Agriculture through the lens of Former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The interest of the former president Obasanjo in agriculture dates back to his childhood in a small farming settlement near Abeokuta, the capital of Nigeria’s Ogun State. At age of five, he was accompanying his dad to the fields where they planted cassava, maize, plantain, oil palm and other crops. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo recalls that his father was considered the most successful farmer in their village at that time and he must have reasoned it out that agriculture is indeed an untapped goldmine. He never lost his fire for agriculture although he moved to the city, the green revolution was within him. He saw the future a far off and he knew that the key to that he had envisioned was in agriculture. . Agricultural policies and programmes to boost declining food production in the country such as the Feed the Nation (OFN) was initiated by General Obasanjo in 1976 ,to encourage more people to venture into agriculture to initiate growth and development of sector and economy. The vision for agriculture as a tool for wealth creation,entrepreneurship, economic growth made him register at the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IAR&T), Ibadan to learn the art of farming as an apprentice for three months shortly after he left office, he explained that to be a successful farmer "hands-on" policy is important. A successful farmer must be ready to lay hands,get involved with the "nitty-gritty" ,this is where the passion for farming is important. Every venture,business requires a passion for you to push through and experience that your vision becomes a reality. Today his farm is a success and of course he is a successful farmer. Obasanjo farms is a household name in Nigeria, the farm has contributed to the development of agriculture in the country and Africa. The farm, established 30 years ago, took off with two layer houses comprising 100,000 birds each and five broiler houses of 12,000 each, with two feed mills of three tons per hour each. The large farm, which has up to 7,000 workers started with four bulldozer operators. Today, Obasanjo makes money from his Ota Farm, with branches in Ibadan and Igbo-Ora, Oyo state, employs many people and a major contributor to development in agriculture,agribusiness ,food production and processing.

A farmer and his featherless chicken.

Nicholas Ochiko, a farmer in Kakamega county, the pains of having to cover his hen with a blanket every brooding season is becoming too much to bear. He has had to keep the hen under a tight watch since others in the spacious compound keep pecking her - probably on the thought of a large piece of meat moving around. The hen - hatched in March 2015 with five others- bothers him not only with the brooding challenge, but also with the ridicule of his witty neighbors who keep taunting them about the strange bird. It also leaves the house at around 8am and returns as early as 4pm, meaning that someone has to be home early to ensure the hen gets to its nest to avoid the cold weather. Ochiko, a resident of Mwibwi village, Matawa sub-location, Mumias is appealing to government to help him understand why the hen has remained featherless since it was hatched. "The other five chicks it was hatched with were normal. They had full feathers. But this one had little feathers around its neck, head and wings. Those on the neck and part of the wings have withered off," Ochiko said. It started laying eggs in September 2015. We keenly observed to see the type of chicks it would hatch. They came out normal with feathers despite the condition of their mother," he explains. The hen has hatched twice and is in the third phase of laying eggs. Lilian Andeso, Ochiko's wife said that the hen normally lays eight eggs, which it tends well - failing to hatch one or two every season it broods. She says the family was shocked at first when the chick was hatched without feathers. "We observed it grow without knowing whether it was a hen or a cock; until it started laying eggs. That is when we established that it was a hen," said Andeso. "I think it feels cold and waits until there is sunshine before it can leave the house. The hen also fears being touched on the skin," she adds and prefers wandering alone.The family wants the hen acquired by the livestock department for use in demonstrations at agricultural forums. Mumias sub-county livestock development officer Antony Mwangi said it was normal to have such a hen. "The coding for feathers was suppressed genetically, leading to hormonal deficiency," the vet said. culled from the-star.co.ke

A strange calving experience reveals a two headed calf with three ears.

Residents of Chepkokwo village in Elgeyo Marakwet woke to a rude shock after a cow calved a two-headed calf with three ear. According to the owner Jane Cheboi, the cow was normal during its gestation period. Cheboi said she called a veterinary officer immediately after the cow went into labour but was shocked when it gave birth to a "unique creature". "When he arrived, the officer Chege Munderu advised me that the cow has to undergo some operations considering its serious condition," she said. She said they were surprised after the calf with shocking features was delivered. "The calf was already dead in utero and the distressed cow also died afterwards. continue

Growing Population Needs Less Waste, Not More Food.

Italian architect Carlo de Sanctis went to a friend’s wedding on the outskirts of Rome two years ago, he did not expect to find himself discussing food waste. As the party was winding down, de Sanctis and his friends ended up wondering what the waiter next to them would do with the uneaten food he had started to collect. “We asked him what they were going do with all this leftover food and he showed us the garbage. We couldn’t believe all this excellent food would simply get wasted,” he said, still in disbelief. De Sanctis felt compelled to act. With his friends, two lawyers and a web designer, he set up Equoevento, a Rome-based non-profit that collects uneaten food from events and delivers it to charities for distribution to the hungry. “On one side you have so much leftover food, and on the other side there is no food at all. We saw every day that there were so many people that didn’t have enough food,” de Sanctis told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, explaining that “equo” means “equal” in Italian. Between 30 percent and 40 percent of food produced around the world is never eaten because it is spoiled after harvest and during transportation, or thrown away by shops and consumers. According to U.N. figures , almost 800 million people worldwide go to bed hungry every night. The problem has become so serious that halving world food waste by 2030 was included as a target for global development goals adopted by world leaders in 2015. From Italy to Germany and Brazil to Kenya, a growing number of enterprises are rescuing food that would otherwise go into landfills to feed those in need - a trend some experts say may be the answer to the mountains of food waste created daily. Equoevento has so far distributed 200,000 meals from food collected from some 400 events. Entirely run by volunteers, experts say reducing food waste is not only a moral imperative but a way of curbing emissions of planet-warming gases linked to agriculture which accounts for about 20 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has calculated that global food waste would be the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter if it were treated as a country. In Kenya, a different kind of initiative is taking root; one that uses produce deemed too ugly for Western supermarket shelves, such as wonky carrots, curved cucumbers and dimpled apples. Nairobi-based enterprise Enviu aims to turn some 5 tonnes of “imperfect” produce into 78,000 school meals a day under a pilot programme it is developing with the World Food Programme’s (WFP) new innovation hub. The FAO notes that about a third of all food, by weight, is spoiled or thrown away worldwide as it moves from where it is produced to where it is eaten, costing up to $940 billion per year globally. “Around 10 percent of the European Union’s fresh fruits and vegetables come from Kenya, and when produce makes it to the airport it gets sorted there for the cosmetic standards,” said Robert Opp, head of innovation at WFP. “An estimated 25 percent of that food, about 75 tonnes a day, is rejected,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Using rejected food would mean farmers no longer losing income and more children getting fed, he added. “There’s a massive amount of food wasted every year and there’s still hunger, so if we can make the food systems more efficient, reduce the wastage and improve distribution - that’s a good thing for the fight against hunger,” Opp said. As efforts to cut food waste spread around the globe, athletes at this month’s Rio Olympics will play a part, perhaps without even knowing it. Refetto-Rio, an initiative by two chefs, Italian Massimo Bottura and Brazilian David Hertz, aims to turn excess food from the Olympic Village into meals for the hungry. This May 6, 2016 photo shows meat sandwiches during one of many food-testing exercises of the Olympic menu in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Diners will choose from five different buffets: Brazilian, Asian, International, Pasta and Pizza, Halal and Kosher, and everyone gets to dig into 40 varieties of Brazil’s exotic fruits like caju, acai, carambola, caqui, goiaba and maracuja. While initiatives like Equoevento or Refetto-Rio are on a relatively small scale, experts say every little helps. Brian Lipinski, food programme associate at thinktank World Resources Institute (WRI), said piecemeal approaches combined with national policies on food waste were necessary to achieve a meaningful reduction in food waste. “Maybe the impact from one of these non-profits that are picking up some excess food and donating it is small on its own, but it’s really one of the only ways to go about addressing this sort of waste right now,” he said. Lipinski also said it was time to stop focusing on how to produce more food for the world’s growing population and instead concentrate on efforts to reduce food waste. In Europe, the European Commission has proposed that member states develop national strategies to prevent food waste by at least 30 percent by 2025. Germany has been a leader on the issue. In 2012, the German government launched a “too good for the trash” campaign and the country has also pioneered “food-sharing”, using the internet to distribute produce recovered from store rubbish while still in good condition. In 2015, France introduced legislation banning big supermarkets from destroying unsold but edible food. Failure to comply could expose supermarket managers to two years in jail and fines of 75,000 euros ($83,850). And last week Italy passed a law that makes it easier for supermarkets to donate unsold food to charities, in an effort to reduce waste.“There’s still too little awareness about food around the world,” said de Sanctis while checking his phone to see which of his volunteers had signed up for the next food pick-up. “People don’t plan what to eat and there’s a lot of waste in people’s homes. We have to educate people about food waste because it’s a real problem.”culled from huffingtonpost.com

Kenya kicking out rabies with Sh1.5 billion.

The ministries of Health and Agriculture are expected to spend Sh1.5 billion in a mass dog vaccination exercise across five counties in a campaign aimed at eradicating rabies by 2030. Livestock PS Andrew Tuimur said the pilot exercise will be in Makueni, Siaya, Kitui, Machakos and Kisumu counties. “The campaign will also focus on education to create awareness because a lot of people, especially in the rural areas, are not aware of the dangers rabies poses yet they spend a lot of time with dogs,” Tuimur said. Tuimur spoke on Friday during the launch of the National Rabies Elimination Coordination committee which will oversee the vaccination. The campaign is supported by various partners that include the European Union, the Africa Network for Animal Welfare and the Kenya Medical Research Institute. Statistics indicate that one person dies every nine minutes from rabies globally with Kenya accounting for 2,000 of the 60,000 deaths annually.Africa and Asia account for 95 per cent of the global fatalities. Rabies is an acute and highly viral infectious disease that affects the central nervous system. It is mainly spread through dog bites. The disease is nearly 100 per cent fatal if not treated. It is ranked among the top five zoonotic diseases for prevention and control in Kenya. In a statement, Health PS Nicholas Muraguri appealed for collaborative efforts between the government and non-state actors in availing resources towards vaccination. Speaking at the same venue, Kariuki Njenga from the Kenya Research Institute said the exercise, which has already kicked off in Makueni county, targets half a million dogs. “The dog vaccination part of it requires just about Sh360 million. That means if we are able to control rabies in the country, we will save a lot of money,” Njenga said. contributed by the-star.co.ke/news

Farmers and new agriculture

UBINIG is a grassroots organization founded in the 1980s by a handful of Bangladeshi academics and professionals who wanted to empower poor farmers. “We wanted to know why we were poor, why major development organizations were telling us what to do,” says director Farida Akhter, a slight woman with grey-streaked hair. At the time, the technologies of the Green Revolution—hybrid seeds and chemical inputs—were credited with increasing production and saving millions of lives in India and Bangladesh. But the women Akhter talked to were noticing something else: the chemicals in their food were making their children ill. Butterflies were disappearing from the fields and the small fish that thrived in the standing water in rice paddies were dying. UBINIG’s approach to agriculture is based on a combination of new research and old technologies. They call it nyakrishi, which means “new agriculture,” even though many of their practices are ancient. The people of Bangladesh expect to feel the effects of climate change sooner and more acutely than most places on the planet. The country is a low-lying sandy delta, split by three major rivers and criss-crossed by countless tributaries that drain into the Bay of Bengal. A one-metre rise in global sea levels would permanently inundate 15% of the country, wipe out thousands of acres of valuable agricultural land and displace 30 million people, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The country’s rich alluvial soil, which grows most of the food the country consumes, is in danger. Every year, about 8,000 hectares of arable land are lost to urbanization and degradation, according to research by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Another 8,700 hectares are swallowed by shifting rivers. As sea levels rise, saltwater pushes inland, flowing up rivers and canals and rendering fields near the coast too salty to grow crops. Every year, tens of thousands of farmers move to the city, looking for work. Begum was one of the first people in her village to adopt nyakrishi farming.She heard about UBINIG and travelled to Dhaka, the capital, for a seven-day workshop. Since then, she has persuaded 257 farmers in her community to join the movement. Across Bangladesh, 300,000 farmer families now practice nyakrishi farming. Begum, a midwife, community activist and organic farmer in the township of Ishwardi, central Bangladesh, has taken on the role of safeguarding the soil her community depends upon. Begum doesn’t use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. She makes her own organic compost and mulches her soil so it retains more water. She brews bio-pesticides with cow dung, ashes and banana leaves. To further protect plants from insects and preserve soil nutrients, she mixes crops—ginger with cumin, for instance. And she harvests her own seeds and keeps them in her seed hut. Among her treasures are 90 varieties of rice indigenous to Bangladesh: some are resistant to drought; others can survive in salty soil. Begum no longer has to spend money on seeds, pesticides or fertilizer. She can sell her produce for higher prices in the market because it’s organic. And she shares her organically grown seeds freely with anyone who promises to join UBINIG, the movement she belongs to. continue

AGRO-VETERINARY: Mobile veterinary clinics in rural areas .

In India ,according to (The Hindu )the State Government has decided to introduce mobile veterinary clinics in districts very soon to improve animal healthcare in rural areas. Nearly 100 such mobile clinics are expected to start functioning with at least one clinic for every assembly constituency. The decision was taken at a review meeting held here on Monday. The meeting was chaired by Minister for Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Talasani Srinivas Yadav. It was further decided to upgrade veterinary polyclinics as district level veterinary hospitals. Officials informed the Minister that a total of 2,142 veterinary dispensaries/hospitals are functioning in the State. Principal Secretary (AH) Suresh Chanda, Secretary (Finance) Navin Mittal, Director (AH) D. Venkateshwarlu, Managing Director of Telangana State Dairy Development Cooperative Federation (TSDDCF) K. Nirmala, Registrar of Veterinary University Kondal Reddy and others attended the meeting. The Minister wanted the officials to improve milk procurement from the existing 5 lakh litres a day to 6 lakh litres by the year-end along with popularising the milk and milk-products of TSDDCF – Vijaya Dairy Telangana by improving the market share and opening more stalls across the State. Officials stated that about 3.85 lakh litres milk was being sold every day in Hyderabad itself and another 50,000 litres in districts now. The Minister directed the officials to implement ‘Sunandini’ programme, under which cattle feed would be provided at 50 per cent subsidy, properly. He also told them to procure fodder for scarcity period of February-June every year in advance. This move by the Indian government can be adopted in other countries especially developing countries with large numbers of livestock to increase access of rural farmers to veterinary services. It is common knowledge that most communities in developing nations cant access veterinary care,thus leaving their animals at risk of various diseases and even health implications for the owners in cases of zoonotic diseases. When veterinary services are accessible by providing mobile services,by engaging more veterinary officers and training livestock hands in these communities will not only keep diseases at bay but also increase production in terms of capacity and quality of livestock. Employment opportunities will also be created as more hands will be needed to go to various communities,this coupled with upgrading of clinics,provision of drugs and vaccine will revamp the agricultural sector as more products such as eggs,beef,chicken,milk e.t.c will be readily available.