By GERALD ANDAE
Households will wait longer for subsidized maize flour due the supremacy battles between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Strategic Food Reserve (SFR) board over who should release the stock to the market.
The SFR board has taken issue with an advert placed by the ministry last week outlining the process of releasing the three million bags of maize from the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB), accusing the latter of usurping its mandate…Read more>>
By REUTERS
Acacia Mining had been fined Tsh5.6 billion ($2.4 million) for alleged pollution at its North Mara mine, Tanzania’s mining minister said on Monday.
Acacia, majority-owned by Barrick Gold, is embroiled in a long-running tax dispute with Tanzania.
It was forced to cut output by a third after the government banned the export of mineral concentrates from its two other mines, Bulyanhulu and Buzwagi, in 2017.
Tanzania’s National Environment Management Council (NEMC) has issued an environmental protection order (EPO) relating to alleged pollution from North Mara’s tailings dam, mining minister Doto Biteko said…Read more>>
By AFP
Botswana on Wednesday lifted its ban on elephant hunting, saying the population had increased and farmers’ livelihoods were being impacted, in a move set to trigger outrage from conservationists.
A prohibition on elephant hunting was introduced in the southern African country in 2014 by then-president Ian Khama, a keen environmentalist.
But lawmakers from the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) have been lobbying to overturn the ban, saying numbers have become unmanageably large in some areas…Read more>>
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https://africasustainabilitymatters.com/wildlife-crime-the-african-elephant-story/
By UN Environment
While restaurants in cities around the world offer a tremendous variety of dishes, our global diet as a whole—what people actually eat—is becoming more homogenized. Rice, one the world’s top staple foods, vividly illustrates this paradox: of the 90,000 varieties of rice stored in gene banks, only 40,000 are being cultivated, and perhaps no more than a dozen can be found on your regular supermarket shelf. Combined with high-yield, intensive agriculture, the choices are bound to drastically decline over time. This is worrying from the point of view of sustainability, food security, biodiversity and health.
Our food systems, nutrition, health, clean air, climate, and freshwater depend on biodiversity and healthy ecosystems—an interdependent web of animal, plant, fungal and bacterial life. For instance, without pollinators—insects, birds and other animals who are pushed out of agricultural lands through the use of pesticides and insecticides—many of the foods we know and love would disappear.
And as a recent report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) shows, the human impact on the natural world is accelerating: entire populations of species are being lost faster than ever before—one million species are being driven to extinction, the report says.
Read full story in the UN Environment
By Thomson Reuters
The world’s food production is in jeopardy because the fertile layer of soil that people depend on to plant crops is being eroded by human activities, scientists said on Wednesday.
Climate change is likely to make it worse even as demand from a grown population is soaring, they said.
Soil erosion happens naturally, but intensive agriculture, deforestation, mining and urban sprawl accelerate it and can reduce crop yields by up to 50%, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
FAO also said the equivalent of a soccer pitch of soil is eroded every five seconds, and the planet is on a path that could lead to the degradation of more than 90% of all the Earth’s soils by 2050.
“We’re approaching a critical point at which we need to start acting on soil erosion or we are not going to be able to feed ourselves in the future,” Lindsay Stringer, professor at England’s University of Leeds, said.
She was speaking on the sidelines of a three-day conference on soil erosion co-organized by the FAO.
Erosion degrades soil, meaning it is less able to withstand stresses such as changes in rainfall and longer droughts, Richard Cruse, professor at Iowa State University in the United States, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A repeat of weather conditions like those experienced in 2012, including drought and famine in the Horn of Africa and hurricanes in the United States, “could really cut our food supply in a way that we haven’t experienced,” he said.
Yet, policy makers are too caught up in day-to-day issues to focus on soil erosion, he added.
“They have to deal with poverty, health, roads, things that are of immediate effect. Soil erosion is long term. It’s like sands through an hourglass. We know what’s happening, but we’ll worry about it tomorrow.”
It is not hopeless, said Stringer, whose research in Kenya found using manure as fertilizer or growing more than one crop on the same plot of land are simple, inexpensive actions that improve both soil quality and crop yield.
However, other proven methods to reduce erosion, such as building terraces and engaging in agroforestry – planting trees on cropland – can be too expensive for farmers, she said.
Ownership of land is key here, Cruse said.
“In my conversation with farmers, they tell me, “If I own my own land and I’m farming, conservation is an investment. If I have to use these practices on rented land, it’s a cost.”
Governments can give incentives to farmers through subsidies and other means, because good soil benefits the wider society, while things would worsen if nothing is done, said Jean Poesen from Belgium’s KU Leuven university.
“Ninety-five percent of our foods come from soil. Can you imagine how the food section of a supermarket would look like if we had no soils? There would be nothing on the shelves,” he said.
“Once the soil is gone… people end up with hard, bare rock, and nothing grows. Then you have to migrate or start a fight with your neighbors and conquer.”
Read original article on Thomson Reuters Foundation
BY RAISSA SAMBOU
More than 94,000 people die of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Ghana every year, a study by the Ghana Non-Communicable Disease Alliance (GhNCDA) has revealed.
The deaths, according to the non-profit organization, amounts to 43 per cent of all deaths in the country annually.
Speaking at the launch of the Ghana Advocacy Agenda of People Living with NCDs in Accra yesterday, Mr. Labram Musah, National Coordinator of GhNCDA said people suffering from NCDs, mainly cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes often become disabled due to their condition and were discriminated against, mostly in terms of education and employment opportunities. Read more…
By JAMES ISICHE|DAILY NATION
Wild animals are intrinsically valuable. They are genetically unique and cannot be exchanged for another individual of the same species. Besides its significant contribution to Kenya’s economy through tourism, wildlife plays an important role in balancing an ecosystem and provides stability to different natural processes of nature like rainfall (transpiration from plants), changing of temperature (heat evolution by animals) and fertility of soil (making of manure by earthworms). Read more…
By Esther Ngumbi and Mwaura Nganga| allAfrica
African agriculture has to carry that appeal that youth are looking for: A profitable, lucrative business that uses technology and leverages all their skills, as well as an enterprise that uses social media, smart phones, big data and everything in between. It needs to be a field that uses many of the emerging technologies and trends including artificial intelligence, block chain, machine learning, robots and drones, as well as a field that offers multiple opportunities to innovate.
What then will it take to create an African agricultural sector that creates such an appeal for the youth? Read more…
By VERENARDO MEEME
At a forum on biotech crops and the Big Four Agenda at the University of Nairobi on April 24, critics of biotechnology, citing the Burkina Faso cotton fiasco, repeatedly misrepresented the facts about its genetically modified (GM) cotton farming.
The truth is, cotton production in the West African country has been on a downward slide since three years ago after the government phased out the pest-resistant GM cotton (also called Bt cotton) …Read more>>
Related article
https://africasustainabilitymatters.com/genetic-cotton-are-we-there-yet/
By Njiraini Muchiri
Authorities in Tanzania are gearing up to enforce a ban on single-use polythene bags in order to protect the environment.
The Office of the Vice President which is overseeing the enforcement of the ban has said that come June 1, plastic carrier bags regardless of thickness will be prohibited from being imported, exported, manufacture, sold, stored or supplied for use in the country.
However, plastic or plastic packaging for medical services, industrial products, the construction industry, the agricultural sector, foodstuff, sanitary and waste management are exempt.
Travel advisory
Effectively, the country has issued a travel advisory to foreign visitors to avoid carrying plastic bags before embarking on a visit to Tanzania, stating only Ziploc bags that are used to carry toiletries will be permitted.
“The government expects that, in appreciation of the imperative to protect the environment and keep our country clean and beautiful, our visitors will accept minor inconveniences resulting from the plastic bags ban,” said a statement from the Vice President’s Office…Read more>>
Related Article https://africasustainabilitymatters.com/solving-the-plastic-pollution-crisis-responsibility-of-the-manufacturer/
