In Africa, Holy Grail for Hunger is a New Rice
Posted on: Wednesday, 10 October 2007, 12:15 CDT
By Celia Dugger
The seeds are a marvel, producing bountiful, aromatic rice crops resistant to drought, pests and disease. But a decade after their introduction, they have spread to only a tiny fraction of the land here in West Africa, where they could help millions of farming families escape poverty. Scientists have called for a new push to develop more seed varieties to withstand global warming, and philanthropists like Bill Gates have recently become entranced by the possibility of a Green Revolution for Africa.
But the New Rices for Africa, as scientists dubbed the wonder seeds, offer a clear warning: Even the most promising crop varieties will not by themselves bring the plentiful harvests that can end poverty. Broader investment in infrastructure is needed, as well as new ways to get seeds into the hands of farmers.
Developed with financing from wealthy countries and private foundations, the New Rices for Africa, or Nericas, are unpatented and freely cultivable by anyone. Yet there is a severe shortage of them in a region where both the private sector and the agricultural economy are woefully undeveloped.
"This is a story repeated thousands of time all over Africa," said Joseph Devries, who heads seed development for the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations' joint effort to jump start farm productivity in Africa. "You have farmers who are very willing adopters of new technologies and want to raise yields but are not getting access to seed, fertilizer and small scale irrigation."
Devries, a plant breeder, said that finding a sustainable way to supply farmers with seed "is emerging as the holy grail for agricultural development." Here in West Africa, where rice is a staple crop, the African Development Bank is financing a $34 million program in seven countries toward that end.
But the obstacles are daunting. Many farmers have little capital or entrepreneurial know-how, and they typically lack credit to buy seed and fertilizer.
Likewise, decent roads to get crops to market are scarce. So are storage facilities to preserve harvests and crop insurance to protect farmers from drought, flood or bumper yields that perversely cause prices to collapse.
All can wipe out the income farmers need to give seed companies reliable demand, making the sale and distribution of the improved seeds a high-risk venture. Across the region, only a handful of private firms in Nigeria and Benin have begun to multiply and market the new rice varieties. Here in Guinea, where there is not a single seed company, the government is now working with farmers to expand the supply of Nerica seed.
Villagers here in Hermakono, which means Waiting for Happiness in Malinke, first enviously spotted the new rices growing in a neighboring community's field. Last year, after writing to Guinea's Agriculture Ministry, they got their first small store of the seeds to sow.
So precious were they that as the first crop grew heavy with grain the villagers took turns standing watch in the fields. "We divided into small groups to guard it so nobody would steal even one stalk," said Goulou Camara, a farmer.
Early one morning last year, a dozen farmers threshed their first harvest. They swirled in a circle, kicking golden sheaves of rice into the air with their bare feet, then beating them with sticks to shake lose the grains. They said they were determined not to eat any of it, but instead to save it to plant as seed this year.
There are only about 200,000 African farmers sowing the new rices on just 5 percent of the land where they could thrive, according to the Africa Rice Center, a Benin-based international research institution that developed the new rices in the mid-1990s.
In contrast to Africa, India had a stronger foundation when new dwarf wheat varieties sparked a Green Revolution there in the 1960s and 1970s, allowing the nation to feed hundreds of millions of people. India had a public seed company to take the marketing risks, far more irrigated farmland and a better road system.
"If we don't develop the infrastructure, there's no way we'll attain the Green Revolution," said Monty Jones, the plant breeder whose groundbreaking research led to creation of the new rices. "How do you bring the Nericas to farmers? How do you get farmers to know the seeds exist?"
Jones now heads the Ghana-based Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa. He also serves on the board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a nonprofit group financed with an initial $150 million from the Gates and Rockefeller foundations.
The alliance intends to invest $23 million to promote the multiplication and distribution of promising seeds.
Almost two decades ago, Jones was put in charge of a team breeding upland, rain-fed rice varieties at the West Africa Rice Development Agency, now known as the Africa Rice Center, one of 15 scientific institutions financed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research with aid from rich countries and philanthropists.
His team overcame highly technical obstacles and produced the first new rices more than a decade ago, an achievement recognized in 2004 when Jones became the first African winner of the World Food Prize, created by Norman Borlaug, the agricultural scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contributions to the original Asian Green Revolution.
The new seeds increased yields even without fertilizer and more than doubled them with it. From planting to harvest, they also took three rather than the five or six months required by traditional varieties, bringing rice to the family table during the hungry season.
But even in places where the seeds have been introduced, initial advances have sometimes been rolled back because farmers were not given more seed periodically or could not buy more themselves.
Odia Camara, a 30-year-old farmer and mother of five, remembers the first time in 1998 that she glimpsed the new rices growing in a government-sponsored test field near her village of Camara.
"The stalks were big and very bushy, carrying a lot of rice, and swayed when the wind blew," she recalled.
Four years later, Camara's group of about 50 women farmers, initially organized to grow vegetables, was one of two groups in the village that got their chance. The government provided each of them with a scant 25 kilograms, or 55 pounds, of seed, as well as subsidized fertilizer - enough for a small plot.
The groups also got basic machines to thresh, husk and parboil the rice from Sasakawa-Global 2000, a nonprofit partnership organized by a former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, and Borlaug.
That first year, the new rices yielded the village's richest rice harvest ever - triple the usual amount. The families of the women ate some of the rice, sold some for cash to buy fertilizer and reserved 100 kilograms to plant in 2003.
In 2003, after another eye-popping harvest, there was plenty of the aromatic rice to feed their families and cash left over to pay children's school fees. Even cranky marriages mellowed.
"When we are hungry, we don't even look at each other," Camara said of her husband. "When the rice comes, we are very happy together."
But 2004 brought signs of trouble. The groups had a decent harvest, but the acreage planted was greater and the yields lower because the new seed was not as pure. It had begun to mix with local varieties in storage sheds, fields and on the floors of the farmer's huts.
Their woes deepened in 2005. International donors did not give Guinea fertilizer that year and the government provided none to the farmers in this area, nor did private traders bring any to local markets, according to government officials. The seeds that Camara's group had saved became more degraded, and there was no fresh Nerica seed available to buy locally. Her group grew so discouraged, she said, that they wanted to give up on the new rices.
But government workers came to their village last year and persuaded them to try again. The government was only able to provide the village of 2,500 people 70 kilograms of scarce, subsidized seeds. The two women's groups had to split it.
Despite these challenges, the new rices, which are also now being grown in East Africa, have spread farther in Guinea than in any other country, covering some 16 percent of the area under rice production.
Source: International Herald Tribune
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