In Rwanda, more than 85 percent of the population's livelihood depends on small-scale agriculture. And the majority of primary school students-roughly 60 percent- will return to rural areas to make their living in ways, instead of going on to secondary or vocational schooling or university.
With that in mind, in 2007, the organization CARE designed the Farmers of the Future Initiative (FOFI) , a three year project that integrates modern and environmentally sustainable agriculture training into primary school curriculum in Rwanda-making traditional schooling more relevant to the average Rwandan student.
The project started with 27 pilot schools in nine districts: Nyamagabe and Nyaruguru Districts in the Southern Province, Gatsibo and Nyagatare Districts in the Eastern Province, and Karongi, Rutsiro, Rubavu, Nyabihu and Ngororero Districts in the Western Province. Each pilot school received funding from CARE to invest in a school garden or farm. After one year, profits from the garden went back into the school's agriculture program while the other half was used to help another school, called a satellite school, start its own garden. By the end of the project there were 28 satellite schools, each with its own garden started with the help of another school.
While maintaining the school gardens, students experimented and were trained in farming techniques that emphasize the preservation of natural resources as much as they do crop production, such as agroforestry, intercropping, mulching and compost, and non-chemical methods of pest and disease control.
According to Josephine Tuyishimire, a FOFI project coordinator, the school gardens also benefit students' parents and their local community. As parents learn new farming techniques from their children, their neighbors also learned from them. "The population surrounding FOFI schools copied [the farming techniques] and replicated them at home."
One boy, an orphan from Cyanika primary school in Nyamagabe District, who is living on his own, used irrigation and intercropping techniques he learned at school to start his own small garden. With the help of a teacher at the school he gained access to a local market to sell his vegetables and eventually earned enough money to purchase his own land. With the additional security that comes with land ownership, he continues to generate more income by selling his produce.
Helping students to be self-sufficient is especially beneficial for young women who are often kept out of school, but who can be "empowered in this project," said Tuyishimire. "In the future they become self-reliant and less dependent on their male counterparts as breadwinners." And women share their knowledge with their children, "passing these skills to future generations" to create future farmers who are educated in a way that allows them to self-sufficient and well-fed.
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In addition to hoes and shovels, more and more farmers in sub-Saharan Africa carry another agricultural "tool": a cell phone.
Over the last decade, cell-phone use in Africa has increased fivefold, and farmers are using their phones to gain information about everything from markets to weather. For example, farmers can find out prices before they make the long trips from rural areas to urban markets, giving them the option to wait to sell until prices are higher. Agricultural extension agents and development agencies also use mobile phones to communicate with farmers, letting them know about changes in weather that could affect crops.
Farmers and agribusiness agents in Zambia are also using cell phones as bank accounts, to pay for orders, to manage agricultural inputs, to collect and store information about customers, and to build credit. Mobile Transactions, a financial services company for the "unbanked," allows customers to use their phones like an ATM card, says Mike Quinn, Mobile Transactions General Manager. An estimated 80 percent of Zambians, particularly in rural areas, don't have bank accounts, making it difficult for them to make financial transactions such as buying seed or fertilizer. But by using Mobile Transactions, farmers are not only able to make purchases and receive payment electronically, they are also building a credit history, which can make getting loans easier.
Mobile Transactions also works with USAID's PROFIT program to help agribusiness agents make orders for inputs, manage stock flows, and communicate more easily with agribusiness companies and farmers. Perhaps most importantly, the partnership helps agents better understand the farmers they're working with so that they can provide the tools, inputs, and education each farmer and community needs.
In addition, e-banking and e-commerce systems can help make better use of agricultural subsidies. Mobile Transactions worked with AGRA and CARE to develop an e-voucher system for obtaining conservation farming inputs. Farmers receive a scratch card with funds that they can redeem via their phones to purchase tools or other inputs from local agribusiness agents. Unlike paper vouchers, there's no delay in moving the money, and farmers can get what they need immediately, such as seed during planting season or fertilizer when it can be used most effectively. And because donors are using Mobile Transactions to distribute the vouchers, they're acting as a stimulant to the private sector, rather than distorting the market.
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As the debate over public health care and insurance reform has raged this August, I have seen much via the cable news outlets about how President Obama has not been able to get his message across the great partisan divide. The media has been far more interested in giving a platform to those which it describes as the "fringe." They inevitably follow up with: "Where is the clear message from President Obama?" At no time does one ever see the media turn the light upon itself and ask itself if it is doing the responsible thing. It is the very agency that should be bringing clarity to the discussion. It is the very agency who has been entrusted with the public airwaves for this very purpose.
Out of all the polls we see paraded across MSNBC, CNN etc., we have yet to see a poll rating how Americans feel the media is living up to its obligations to actually inform us. We see polls that show that Americans don't really understand the discussion, but very little regarding those who present this discussion to us. I find this to be very curious.
If these "news outlets" put half as much effort into bringing clarity to the public health care debate as it does on presenting every little bit of trivia surrounding the death of Michael Jackson, then I would imagine these other polls that we're seeing would reflect a more informed public. Of course, it doesn't help that some of the interests that oppose health care reform are the MSM's biggest advertisers. It is rare that the MSM will bite the hand that feeds it. Unfortunately it leaves the American public starving for real information to make critical choices.
Factory food sickens humans, livestock and the environment
What we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the last 10,000. So asserts Robert Kenner's new film, FOOD, Inc., which opens nationwide June 19th. The vast bulk of food production is now controlled by just a few mega-corporations with one value: profit. Relying on genetic engineering, pesticides and antibiotics, factory food is cheap, requiring little land. But the external costs to our health, the environment and the natural food industry are enormous.
Director: Robert Kenner
Producers: Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein
Co-Producer: Eric Schlosser
Released by Magnolia Pictures, with Participant Media and River Road Entertainment
93 minutes
FOOD, Inc. is the single most important film of the decade. Transcending hype and industry muzzling, the film exposes some of the cruel and unnatural aspects of industrial farms and food processing. It links epidemic rates of US obesity and diabetes with our intake of genetically engineered food.
NPR called it this summer's "suspense thriller."
The film condemns how workers and animals are abused. Illegal immigrants, who cannot complain about working conditions, comprise most of the workers at industrial food plants. They are vulnerable to raids and deportation. No corporate executives are arrested.
Well researched and well scored, the film debunks the pastoral fantasy spin. Industrial food is not grown, raised or processed on a farm. The animals see no sunshine, are kept immobile in cages, and are genetically or chemically modified. Those that are somewhat mobile are bioengineered to plump their bodies faster than their bones and muscles can support. They flop helplessly to the floor when trying to move.
STATE BLOGS
In Rwanda, more than 85 percent of the population's livelihood depends on small-scale agriculture. And the majority of primary school students-roughly 60 percent- will return to rural areas to make their living in ways, instead of going on to secondary or vocational schooling or university.
In addition to hoes and shovels, more and more farmers in sub-Saharan Africa carry another agricultural "tool": a cell phone.