How Much Impact Could We Make by Co-Ordinating All the Current Food and Environmental Projects?

Fruit, vegetables, cocoa, coffee, tea are all things we take for granted on UK supermarket shelves but how many shoppers know that they originated in Africa or were made from African produce?

UK shoppers spend about 1 million every day on food products from Africa, including some Fairtrade items.

The focus on climate change and on food miles, however, has created misunderstanding about the sustainability of food from African and highlighted how little we know about how the resulting changed shopping habits have impacted on developing countries.

Almost 75% of Africans relay totally on agriculture for their livings and severl million of them rely partly on selling produce to the UK to enable many of them to escape poverty.

Most UK consumers support the idea of making their shopping choices reduce poverty. However, they also worry about other issues such as price, food safety, the environment and animal welfare.

Now, to add to the pressure comes a new report this month (July 2010) saying that climate change threatens to undo years of work to tackle poverty in developing countries.

Forum for the Future's study emphasised the need for strong action in poor countries to tackle climate change but in tandem with efforts to boost economic development and it said international aid's efforts to tackle poverty should factor in climate change and measures to help poor countries adapt to its effects.

It wants them to avoid promoting high-carbon development and to help developing nations deal with the impact of climate change and seize new opportunities created by global movement to a more low-carbon economy.

The UK's Department for International Development (DFID) supported the Forum's latest report and also has its own initiative, FRICH Food Retail Industry Challenge to support the development of trade in food from Africa to the UK.

No in its third round of bidding the Challenge asks food supply and distribution business with their supply chain partners to test and develop innovative business models to bring new and higher volumes of food products from Africa to UK while improving the livelihoods of African producers.

So far it has funded seven challenges. They include Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate, seller of a famous Yorkshire Tea, which is working with Rwanda's tea authority, tea factory owners, the Rainforest Alliance and the farmers who supply the factories to develop a sustainable supply of quality tea for their famous Yorkshire Tea brand. Rwanda tea is now on UK supermarket shelves as a Yorkshire Gold 'seasons pick'

The Co-operative has long supported Fairtrade and is working with tea supplier Finlay Beverages, the Cooperative College UK and Africa Now to deliver the benefits of both Fairtrade and the co-operative business model for sustainable livelihoods for 8,000 small-scale tea farmers in Kericho, South-West Kenya.

Waitrose has been helping growers to adapt their cultivation and production processes to meet the environmental requirements of the LEAF Marque standard as a way of spreading the message of sustainable agricultural practices across Africa. The LEAF Marque guarantee for UK fresh grown produce has been used by Waitrose for the past three years and the company has now committed to helping all its suppliers to use environmentally responsible practices.

The third Challenge Fund bidding round invites UK companies to offer projects that will promote trade to some of the poorest countries north of South Africa and south of the Sahara

Its aims are enhancing productivity and adding value to any sector of the supply chain from the start in food production, through processing, storage, to compliance, financing or procurement

It also aims to extend the benefits of export supply chains to producers currently unable to meet market requirements or insufficiently established as export growers to be able to attract commercial investment in their operations.

Its third focus is expanding UK consumer demand for African produce in the face of concerns about food miles, environmental conservation, labour standards and food safety.

Search around a bit and it's possible to find any number of inventive pieces providing some solutions to the complex puzzle of climate change, environment and food scarcity.

They can be small and local - such as the Indian village treadle-powered irrigation system that has stabilised and improved cultivation there - or slightly larger like the FRICH Challenge focusing on a particular world region.

Or they can be potentially far-reaching - like the Biopesticides Developers' invention of promising new low-chem agricultural products such as biofungicides and yield enhancers to play their part in helping combat climate change and pests while increasing yield sustainably to help farmers, both small and larger.

It would be nice if all these disparate elements were co-ordinated to work in tandem to making access to food and a reasonable income fairer around the world alongside a significant global impact on preserving the environment.

Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

There's plenty of evidence of research, projects and initiatives of all sizes happening around the world to combat climate change, restore the environment or increase farming yield sustainably from village irrigation schemes to R & D in low-chem agricultural biofungicides. Yet says consumer journalist Ali Withers we have little sense that they're making much impact.

Environmental Restoration - How to Turn Wasteland Into a Paradise

Over many years, major parts of Kenyan forests were cleared. But within the last decades, the attitude of the people of Kenya towards the nature surrounding them has changed.

One man who plays a major role in this development is Dr. Rene Haller.

The story began in 1970, when Dr. Haller started an ecological experiment, attempting to re-establish an ecosystem in the area of a former limestone quarry.

Since the area was relatively close to the coast, the salt content of the ground water was rather high - at the same time, the level of ground water varied due to the tide. Most of the fertile ground had been eroded, which is why no greenery developed by itself. The wind from the coast tended to dry out all newly planted trees. In short: The terrain was highly unsuitable for any kind of plant.

Haller decided to rehabilitate the natural diversity of flora and fauna of the region, instead of simply covering the area with greenery. The major difference is that a rehabilitation (in case of success) would result in a self-sustaining ecosystem, while covering the area with fast growing greenery for cosmetic reasons only would have required a lot of support and intensive care without offering significant benefits.

In order to start the rehabilitation, twenty different species of trees were planted of which three survived. Out of these three, the Casuarina Trees put up best with the strain of wind and dryness. But even this robust species could not survive the difficult climate and scarcity of resources - until the mycorrhiza symbiosis the Casuarina profits from in its natural habitat was established, providing the roots of the trees with minerals bound by the fungi involved in the symbiosis.

The withered leaves dropped by the trees were transformed to humus by centipedes and micro-organisms, allowing Dr. Haller to plant a secondary vegetation of over 350 different indigenous tree species.

Every imbalance in Rene Haller's newly established ecosystem was solved without the use of chemical pesticides. Instead, he invested time in finding out what kinds of ways nature provided to overcome these issues. Whenever a pest started to disturb the balance of his system (like a bark beetle heavily damaging the secondary vegetation), Haller searched for a natural (preferably indigenous) predator he could introduce to the system to regulate the population of the pest (in order to regulate the number of bark beetles, owls were released in the area).

Dr. Haller had developed the vision of a landscape including lakes, forest and swamp. He planned to harvest wood, feed, honey, and fruit. Part of what later became known as the "Haller Park" was a fish farm producing mainly Tilapia. An advantage of Tilapia was the fact that this species could be fed completely vegetarian -- thus it is easy to avoid ecologically questionable additives. The excrement of the fish was used as a fertilizer for rice paddies that were also part of the Haller Park, providing value instead of polluting nearby waters. To make the keeping of Tilapia possible, Haller had to study the behavior of the species and design special fish tanks that would make it possible to profitably maintain the farm. But the keeping was not the only issue Rene Haller had to deal with - attracted by the fish food, rats became a plague. Again, the system was balanced by means of biological pest control: Snakes were introduced to regulate the population of rats, monitor lizards were used to contain the amount of snakes while predatory birds and crocodiles fed on the lizards.

Since then, the Haller Park has developed into an astonishing terrain including lakes, wetlands and savannah grasslands with walking and cycling trails, as well as a nature park and wildlife sanctuary with an enormous diversity of animals - antelopes live here as well as giraffes, hippopotamuses, buffaloes, and giant tortoises. Over 80 species of palms can be found in the Haller Park, many of them being collected by Dr. Haller himself.

Surrounded by the beauty of the abundant nature, visitors can eat a restaurant called "Whistling Pine".

The Haller Park has brought a remarkable number of benefits to the region and its inhabitants. Firstly, it provides a habitat for hundreds of species. Apart from that, the timber harvested in this area helps protecting the rare mangrove forests by providing substitute materials that replace the mangrove wood. Twenty-five tons of rice are harvested every year in the paddies, the fish grown in the tanks are fed to animals in the park and sold locally to hotels.

While antelopes and crocodiles provide meat, other exotic animals attract tourists and thus provide another source of income. Due to the nearby beach and hotels, the Haller Park is highly frequented by tourists -- in the year 2002 the number of visitors was close to 100,000. The facility provides 400 jobs for inhabitants of the region.

Even though only showing little response, the vegetable garden of the Haller Park was planned as an example for local farmers, trying to demonstrate simple techniques to increase their yield. Apart from that, the garden itself is another source of food.

The work of Rene Haller has contributed a lot to the establishment of an environmental consciousness with the local population. Following the motto "Never give up, just find another way to achieve your goals!", Dr. Haller founded the "Baobab Trust" with the aim to improve the food supply of the local population. One of his recent projects is the protection of the Shimba Hills National Park in Kenya. For this purpose, Dr. Haller bought land around the national park to provide a new habitat for the elephants destroying the vegetation of the national park.

Visit the official website of the Haller Foundation for more information: http://www.haller.org.uk/

(c) Dino Schachten 2010. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.