When real estate companies discover agriculture

It is with great intersted i read the "seeds of gold" the agricultural supplement of the Kenyan daily nation yesterday. It is about HessConsultant, a real estate company i came accross when i was looking into buying a flat in Nairobi. To my big astonishment, they where not building houses, but building gated farms, like gated communities in Nairobi (set of townhouses that share security).
A gated farms shares security, water access and professional advice. A very interesting new concept for commercial farming in Kenya, providing 25 four acre plots, these are sizes where lots can be done and is commercially viable.

Gated farms

The owners of the plots have all their different business plans from horticulture to livestock and are very confident. What is missing in this discussions is the synergies that theses 25 farms could have by working together, for example the poultry farm providing input to the dairy farm with the poultry excrement, or the crop residues to livestock.
Where as the concept as presented is a classical commercial agriculture model relying on outside inputs, it might be worth to look at how these different farms could complement each other to produce commercially in a closed and sustainable system. An opportunity that these farmers should not miss, and an initiative that i will hopefully visit one day, when it will be fully set up!

Find here the full article.

Who is poor?

In the past poverty was usually assessed with the famous 1 usd or 2 usd per day poverty lines. However, new poverty assessements are moving away from expenditures and income that are quite difficult to assess correctly to assets that can be assessed through farm household survey easily, as for example the demographic health surveys (DHS).

The wealth index is a composite measure of a household's cumulative living standard. The wealth index is calculated using easy-to-collect data on a household's ownership of selected assets, such as televisions and bicycles; materials used for housing construction; and types of water access and sanitation facilities. - See more at: http://www.dhsprogram.com/topics/wealth-index/Wealth-Index-Construction.cfm#sthash.aMwBEa0h.dpuf

Wealth index are the novel way to assess poverty and is computed for any DHS survey or farm household survey that has an extensive asset section. In most simple words, the wealth index ranks household based on assets and categorizes them into wealth quintile. 

In order to define the weight of every asset in the index, a principal component analysis is implemented. The first factor (loading) is used as weight. Find more info about the wealth index here.

However there are also downsides to wealth index. The main one is that it is a relative measurement of poverty that is computed for each country separately.

Many efforts are done to move away from country specific indexes to more regional ones allowing to compare poverty across countries. A very interesting approach is presented in this FAO working paper.

Following the formal milk route in Bihar

During my trip in India last year, to Nalanda district in Bihar, i followed the formal (organized) milk route. It is one of the first formal milk value chain i have visited and i learned a lot about the challenges of a cold chain. Let me take you along!

We first visited a village, in which farmers had create. They have a milk collection point, where quality and quantity of the  milk is assessed.

Community collecting point, with the machine to assess milk quality

From there one of the farmers takes all milk by bike to the big road, which is the pick up point and waits for the milk union track that comes and picks the milk. In order to remember from where the milk comes every container has the name of the community market in red.

the milk containers with community name

The milk truck as a fixed agreed route and usually reaches the pick up point with 15 min. From there the track continues to the processing plants.

The milk truck

Between milking and cooling within the processing plant there is a maximum of 4 hours. Every step in the chain is monitored, so when milk arrives bad at the plant, one can find where something went wrong (was the truck late, or did the farmer bring old milk), so that it can be defined who has to bear the loss. The plant pays only for the good quality milk that has arrived.

the processing plant in Nalanda

In some districts it is not possible to reach the plant within 4 hours since milking. Therefore, the milk union also build cooling point. As the milk union continues to grow, there will be a need for more of these cooling points, as distances to the plant will increase.

packed milk arriving at the shop

The milk is processed, pasteurized and brought back to the consumer in a cool chain.The plant also processes powder milk. During holiday season, when the demand for milk is big and farmer supply little (as their home consumption increases), powder milk regenerated and mixed into the fresh milk (up to 50%). If there is too much powder milk, then it is dumped to Bangladeshi and Nepali market.

a milk shop that sells the milk union pasteurized milk in Patna town

Because the quality of the milk is still relatively low, it is just pasteurized and sold in the region. However the Nalanda plant hopes to be able to increase milk quality so that it will fit the standard to be packed into tetra pack that can be sold in Dehli, which implies much higher margins.

I hope i will get a change to go back in some years and see how this value chains has changed. 

Where does our meat come from?

Just came across this movie from ZDF showing where our meat comes from. I guess the author of the movie wanted to scare people when they see how their meat is produced.

Yes i agree, the breeds we have been improving the get "our meat machine" where animals are just born to feed us, and have no right for quality of life can be shocking (but somehow was no news for me.)

I was much more interested into how slaughterhouse work, and how the animal end up on our plates. Under what conditions are animals slaughtered and how is food security and traceability insured.

And far from being shocked, i have been pretty astonished on how painlessly the animals are slaughtered. Most chicken in Kenya for example are slaughtered in backyard and just get their head cut in front of other chicken. Also hygiene is quite difficult to guarantee in backyard slaugthering and let's not even talk about the cold chain.

So have a look at this movie here (in German)

Nairobi, an urban zoo? or the limits of agricultural census data

In my last post I have shown a livestock keeper in urban area. Urban agriculture is often not so widely studied, as most agricultural census data are restricted to rural area. The lack of standardized big amount of data makes it very difficult to understand the different food producing systems along the urban rural continuum.

The recently released demographic health surveys (DHS) are bringing a big change in the data availability. Because they focus on health, they cover the whole continuum from urban to rural. As they are also interested in wealth of the households, they collect lots of information about assets,  including livestock and agricultural land.

As part of the Urban Zoo project to which ILRI contributes, i have been asked to study livestock ownership within the boarders of Nairobi based on this data, with some astonishing results.

About 60% of households in poorer neighborhoods of Nairobi own livestock

The most common animal is chicken

but also dairy cow

So missing urban areas out of agricultural survey will always result in missing livestock keepers who contribute to food security.

Where do urban sheep go? A reflection from Burkina Faso

Especially in the Western world, there is this understanding that livestock belongs to rural area, and most of the agricultural surveys are limited to rural area, ignoring urban agriculture.
During my last year's trip to Burkina Faso, i had the opportunity to visit an urban farmer. He lives in the city of Ouahigouya in the North of Burkina Faso, and he has about 10 sheep, that he has imported from Mali if i remember correctly, a breed that fits his environment but are stronger and bigger than the local breed.

The farmer presenting his animals

His major challenge is feed. He usually get crop residue and barley water from women in his neigborhood. (Note here that there is an entry point to look at gender relations in this value urban value chain).  This local feed is usually cheaper than commerical feed or crop residue from cotton that has to be brought to town. However, local feed is not sufficient and therefore he has to rely on commercial feed. He thinks that getting a feed processing plant might reduce his production costs.

Cotton crop residue processed in the South of the country, that he bough as feed

He sells his animal to the livestock market for meat. Through the discussion we discovered that there is only one small ruminant value chain in Burkina Faso : both urban and rural livestock (both from pastoralists and sedentary farmers) ends up on the same market. The farmer did not seems to have really understood the market dynamics, as he had failed to sell his animals during the Muslim festival. But he insisted that he would sell his animals for meat as pilgrim will be coming back and buy animals on their way. It did not really convince anyone of our scientific team, and i was pretty astonished that he is targeting a meat market as he is bringing a new breed to the region. I asked him why he does not do breeding and sell off young animals to other farmers to improve their herds. Those animals usually fetch a higher market price. He made big eyes at me and admitted that he had never thought about it.

the urban sheep herd

It was a great encounter with a farmer that had started his business less than year ago and obviously was discovering how to run it. I hope one day i will get a chance to meet him again, and see what he has been learning over time and if he has taken up the breeding idea.

Shrimps made in Switzerland

Shrimp is a quite contested food, as it used to be quite a polluting production in Asia, with important antibiotics use. Also transport from these countries to Europe is very CO2 intensive as they need a cold chain.

Some young entrepreneurs address these issues by taking up the challenge to grow shrimps in Switzerland ! See the movie from the Swiss TV.



And as usual, there is much critique, there is even a request to take up shrimps into the Swiss animal protection law. Also shrimps need warm water, is it really ecological to keep shrimps in places where water has to be kept warm artificially?

An interesting initiative, remains the question, do we really need to eat shrimps? 

Rehabilitating land to decrease conflict with pastorlists

During my last year trip to Burkina Faso, I visited a community in Thiou, North West of Ouahigouya.



I was welcomed by Sa Majeste, the head of the community for a courtesy visit and present the Livestock and Fish Research program I am working on. He is also involved with the the "Association pour la Promotion de l'Elevage au Sahel et en Savane (APESS)" a very active organization around the support of smallholder livestock keepers. 

The head of the community and some representative of the community

Like many other communities around, they are cropping on some lands. When the dry season comes and fodder for livestock becomes short, they go on transhumances. Some men in each family will take their cattle South in the search for fodder. They take small ruminants (goats and sheep) with them, to sell on the way and get money meet their daily needs.
 
It is a very innovative community that has been testing different fodder for their cattle, trying on the one hand to reduce their own need to go on transhumance and on the other hand to make sure that other pastoralists coming from the North passing their land find sufficient fodder, so that no conflict emerges on on cropped land.

Testing various fodder crops including soya

On their communal land (basically owned by the head of the community), the community tries to rehabilitated degraded land. This land was quite unproductive but with smart rainwater management, biomass is now growing and can be used as fodder.

The result of rainwater management, grasses are starting to grow in areas

The community envisions that when the grass will grow plenty, then they will perceive a fee from any pastoralist who wants to stay and use the area to feed his animals. This fee will allow to cover the costs of rehabilitating the land. The area will also insure drinking points.

In order to avoid the spreading of animal diseases, there is also a vaccination park, where animals can get vaccinated efficiently.

vaccination park

The area around Thiou should become one of the zones where pastoralists are welcome within fixed boundaries and will find sufficient fodder and water along the Mali-Ghana transhumance route. In this way, conflict between pastoralist and cropping communities can be reduced.

I was impressed to discover this area and its people who believe in a peaceful pastoralism that benefits smallholders.

Chicken run ! or why it is never too late to wish you a happy new year!

There has been quite a long silence on this blog, and it time to catch up and get back on track. Indeed the end of the year has been quite busy. It was a time full of interesting work and personal changes followed by a resting time, a long Christmas leave.

A leave for rest and reflection about the year 2014. It was an amazing year for me, my first year in Kenya. Firslty, work-wise i had a great oppotunity to visit farmers around the world. It was a fascinating experience to meet semi-pastoralist in Burkina and young farmer at the edge of the dairy industrialization in India. This blog reported from India and will with delay report from Burkina Faso.

rehabilitation of marginal lands in Burkina Faso to improve fodder along the transumance route

Secondly, it is a year i spent lots of thoughts into the role of GIS, real time crowed sourced spatial data or satellite images can contribute to better agricultural practice both in crop-livestock and pastoralism systems. 

Finally, there has been all the experience in contributing to Jolly Poultry a social enterprise bringing the Kuroiler breed to Kenyan smallholders. Kuroiler breed is a improved endogenous chicken that allow smallholder to commercialize but to industrialize. It is a great option to produce organic high quality poultry meat and make those farmer benefit that need it most. Many Sundays in 2014 were spent at the Jolly Farm making me feel a bit like in the chicken run movie.

In 2015, the Jolly team hope the develop this enterprise further and insuring the more smallholder can access the Kuroiler and develop its market.

We are already one month in 2015, but it is not yet too late to wish you a happy new year may it be  fascinating. I hope you will continue following this blog despite of the long silence over the last two months.

An opportunity or the winner's curse : H&M in Ethiopia

About a year ago, i discussed the emergence of the manufacturing industry in Ethiopia, as a chance to move huge amount of rural population out of agriculture and push for more productive agriculture.
It was a movie that was very biased, towards modern slavery not looking at the opportunities that this new sector can bring to a very poor country. Especially the working conditions offered by Chinese manufacturers were actually quite good compared to other employment opportunities in Ethiopia.

Recently the German TV followed the cloth route for H&M cloth in Bangladesh and unveiled how H&M is working. H&M is also starting operations in Ethiopia because of the very low wage level.



It unveils how H&M never pays taxes, does not care at all about development of the countries their work in nor about their population. As much as manufacturing of cloth is a tremendous opportunity, it is time to look at what type of development it means. Government have the power to let H&M in, and under which conditions... Time for Ethiopia wake up and don't let its people become slaves?