Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

The farmers of the Neleshi Grasscutter and Farmers Association (NAGRAFA) consider themselves not only farmers and businesswomen and men, but also conservationists. Grasscutters, or cane rats, are found throughout Western Africa and, as their name suggests, they live in grasslands. But many poor farmers in Ghana use slash and burn methods on grasslands to provide short term nutrients to the soil, as well to drive out grasscutters and sell their meat, which is considered a delicacy. To help preserve the grasslands and help other farmers increase their incomes, NAGRAFA offers free trainings to farmers and youth about how to raise, slaughter, and process grasscuttter and rabbit meat.

The group is made up of about 40 active members—both men and women—who have been working together to find better ways to raise grasscutters and rabbits on a small-scale. Their biggest challenges, says Farmer Brown (which is the only name he gave us), the leader of the group is finding inexpensive ways of housing and feeding their animals, finding better packaging for their products, and publicizing the health and nutritional qualities of their products.

NAGRAFA is also reaching out to youth to engage them in farming. Because the rabbits and grasscutters are cute, it’s easy to get children and teenagers interested in them, according to Ekow Martin, one of the members of NAGRAFA. He’s training 5 to 6 youth in his community about how to raise the animals—and earn money from the sale of the meat. And, Mary Edjah, another NASGRAFA farmer says that “we need more hands” to help raise rabbits and grasscutters. She and other members of the group are helping train 6 orphans about how to raise and care for the animals.

Ms. Edjah also says that raising grasscutters and rabbits helps “bring the family together” and “keeps the children at home.” Raising these animals, says Mr. Martin, “changes everything.” The family is happy, he says, because they’re able to supplement their income, as well as improve the family’s nutrition.

And like other livestock such as cattle and goats, grasscutters and rabbits are like walking credit cards, giving families the opportunity to sell them to pay for school fees or medicine, or eat them. Ms. Edjah says “that in times of need, women know they can slaughter the rabbits.”

For more about NAGRAFA, check out the videos below.

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Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Zambian grocery stores are filled with processed foods from around the world, from crackers made in Argentina and soy milk from China to popular U.S. breakfast cereals. In addition to these foreign foods, however, are also variety of locally made and processed products, including indigenous varieties of organic rice, all-natural peanut butter and honey from the It’s Wild brand.

It’s Wild was started by the Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) over 30 years ago to preserve and protect wildlife. But the organization soon learned that in order to protect wildlife, it would need to address the lack of income sources for local communities that were sometimes forced to resort to poaching elephants or other wildlife in order to earn enough to feed their families.

To do this, COMACO organizes farmers into producer groups, encouraging them to diversify their skills by raising livestock and bees, growing organic rice, using improved irrigation and fisheries management and other practices. The organization supports the creation of regional processing centers and trading depots to make it easier for farmers to process and transport their crops. Their products are then sold under the It’s Wild brand in supermarket chains in Zambia, such as ShopRite, Checkers and Spar. And the organization tries to do as much of the product distribution as possible so that the money stays with the farmers, not middlemen, improving local livelihoods and preserving local wildlife. (See also: Peanut Butter and Progress)

And all across sub-Saharan Africa, other organizations are providing farmers with the processing skills and materials they need to improve their incomes and support their families—and that can produce unexpected benefits, including wildlife, reducing food-born health risks, and improving access to education.

In Kenya, the Mazingira Institute is working to create awareness about climate change, human rights, and urban agriculture. And they’re also training communities to learn better skills to increase income generation and well-being—including training in how to process foods to preserve them longer and make them more appealing to consumers.

Mazingira, for example, helped Esther Mjoki Maifa, an entrepreneur in Nairobi, capitalize on a growing interest among Kenyans for natural healthy products by training her to process groundnuts without any preserves or chemicals. It takes her about one day to produce 50 kilograms of groundnuts and she sells jars from 200-300 shillings each. Eventually, Ms. Maifa is hoping to make enough money from her products to purchase her own nut grinding machine. (See also: Mazingira Institute and NESALF: Training a New Breed of Farmers)

In Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project is helping livestock farmers to improve the processing and preservation of milk in order to produce better tasting and longer lasting dairy products which are also safer for the consumer. EADD encourages farmers to join cooperatives (See Innovation of the Week: Farmers Groups and Cooperatives), giving them access to group owned and run refrigerated milk collection centers, significantly reducing the financial burden of the process. The milk is then transported to a milk processing facility and sent to market where the processed milk will receive a higher price than unpasteurized milk. It also stays good longer and reduces the risk of food borne illness. (See also: Improving Incomes with Milk Processing)

In Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria, the World Cocoa Foundation is providing cocoa farmers with hands-on training on production, pest and disease management and post-harvest techniques. The region accounts for nearly 70 percent of the world’s cocoa production, 90 percent of which is grown on nearly 2 million small family farms. Almost 16 million people depend on this crop as their main source of income and being able to properly process cocoa can make a big difference in income for a family. One farmer in Côte d’Ivoire, Ekra Marceline, was able to more than quadruple her cocoa harvest after receiving training from a Farmer Field School supported by WCF. She was able to build a solar dryer to produce higher quality beans and the additional income she earns enabled her to send her children to school and build a new home for her family. (See also: Improving African Women’s Access to Agriculture Training Programs)

To read more about how training in processing techniques can improve incomes and provide other benefits, see also: Women Entrepreneurs: Adding Value, Reducing Food Waste, Investing in Better Food Storage in Africa, and Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods.

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Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Earlier this week, we highlighted Nicholas Kristof’s OP-ED in the New York Times about Gabon, a country in West-Central Africa where the rights of farmers are frequently in conflict with wildlife conservation efforts. One young village chief and farmer, Evelyn Kinga explained that she doesn’t like elephants because they eat her cassava plants—a crop her livelihood depends on—because she doesn’t benefit from rich foreigners who come to Gabon for eco-tourism.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, says Raol du Toit, Director of the Rhino Conservation Trust in Zimbabwe. His organization works closely with farmers on the ground to help communities realize that protecting wildlife can be in their own best interest.

du Toit promotes “landscape-level planning” that takes into account the needs of wildlife, the environment, and farming communities. Rather than relying on development agencies and governments to decide where cattle fences should go or where farmers should plant their crops, local communities and stakeholders need to be part of the process. Development aid, says du Toit, should follow what local stakeholders need and perceive, not the other way around. Additionally, the Rhino Conservation Trust provides classroom materials for schools so that students may learn the connections between sustainable agriculture and wildlife conservation at an early age. (See also Helping Farmers Benefit Economically from Wildlife Conservation)

And du Toit is not alone in his effort to improve the lives of farmers, as well as protect wildlife.

In Tanzania, the Jane Goodall Instutite (JGI) started as a center to research and protect wild chimpanzee populations in what is now, thanks to their efforts, Gombe National Park. But by the early 1990’s the organization realized that in order to be successful it would have to start addressing the needs of the communities surrounding the park. JGI was planting trees to rebuild the forest but members of the community were chopping them down—not because they wanted to damage the work but because they needed them for fuel and to make charcoal.

In response, JGI started working with communities to develop government- mandated land use plans, helping them develop soil erosion prevention practices, agroforestry, and production of value-added products, such as coffee and palm oil. “These are services,” says Pancras Ngalason Executive Director of JGI Tanzania, “people require in order to appreciate the environment” and that will ultimately help not only protect the chimps and other wildlife, but also to build healthy and economically viable communities. (See also: Rebuilding Roots in Environmental Education)

In Botswana, the Mokolodi Wildlife Reserve is doing more than just teaching students and the community about conserving and protecting wildlife and the environment, they’re also educating students about permaculture. By growing indigenous vegetables, recycling water for irrigation, and using organic fertilizers—including elephant dung—the Reserve’s Education Center is demonstrating how to grow nutritious food with very little water or chemical inputs.

When school groups come to learn about the animals, the reserve also teaches them about sustainable agriculture. Using the garden as a classroom in which to teach students about composting, intercropping, water harvesting, and organic agriculture practices, the Wildlife Reserve helps draw the connection between the importance of environmentally sustainable agriculture practices and the conservation of elephants, giraffes, impala, and various other animals and birds living in the area.(See also: Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture Conservation)

To read more about innovative ways to protect agriculture and the surrounding wildlife, read: From Alligator to Zebra: Wild Animals Find Sanctuary in the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Kigoma, Tanzania, Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods, Helping Conserve Wildlife–and Agriculture–in Mozambique, Honoring the Farmers that Nourish their Communities and the Planet, and Investing in Projects that Protect Both Agriculture and Wildlife

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Fridah Mugo and her 13 siblings grew up in a farming family in rural Kenya, where the majority of young girls are not expected to finish primary school. But, in 1999, with a scholarship provided by Winrock International’s African Women Leaders in Agriculture and the Environment program (AWLAE), she was able to complete her PhD in Natural Resources Policy and Management.

Now, with an education and AWLAE’s Leadership for Change training, Mugo is working to address the problem of devastating deforestation in Kenya where only 2 percent of the country is forested—in the 1950’s one third of Kenya was covered in trees. She provides extension services to rural communities dependent on wood burning cookers. Training women to make and use new and alternative energy sources, such as fireless cookers (reed baskets lined with cloth that can be quickly heated on fires to slowly cook food over the course of an entire day, reducing the need for firewood), Mugo is helping prevent the loss of more forest and improving livelihoods. (See also: Reducing the Things They Carry)

She also lobbies for women’s participation in agricultural development projects in Kenya and other African countries, and founded an education program for young girls, enabling dozens of girls to attend and complete primary school.

But in Kenya and most of sub-Saharan Africa, Mugo’s achievements as a woman are the exception, not the rule. “Women hold their families and country together. The problem is they have no decision-making power and lack access to resources and education. Those who do have resources can make a huge difference,” says Mugo.

Since its start in 1989, AWLAE has presented 570 women with scholarships for advanced studies, helped over 50,000 young girls gain access to primary education, and provided training to more than 100,000 farmers. The program also provides a network, connecting scholarship and training recipients to each other for support and to exchange knowledge and experiences.

And this support is just as important as the education itself because, according to Mugo, “women are brought up to listen. You’re not supposed to talk. At the training, they taught us that we could achieve anything.”

And, according to a growing number of voices in the global agriculture community, when women are allowed to strive to achieve anything, it is their families and the wider community that benefit. To read more about how empowering women can alleviate hunger and poverty, see also: Feeding Communities By Focusing on Women, Women Farmers Are Key to Halving Global Hunger by 2015, and Panelists Call for Women’s Important Role in Alleviating Global Hunger to be Reflected in Agriculture Funding.

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For centuries, farmers in the Sahel—a band of land that crosses Africa at the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert—used rotational tree farming to provide year-round harvests and a consistent source of food, fuel, and fertilizer. But severe droughts and rapid population growth in the 1970s and 80s significantly degraded the Sahel’s farmland, leading to the loss of many indigenous tree species and leaving the soil barren and eroded. With the loss of the trees went the knowledge, traditions, and practices that had kept the region fertile for hundreds of years.

To save the land as well as local livelihoods, many traditional management practices are now being revived. One inexpensive method of farming that helps to restore the Sahel’s degraded land is so-called Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) (see also Millions Fed: “Re-Greening the Sahel: Farmer-led Innovation in Burkina Faso and Niger”). By pruning shoots that periodically and naturally sprout from below-ground root webs, farmers can promote forest growth and take advantage of a naturally occurring source of fuel, food, or animal fodder.

The trees produce fruit rich in nutrients and help to restore the soil by releasing nitrogen and protecting the ground from erosion by wind and rain. The cultivated but naturally occurring forest also creates a local source of firewood and mulch, reducing the time spent in gathering fuel for cooking meals and cleaning households (see Reducing the Things They Carry). The practice also cuts down on deforestation as the trees that are used for fuel are replaced with seedlings and tended by farmers.

“Farmer-managed natural regeneration is a fairly simple technique, but it produces multiple benefits,” explained Chris Reij, a natural resources management specialist with the Center for International Cooperation (and advisor to the Nourishing the Planet Project), at an Oxfam-hosted panel on locally driven agriculture innovations in Washington, D.C., last October. “Sometimes planting trees make sense, but in terms of costs and long-time success, in many cases it makes more sense to use natural regeneration.”

As important as the technique itself is, even more important is making sure that farmers in the Sahel know about it. When farmers learn how they can benefit from the practice, they are quick to adopt it, improving their own livelihoods and food security while regenerating local forests. Reij attributes the overwhelming success of FMNR in Niger—where many villages have 10–20 times more trees than 20 years ago—to the reduced central-government presence in rural areas. With the government distracted by political conflict, forest management now belongs almost completely to the local farmers who benefit from FMNR the most. (See also Aid Groups, Farmers Collaborate to Re-Green Sahel.)

To ensure that even more farmers know about FMNR and its benefits, the Web Alliance for the Re-Greening in Africa (W4RA), a joint project between African Re-Greening Initiatives (ARI), the Web Foundation, and VU Amsterdam, is helping to create web-based information exchanges between farmers. Meanwhile, the organization SahelEco has initiated two projects, Trees Outside the Forest and the Re-Greening the Sahel Initiative, to encourage policymakers, farmers’ organizations, and government leaders throughout the region to provide the support and legislation needed to put the responsibility of managing trees on agricultural land into the hands of farmers.

To read more about agroforestry and other ways that agriculture can restore degraded land, see: An Evergreen Revolution? Using Trees to Nourish the Planet, It’s About More Than Trees at the World Agroforestry Centre, Trees as Crops in Africa, and Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use.

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Wildlife conservation and sustainable farming practices are becoming increasing prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa (see Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods, Helping Conserve Wildlife–and Agriculture–in Mozambique, and In Botswana, Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture and Conservation). Yet efforts to preserve elephants, rhinos, and other wildlife are difficult in countries plagued by political unrest and conflict.

In Zimbabwe, for example, “it’s pretty hard to get anything done,” says Raol du Toit, Director of the Rhino Conservation Trust. Although a new president, Morgan Tsvangirai, was elected in 2008, Zimbabwe’s 86-year-old dictator Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country for more than 30 years, refused to cede power. A “power-sharing agreement” between the two leaders allows the country to function, but just barely. Unemployment rates are over 90 percent, and people who voice public opposition to Mugabe are often jailed and even tortured.

Despite these obstacles, du Toit is helping farming communities benefit economically from efforts to save dwindling populations of rhinos and other wildlife. While many conservation groups seek to protect wildlife from farmers, the Rhino Conservation Trust has a very different approach. Rather than telling farmers not to farm in areas where wildlife are present, they help communities realize that protecting wildlife can be in their own best interest.

“Wildlife is like a herd of cattle,” says du Toit, and farmers “will get benefits” if they manage and conserve local wildlife species. This “horns and thorns” approach gives farmers an opportunity to be paid for the ecosystem services they provide through more sustainable farming practices—including protecting wildlife, conserving water, preventing deforestation, and sequestering carbon in the soil. The solution is to help farmers practice agriculture “in appropriate areas, using appropriate practices.”

What’s needed, according to du Toit, is more “landscape-level planning” that takes into account the needs of wildlife, the environment, and farming communities. Rather than relying on development agencies and governments to decide where cattle fences should go or where farmers should plant their crops, local communities and stakeholders need to be part of the process. Development aid, says du Toit, should follow what local stakeholders need and perceive, not the other way around. “We need to trust people on the ground, rather than just planning for them.”

More locally based partnership arrangements, such as the Laikipia Wildlife Forum developed in Kenya, can help both farmers and wildlife survive. The Forum has united the community, from smallholder farmers to tourism ventures, in the fight to preserve wildlife and manage natural resources, helping to improve local livelihoods.

Educating children early about the benefits of wildlife is also important. The Rhino Conservation Trust has developed a school materials project that teaches children the importance of conserving rhinos.

And despite the political turmoil in Zimbabwe, the country still has wildlife resources that other countries don’t have, giving it the opportunity to both protect these assets and profit from their conservation.

For more about rhino conservation in Zimbabwe, see Raol du Toit’s presentation at the AHEAD workshop last year.

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Co-written with Dr. Jacob Wanyama and originally featured in the Mail & Guardian. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Maralal, Kenya, is mostly known for its wildlife. And as we made the seven hour, bumpy trek from Nairobi — half of it on unpaved roads — we saw our fair share of water buffaloes, rhinos, impala, and giraffes. But we weren’t here to go on safari. We were here to meet with a group of pastoralists — livestock keepers who had agreed to meet with us and talk about the challenges they face.

We met in the community primary school and it was humbling to see so many people — many wearing traditional Maasai clothing, brightly woven clothe, beads, elaborate earrings — come through the door to greet us.

Over the years, pastoralists like the well-known Maasai here in Kenya have been pushed out of their traditional grazing lands to drier and drier regions, places where it was easy to ignore them. But as the effects of climate change, hunger, drought and the loss of biodiversity become more evident, it’s increasingly hard to push livestock keepers’ rights aside. Governments need to recognize that pastoralists are the best keepers of genetic diversity.

Anikole cattle, for example, a breed indigenous to Eastern Africa, are not only beautiful to look at but they’re one of the “highest quality” breeds of cattle because they can survive in extremely harsh, dry conditions — something that’s more important than ever as climate change takes a bigger hold on Africa.

Although most of the people we met don’t have access to cable TV or even radios, they do have a good sense of the challenges their fellow livestock keepers face all over Kenya. They are aware that climate change is likely responsible for the drought plaguing much of East Africa, killing thousands of livestock over the last few months. They know that conflict with neighbouring pastoral communities over water resources and access to land makes headlines in Kenya’s newspapers. And they know that many policy-makers would like to forget they exist, considering their nomadic lifestyle barbaric, as our guide Dr Pat Lanyasunya, a member of the Africa LIFE Network, explained.

Unfortunately, governments and agribusiness don’t share the same viewpoint. They’re increasingly promoting cross-breeding of native breed with exotic breeds — breeds that were designed to gain more weight and produce more milk. The problem is, however, that these newer breeds have a hard time adapting to sub-Saharan Africa’s dry conditions, as well as the pests and diseases present here. As a result, pastoralists who adopt these breeds have to spend more on feed and inputs, like pesticides and antibiotics to keep cattle healthy.

One of the most serious problems we heard about was the effects that replacing indigenous breeds of livestock with mixed breeds of more exotic cattle have had during the drought. These livestock keepers began replacing their indigenous Zebu cattle with mixed breeds about 15 years ago after missionaries introduced them to the community. While the new breeds were bigger and could potentially produce more meat or milk, they aren’t as hardy as native cattle that can travel long distances without much water.
According to one of the community elders, the “old breeds could go 40km [for food and water] and come back,” but the new breeds can’t tolerate the distance or the heat. In the past, water sources could be much farther away and the cattle could thrive, but now they need to be much closer.

That’s one reason different pastoralist communities sometimes clash — when cattle can’t travel far for water, livestock keepers have to find it elsewhere, often at sites that are traditionally used by different communities. A man wearing a Harley-Davidson hat along with his Maasai shawl acknowledged that although they fight with other communities over resources, “they’re just like us”, trying to survive with very little support from the government or NGOs. The conflict has not only effected the raising of livestock, but also forced schools to close and created more internally displaced people as they are driven off the land.

What surprised us most about these livestock keepers is their understanding that the world is changing. They know that many of their children won’t live the same kind of lives that their ancestors lived for centuries. Many will choose to go to the cities, but they said if their children become “landed”, they want them to maintain links to the pastoralist way of life. And they said that for some of them, livestock is what they do best and what they have a passion for — and that they should be allowed to continue doing it.

Dr Jacob Wanyama is a veterinarian and coordinator for the Africa LIFE Network.

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In this regular series, we profile advisors to the Nourishing the Planet project. This week, we feature Louise Buck, Senior Extension Associate at Cornell University. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

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Name: Louise Buck

Affiliation: Cornell University and Ecoagriculture Partners

Location: Ithaca, New York, United States

Bio: Louise Buck is Senior Extension Associate at Cornell University. She joined the university’s Department of Natural Resources in 1996 and has been associated with the Cornell International Institute for Food Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD) since 1993. Presently, Louise leads the Cornell Ecoagriculture Working Group. Her interests include community-based natural resource management, agroforestry, curriculum development for experiential learning, and participatory research.

Recent Work:

-L.E. Buck and S.J. Scherr, “Building innovation systems for managing complex landscapes,” in K.M. Moore, ed., The Sciences and Art of Adaptive Management: Innovating for Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources Management (Ankeny, IA: Soil and Water Conservation Society, 2009).
-J. Sayer and L.E. Buck, eds., "Learning from Landscapes,” IUCN Forest Conservation Program and Ecoagriculture Partners, Arborvitae Special Issue, September 2008.
“Farming the Forest,” Cornell Plantations Magazine, vol. 62, no. 2 (2007), pp. 6–13.
-L.E. Buck, T.A. Gavin, N.T. Uphoff, and D.F. Lee, “Scientific Assessment of Ecoagriculture Systems,” in S.J. Scherr and J.A. McNeely, eds., Farming with Nature: The Art and Science of Ecoagriculture (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2007).

On Nourishing the Planet: The Nourishing the Planet project will stimulate much-needed innovation in the development of integrated land-use and market systems that can deliver food production, environmental conservation, and livelihood security outcomes. It will also support innovation in the collaborative management of agriculture and natural resources at a landscape scale.

How do farmers benefit from the utilization of forest management? Forests and forest resources play vital roles in farmers’ livelihood strategies throughout the world, especially in lesser developed countries and in places where livelihood security is tenuous. Forests provide safety nets for farmers when times get tough, and managing them is essential to the reliable production of foods, medicines, fodder, and building materials that many millions of farmers depend on during all or part of the year. In addition, forests play vital roles in micro-climatic and hydrologic functions that regulate the supply of water needed for crop growth and livestock production in agricultural landscapes. Management is required to ensure the delivery of these critical ecosystem services.

Can you describe the local benefits of forest management as well as the global benefits? Local benefits contribute to the livelihoods of people and to the well-being and survival of wildlife in proximity to where forests are located. Such benefits include a wide variety of products, habitat, and water regulation to help prevent flooding and drought. Globally, forests contribute to climatic function through their roles in the hydrological cycle, and in the sequestration of carbon and other greenhouse gases.

What types of projects, policies, and other actions would you like to see put in place to encourage improved forest management? Systems of land tenure and property rights that provide incentives for local communities to manage forest resources for current and future use are the core requirement for sustainable forest management. Locally based management systems must be protected by national-level regulations and sanctions against internal and external violators. With these measures in place, communities can readily develop the capacity for effective management. While a variety of joint management and collective-use agreements from around the world can serve as models, the political will to support and protect them from violators is too often in short supply. Given the local and global importance of forests, this is a core issue that humanity needs to address.

What role can education play in encouraging people to think about environmental sustainability when practicing agriculture? Formal and informal education at all levels can play an essential role in building awareness about the linkages between agricultural practice and environmental protection. The keys are in “getting the curriculum right” and in fostering joint learning and collective problem solving. A particularly promising educational tool for this purpose is the Agriculture Bridge system, which connects innovative agricultural practitioners around the world to leading universities and to one another to help resolve pressing questions related to agriculture and conservation through the use of multi-media case studies and an interactive communications platform.

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Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In many parts sub-Saharan Africa, 60 percent of children come to school in the morning without breakfast, if they attend school at all. Many suffer from health and developmental problems, including stunted growth. Exhausted from hunger and poor nutrition, they often have trouble paying attention and learning during class.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) provides school meals for about 20 million children in Africa. While some national governments, including in Côte d’Ivoire, have provided school meals for decades, the food, fuel, and financial crises of 2007-08 highlighted the role that school nutrition programs can play in not only improving education, health, and nutrition, but also providing a safety net for children living in poverty. For some children, these programs provide the only real meal of the day.

Improved school menus provide students with much-needed nutrition while also creating an incentive for both students and parents to keep up regular attendance. Some programs include a take-home ration, targeted specifically at improving the attendance of girls. In exchange for an 80-percent attendance rate for one month, for example, students are able to take home a jug of vegetable oil to their family. Students also often share the nutrition information they learn at school with family members, helping to improve the nutritional value of meals made at home.

Earlier this year, the Partnership for Child Development (PCD), in partnership with the WFP and with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) program. HGSF, modeled in part after programs developed by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), works with governments to develop and implement school feeding programs, improving the diets and education of students while also creating jobs and supporting local agriculture.

Starting with five countries that were either already running school food programs or had demonstrated an interest in them and a capacity for implementation–including Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, and Ghana–HGSF hopes to create a bigger market for rural farmers through demand created by purchasing only locally grown and processed food for school meals.

"The definition of `local’ varies from country to country," says Kristie Neeser, program coordinator at PCD. "Some schools keep their food purchasing within the local community and some keep their purchasing within the country. But what is most important is creating that relationship between the farmers and the government program."

To best facilitate links between farmers and governments, HGSF works closely with the ministries of education to develop programs that will suit local needs and customs. In Ghana, for example, markets are run by "market queens," women who purchase vegetables from farmers and then sell them to commercial buyers at markets. To avoid disrupting this system, HGSF works to incorporate the market queens with Ghana’s school purchasing process, instead of attempting to deal directly with the farmers, as programs in other countries often do.

Ultimately, HGSF hopes to work with 10 countries, transitioning each program to being fully government owned, funded, and implemented–creating a permanent safety net for school children and a dependable demand for local, small-scale, farmer-sourced produce.

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The highways in southern Africa are filled with trucks carrying food aid across the continent. In the past, much of the maize, rice, soy, and other foods loaded onto these trucks came not from African farmers, but from the United States. And while these shipments provided much needed calories to people in need, they also disrupted national and local markets by lowering prices for locally grown food.

But today, more and more of the crops providing food aid come from African farmers who are selling directly to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) through local procurement policies. In Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zambia, and several other nations in sub-Saharan Africa (as well as in Asia and Latin America), WFP is not only buying locally, but helping small farmers gain the skills necessary to be part of the global market.

The WFP’s Progress for Profit (P4P) program, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the Belgian government, is working with the private sector, governments, and NGOs to provide an incentive for farmers to improve their crop management skills and produce high-quality food, create a market for surplus crops from small and low-income farmers, and promote locally processing and packaging of products.

In Zambia, WFP buys food directly from the Zambia Agricultural Commodity Exchange while remaining “invisible,” says Felix Edwards of the Zambia P4P Program. This way, WFP Zambia doesn’t distort prices and helps create an alternative market for farmers. WFP also works through its partners, including USAID’s PROFIT program, to help farmers and farmer associations meet the quality standards required by the Exchange. As a result, they are preparing Zambian farmers to provide high-quality food aid not only to programs and consumers in their own country, but also potentially to growing regional and international markets.

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