challenging – but isn’t that the way of all good relationships?) Thirdly, it is based on continuing relationships of trust between me, as a consumer, and my suppliers. The same lessons apply as to me as a small business- in my relations with my clients and suppliers: I value keeping a relationship with same mechanic, hairdresser, computer systems troubleshooter, whatever. Looking to save a few percent on price is not nearly as important as knowing I am dealing with someone I trust. Committed business relationships are a way of building trust and stability and cutting out so much of the crap associated with a free (spot price) market economy.

But equally there is a political component to my choice. The consolidation of retail power in Northern countries is driving small producers out of business. To achieve cheap prices the multiples want suppliers who can guarantee bulk volume. Economics takes priority over ecology. To supply bulk buyers a farmer has to specialise in one or two crops. But this is a risky strategy – drought, frost, pests, disease or a market glut can all too easily destroy the main cash crop and a farmer’s livelihood. Through diversifying, farmers spread their risks. That is also lesson I also try to carry with me in running a business – in developing a loyal and varied client base rather being dependent on one or two main customers. Both my immediate neighbours in the business park where I am based have gone bust in the past year because they were over reliant on one customer. That’s an important lesson.

Back to the kitchen. Today I wanted some (fresh) Basil to complete a recipe and I went round all the market stalls and sadly it’s out of season. But I did end up with a fresh sprig of thyme and a pot of chives. I was tempted by the pots of samphire at the fishmongers, but at €4 per 100g it seemed too expensive (just to show I am not completely price insensitive). Last week I acquired a mortar and pestle (after months of hunting) for one at a good price- and today went to the Toko and bought fresh cumin, coriander and mustard seeds. Something spicy is going to be cooking tonight!


Technical footnote: Box schemes fall into three main categories. Firstly there are those run by wholesalers who tend to mix and match –using local produce and supplementing this with imports in the off –season. I currently subscribe to one of these from (Odin). This suits me because in winter I get some off season / tropical produce (this week’s bag includes three Dutch products, two from Italy – the onions and fennel - and one from Peru – the bananas). Secondly, there are farm-based ones – which sell exclusively (or mainly) their own produce – these can get quite boring in the lean months (Feb- April). Some have a closure period at this time, which means they can struggle to maintain client loyalty. Thirdly there are Community Supported Agriculture Schemes (CSAs) such as this local one These are slightly different in that you pay a lump sum up front for produce throughout the year. The farmer and his members discuss what to grow next year and usually the members go and pick their own produce. Economically this is attractive as it means no harvesting, packing or distribution costs for the farmer – and it can be an incredibly educative experience (for adults but especially children) about where food comes from (not a shelf in the supermarket) and its seasonality- but joining such a scheme depends upon access and your willingness to pick your own food. If you really want to go it by yourself you can always get an alottement.


Some acknowledgments are due here: Firstly to Joe Strummer, whose song “Sandpaper blues” inspired the title for this thread on my blog: “Keep the lantern bright, keep food upon the table”. Wherever your soul is now Joe "shake it well tonight as well as you are able. Secondly to Nigel Slater whose Kitchen Diaries and recipes have been a long-standing inspiration in my kitchen and in my blogging about food. Thirdly to Jan Douwe van der Ploeg whose work about farmers, autonomy and agency crystallised things that I knew for years but had never seen so lucidly expressed before. Finally, and most of all, to all the farmers (and the customers who support them) who have realised that growing one or two crops for Albert Hijn or Tesco (to name but two) is not a viable way forward. Diversity is the way for maintaining our ecology, economic viability and sanity!

Desmond has a barrow in the market place

In Wageningen we are really privileged to still have a good number of family / specialist stores and a twice weekly market. With the exception of the organic shop I don't use them enough. I am ashamed to say that the supermarket trawl is easier than visiting seven or eight shops to buy proper and decent food. Today I did a big tour of them and spent outrageous sums of money stocking up my fridge and cupboard. First to one of the town's two excellent cheese shops where I buy my usual favourites and then splash out on some thome de savoie - for no other reason than it is made from raw milk and that I am editing a thesis where Savoie is one of the case studies and it is nice to eat some produce from an area whose farming systems and governance I am becoming (over) familiar with. That's 12 Euro down. Next to the family butchers. They are not organic (that one is out of town) but at least they sell free range meat. My Dutch is now good enough to verify this (as opposed to miming a free range chicken in a Saturday-afternoon-crowded shop). Then to the Toko (world food shop) where I make serious dent in a 50 Euro note by buying up spices, staples and a few treats.
Finally to the market. The organic stall has no tarpaulin above it today. I ask and was told it had been blown away by the wind. The organic bread stall does even worse- while I am buying a couple of loaves the wind first of all whips away all the cake boxes and then as the trader is reaching into her cash box it blows away most of her day's takings. Blue and red banknotes flying around in the air!! The people in the queue behind me all rush off to retrieve the money from under the tables and chairs of a cafe on the terrace - to return it to the somewhat hapless trader. I'm left thinking what a wonderful movie scene that would make - how lucky I am to have an office job and how hard people work to bring food to our tables.

Today the wind and storms killed six people in Germany and Austria. I guess we got off lightly.

Food on the table

Like damsons, Brussels spouts should only be picked after the first frost. After four days of sub-zero temperatures it seemed timely to enjoy the first of the season. A friend was over to help me with a project. We ran late, decided to eat something but our restuarant of choice was booked out. Realising I had a fridge full of food anyway I suggested a meal with sprouts and he sounded ecstatic- "wow the first of the year" - as if we were talking asparagus or beaujolais nouvueax. After months of not being very creative in the kitchen I wondered if I could meet his expectations - and what else I had in my kitchen- to match up to the task. Being creative with sprouts is not easy (especially without any chestnuts available). But I think I managed it. So here's a real off-the-cuff recipe for a quick meal that combines African/Italian and North European influences. (Cooking and preparation time 40 minutes max).

Ingredients:
.33 Kg Pollenta (maize meal)
200g (or so) of Sprouts
100g Shoarma(my limited Dutch is taking over here - but there's no clear English equivalent- they are little strips of meat - not mince- but coarser cut- the kind of thing that you would use in use in a stir fry). Veggies can use (marinaded / smoked) tofu.
2 x medium or 1 x large onion
garlic - to taste
125 g (or so) blue cheese


Peel the outside leaves of off the sprouts. Cut into the bases of any large ones to enable them to cook evenly. Blanche them in boiling water for 10-15 minutes. Stir fry the meat (tofu) and onions for 10 minutes or so. Pour 1 litre or so of boiling water onto the pollenta in an oven proof dish. Stir until the mix acquires a porridge like texture. Add layer of shoarma and onions. Add layer of sprouts. Add layer of blue cheese (finely cut). Put in medium-hot oven (200C or so) for 15-20 minutes. I was surprised how good a feast this turned out to be. My first time using pollenta. Many more pollenta adventures to come!