The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) was inaugurated in May 1996 in the presence of then President Nelson Mandela, the patron of the launch of the Academy. The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) was inaugurated in May 1996 in the presence of then President Nelson Mandela, the patron of the launch of the Academy.
STAFF
Forum Steering Committee on Forum Steering Committee on Science for Poverty Alleviation Science for Poverty Alleviation. Professor of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Cape Town.
CONSULTANT
Sagadevan Mundree was appointed chairman of the committee and was instrumental in organizing the forum. The result of the forum and the discussions that flowed from it show this.
PURPOSE OF THIS FORUM
IMPORTANCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR IN AFRICA
It is clear that poverty alleviation and food security are high on the agenda of the strategy. Africa's crop production is the lowest in the world (1.7 tons/ha Africa, .. compared to the world average of 4.0 tons/ha worldwide) 40% of the crop can be lost due to post-harvest damage.
TWO RECENT EXAMPLES OF THE POTENTIAL FOR SCIENCE TO IMPROVE PEOPLE’S LIVES
ROAD MAP FOR THE REST OF THIS REPORT
Some research programs are large-scale and involve significant international funding and partnerships, while others are smaller in scale and closer to implementation. We recognize that there is much to learn about these types of science forum-based interventions, but we are excited by the vibrancy generated during the forum and the possibility that this report will be useful to many stakeholders, especially people who are pro-survival and livelihoods depend on small-scale agriculture in both rural and peri-urban settings.
INTRODUCTION
Biotechnological approaches to crop development Biotechnological approaches to crop development to adapt plant development to adapt to local African conditions.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN FOOD CROPS
While the large and rapidly growing urban populations of Africa will buy most of their food from local markets – from both commercially grown and locally grown sources – the still significant rural and urban populations grow much of their own food, particularly in tropical and subtropical Africa, where the climate allows cultivation all year round. It is these people – who support a very significant part of Africa's population – who face the serious disease problems without the means to deal with them.
MAJOR VIRUS DISEASE PROBLEMS
Cassava mosaic disease
An extensive survey of cassava in the area showed that the disease spread rapidly and caused crop failure. Transgenic resistance to ACMD has been trumpeted as 'the' solution to the problem, in the previously apparent absence of resistant germplasm, by a number of research groups (see Zhang, Vanderschuren, Futterer & Gruissem 2005; Legg & . Fauquet 2004).
Maize streak virus
In the second approach, researchers at the University of Cape Town developed a strategy for GM resistance based on the expression of a 'dominant negative' mutant version of the rolling circle replication initiator protein encoded by the viral rep gene. Based on the results of approximately 20 years of virus diversity work from the same laboratory, it can also be predicted that resistance should be broad-spectrum and durable, as all the many maize-derived MSVs isolated in Africa and the Indian Ocean territories only vary by approx. 4% in the whole genome and <2% in the rep gene (Martin, 2001; Martin & Rybicki, 2002).
Rice yellow mottle virus
Success with several MSV-derived gene constructs in isolated maize cells was followed by success with a single gene in the grass system (Shepherd 2007), and then in maize. Other biotechnology-related work of recent interest regarding this virus is the study of its diversity, related to resistance in the host: there have been recent systematic molecular studies of diversity, describing important phylogeographic variations, as well as a number of resistance-breaking isolates (Hebrard, Pinel-Galzi, Bersoult, Sire & Fargette 2006; Sorho et al. 2005; Traore 2005).
MAJOR PROBLEMS IN DISEASE IDENTIFICATION
It has been speculated that RYMV originated in East Africa and then gradually dispersed and differentiated from east to west of the continent (Fargett 2004). For example, the Central Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom – an executive agency of the UK government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – is developing low-cost, rapid,.
Failures to learn from
A program to develop similar reagents and kits for Africa will undoubtedly pay huge dividends: for the first time, surveys can be conducted across Africa to broaden the pathogen knowledge base, which will support efforts aimed at controlling its occurrence and spread. , will inform very significantly. of specific disease agents.
CONCLUSIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Genetic diversity and phylogeography of cassava mosaic viruses in Kenya', J. www.ciat.cgiar.org/africa/biotechnology.htm. Expression of rice yellow spot virus coat protein enhances virus infection in transgenic plants Archives of Virology.
STRATEGIC APPROACH
Africa Harvest is an international non-profit foundation with a global vision with an African focus on fighting poverty, hunger and malnutrition.
Projects implementation with other partners using the Whole Value Chain for rural communities development
Africa Harvest has developed and refined the WVC model, which has proven to be a critical development strategy. The Africa Harvest WVC model starts with establishing demand, adjusting the supply side response to it and ends with the market.
Capacity Building & Knowledge Transfer for strengthening science & technology in Africa
The WVC model is a vertical alliance of companies working together to achieve a more favorable market position. Our experience in Kenya has shown that the WVC model can help farmers, processors and retailers cope with the new realities of market competition.
Facilitating development of new crops and products using GM techniques in partnership with others
Africa Harvest's strategy is also driven by the urgent need to "scale up and out" successful models, and in particular the TC Banana Project. Africa Harvest supports the adoption of this GM technology, and especially when applied to African "orphan crops", based on Africa-identified needs.
THE NEED FOR SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION TO IMPROVE AFRICAN AGRICULTURE
By introducing high-yielding plant varieties and new irrigation techniques into agricultural systems around the world, the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s increased crop yields and helped lift millions of people out of hunger and poverty. We support the African Green Revolution initiative of the Rockefeller and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
African Agriculture is Under-Performing
Our position is based on scientifically proven findings that biotechnology is an important arsenal in Africa's war against poverty, hunger and malnutrition. This inadequate water control and lack of infrastructure constitute structural constraints that largely explain why African agriculture is unproductive and uncompetitive.
GLOBAL BIOTECH STATUS OF SELECTED CROPS
The largest increase of any country in 2005 was in Brazil, provisionally estimated at 4.4 million hectares (9.4 million hectares in 2005 compared to 5 million in 2004), followed by the United States (2.2 million hectares), Argentina (0 .9 million hectares) and India (0.8 million hectares). India had by far the largest year-on-year proportional increase, nearly tripling from 500,000 hectares in 2004 to 1.3 million hectares in 2005.
CHALLENGES FACING MAIZE
Notably, 90% of beneficiary farmers were resource-poor farmers from developing countries whose increased income from biotech crops contributed to their poverty reduction. In 2005, about 7.7 million poor subsistence farmers (compared to 7.5 million in 2004) benefited from biotech crops – most in China with 6.4 million, 1 million in India, thousands in South Africa, including mainly with women growing Bt cotton over 50,000 in the Philippines, with the balance in the seven developing countries growing biotech crops in 2005 (James, 2005).
LOW SOIL FERTILITY
Insects in developing countries reduce annual maize production by attacking roots (root borers, wireworms, whiteflies and seed corn larvae), leaves (aphids, thrips, stem borers, thrips, spider mites and grasshoppers), stems (stem borers , termites), ears and tassels (stem borers, earworms, rootworm adults and maggots) and grain during storage (grain borers, grain borers, Indian strong moth and Angoumois grain moth). Comparing corn productivity in the U.S. and Africa (which have a similar number of corn acres), African farmers achieve only 18% of the productivity of U.S. farmers due to technology and inputs (Table 2).
GLOBAL CONTRIBUTION OF BIOTECH, INCLUDING GM TECHNOLOGIES
The increasing collective impact of the five main developing countries (China, India, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa) representing all three continents of the South, Asia, Latin America and Africa is an important ongoing trend with implications for the future adoption and adoption of biotechnology crops worldwide (James, 2005). The most recent survey of the global impact of biotechnology crops for the nine-year period 1996 to 2004 estimated that the global net economic benefits to crop biotechnology farmers in 2004 were $6.5 billion, and $27 billion ($15 billion for developing countries and $12) billion for industrial countries) for the accumulated benefits during the period 1996 to 2004; these estimates include the benefits associated with the double cropping of biotech soybeans in Argentina (James, 2005).
BENEFITS OF BIOTECHNOLOGY Science
In the first decade, the accumulated global biotech crop area was 475 million hectares or 1.17 billion hectares, equivalent to almost half the total land area of the US or China, or 20 times the total land area of the UK. Quality traits - or "output" traits - help create value for consumers by improving the quality of the food and fiber produced by the plant.
Environmental
This molecule is a precursor to vitamin A and can therefore help correct the nutritional deficiencies affecting millions of people. The threat posed by any plant - bioengineered, conventionally bred or wild - has to do solely with the traits it expresses.
Economics
TRADE POLICY AND GM TECHNOLOGY
THE BIOFORTIFIED SORGHUM (ABS) PROJECT
The ABS project is committed to ensuring that public health solutions are optimized with the aim of facilitating (i) the broad availability of data and information to the scientific community and (ii) access to affordable health solutions to benefit people most in need Africa and the developing countries. The ABS project is committed to ensuring that the knowledge created by the project is available for humanitarian purposes and that potential products are available at an affordable cost to the people most in need in Africa and the developing world.
CHALLENGE
In sub-Saharan Africa, more than a quarter (28%) of all children under the age of five are underweight. Note that these three countries are home to only 29% of the developing world's under-five population.
BMGF GRAND CHALLENGES IN GLOBAL HEALTH
The highest prevalence of underweight is found in South Asia, where almost half (46%) of all children under the age of five are underweight. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than a quarter (28%) of children under the age of five are underweight.
AFRICAN CHALLENGES
South Asia has staggeringly high levels of underweight prevalence, with nearly half (46%) of all children under five in the region underweight. Nigeria and Ethiopia alone account for more than a third (37%) of all underweight children in sub-Saharan Africa.
CONSORTIUM SUCCESS FACTORS
ADDRESSING THE NUTRITIONAL CHALLENGE
The germ fraction in sorghum is rich in ash, protein and oil, but very poor in starch. Endosperm, the largest part of the kernel, is relatively poor in minerals, ash and oil.
SPECIFIC PROJECT OBJECTIVES
Sorghum bran is low in protein and ash and is rich in fiber components.
ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGE
BIOSAFETY
Focus on yield issues for Focus on yield issues for small-scale farmers in Africa small-scale farmers in Africa.
ABSTRACT
EXPLORING INDIGENOUS PLANT SPECIES FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA
The honeybush tea plant (Cyclopia spp.) is another knotty legume endemic to the Western Cape and used to make tea. Honeybush tea is also very rich in flavonoid compounds and is therefore used as a health supplement.
Buchu: a Major Medicinal Plant
Marama bean: an important Commercial Species Native to the Kalahari Desert
Developing Agri-Technologies for Rooibos and Honeybush tea in Rural South Africa
In this way, our knowledge of the biological properties of these types of tea would transcend mere academic exploration in the field of home economics, wealth creation, poverty alleviation and livelihood improvement.
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES TO ALLEVIATING POVERTY IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA USING
BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL APPROACHES
Furthermore, there is a lack of credible and functional agricultural credit facilities for emerging farmers in rural South Africa. Dakora FD and Mvalo MG (2004) Investigating the biological potential of indigenous African legumes for the development of agricultural technology and SMMEs to alleviate poverty in rural communities.
SUMMARY
JUSTIFICATION
Are we addressing a real problem, or just spending money?
Can our crop improve the diet? Can it sustain and can it support the struggling immune system? Can it help fi ght and delay the virus?
What does it take to succeed in delivering the benefi ts of virus-elimination to actual farmers?
RESULTS: A SITUATION REPORT FROM ZIMBABWE
The majority did, averaging well over ten (anecdotal evidence during feedback workshops and farm visits: eg Amai Chipara sold to 172 in one week, during and after her field day, Figures 4 and 5). Figures 4 and 5: Amai Chipara in Sunday best on her field day and some of her young neighbors, who all bought second generation vineyards from her.
CONCLUSION
He got 24 t/ha on clean river sand without any fertilizer, 32 t/ha with Compound D and 36 t/ha with liberal kraal manure. He has bought a dairy cow, bricks for a good house for his family and plans to buy a bakkie.
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
This paper is one of several presented on the topic of Science-Based Approaches to Poverty Alleviation, with specific reference to subsistence agriculture. My given title implies that an improvement in subsistence agriculture is one path to poverty alleviation.
THE PRINCIPLES OF SOIL SCIENCE APPLIED TO AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION
Interestingly, however, specialist institutes associated with this field seem to increasingly emphasize (http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/) that the way forward is for subsistence agriculture to become commercial agriculture, with growers having as the main driver the production of a surplus over their requirements. Finally, I will make some brief comments, completely unrelated to earth science, about agriculture and emancipation.
Soil fertility and plant nutrition
Soil physical properties
Porosity reduces the amount of contact between particle surfaces and ensures that Van der Waal's forces do not produce an impossibly hard consistency when the soil dries out.
Soil biology
Applying principles to subsistence agriculture
Empirical local knowledge and ingenuity, developed through centuries of trial and error, invariably confirm, and even inform the geologist's theoretical understanding of physical and chemical processes. For example, local maize varieties developed by generations of Zulu subsistence farmers have been found to outperform modern cultivars specially developed for the acidic soil context in which they are grown.
BEYOND SUBSISTENCE: THE CASE FOR COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE
I would go so far as to suggest that international research funding is often infected with the same kind of hidden agenda, in which scientists benefit greatly from the myth that subsistence is inevitable and therefore demand 'research' to improve the lot of the world's population. those who have to survive the rest of their lives by tilling the soil. In trying to keep our research programs going, we may have all fallen into the same trap.
ORGANIC FARMING AND SUSTAINABILITY
These usually mean giving preference to organic fertilizers over inorganic fertilizers, sometimes to the exclusion of the latter. Cost and local availability play a role in this selectivity, but there seems to be an element of cashing in on the organic options currently so much in vogue in the affluent north.
EMANCIPATED FARMING
An observation: the creator of the Ames test once showed that apples completely saturated with pesticides are much less carcinogenic than organically grown apples, because there are many more mycotoxins on organically grown fruits and vegetables than on apples soaked in pesticides. I have developed a checklist with all the benefits of organic matter in humus in the soil and also a checklist with the negative factors.
THE SOCIOECONOMICS OF SUBSISTENCE FARMERS
This means that a small farmer can be resource-rich, resource-poor or somewhere in between (resource-medium). Most farmers in developing countries are identified as resource poor (Chambers, Pacey & Thrupp 1989), but in South Africa farmers will fall somewhere within a grid composed of all three of the axes we have described.
THE LABOUR FORCE SURVEY
Many of the trends illustrated in the LFS coincide with the findings of current research on smallholder agricultural practices and purposes. The implications of the Labor Force Survey are that very few black farmers in South Africa can actually be labeled as subsistence farmers (that is, households that meet household needs through agricultural activities).
THE USE OF NATURAL RESOURCES
In fact, the suggestion is that they must depend on alternative sources of livelihood to satisfy household needs.
OTHER SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS
In fact, it can be argued that their current situation is a result of the nature in which they are embedded in the national economy, both historically and currently. While the figures strongly suggest that they rely heavily on other livelihoods for their survival, this was not always the case in southern Africa.
AN INTEGRATED PERSPECTIVE
If prosperity was the case in the mid-19th century, we must ask ourselves what happened to bring about the change and current situation. Historically, change is clearly a result of political-economic and technical characteristics of interactions and changes in the natural resources available for production.
AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
The context is rarely taken into account and it is often seen that farmers are making ill-informed decisions, when they reject or use this technology in alternative ways than those described, by those who do not understand their circumstances. In this way, applied social sciences can be integrated with natural sciences in achieving agricultural and rural development.
SOCIAL SCIENCE CONTRIBUTIONS
Because there are a number of factors that influence agricultural development, in addition to purely technical considerations, social science methodologies offer a number of contributions to understanding the context in which agricultural development takes place. With the advent of participatory research methods and approaches in development, qualitative and quantitative methods from a number of disciplines are being combined.
PARTICIPATORY METHODS
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Technology, representation and cotton in the Makhathini Flats, South Africa', Review of African Political Economy. This subsystem is actually a major user of the fuel being created, and if we are in a position to set up a new system we should take the opportunity to do something about it.
AN AFRICAN MODEL
We should take good parts from these models, but we have to make sure we don't use bad parts. In fact, we are proposing to develop good new science and engineering that can make a more decentralized, highly flexible approach work.
BIO-ETHANOL EXAMPLE Growing
We have tried to show that the drivers for creating an efficient and successful biofuels industry in Africa and developing countries are completely different from those in the developed world and should be taken into account before blindly using developed world models. This waste, however, will be very suitable as animal feed and fertilizers, thus reducing the use of commercial fertilizers that are needed.
Fuel production
This is a very important concept, since most organisms are inhibited or poisoned in the presence of high concentrations of ethanol, and therefore an effective removal from the growth medium can increase the efficiency of the fermentation systems (reaction and separation) enormously. As previously mentioned, the waste from the fermentation process now becomes fertilizer and animal feed for the cultivation process and does not have to be transported over long distances.
Transportation
We have also started a research program on using a thermophile (an organism that operates at high temperature) to ferment lignocellulose. All of these relate to looking at the whole system rather than looking at each of the parts individually.
OTHER BIOFUELS
If these transportation cost savings are taken into account, the economics of these processes will become much more attractive.
FLEXIBILITY
If one initially starts on a small scale, it is not a philosophical issue of a mega-plant that consumes a significant part of the country's maize production. However, many of the other world academies (such as the Royal Society, the French Academy and the national academies of Mexico, Brazil, China and India) show a noticeable tendency to concentrate on this activity.
PLENARY DISCUSSION
I am part of SEDA Technologies, a small business development agency with two parts to our program: (1) incubation – we have a number of agriculture-based incubators, including biodiesel, essential oils and floriculture, and (2) technology transfer, where we become involved in agricultural processes. Most of the technologies we discussed today are generated in the first economy.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS
From 1992-98 he was a member of the Statutory South African Council of Urban and Regional Planners. She was a member of the Communications Working Group of the National AIDS Committee of South Africa.
SPEAKERS
MASSAf is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Pretoria and President of the South African Academy of Sciences (ASSAf). He was twice President of the Biochemical Society of South Africa and President of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa from 1998 to 2004.
ASSAf Committee on
Science-based approaches to the alleviation of poverty Science-based improvements of rural/subsistence agriculture
Ian Robertson, Agri-Biotech, Zimbabwe: “Reaching some of the potential 'clean' sweet potatoes in smallholder fields in Zimbabwe”. Diane Hildebrandt, Director of the Center for Materials and Process Synthesis, School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, University of Witwatersrand: “Best Technology and Poverty Reduction: A Win-Win for Africa”.
Biotechnological approaches to crop plant development for adaptation to local African conditions
Developing Sustainable Food Security through Agricultural Biotechnology: The ABS Project Model
Developing Bio- and Agri-technologies for Poverty Alleviation in Rural South Africa
Achieving some of the Potential of ‘clean’ sweet potato in small-holder farmers’ fi elds in Zimbabwe
The Socioeconomics of Subsistence Farmers and the Contribution of the Social Sciences to Agricultural Development
Biofuels for Africa: Horses for Courses
Dutton, Prof. Yuunivarsiitii Maayik Johaannesbarg Eloff, Yuunivarsiitii Kobus Pretoria Enow, dr. Andireew Achno ICSU. Taylor, Prof. Yuunivarsiitii Joon Piriitooriyaa Vaan der Waalt, Reeta Yuunivarsiitii Kaaba-Lixa Vaan Eeden, g. Jaques Rockwezc jedhamuun beekama.
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
