Thirteen corporations control up to 40 per cent of world’s most valuable fisheries

A press release from Stockholm University: Just thirteen corporations control 19-40% of the largest and most valuable stocks and 11-16 % of the global marine catch, according to new research. These “keystone” corporations of the global seafood industry critically shape the future of marine ecosystems, but have yet to assume this responsibility at the global scale.

The new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, makes an analogy between the largest companies in seafood industry and keystone species in ecological communities. Keystone species in nature have a profound effect on the structure and function of the ecosystem and disproportionately determine the prevalence and activities of other species. For example just a small number of sea otters can determine urchin numbers, or a few grey wolves determine the size of bison, deer or elk populations.

Likewise, the study found that the average annual revenues of the 160 largest companies in 2012 exhibit a distinct keystone pattern, where the top 10% account for 38 % of total revenues. The identified thirteen companies (box) shape very large marine ecosystems around the world and are involved in both wild capture fisheries and aquaculture, including whitefish, tuna, salmon, shellfish, fishmeal, fish oil, and aqua feeds. Their combined annual revenues correspond to 18% of the global value of seafood production in 2012 (US$ 252 billion).

This handful of corporations (representing 0.5% of 2250 registered fishing and aquaculture companies worldwide) dominate all parts of seafood
production, operate through an extensive global network of subsidiaries and are profoundly involved in fisheries and aquaculture decision-making. Such omnipotence represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the governance of global fisheries.

“The phenomenon of keystone actors is an increasingly important feature of our human-dominated world. Active leadership in sustainability initiatives by these corporations could result in a cascade through the entire seafood industry towards improved management of marine living resources and ecosystems,” says lead author Henrik Österblom, Deputy Science Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

“Increasing demand for seafood has contributed to a global fisheries crisis, with consequences for marine ecosystems around the world,” Österblom adds. Existing analyses of global fisheries operations have, however, so far largely focused on the role of countries, rather than industry corporations....

A fishing vessel off the coast of Scotland in 1963, shot by Phillip Capper, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Fury over Senegal’s private land buyers

IRIN: ...A liberal land regime in Senegal over the decade has favoured large-scale acquisitions of arable land by both foreign and local investors. Dramatic changes in ownership have coincided with serious food shortages in the sub-region, a global financial crisis and a growing emphasis on the promotion of bio-fuel, with Senegal heavily promoting the planting of the controversial Jatropha tree, the seeds of which are used for the production of fuel for diesel engines.

Between 2000 and 2010, over 657,000 hectares of land, around 17 percent of Senegal’s arable land, was allocated to 17 private firms. Ten of the firms are Senegalese and the rest are foreign, according to the regional pressure group Pan-African Institute for Citizenship, Consumers and Development (CICODEV).

Under the previous administration of Abdoulaye Wade, the government pushed high profile schemes like the Return towards Agriculture plan (REVA) and the Grand Agricultural Drive for Food and Abundance (GOANA), with an emphasis on promoting agri-business and bio-fuels.

“These initiatives have led to a glut of private operators, including religious leaders and senior state officials moving in on land in rural areas,” complains Mariam Sow, coordinator of the Natural Protection Programme of international NGO ENDA.

In a May 2011 report, the Agricultural and Rural Prospective Initiative (IPAR), a sub-regional NGO which aims to provide “strategic analysis” of rural and agricultural issues, highlighted the volume of land deals in northern Senegal. IPAR drew particular attention to the case of Mbane in Saint Louis Region, where it said 232,000 hectares had been distributed to politicians, religious leaders and private operators with strong political connections under the GOANA project. The IPAR report noted that, at the time of writing, much of the land acquired had yet to be exploited....

A farm in Senegal, image by Richard Melo da Silva, public domain

Exxon Mobil to assess climate risk

Heather Long in CNN Money: Exxon Mobil (XOM), America's largest energy company, funded global warming denial groups for years. Now it has agreed to release a report by the end of March that details how climate change could affect its business.

The move comes in response to a shareholder resolution and as the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the Valdez oil spill that released 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska. Investors and activists concerned about climate change see this as a major victory that they hope will inspire other companies to follow suit.

The push to get Exxon Mobil to do a climate change assessment has been going on for months. Investors sent letters and tried to engage with Exxon behind the scenes. Arjuna Capital, a sustainable wealth management firm, and As You Sow, a California non-profit, ultimately filed a shareholder resolution demanding a comprehensive "carbon risk report." That resolution has been dropped now that Exxon plans to issue its climate change report.

The argument environmentally conscious investors have made is that shareholders need to know how large a company's fossil fuel reserves are. Regulatory or financial conditions may make it too costly to use all the current reserves, let alone new ones. "Shareholder value is at stake if companies are not prepared for a low-carbon scenario," said Natasha Lamb, director of equity research for Arjuna Capital....

Food system that fails poor countries needs urgent reform, says UN expert

Mark Tran in the global development blog at the Guardian (UK): The existing food system has failed and needs urgent reform, according to a UN expert who argues there should be a greater emphasis on local food production and an overhaul of trade policies that have led to overproduction in rich countries while obliging poor countries – which are often dependent on agriculture – to import food.

In his final report , Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, offers a detailed critique of an industrial system of agriculture that has boosted food production over the past 50 years, yet still leaves 842 million – 12% of the world's population – hungry.

"Measured against the requirement that they should contribute to the realisation of the right to food, the food systems we have inherited from the 20th century have failed," he told the UN human rights council. "Of course, significant progress has been achieved in boosting agricultural production. But this has hardly reduced the number of hungry people."

The right to food is defined as the right of every individual to have physical and economic access at all times to sufficient, adequate and culturally acceptable food that is produced and consumed sustainably, preserving access to food for future generations...

In India, a "metate" is used to process grain, shot by Fotokannan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Shareholders seeking stronger responses from companies as climate change concerns deepen

A press release from Ceres: Motivated by mounting scientific evidence that human activity is a leading cause of climate change, major institutional investors are pushing for stronger actions from companies in climate-related shareholder resolutions in the 2014 proxy season.

Led by Walden Asset Management, the New York State Comptroller’s Office, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, Calvert Investments, the Connecticut Treasurer’s Office, Trillium Asset Management, Mercy Investments and Green Century Capital Management, 35 institutional investors have filed 142 resolutions in a coordinated effort to spur action by 118 companies – including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Kinder Morgan, Lowes and several electric utilities – on a wide range of climate-related issues such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy efficiency and sustainable palm oil.

“The combined package of 2014 resolutions demonstrates a common urgency that investors and companies alike need to ‘raise the bar’ and expand our actions to address climate change,” said Timothy Smith, Senior Vice President and Director of Environmental Social and Governance Shareholder Engagement at Boston-based Walden Asset Management. “The range of resolutions shows how investors are broadening their outreach to more companies and deepening their message to other companies on difficult climate issues such as lobbying on climate by fossil fuel companies.”

This year’s record number of climate-related resolutions demonstrates that investors are paying more attention than ever to risks and opportunities that climate change and environmental issues pose to companies in their portfolios. The investors – many of which are members of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, coordinated by the sustainability advocacy group Ceres, and members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) – request specific actions from companies such as adopting and achieving company-wide goals for reducing GHG emissions from operations...

A stock certificate photographed by SpreeTom, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

US farmers, food interests unite against GMO labeling

Seed Daily via AFP: US farmers joined with the food industry Thursday to launch a united front against labeling genetically modified products, amid mounting consumer pressure and an ongoing trade dispute with China.

More than half of US states introduced bills aimed at requiring GMO labeling last year, in a country where 80 percent of the food contains ingredients that were made with genetically modified organisms. While only two states have passed such measures, and none have yet implemented any labeling requirements, farmers are clearly concerned about the prospect.

"If each state had a different label requirement, our farmers just couldn't adapt to that and really economically grow safe, affordable food," said Ray Gaesser, president of the American Soybean Association which represents 600,000 US farmers.

Gaesser estimated that any new state-by-state labeling laws would hike prices 15 to 30 percent. Stressing the lack of scientific evidence that GMOs cause harm, Gaesser joined with corn farmers, bakers, restaurants, fisheries, animal feed and grocery store groups in forming the 30-member Coalition for Safe Affordable Food....

Corn on the cob, shot by Thamizhpparithi Maari, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

World’s richest nations ‘failing’ to address climate change

Paul Brown in Responding to Climate Change:  The world’s richest countries have made some progress since the 1990s in limiting environmental damage. But they have not done enough to prevent catastrophic climate change, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Scientists say that carbon dioxide emissions need to start going down in the next decade to prevent global temperatures reaching dangerous levels. But the OECD predicts they will continue to rise and by 2050 will be 50% higher than they are today. The 34 OECD countries in the survey are mainly the older mature economies which in the 1970s produced well over half the world’s CO2 emissions from their factories and transport.

Now the OECD share of total world emissions has dropped to 30%, but only because of the vast increase in the energy use of China and other high-growth countries like Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and South Africa.  These now account for 40% of global emissions on their own.

There is some good news in the report. Some OECD countries have both increased production and reduced CO2 emissions by introducing renewables and energy efficiency. The problem for those that fail to do so appears to be political, with countries like Australia and Canada, which have repudiated the Kyoto Protocol, apparently also abandoning most policies to combat climate change...

Gabriel Metsu's 17th century painting, "The Triumph of Justice"

US business leaders must break silence on climate change

Jo Confino in the Guardian (UK) "Leadership hub":  Is it possible for the chief executives of US corporations to show anything even resembling leadership when it comes to speaking out about the dangers of climate change?

Whatever meeting or conference I go to, I constantly hear the same message; that unless CEOs stand up in public en masse, the sustainability movement will be unable to even get close to matching the power of the fossil fuel lobby.

But if you count the number of business leaders who are raising their heads above the parapet on a consistent basis, then you would probably need no more than the fingers on one hand, and that may well leave fingers to spare.

The riposte from many progressive companies is that they are squirreling away within their own operations and supply chains, driving innovation and seeking to cut their own emissions either by switching to renewable energy or through greater efficiencies. But when looked at from a meta level, that is the equivalent to a slow journey to hell.

They will also point to the fact that around 60 major corporations, ranging from General Motors and Mars to Microsoft and Intel, are among the more than 700 businesses to have signed the Ceres climate declaration, the most prominent coalition seeking to challenge the fossil fuel industry in the US...

A Phelps Dodge smelter in 1972, EPA photo

Rich countries must end obsession with private climate finance

A press release from Oxfam: Rich countries’ obsession with private finance means millions of poor and vulnerable people could be left to face increasingly extreme and erratic climate alone warned Oxfam today as ministers from around the globe meet in Warsaw to discuss how they deliver on their climate finance commitments.

Rich countries promised to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries reduce their emissions and adapt to a changing climate. However two US-hosted Ministerial Meetings and pre-COP finance discussions during 2013 have focused almost exclusively on the role of private finance in meeting this target.

The invitation for Ministers to attend today’s meeting also highlighted the need for participants to come prepared to present ideas on how to mobilize funds from the private sector. Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International said: “Private finance is not a panacea. It has a role to play, particularly on projects aimed at reducing emissions, but it will not reach the most vulnerable people in the poorest countries who need help to survive in the face of increasingly extreme and erratic weather.”

“Rich country governments must stop using the private sector to side step their own climate finance promises and seize this opportunity to sort out the public funding mess. Murky accounting and a lack of transparency mean the world’s poorest countries have no idea what money will be available and when. The uncertainty makes it impossible for them to take action to protect their populations.

“Rich countries must make it clear what new money they are putting on the table now and how they will deliver the $100 billion a year they promised by 2020. Kicking this issue down the road again could spell disaster for poor communities who need help to adapt to a changing climate and lead to a breakdown in trust that will bury hopes for agreement on a global climate deal in 2015.”...

'Seed freedom is the answer to hunger and malnutrition'

Vandana Shiva in the "Health and well-being hub" at the Guardian (UK): What happens to the seed affects the web of life. When seed is living, regenerative and diverse, it feeds pollinators, soil organisms and animals - including humans. When seed is non-renewable, bred for chemicals, or genetically engineered with toxic Bt or Roundup Ready genes, diversity disappears.

In recent years, beekeepers have been losing 25% of their hives each winter. According to a scientific study in 2008, bees and pollinators contribute more than €153bn annually to agriculture. Chemically-farmed soils, sprayed with herbicides and pesticides kill the beneficial organisms that create soil fertility and protect plants.

Organic seeds and organic farming do not just protect human health; they protect the health and wellbeing of all.

With industrial seeds and industrial agriculture, the diversity of plants and crops disappears. India had 200,000 rice varieties before the "green revolution" in the 1970s, which relied on pesticides and fertilisers to avert famine in India. This diversity was replaced by monocultures.

Today the fastest expanse in acreage is of genetically engineered corn and soya, because they are patented and corporations can collect royalties from farmers. When seed freedom disappears and farmers become dependent on GMO seeds, they in effect become seed slaves.

According to the National Bureau of Crime Records, more than 284,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since seed monopolies were established in India. Gandhi spun cotton for our freedom. Today GMO Bt cotton has enslaved our farmers in debt, and pushed them to suicide. And 95% cotton seed is controlled by one company: Monsanto.

When culture is eroded, biodiversity is eroded. And when control over seeds becomes big business, diversity disappears faster. Diversity is a product of care, connection and cultural pride....

Home-grown seeds of Detroit Dark Red beets (Beta vulgaris), an earthy-tasting, dark red, culinary beet. Shot by Downtowngal, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Rich countries' proposal to bypass governments on climate aid rejected

John Vidal in the Guardian (UK): Efforts by rich countries to give $100bn (£66bn) a year of 'climate aid' direct to companies, bypassing poorer countries' governments, have suffered a setback. The UN's fledgling Green Climate Fund (GCF) is designed to transfer money in the future from the developed to developing world, to tackle the impacts of climate change, such as floods and droughts.

Papers seen by the Guardian following a tense GCF board meeting in South Korea show that rich countries led by the US, Britain and Australia pushed for the World Bank-run fund to be able to bypass the governments of poor countries by giving money intended to help them directly to rich countries' companies. Under this scenario, large contracts for climate change adaptation works in developing countries might have been awarded by the fund to international companies rather than to host governments.

They also lobbied hard for the fund to be able to act like an autonomous bank, taking risks, guaranteeing loans, having its own governing body and even being able to speculate with climate funds.

But the 24-strong board of the new fund voted down the proposal for the GCF to act like a bank and denied rich countries the independent governing structure for the private sector that they sought...

An opera = plutocracy, maybe. Peng, edited, masked and converted to PNG by Wikipeder 2007-07-21, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

OECD-FAO expect slower global agricultural production growth

A press release from the OECD: Global agricultural production is expected to grow 1.5% a year on average over the coming decade, compared with annual growth of 2.1% between 2003 and 2012, according to a new report published by the OECD and FAO today.

Limited expansion of agricultural land, rising production costs, growing resource constraints and increasing environmental pressures are the main factors behind the trend. But the report argues that farm commodity supply should keep pace with global demand.

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2013-2022 expects prices to remain above historical averages over the medium term for both crop and livestock products due to a combination of slower production growth and stronger demand, including for biofuels,

The report says agriculture has been turned into an increasingly market-driven sector, as opposed to policy-driven as it was in the past, thus offering developing countries important investment opportunities and economic benefits, given their growing food demand, potential for production expansion and comparative advantages in many global markets.

However, production shortfalls, price volatility and trade disruption remain a threat to global food security. The OECD/FAO Outlook warns: “As long as food stocks in major producing and consuming countries remain low, the risk of price volatility is amplified. A wide-spread drought such as the one experienced in 2012, on top of low food stocks, could raise world prices by 15-40 percent.”

China, with one-fifth of the world’s population, high income growth and a rapidly expanding agri-food sector, will have a major influence on world markets, and is the special focus of the report. China is projected to remain self-sufficient in the main food crops, although output is anticipated to slow in the next decade due to land, water and rural labour constraints....

View from Bukowica hill, Nowotaniec, farmland, parish and main market, Lipiec. Poland, shot by Marek Silarski, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Investors who trample land rights risk bottom line

Seed Daily via AFP: Companies that invest in land and resources in emerging economies risk financial and public relations disasters if local inhabitants feel they are getting ripped off, consultants warned in a report last week. The report was released by a group known as the Munden Project and founder Lou Munden said: "When we looked at companies involved in international land acquisitions, we found that they experience an astonishing amount of financial damage."

This ranged from "massively increased operating costs, as much as 29 times above a normal baseline scenario, to outright abandonment of functional operations when they ignore pre-existing or customary local land rights."

The report was entitled "The Financial Risks of Insecure Land Tenure: An Investment View," and Munden emphasised that the financial risks were many and varied from delays in construction timetables to the expropriation of assets "following the loss of insurance coverage."

He commented that "even more troubling, the escalation of risk can be extremely rapid", and that conventional techniques for managing risk were inadequate for coping with insecure local land tenure.

Projects go wrong when local people feel they have not been adequately compensated and are being deprived of their land, jobs, water and forests.

This can lead to disruption of many kinds, from roadblocks to frequent acts of sabotage and other forms of violence....

A walk for land rights in Chambai, India, in 2009, shot by Ekta Parishad, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Asia Pulp & Paper commits to end rainforest destruction

Business Green: Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), the company at the centre of a decades-long campaign against its logging activities, has today committed to end all deforestation of natural forests.

The company today published a new "Forest Conservation Policy" committing it to end development of all natural forested areas, including peat forests, improve its peatland management to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and work more closely with local communities and other stakeholders.

Crucially, the stated strategy applies to all APP operations and all of its suppliers, as well as "all future expansion" and "any Indonesian fibre utilised by APP's mills elsewhere, including China". In addition, the new strategy will be subject to a series of independent assessments.

APP has in the past published a series of environmental commitments that have been dismissed as "greenwash" by campaigners, but Greenpeace, which has led many of the protests against the company, today welcomed the new strategy.

"We commend APP for making this commitment to end deforestation," said Bustar Maitar, Head of Greenpeace's Forest Campaign in Indonesia, adding that the NGO would now be monitoring its progress closely to ensure the commitments are honoured. "If APP fully implements its new policies it will mark a dramatic change in direction, after years of deforestation in Indonesia."...

Shell Arctic rig runs aground off Alaska

Tom Fowler in the Wall Street Journal:  Royal Dutch Shell PLC suffered another potential setback in its attempt to drill for oil in U.S. Arctic waters when an offshore rig ran aground after breaking free from tow ships in high seas.

The Kulluk, a drilling rig owned by Shell and operated by Noble Corp., NE +2.58% struck Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited area about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage late Monday, according to a joint statement by Shell, Switzerland-based Noble and the U.S. Coast Guard, which were coordinating their response to the accident.

A Coast Guard helicopter on Saturday lifts crew members from Shell's Kulluk drilling unit. The rig later broke free from tow ships and ran aground. The rig has about 139,000 gallons of diesel on board, along with about 12,000 gallons of combined lubrication oil and hydraulic fluid. Coast Guard aircraft that flew over the rig Tuesday didn't spot any signs of leaking fuel. Plans were under way to get salvage crews to the rig.

Shell used the Kulluk and another rig to drill exploratory wells in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska's northern coast last year, the first such operations in U.S. Arctic waters in more than two decades.

But the ambitious drilling venture—monitored by rival companies, the U.S. government and environmental groups—has encountered problems from the outset. The drilling season started later than planned because of lingering sea ice. The other drilling rig, the Noble Discoverer, almost ran aground when its anchor slipped in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

Also, an important piece of spill-response equipment was damaged during testing, leading Shell to scale back plans to drill six wells to just two wells. A Coast Guard inspection of the Noble Discoverer, conducted after the drilling season, discovered problems with the ship's propulsion and safety systems....

The Arctic Challenger with the newly redesigned and repaired Containment Dome move away from the Port of Bellingham, WA where it had been moored since returning in September 2012 after a catastrophic failure of the first iteration of their containment process. This is not the vessel mentioned in the story, apparently. Shot by TJ Guiton, Wikimedia Commons, nder the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Liberian farmers attribute climate change to government's concession policies

Alloycious David in AllAfrica.com via the News (Monrovia): Local farmers across the country are blaming government's policies that allocated large-scale industrial mining, logging and agriculture concessions for climate change in the country. Participants at a recent workshop organized by Green Advocates with funding from the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) in Rivercess County southeast of Liberia have blamed current changes in their climatic conditions as well as the current rate of deforestation and forest degradation on an elitist-led massive land grabbing by foreign concessionaires.

The farmers said that the current rate of deforestation and forest degradation has never been witnessed before in Liberia since the granting of the US$1million concession to the Firestone Agriculture Plantation in 1926.

The workshop was intended to deliberate on how to address the issues of deforestation and forest degradation as well as to design a strategy to engage government and other stakeholders on the government climate change policy formulation process as well as its readiness plan for Reduce Emission from Deforestation and Degradation ( REDD).

The group of farmers participating in the forum said: "do not blame poor rural farmers for climate change." According to the farmer and other participants, recent agricultural, forest and mining concessions have been appropriated approximately 2 million acres of community land subject to customary law. "Just in the last six months alone approximately 2 million hectares of forest land have been awarded under Private Use Permits alone, they stated.

The participants pointed to a recent study by the Liberian Land Commission, which estimated that about 75% of the total Liberian Land areas have either been awarded under concessions or is currently in the pipelines to be awarded under concessions, This means that poor Liberians may only have to fight over the remaining 25%.

"These situations could foster resentment and conflict among indigenous and rural populations, and ultimately undermine not only the efficacy of a Liberian REDD program and the sustainable forest program more generally but the peace and stability of the Country," they added....

USAID photo of a tropical forest in Liberia

Laissez-faire failing world’s dwindling water resources

Stephen Leahy in IPS: Growing water shortages in many countries are a major threat to global security and development and should be a top priority at the U.N. Security Council, a panel of experts said in a new report.

However, that report ignores the biggest threat to water security: neoliberal policies of the free market economic system laying waste to the natural world and turning water into a commodity, activists counter.

China and India will not have enough fresh water to meet their needs before 2030, according to the “Global Water Crisis” report released this week. Well before that time, water shortages will increase conflicts and worsen instability in sub-Saharan Africa, West Asia and North Africa, it warned. “Using water the way we have in the past simply will not sustain humanity in future,” said Chrétien, a co-chair of the InterAction Council (IAC), a group of 40 prominent former government leaders.

The IAC, the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and Canada’s Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation convened a conference of water experts in 2011 whose deliberations ultimately resulted in the report: “The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security Issue”.

With about one billion more mouths to feed worldwide by 2025, global agriculture alone will require additional water equivalent to the annual flow of 20 Niles or 100 Colorado Rivers every year, the report found. Meanwhile, greater competition between the energy sector and other water users for already limited freshwater resources in many regions will impact future energy development, with significant potential impacts on energy reliability and security....

Kvinnefossen is a 120m high waterfall on road Rv55 in Leikanger municipality 2km east of Hella, Norway, shot by Sogning, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Jobs, social welfare are crucial to food security, top ag scientist says

Johann Earle in Alertnet: Making life better for family farmers is a key way to ensure food security in Guyana without compromising the environment, according to a top Indian agricultural expert who helped lead that country’s agricultural “Green Revolution.”

M.S. Swaminathan, who promotes sustainable agriculture that preserves biodiversity and who worked in Guyana in the early 1990s on a forest conservation project, says agricultural and conservation need not be in conflict.

“The foundations of agriculture are land, water, biodiversity and climate. A family farmer will look after the land very well. It is the agri-business people who have short term interest in land,” the scientist told AlertNet at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in South Korea.

“A family farmer has to take care of the children so it is a way of life for them so they ensure that there is soil fertility…whether it is cow dung, compost, or crop rotation,” he said. What Guyana needs, he said, is “a new deal for the family farmers, otherwise family farming will disappear and all will become agri-business,” he said.

For the small South American nation to be a truly food secure, it must pay attention to three factors: availability of food on the market, which is a function of production; accessibility to food, a function of jobs and income, and absorption of food in the body, which is a function of clean drinking water, sanitation and primary health care like immunization, he said.

“You have food security in a country when all these three things are there,” he said...

A tractor in a Guyanese rice field, shot by Tracey Dos Santos, public domain

Mozambique's agricultural fortunes rest on a choice between Obama and Annan

Joseph Hanlon in the povertymatters blog at the Guardian (UK): Mozambique is a development paradox. Rural poverty is increasing despite high growth rates and billions of dollars in aid. Now the country has been targeted by two contrasting models of agricultural development. The Barack Obama model was backed by the G8 in Washington in May, while the Kofi Annan model was proposed by the Africa Progress Panel (APP). Which works better for the poor?

The APP, which is chaired by Annan and counts a former IMF head and a former US Treasury secretary among its members, is heavyweight and conservative. It says one of the biggest dangers in Africa is the growing inequality between rich and poor, which is creating a threat of social instability. In sub-Saharan Africa, the APP argues, "the pattern of trickle-down growth is leaving too many people in poverty". The panel warns that Mozambique is one of Africa's more unequal countries, pointing out that – despite having huge agricultural potential – the republic is a net importer of staple foods.

The APP report calls for "fundamental change" in both donor and African government policies. "Raising the productivity of smallholder farmers is critical," it says. "Smallholder agriculture must be placed at the centre of a green revolution in Africa." This will require more government action and more support for small farmers. Let's call this the Annan model.

The second agricultural model for Mozambique was agreed in Washington in May, when G8 leaders adopted a new alliance for food security and nutrition proposed by President Obama and USAid. The idea is to use giant agribusiness to end hunger in Mozambique and five other countries. The first project in Mozambique will be to support Cargill, the giant grain trader and largest private company in the world, to take 40,000 hectares of farmland. US officials say this will include some smallholder contract farming, which means Cargill will not make enough profit from the investment, so the giant transnational grain trader must be subsidised from G8 aid. Let's call this the Obama model.

The two models are incompatible. The APP report points specifically to the very large land concessions in Mozambique, and warns that "for Africans, the benefits of large-scale land acquisitions are questionable"....

Farmers in Mozambique, shot by Alan Meier, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

No risk of flood, but forced to insure

Jeffrey Meitrodt in the Star-Tribune (Minnesota): Thousands of homeowners in Minnesota and across the country are being pressured to buy flood insurance by their mortgage lenders, despite evidence showing that many of these homes are well outside danger zones. Though the federal government's new flood maps are more accurate than ever, state and local officials say lenders and their agents are making obvious mistakes in their interpretation of flood risk.

Chisago County officials said they have intervened this year on behalf of 20 property owners who were wrongly classified as living in high-risk zones where flood insurance would be mandatory. Officials in Stearns and Washington counties also have taken steps to correct the record for dozens of homeowners who face minimal, if any, risk of flooding. "We're seeing too many problems," said Ceil Strauss, Minnesota's floodplain coordinator.

In many cases, lenders are giving homeowners just 45 days to buy flood insurance or threatening to obtain it for them, often at exorbitant prices. Some homeowners have been told their premiums could run as high as $6,400 a year.

Authorities expect the problem to get worse. Over the next two years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will introduce new flood maps in more than two dozen counties in Minnesota, including Hennepin, the state's most populous. The maps will trigger more flood-risk reviews by mortgage lenders.

Often, lenders receive commissions for the new flood policies they impose on borrowers. Fees can amount to as much as 20 percent of the annual premium. In New York, officials are exploring whether to ban lenders from charging commissions on the forced placement of property insurance, calling such payments a "perverse incentive."....

Norman County, MN, March 29, 2009 --Flooded farms and rural communities in Norman County adjacent to the Red River of the North. Andrea Booher/FEMA