A new CNN poll says Americans overwhelmingly agree that Republicans are not doing enough to forge consensus with President Obama.
So certainly they think President Obama should be commended for his efforts to reach out to these people considering they overwhelmingly think Republicans aren’t being conciliatory enough? Right?
We love the energy of Maputo.
It’s the good kind of energy where we never felt like people were trying to hustle us like in the tourist traps of Arusha and Zanzibar, Tanzania. We also felt safe to wander in the evenings unlike in Nairobi, Kenya or Johannesburg, South Africa where we would jump into cabs after evening meetings (or linger in the suburbs).
Maputo’s vibrant, entrepreneurial, positive, and alive. It reminded us of Kampala, Uganda where the youth are bursting with energy, from the buzzing music scene, to the street and informal economy, and small upstart businesses.
Mozambique is not without its problems. Real poverty is everywhere, drug use rampant, many schools are dilapidated and deteriorating, and there is lots of evidence of environmental destruction and deforestation. But Maputo is clearly on the move, transforming itself and melding some of the best parts of its rich and diverse cultures.
We arrived by an Intercape bus from J’burg on an all night ride that spent an extra five hours on the road due to a closed highway from a chemical spillage and accident. And after pulling an all-nighter we jumped right into a series of meetings for Dani’s research for Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.
We checked into Base Backpackers largely because it was in walking distance to the Intercape bus station and twenty dollar a night for a private room. We’d be lying if we told you it was a perfect situation: we were in the lower basement (it wreaked of mold), had to walk two flights of stairs and across a hallway to go to the bathroom (twenty people were sharing the one working toilet), cold water showers, and internet so bad that old school AOL dial-up would have felt like luxury. With that said, the hostel was in the heart of the city and across the street from vegetarian friendly Chinese and Indian food. The hotel staff was extremely friendly, and the “guard” — a mutt resembling a bijon frise named Spudd — made for a warm, tail wagging welcome when we came home.
We spent the day visiting a workshop organized by Prolinnova, the Spanish NGO Centro de Iniciativas para la Cooperación/Batá, and the National Farmers Union of Mozambique, UNAC, about different agricultural innovations. The workshop brought farmers together from across the country to share with each other different innovations each farmer was practicing in her or his community. What I loved about the workshop was that it wasn’t some NGO preaching about what should be done, the farmers led the meeting, they drove the discussion, they presented their own findings. It was really refreshing to hear from the people who know best what is working and what needs to be scaled-up across the country. Throughout the morning, farmers presented other innovations and practices-including how to prevent diseases that affect their crops and fruit trees and how to raise farmed fish. Batá/Prolinnova/UNAC plans to identify 12-14 innovations and practices identified at the workshops for a book which will be translated into three of Mozambique’s languages, allowing these different innovations to spread throughout the country.
The next day we spent an awe-opening couple of hours with Dr. Rosa Costa at International Rural Poultry Center of the Kyeema Foundation in Mozambique. We know all too well how avian influenza, H1N1 and serious diseases can ravage livestock and rural communities. Newcastle disease, which can wipe out entire flocks of chickens and can spread from farm to farm, is especially devastating for rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Vaccines for Newcastle used to be hard to come by in Africa. They were imported and usually expensive, putting them out of reach of small farmers. And even when they were available, they required refrigeration, which is not common in many rural villages. Today, however, thanks to the work of the Kyeema foundation in Mozambique, villages have access not only to vaccines, but also to locally trained community vaccinators (or para-vets) who can help spot and treat Newcastle and other poultry diseases before they spread. With help from a grant from the Australian Government’s overseas aid program (AusAID), Kyeema developed a thermo-stable vaccine that doesn’t need to be refrigerated and is easier for rural farmers to administer to their birds.
Dr. Costa also talked at great length about the importance of nutrition when it comes to treating HIV/AIDS. Many retroviral and HIV/AIDS drugs don’t work if patients aren’t getting enough vitamins and nutrients in their diets or accumulating enough body fat. She noted that while many farmers are often too sick to grow crops, “chickens are easy.” Because women are often the primary caregivers for family members with HIV/AIDS, they need easy, low-cost sources of both food and income. Unlike many crops, raising free-range birds can require few outside inputs and very little maintenance from farmers. Birds can forage for insects and eat kitchen scraps, instead of expensive grains. They provide not only meat and eggs for household use and income, but also pest control and manure for fertilizer.
On our last day we visited with Madyo Couto who works under the Mozambique Ministry of Tourism to help manage the country’s Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs). These areas were initially established to help conserve and protect wildlife, but they’re now evolving to include other uses of land that aren’t specifically for conservation. Madyo explained that in addition to linking the communities that live near or in conservation areas to the private sector to build lodges and other services for tourists, they’re also helping farmers establish honey projects to generate income. In many of national parks and other conservation areas, farmers resort to poaching and hunting wildlife to earn money. He added that establishing alternative-and profitable-sources of income is vital to protecting both agriculture and biodiversity in the TFCAs.
Finally we met with Jessica Milgroom, an American graduate student working with farming communities living inside Limpopo National Park, in southern Mozambique. When the park was established in 2001, it was essentially “parked on top of 27,000 people,” says Jessica. Some 7,000 of the residents needed to be resettled to other areas, including within the park, which affected their access to food and farmland. Jessica’s job is to see what can be done to improve resettlement food security. But rather than simply recommending intensified agriculture in the park to make better use of less land, Jessica worked with the local community to collect and identify local seed varieties. One of the major problems in Mozambique, as well as other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, is the lack of seed. As a result, farmers are forced to buy low-quality seed because nothing else is available. In addition to identifying and collecting seeds, Jessica is working with a farmer’s association on seed trials, testing varieties to see what people like best.
After only five days in Maputo, we will definitely come back for another visit. Mozambique is so vast and incredible with loads of incredible projects to visit that our brief trip simply wasn’t enough time. But with meetings already scheduled in Durban, we boarded the 20 hour bus ride (had to go via J’Burg) back.
The once-beloved savior of the Tea Party – Scott Brown – is now Satan Incarnate to the Far Right (which has been becoming synonymous with “the Right”). The Tea Party Conference was, at best, a strange occasion. CPAC seemed to have as many sessions on how to beat the GOP as it did on winning against Democrats.
And the $15B Jobs Bill just passed the Senate on a vote of 70-28.
Is The Krazy beginning to drain away from the actual political function of the Republican party, or is it just a hiatus?
This is an Open Thread.
This is the first in a series of blogs where we’ll be asking policy makers, politicians, non-profit and organizational leaders, journalists, celebrities, chefs, musicians, and farmers to share their thoughts-and hopes-for agricultural development in Africa. Cross posted from Nourishing the Planet.
Last week, I had the privilege of meeting with the new U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray. Ambassador Ray was gracious enough to take the time to answer my questions about agricultural development in a country facing political turmoil, high unemployment, and high food prices.
What do you think is needed in Zimbabwe to both improve food security and farmers incomes?
Over the past decade, Zimbabwean small holder farmers have endured a litany of economic, political, and social shocks as well as several droughts and floods resulting in the loss of their livelihoods and food security. Poverty for small holder farmers has greatly increased throughout the country.
In order to restore farmers’ livelihoods they need to be supported in a process of sustainable private sector-driven agricultural recovery to achieve tangible household-level impact in food security and generate more household income, as well to promote more rural employment.
The U.S. government through USAID is doing this by supporting programs that provide effective rural extension, trainings and demonstration farms in order to improve farm management by small holder producers. The programs also include support for inputs and market linkages between the farmers and agro-processers, exporters and buyers. These programs are broad-based and cover all communal small holder farmers throughout the country.
The result of this work is increased production, and productivity, lowered crop production costs and losses, improved product quality, and production mix and increasing on-farm value-adding. Together these programs are increasing food security and farmer’s incomes as well as generating more farmer income and rural employment of agro-business.
At present, the U.S. is the largest provider of direct food aid in Zimbabwe. We are working with our partners to move from food aid to food security assistance which will use more market oriented approaches and combine livelihoods programs as noted above, which will reduce the need for food distribution.
Do you think Zimbabwe needs more private sector investment? If so, what are ways the U.S. government and other donors can help encourage both domestic and foreign investment?
Zimbabwe certainly needs more foreign direct investment. There is little chance that the country can internally generate the investments required to promote the economic growth it needs without it. But it is the government of Zimbabwe that is responsible for creating the business enabling environment to attract investment including both foreign and national.
At present, much more needs to be done in policy and the legal and regulatory framework and in the rhetoric and actions by the government in order to create the environment conducive to attract investment. Without the clear will of the government to be FDI-friendly there is not much that the donors can do.
This is the third part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Ohio. The last part can be found here.
Swing Ohio
Like most states, Ohio contains several swing areas. Some lean Democratic; others lean Republican. A good politician will usually pick up most of these regions on his or her way to victory.
The following map provides a sense of swing Ohio.
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I am one of those folks who never really thought of Grover Norquist as being the face of evil. At least not evil in the Hellfire and Brimstone sense. And I don’t think that Paul Krugman really think’s he’s evil either. But, Norquist and his ilk, despite having backed away from the deregulation fiasco–and none have yet acknowledged their policy advisements were in any way, shape, or form irresponsible or disastrous–do still represent a dire threat to our economic future.
W
hen a genuine democracy acts in the world it does so in the name of its citizens, especially when the preamble to its Constitution begins “We the people…,” basically meaning all of us. This is the foundation of our rights and also our responsibilities, not only as citizens of our own fair republic but as a people among the nations of the world. And our values are fairly judged, domestically and abroad, by the intentions and outcomes of those actions.
The heavily redacted report of the Office of Professional Responsibility of the Department of Justice, Investigation into the Office of Legal Counsel’s Memoranda Concerning Issues Relating to the Central Intelligence Agency’s Use of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” on Suspected Terrorists, published in July of 2009, weighs heavily on the scales of judgement of American moral ‘values’ in the modern world. This report originally recommended that Jay Bybee, a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and John Yoo, formerly with the Office of Legal Counsel, should face ‘disciplinary action’ for professional misconduct regarding flawed legal opinions they provided in support of the Bush administration’s extrajudicial authorisation of torture in their prosecution of the “war on terror.” But it isn’t going to happen.
What is at stake for us as a nation? From the perspective of history, perhaps quite a bit:
Seriously, this is a document that informed Americans should be familiar with, as a basis for any future discussion about the costs and consequences of a “global war on terror” and about the maintenance of American “values” in the world.Through American history, there have been episodes of brutality and abuse that, in hindsight, span a very wide range of moral acceptability. There is no way to “understand” lynchings that makes them other than abominations. But – to use the extreme case – America’s use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki will always be the subject of first-order moral debate, about whether any “larger good” could justify the immediate suffering, the decades-long aftereffects, and the crossing of the “first use” frontier that this decision represented.
My point now is not to go through the A-bomb debate. It is to say that anyone who is serious in endorsing the A-bomb decision has to have fully faced the consequences. This is why John Hersey’s Hiroshima was requisite basic knowledge for anyone arguing for or against the use of the bomb. The OPR report is essentially this era’s Hiroshima. As Hersey’s book does, it makes us confront what was done in our name – “our” meaning the citizens of the United States.
If you want to argue that “whatever” happened in the “war on terror” was necessary because of the magnitude and novelty of the threat, then you had better be willing to face what the “whatever” entailed. Which is what this report brings out. And if you believe – as I do, and have argued through the years – that what happened included excessive, abusive, lawless, immoral, and self-defeating acts done wrongly in the name of American “security,” then this is a basic text as well.
James Fallows – The OPR Report: This Era’s ‘Hiroshima’ The Atlantic 21 Feb 10
So what have we done about this? We seem determined to sweep the crumbs of our moral dilemma under the carpet.
Friend of mine snapped this photo of Colbert at an Olympics related event in Vancouver, B.C.
Proof positive. Bada bing, bada bang, bada boom. What has your attention these days? Anything cool shakin’ in your neck of The Socialist States of Obama-Nation?
Wausau Daily Herald: Husband and his wife are helping an African nation farm its was out of poverty
Husband and his wife are helping an African nation farm its was out of poverty
http://www.wausaudailyherald.c…
By Danielle Nierenberg
For the Wausau Daily Herald
Stacia and Kristof Nordin have an unusual backyard, and it looks a lot different from the Edgar yard in which Kristof grew up.
Rather than the typical bare dirt patch of land that most Malawians sweep “clean” every day, the Nordins have more than 200 varieties of mostly indigenous vegetables growing organically around their house. They came to Malawi in 1997 as Peace Corps volunteers, but now call Malawi home. Stacia is a technical adviser to the Malawi Ministry of Education, working to sensitize both policymakers and citizens about the importance of using indigenous foods and permaculture to improve livelihoods and nutrition. Kristof is a community educator who works to train people at all levels of Malawian society in low-input and sustainable agricultural practices.
The Nordins use their home as a demonstration plot for permaculture methods that incorporate composting, water harvesting, intercropping and other methods that help build organic matter in soils, conserve water, and protect agricultural diversity. Most Malawians think of traditional foods, such as amaranth and African eggplant, as poor-people foods grown by “bad” farmers. But these crops might hold the key for solving hunger, malnutrition and poverty in Malawi — as well as in other African countries.
Nowhere needs the help more than Malawi, a nation of 14 million in southeast Africa that is among the least developed and most densely populated on Earth.
The country might be best known for the so-called “Malawi Miracle.” Five years ago, the government decided to do something controversial and provide fertilizer subsidies to farmers to grow maize. Since then, maize production has tripled and Malawi has been touted as an agricultural success story.
But the way they are refining that corn, says Kristof, makes it “kind of like Wonder Bread,” leaving it with just two or three nutrients. Traditional varieties of corn, which aren’t usually so highly processed, are more nutritious and don’t require as much artificial fertilizer as do hybrid varieties.
“Forty-eight percent of the country’s children are still nutritionally stunted, even with the so-called miracle,” Kristof says.
Rather than focusing on just planting maize — a crop that is not native to Africa — the Nordins advise farmers with whom they work that there is “no miracle plant — just plant them all.” Research has shown that Malawi has more than 600 indigenous and naturalized food plants to choose from. Maize, ironically, is one of the least suited to this region because it’s highly susceptible to pests, disease and erratic rainfall patterns.
Unfortunately, the “fixation on just one crop,” says Kristof, means that traditional varieties of foods are going extinct — crops that already are adapted to drought and heat, traits that become especially important as agriculture copes with climate change.
“Design,” says Kristof, “is key in permaculture,” meaning that everything from garden beds to the edible fish pond to the composting toilet have an important role on their property. And although their neighbors have been skeptical, they’re impressed by the quantity — and diversity — of food grown by the family. More than 200 indigenous fruits and vegetables are grown on their small plot of land, providing a year-round supply of food to the Nordins and their neighbors.
In addition, they’re creating a “model village” by training several families who rent houses on the property,) to practice and teach others about the permaculture techniques that they use around their homes. They also have built an “edible playground,” where children can play, eat and learn about various indigenous fruits.
More important, the Nordins are showing that by not sweeping, burning and removing all organic matter, people can get more out of the land than just maize and reduce their dependence on high-cost agricultural inputs in the process.
And indigenous crops can be an important source of income for farmers. Rather than import amaranth, sorghum, spices, tamarinds and other products from India, South Africa and other countries, the Nordins are helping farmers find ways to market seeds, as well as value-added products, from local resources. These efforts not only provide income and nutrition, but fight the “stigma that anything Malawian isn’t good enough,” says Kristof. “The solutions,” he says, “are literally staring us in the face.”
And as a visitor walked around seeing and tasting the various crops at the Nordins’ home, it became obvious that maize is not Malawi’s only miracle.
Danielle Nierenberg is a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, blogging daily from Africa
at: http://blogs.worldwatch.org/no… She can be reached at dnierenberg@worldwatch.org.
This is the second part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Ohio. Part three can be found here.
Unlike Florida and Pennsylvania, Ohio cannot be easily divided into geographically distinct regions (although they do exist). Instead, I will be examining it through the lens of both partys’ strongholds in the state.
History
During the late eighteenth century Ohio was a consistently Republican state, the equivalent today of North Dakota or Arizona. Democrats often came close behind – four or five points – but never quite won the state until 1912. Their stronghold lay in a ring of rural counties populated by German immigrants (a pattern that has completely disappeared today). But this was never enough to overcome Republican strength everywhere else.
It was Franklin Roosevelt who changed this pattern forever.
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