Cowpea Production in Nigeria

Cowpea

Rich in potassium with good amount of calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, Vitamin A and C, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, Vitamin B6, and panthothenic acid, Cowpea is a warm season crop that cannot stand cold weather.

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), is a food and animal feed crop grown in the semi-arid tropics covering Africa, Asia, Europe, United States and Central and South America. It originated and was domesticated in Southern Africa and was later moved to East and West Africa and Asia.

The grains contain 25% protein, and several vitamins and minerals. The plant tolerates drought, performs well in a wide variety of soils, and being a legume, it replenishes low fertility soils when the roots are left to decay. It is grown mainly by small-scale farmers in developing regions where it is often cultivated with other crops as it tolerates shade. It also grows and covers the ground quickly, preventing erosion.

Importance
Cowpea’s high protein content, its adaptability to different types of soil and inter-cropping systems, its resistance to drought, and its ability to improve soil fertility and prevent erosion, makes it an important economic crop in many developing regions. The sale of the stems and leaves as animal feed during the dry season also provides a vital income for farmers.

Production
More than 5.4 million tons of dried cowpeas are produced worldwide, with Africa producing nearly 5.2 million. Nigeria, the largest producer and consumer, accounts for 61% of production in Africa and 58% worldwide. Africa exports and imports insignificant amount.

Harvesting
More than 11 million hectares are harvested worldwide, 97% of which is in Africa. Nigeria harvests 4.5 million hectares annually. The crop can be harvested in three stages: while the pods are young and green, mature and green, and dry.

 Consumption
All parts of the cowpea crop are used as all are rich in nutrients and fibre. In Africa humans consume the young leaves, immature pods, immature seeds, and the mature dried seeds. The stems, leaves, and vines serve as animal feed and are often stored for use during the dry season. Fifty-two percent of Africa’s production is used for food, 13% as animal feed, 10% for seeds, 9% for other uses, and 16% is wasted.

Regional preferences occur for the different seed size, color texture of seed coat. For example, Ghanaians are willing to pay a premium for black-eyed peas, while Cameroonians would lower their prices for them.
More than 4 million tons of peas of all sorts are consumed worldwide, with 387,000 tons consumed in Africa.

Disease Incidence and Constraints
The cowpea plant is attacked by pests during every stage of its life cycle. Aphids extract juice from its leaves and stems while the crop is still a seedling and also spread the cowpea mosaic virus. Flower thrips feast on it during flowering, pod borers attack its pods during pod growth, and bruchid weevils attack the post harvested seeds. The plants are also attacked by diseases caused by fungi, bacteria and viruses. Parasitic weeds—Striga and Alectra—choke the plants growth at all stages and nematodes prevent the roots from absorbing nutrients and water from the soil.

Most cowpea crops are rain fed and although it is drought tolerant, cowpea farmers in the dry savanna areas of sub-Saharan Africa obtain low yields, estimated at about 350 kg per hectare.

Furthermore, scientists of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, IITA have developed high yielding varieties that are early or medium maturing and have consumer-preferred traits such as large seeds, seed coat texture and color. A number of the varieties have resistance to some of the ajor diseases, pests, nematodes, and parasitic weeds. They are also well-adapted to sole or intercropping.

The Improved varieties according to IITA have been released to 68 countries in all of the world’s regions. In addition, IITA’s Farmer Field School (FFS) projects, in collaboration with partners, have trained farmers in improved pest management practices of cowpea crops.

The IITA gene bank holds the world’s largest and most diverse collection of cowpeas, with 15,122 unique samples from 88 countries, representing 70% of African cultivars and nearly half of the global diversity.

African Development Bank : Fixing agriculture and energy key to Africa’s growth

African Development Bank

African Development Bank Group President Akinwumi Adesina paid a courtesy call to President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana on October 16, 2015 in the country's capital, Accra.

The two discussed the status of development cooperation with Ghana in the context of the changing global economic landscape, and how the Bank can further support development initiatives in the West African nation. President Adesina commended Ghana for its efforts in significantly reducing poverty over the years, but noted the variability in the level of poverty and inequality in the country. The poverty rate is four percent in the Greater Accra region while it reaches as high as 80 percent in the northern region, according to official statistics.

'I am particularly concerned about northern Ghana. We need to look at how to address poverty where it is highly concentrated,' President Adesina said.

The two cited agriculture as the game-changer, with the ability to create jobs for young people while at the same time ensuring food security. 'But not just agriculture for food production... we need to look at it from a different perspective- value addition. We need to begin looking at agriculture as a business,' he said.

President Mahama observed that the region had 11 million hectares of arable land with potential for development, saying 'we have not leveraged it fully.' The two leaders explored how the land resources could be utilised for rice production, turning the region into a huge producer of rice. President Adesina reaffirmed the Bank's commitment to support this initiative, in addition to giving continued support to the energy sector.
The Bank's portfolio in Ghana currently stands at USD 760 million, of which 52 percent is in the infrastructure sector - mostly transport and energy. Agriculture accounts for 20 percent, and the social sector 14 percent.

While in Accra, President Adesina also participated in the marking of End Poverty Day, and the launch of World Bank's report Poverty in a Rising Africa, ahead of the international day for Eradication of Poverty (October 17). The report highlights growing poverty levels despite economic growth on the continent, charting the parallel course of poverty-reduction and population increase. It also makes particular mention of the gender face of poverty, and the mechanisms in place to address it.

President Adesina reiterated the importance of fixing Africa's energy challenges in order to spur economic growth. 'Energy poverty in Africa drives up poverty rates. Without energy, micro, small and medium size enterprises - which account for over 90 percent of businesses - operate below capacity. Industrialization is stalled, and Africa loses two to four percent of GDP,' he said.
'If we get power right, we will get everything right in Africa,' Adesina stressed.

World Bank President Dr Jim Yong Kim noted that only 24 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's population has access to energy, and when available, it can be unreliable and unaffordable. He emphasized the implications this has on business investments. 'In most countries, infrastructure is a major constraint for doing business. It has been found to depress business productivity by around 40 percent in some places,' he said.

President Mahama said his country had embarked on strategies to produce more power within the next five years. He observed that this would help in accelerating efforts towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals that seek to end poverty.

Adesina also participated in a 'Shared Prosperity Forum' at the University of Ghana, Legon, alongside President Kim, Nigerian businessman and philanthropist Tony Elumelu, and Ghana's education minister, Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang. They debated the theme of ending extreme poverty by 2030, and boosting shared prosperity among the poorest 40 percent of the population in developing countries.

The forum focused largely on undertaking reforms in the education sector, so as to empower students not to become job hunters but job creators. It also addressed building health care systems with the ability to tackle threats of epidemics, as well as private sector participation, and transforming agriculture into a business and wealth creating sector.

Musa Cultivation in Nigeria

Bananas and plantains

Bananas and plantains (Musa) have played interesting and important roles in the history of human civilizations. These seedless fruits are eaten and joked about by Westerners, but they also constitute a crucial part of human diets in all tropical regions. In the same plot of land where one could harvest 98 pounds of white potatoes or 33 pounds of wheat, a person could also harvest 4400 pounds of bananas with very little labor.

Banana and plantain are perennial crops that take the appearance of trees as they mature. Diverse cultivars are grown. The word “banana” are believed to have originated in coastal West Africa, presumably in Guinea or Sierra Leone, and was adopted in the New World for the sweet forms with yellow skin (peel). The word plantain is now widely used to refer to the starchy cooking bananas, which often have green or red skins. Plantain presumably originated from the Spanish word “plantano”.

The sweet banana is easily digested, but plantain must be boiled, steamed, roasted, or deep fried to make it soft and palatable.

Throughout history Musa has provided humans with food, medicine, clothing, tools, shelter, furniture, paper, and handicrafts. It could be termed the “first fruit crop” as its cultivation originated during a time when hunting and gathering was still the principal means of acquiring food.

Musa are rich in vitamin C, B6, minerals and dietary fibre. They are also a rich energy source, with carbohydrates accounting for 22% and 32% of fruit weight for banana and plantain, respectively.
Around the world, there are more than 100 common names used for the fruits of Musa.

Banana (Musa acuminate)
Bananas are cultivated in nearly all tropical regions of the world. Of particular importance to Africa is the East African Highland Banana (EAHB) which is a staple starchy food for 80 million people and important source of income. There are 120 EAHB varieties in Uganda alone that are not found anywhere else in the world. Banana is a monoecious plant. Its inflorescence has male flowers at the tip, several sterile flowers, and female flowers behind.

For wild bananas, birds usually pollinate the female flowers, but pollination is unnecessary for fruit set of the cultivated forms, which form sterile fruits automatically without the presence of pollen. This type of fruit development is called parthenocarpy.

The ovules that were present in the ovary abort their development, and the pulp subsequently is produced by the enlargement of the internal tissues of the ovary, particularly from the inner face of the skin and the enlargement of the septa and central axis. These cell divisions are stimulated by the presence of high levels of auxin in those tissues, which are not present if the ovules are fertilized. Wild bananas have fairly dry fruits with large seeds and no pulp.

Plantain (Musa paradisiaca)
Plantain resemble banana but are longer in length, have a thicker skin, and contain more starch. They are also a major staple food in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. They are usually cooked green, either boiled or fried, and not eaten raw unless they are very ripe. It may also be dried for later use in cooking or ground for use as a meal. The plantain meal can be further refined to a flour.

Plantains are more important in the humid lowlands of West and Central Africa. One hundred or more different varieties of plantain grow deep in the African rainforests.

It is a tall plant (3–10 metres [10–33 feet]) with a conical false “trunk” formed by the leaf sheaths of its spirally arranged leaves, which are 1.5 to 3 m long and about 0.5 m wide. The fruit, which is green, is typically larger than the common banana.

The botanical classification of plantains and bananas is so complicated that plantain is variously viewed as a subspecies of banana, and banana as a subspecies of plantain.

Importance
Banana and plantain are important staple foods in many developing countries, especially in Africa. Of the numerous edible varieties, the EAHB accounts for 17% of the types of Musa grown worldwide, and plantain accounts for another 19%.

They provide food security and income for small-scale farmers who represent the majority of producers. Only about 15% of the global banana and plantain production is involved in international trade; most production is consumed domestically.
Banana starch, flour, and chips are processed banana products whose markets are yet to be fully developed.

Production
More than 100 million tons of banana and plantain were produced worldwide in 2007 according to Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO estimates. Bananas are grown in nearly 130 countries. Uganda is the largest producer of banana and plantain in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), followed by Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon.

Banana and plantain are cultivated in a wide variety of environments. These Plants produce fruit year round and can produce for up to one hundred years and are suitable for intercropping. Vegetative propagation is necessary because they rarely produce seeds and those are not true to variety.

Harvesting
In 2007 more than 9.9 million hectares of banana and plantain were harvested worldwide and marketed across longer distances. Post-harvest plantain losses are heavy due to poor handling and transport conditions and inadequate market access routes.

Consumption
Africans annually consume 21 kg of banana and plantain per capita, but Ugandans consume 191 kg per year, or more than half of one kg per day. In fact, Ugandans use the same word for food as the name of the local banana dish matooke. Four African countries have the highest per capita consumption of banana/plantain in the world, with Uganda having the highest.

Pest and disease incidence
Black Sigatoka disease is considered the most economically important disease of banana worldwide, causing typical yield losses up to 50%. The fungus grows on the leaves producing dark spots and causes the fruits to ripen prematurely.

Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) attacks almost all varieties of Musa, destroying the fruits and devastating the crop. It was first identified in Ethiopia in the 1970s, but spread rapidly to other parts of the Great Lakes region after reaching Uganda in 2001. Fusarium wilt has had a huge impact on the world banana trade and is found in every banana/plantain producing area. It is spread through corms used for planting.

The major banana and plantain pests are the burrowing nematode and the banana weevil. Nematode species attack the plant’s roots, resulting in whole plant toppling or reduced yield. The banana weevil, Cosmopolites sordidus, attacks the plant’s underground corm, weakening the plant and causing stem breakage.

Meanwhile, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, IITA scientists have developed and introduced high yielding, disease and pest resistant varieties with durable fruit quality. Various institutions have adopted IITA’s different Musa breeding schemes.

IITA has also developed and is promoting hot water treatment to rid plants of nematodes and to produce clean planting materials. Another important control tactic is the use of nematode-antagonistic plants that inhibit nematode reproduction.

To combat BXW, IITA is collaborating with partners internationally to develop reliable and cost effective diagnostic tools. Also, a genetic transformation system developed and optimized at IITA can be used to produce BXW-resistant varieties of banana.

IITA has successfully identified variations within the Black Sigatoka species in Africa and the possibility to design new diagnostic tools. Such tools would enhance the capacity of subsequent projects in selected countries in SSA.

World Food Day: Stakeholders Call For More Investment In Agriculture

Stakeholders in the agriculture sector have called on the Federal Government to invest more in the sector for increased food production and direct access to food.
They made the call in separate in Abuja on Friday to mark 2015 World Food Day.

Dr Tunde Arosanyin, the National Technical Adviser, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), said that most of the world’s poor and hungry people today belonged to rural families who depended on agriculture for their daily livelihood.

“Government needs to invest heavily in agriculture by increasing its budget from the current eight per cent to at least 20 per cent to make food available for rural dwellers.

“Presently, the vacuum created in our agricultural practice as a nation has led to social security challenges all over the country such as the Boko Haram, kidnapping and cattle rustling.”

He added that the challenges needed to be addressed to allow farmers to farm, stating that “you do not expect farmers to be in farm while they are being attacked on a daily basis”.

Arosanyin said that unstable policies were also part of the constraints militating against food security attainment in the country.

He said the way forward was for government to return the salient features of Operation Feed the Nation (OPC) policies of 1977 with river basin authorities.

According to him, Operation Feed the Nation failed because it was not properly articulated. It just followed the political class and disappeared.

He explained that the programme intended to make agriculture a profitable business venture, not only to make the nation food sufficient but also tackle the challenges of youth unemployment.

“The policy also encouraged farmers from all stages of production through extension services and if a farmer doesn’t have a competitive market to sell after producing, the river basins were on ground to buy.

“They bought from farmers at market price which encouraged production to be totally complete and this lead to good harvest.

“If Federal Government buys into these ideas, I am sure agriculture can create job to about 40 million people.

“We have a blueprint on this on ground which we are going to send to the Federal Government once a new minister is on board to review, ” he added.

Arosanyin said that the World Food Day was significant in so many ways to human existence, adding that the UN Charter guaranteed the right of every human to food at all times.

He added that the day was set aside to create awareness on hunger and encourage people to take action in the fight against hunger.

Mr Ajiboye Daniel, AFAN Chairman in Kwara, frowned at the manual system of agriculture in the country which discouraged a lot of youths taking agriculture as business.

Daniel said that food was a foundation of life given by God, and urged government to make it interesting by making hoes and cutlasses a thing of past.

He, therefore, commended the agricultural Transformation Agenda of the last administration such as the e-Wallet System and urged the current administration to do more.

He called for provision of social amenities in the rural areas to control the problem of rural-urban migration to achieve food sufficiency soon.

The theme for this year is, “Social safety and agriculture: Breaking the cycle of poverty in rural areas.”

Nutritional Values of Peanuts

Peanuts

Peanut, also known as groundnut (Arachis hypogaea) is a crop of global importance. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, being important to both smallholder and large commercial producers. It is classified as both a grain legume, and, because of its high oil content, an oil crop. World annual production is about 46 million tonnes per year.

As a legume, peanut belongs to the botanical family Fabaceae (also known as Leguminosae, and commonly known as the bean or pea family). Like most other legumes, peanuts harbor symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in root nodules. This capacity to fix nitrogen means peanuts require less nitrogen-containing fertilizer and improve soil fertility, making them valuable in crop rotations.

Peanuts are similar in taste and nutritional profile to tree nuts such as walnuts and almonds, and are often served in similar ways in Western cuisines. The botanical definition of a “nut” is a fruit whose ovary wall becomes very hard at maturity. Using this criterion, the peanut is not a nut, but rather a legume. However, for culinary purposes and in common English language usage, peanuts are usually referred to as nuts.
 
Peanuts originated in South America where they have existed for thousands of years. They played an important role in the diet of the Aztecs and other Native Indians in South America and Mexico.

The Spanish and Portuguese explorers who found peanuts growing in the New World brought them on their voyages to Africa. They flourished in many African countries and were incorporated into local traditional food cultures. Since they were revered as a sacred food, they were placed aboard African boats traveling to North America during the beginning of the slave trade, which is how they were first introduced into this region.

In the 19th century, peanuts experienced a great gain in popularity in the U.S. thanks to the efforts of two specific people. The first was George Washington Carver, who not only suggested that farmers plant peanuts to replace their cotton fields that were destroyed by the boll weevil following the Civil War, but also invented more than 300 uses for this legume. At the end of the 19th century, a physician practicing in St. Louis, Missouri, created a ground up paste made from peanuts and prescribed this nutritious high protein, low carbohydrate food to his patients. While he may not have actually “invented” peanut butter since peanut paste had probably used by many cultures for centuries, his new discovery quickly caught on and became, and still remains, a very popular food.

Today, the leading commercial producers of peanuts are India, China, Nigeria, Indonesia and the United States.
Let’s take a quick look at the nutritional values of peanuts while munching that favorite snack.

Substitute for meat
For those looking for excellent and cheap alternatives to meats, peanut is one of them. Like other legumes and dried beans, peanuts contain protein of lower biological value than meats but when eaten with cereals, the total protein value approaches that of meat and thus, costs less.

About 1 cup raw peanuts may be substituted for a serving of meat or fish. For vegetarians, dried beans, legumes and nuts are the primary protein source of their diet.

Vitamin-B to boost energy
Dried beans and legumes such as peanuts are rich in vitamin-B namely thiamin, riboflavin and niacin which help release energy from nutrients. Thiamin supports normal appetite and nerve function. Riboflavin supports skin health, cracks and redness at the corners of mouth, inflammation of the tongue and dermatitis. Niacin also supports the skin, nervous and digestive systems.

Cholesterol-lowering property
Peanut is rich in dietary fiber, a food component that has been associated with the prevention of several chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, colon cancer, and control of diabetes. According to a recent study, among the legumes consumed, peanut showed a marked decrease in the total cholesterol levels of the subjects. Dietary fiber lowers the blood cholesterol levels by binding the bile acids in the intestines.
It is then excreted from the body via the feces, preventing the re-absorption of bile acids in the liver to become cholesterol again, thus lowers cholesterol levels.

Likewise, peanut’s fat content contributes to more energy and thus, is one of the foods added in supplementary foods for children to give a high-calorie, high-protein dish like banana-peanut mix and in disaster foods such as the food bar.

Peanuts Rival Fruit as a Source of Antioxidants
Not only do peanuts contain oleic acid, the healthful fat found in olive oil, but new research shows these tasty legumes are also as rich in antioxidants as many fruits. While unable to boast an antioxidant content that can compare with the fruits highest in antioxidants, such as pomegranate, roasted peanuts do rival the antioxidant content of blackberries and strawberries, and are far richer in antioxidants than apples, carrots or beets.

Research conducted by a team of University of Florida scientists,  shows that peanuts contain high concentrations of antioxidant polyphenols, primarily a compound called p-coumaric acid, and that roasting can increase peanuts’ p-coumaric acid levels, boosting their overall antioxidant content by as much as 22%.

Peanuts Protective, but Pickled Foods Increase Risk of Colon Cancer
A number of studies have shown that nutrients found in peanuts, including folic acid, phytosterols, phytic acid (inositol hexaphosphate) and resveratrol, may have anti-cancer effects. A rich source all these nutrients—including the phytosterol beta-sisterol, which has demonstrated anti-cancer actions—peanuts have long been considered a likely candidate as a colon cancer-preventive food.

Colorectal cancer is the second most fatal malignancy in developed countries and the third most frequent cancer worldwide. In Taiwan, not only has incidence of colon cancer increased, but the likelihood of dying from the disease rose 74% from 1993 to 2002.

Taiwanese researchers decided to examine peanuts’ anti-colon cancer potential and conducted a 10-year study involving 12,026 men and 11,917 women to see if eating peanuts might affect risk of colon cancer.(Yeh CC, You SL, et al., World J Gastroenterol)
Researchers tracked study participants’ weekly food intake, collecting data on frequently consumed foods and folk dishes such as sweet potato, bean products, peanut products, pickled foods, and foods that contained nitrates or were smoked.

Risk of colon cancer was found to be highly correlated with both peanuts, which greatly lessened risk, and pickled foods, which greatly increased risk, particularly in women.

Eating peanuts just 2 or more times each week was associated with a 58% lowered risk of colon cancer in women and a 27% lowered risk in men.

Help Prevent Gallstones
Twenty years of dietary data collected on over 80,000 women from the Nurses’ Health Study shows that women who eat least 1 ounce of nuts, peanuts or peanut butter each week have a 25% lower risk of developing gallstones. Since 1 ounce is only 28.6 nuts or about 2 tablespoons of nut butter, preventing gallbladder disease may be as easy as packing one peanut butter and jelly sandwich (be sure to use whole wheat bread for its fiber, vitamins and minerals) for lunch each week, having a handful of peanuts as an afternoon pick me up, or tossing some peanuts on your oatmeal or salad.

Eating Nuts Lowers Risk of Weight Gain
Although nuts are known to provide a variety of cardio-protective benefits, many avoid them for fear of weight gain. A prospective study published in the journal Obesity shows such fears are groundless. In fact, people who eat nuts at least twice a week are much less likely to gain weight than those who almost never eat nuts.

The 28-month study involving 8,865 adult men and women in Spain, found that participants who ate nuts at least two times per week were 31% less likely to gain weight than were participants who never or almost never ate nuts.

And, among the study participants who gained weight, those who never or almost never ate nuts gained more (an average of 424 g more) than those who ate nuts at least twice weekly.
 
Study authors concluded, “Frequent nut consumption was associated with a reduced risk of weight gain (5 kg or more). These results support the recommendation of nut consumption as an important component of a cardio-protective diet and also allay fears of possible weight gain.”

USDA Invests in Global Food Security

USDA

Today, 795 million people around the world do not have access to a sufficient supply of safe and nutritious food. The United Nations estimates that worldwide demand for food will increase 70 percent by 2050. To meet this need, production in developing countries will need to almost double.

Establishing global food security is important not only to hundreds of millions of hungry people, but also to the sustainable economic growth of developing nations and the long-term economic prosperity of the United States. As we help countries become more food secure and raise incomes, we also expand markets for American producers. For example, between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, U.S. agricultural exports to developing countries grew 44.3 percent for developing countries, significantly outpacing the 33.4 percent for developed countries. Exports to Southeast Asia grew 56.5 percent.

In 2009, G8 nations committed to act with the scale and urgency needed to achieve sustainable global food security and to be accountable and coordinate with country development plans. In the subsequent years, the United States has invested over $3.75 billion to address global food security, exceeding the President's commitment, and launched his Feed the Future Initiative.

 USDA is a key member of the whole of government effort on Feed the Future and supports global food security through in-country capacity building, basic and applied research, and support for improved market information, statistics and analysis. Around the world, USDA has helped to train small farmers and foreign officials on plant and animal health systems, risk analysis, and avoiding post-harvest loss; completed assessments on climate change; and helped to increase agricultural productivity.

Building Local Capacity, Increasing Productivity, and Improving Markets and Trade
USDA staff members are strategically placed to monitor agricultural matters globally in more than 160 countries and assist in USDA's efforts to build local capacity. Since 2010, USDA has aligned its program with the Feed the Future Initiative to support agriculture development in select focus countries and regions—Ghana, Kenya, East Africa, Bangladesh, Haiti, Guatemala and Central America—and worked in all 19 of the Initiative's priority countries.

• Over the past six years, USDA's international food aid programs benefited approximately 48.3 million individuals globally, with assistance valued at nearly $2.2 billion.
• Over the past six years, USDA's McGovern- Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program supported the education, child development, and food security of some 26 million of the world's poorest children in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• With the support of the McGovern Dole program, the United Nations World Food Program provides a daily breakfast of rice, canned fish, vitamin A-fortified vegetable oil, and yellow split peas to feed pre- and primary school students in Siem Reap and two other provinces in Cambodia. The project also provides food scholarships, in the form of take home rations, to poor students as an income-based incentive to encourage poor food-insecure households to send their children to school regularly to increase student attendance and retention rates.
• The McGovern Dole Food for Education program provided training to over 132,000 people on child health and nutrition. Projects have trained health professionals, primary health care workers, community health workers, volunteers, and non-health personnel such as teachers, school administrators and parents.
• In Mali, for example, as part of USDA's partnership with Catholic Relief Services over 2,000 people have been trained in basic health and nutrition practices such as child growth and development, malnutrition, and how to prepare nutritious foods using locally available foods such as millet, peanuts and beans.
• In order support the sustainability of McGovern Dole efforts, projects aim to create long-lasting public-private partnerships with businesses and producers. While USDA has just started to track these efforts, in the past year, 258 public-private partnerships have been formed. Many of the public-private partnerships formed under the McGovern Dole program are partnerships between producer groups who commit to providing food to local schools, supplementing food provided by USDA.
• In Malawi, for example, the USDA McGovern Dole project implemented by WFP has developed 90 partnerships with farmer group associations that provide a diverse selection of local produce, such as maize, beans and vegetables to their local primary schools as part of the Government of Malawi-supported pilot Home Grown School Feeding model.

USDA's Food for Progress program helps developing countries and emerging democracies modernize and strengthen their agricultural sectors. The two principle objectives of Food for Progress are increasing agricultural productivity and expanding trade of agricultural products. In fiscal year 2014, nearly 223, 337 individuals in the Feed the Future countries and regions received USDA's agricultural productivity or food security training.

• Food for Progress projects have trained farmers in animal and plant health and improved techniques and technologies on and off farm. In 2014, over 220,000 producers received training on agricultural sector productivity or food security training as a result of USDA assistance.
• In Honduras, the Food for Progress program implemented by USDA's partner TechnoServe, Inc., and focused on the coffee and bean sector, trained 13,406 men and 3,357 women in improved agricultural techniques and technologies. In the coffee sector, training was provided in areas such as Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), post-harvest handling, and helping farmers better understand the causes of common coffee bean defects and expectations of international buyers making purchasing decisions.
• As a result of USDA training in improved techniques and technologies, over 80,000 producers in fiscal year 2014 have adopted one or more improved techniques or management practices. Through USDA's partner, National Cooperative Business Association, more than 19,000 Ugandans have adopted conservation farming practices to their maize, pulse and soybean cultivation. Adopting these practices has led to an average increase in yields of about 47%.
• Farmers adopting improved techniques or technologies in their farming practices have resulted in almost 64,000 hectares of land cultivated under USDA-promoted improved techniques or management practices in nine countries in fiscal year 2014 in Africa and Latin America.
• Counterpart International, in coordination with the Guatemalan Ministry of Agriculture's formal extension agents, has held over 83 trainings for agricultural producers in Huehuetenango and San Marcos on topics such as soil conservation, water management, integrated pest management, and post-harvest management. While still early in the project, these trainings have resulted in over 2,426 hectares of land cultivated under USDA-promoted improved techniques and technologies.
• USDA programs often support increased access to and utilization of financial services in order to expand agricultural productivity and markets and trade. Making more financial loans shows that there is improved access to business development for producers, cooperatives, MSMEs and business enterprises including producers, service providers and manufacturers. In fiscal year 2014, USDA supported $12.6 million in agricultural and rural loans in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mali and Tanzania.
• Last year, USDA's Food for Progress program efforts resulted in close to 10,000 jobs. In Honduras, for example, this has meant that 1,670 new on-farm full-time jobs and 215 new post-production jobs in the coffee and bean sector were attributed to USDA's work through its partnership with TechnoServe, Inc.

Two of USDA's premier trade and scientific exchange programs play an important role in USDA's food security initiatives:

• The Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship Program (Borlaug Fellowship Program or BFP) promotes food security and economic growth by providing training and collaborative research opportunities to fellows from developing and middle-income countries. Borlaug fellows are scientists, researchers, or policymakers who are in the early or middle stages of their careers.
• Over the past six years, USDA's Borlaug Fellowship Program provided training and collaborative research opportunities to 440 scientists and policymakers from developing and middle-income countries, focusing on a wide range of agriculture-related topics including agronomy, veterinary science, nutrition, food safety, sanitary and phytosanitary issues, natural resource management, and biotechnology.
• The Cochran Fellowship Program strengthens and enhances trade linkages between eligible middle-income and emerging market countries and agricultural interest in the U.S. The Cochran program also assists eligible countries to develop agricultural systems necessary to meet the food and fiber needs of their domestic populations by providing training opportunities for senior and mid-level specialists and administrators working in agricultural trade and policy, agribusiness development, management, animal, plant, and food sciences, extension services, agricultural marketing, and many other areas.
• Over the past six years, USDA's Cochran Fellowship Program trained 3,148 agricultural professionals worldwide in areas related to agricultural trade, agribusiness development, management, policy, and marketing.

Driving Innovation through Research and Technologies
Since 2009, USDA has expanded analysis and reporting to increase core data, statistics, and analysis of global agricultural systems. In 2011, USDA expanded its annual Food Security Assessment to include 77 countries; completed assessments of agricultural statistics and market information in ten Feed the Future countries and identified key areas where improvement is needed; and conducted in-depth assessments of the capacity of the statistical systems of Ghana, Haiti, Malawi, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Bangladesh.

• In 2014, USDA conducted in-depth country assessments of agricultural statistics and market information systems in Benin, Malawi, and Senegal. An on-going agricultural statistics project in Haiti resulted in the first country wide agricultural production survey data release. Tanzania conducted a cognitive pre-test of point sample area frame methodology for an Annual Agricultural Sample Survey.

Important research on solving food production issues continues:

• USDA researchers sequenced the genome of wheat and the wheat stem rust pathogen, which threatens to destroy wheat crops worldwide, and distributed new wheat germplasm globally to reduce the risk of unproductive harvests.
• USDA continues research to combat aflatoxin (mycotoxins can be lethally toxic in high dosages or cause dilatory health effects over the long-term in smaller dosages) through genetic resistance in maize and using RNAi approaches in peanut.
• In partnership with USAID, USDA is part of an international consortium to develop a safe and economically sustainable vaccine for the pathogen that causes East Coast Fever (ECF), a devastating disease of cattle of eastern Africa.
• USDA is cooperating with over a dozen institutions in the United States and developing countries to provide resource poor farmers with dry bean cultivars with improved productivity and quality. Researchers have identified broad spectrum resistance to rust in large seeded landrace cultivars that originate from Tanzania. These landraces, with confirmed resistance in field trials in Africa and the United States, provide breeders with a valuable source of rust resistance for improving large-seeded African cultivars used by small-holder farmers.
• In 2013, the United States, along with the United Kingdom, launched the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition initiative, which seeks to support global efforts to make agricultural and nutritionally relevant data available, accessible, and usable for unrestricted use worldwide. The initiative encourages collaboration and cooperation among existing agriculture and open data activities. Open access to research, and open publication of data, are vital resources for food security and nutrition, driven by farmers, farmer organizations, researchers, extension experts, policy makers, governments, and other private sector and civil society stakeholders participating in "innovation systems" and along value chains.

Industry Experts Set to Speak at the National Advanced Biofuels Conference

National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo (NABCE)

The 2015 National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo (NABCE) will be taking place October 26-28 in Omaha, Nebraska. Renowned as the largest advanced biofuels event of the year, NABCE will provide attendees with insight on the current and future efforts regarding the production and development of alternative energy. With two comprehensive program tracks titled Feedstocks & Feedstock Supply Chains and Technologies, Plant Design, Construction & Operation, this year's event will feature nearly 70 advanced biofuels presentations on technology scale-up, bolt-on considerations, emerging feedstock opportunities, project development, policy, RIN markets and more -- with a core focus on opportunities for America's existing fleet of biofuels plants to produce advanced biofuels in the near term.

Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a content-rich industry tour, featuring two stops that each will offer a hands-on look at both pilot-scale next generation biofuels production and the manufacturer of crucial biomass handling systems. Experts will share their insight on the biofuels industry through a variety of presentations.
Presentation topics include:

• Project Updates
• Feedstock Cultivation, Harvest, Storage and Transport
• Biomass Pretreatment Strategies
• Enzyme Design & Optimization
• Integrating Cellulosic Production at Existing Facilities
• Thermochemical Conversion Approaches
• Waste based Biofuels Production
• Strategic Partnerships
• Enzyme Development and Biological Pathways
• Thermochemical Pathways
• Dedicated Energy Inputs
• Drop In Fuels
• Policy & Legislative Goals

"We couldn't have picked a better venue to hold the National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo," says Tim Portz, vice president of content at BBI International. "Within 200 miles of Omaha, there is a massive amount of activity dealing with the progress of advanced biofuels." Portz adds, "Last year's event was a huge success and we are incredibly excited to bring together the leading experts of this industry to discuss the future of sustainable energy."

"This event provides a unique opportunity to network with those involved in the biofuels industry. Last year's conference hosted attendees from around the globe that connected with current and potential customers," says John Nelson, marketing & sales director at BBI International.

Attendees and exhibitors will include 200+ professionals in key sectors including biofuels and biobased chemicals production; agribusiness; petroleum and petrochemical refining; pulp and paper milling; food processing; waste management; finance; aviation; government/military; research and academia.
To view online agenda visit: www.AdvancedBiofuelsConference.com

Governors Push for Rice Importation Ban By 2017

Gov. Yari and Gov Bindo

State governors recently pushed for the ban of rice importation by 2017 when the country would have developed sufficient capacity to produce enough to meet local consumption.

This was the position of governors of the front line states producing rice in the country at a meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, on a new policy on agriculture and food sustainability with a view to banning importation of rice into Nigeria in the next two years.

After the meeting which was also attended by other stakeholders and governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Zamfara State Governor and Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), Governor Alhaji Abdulazeez Yari said with the population of the country, it was regrettable that it still had issues of food security.

According to Yari, the meeting which held at the Vice President’s wing of the Villa discussed with relevant government agencies, policies on agriculture and food sustainability to be put in place in order to ensure self sufficiency in rice production, so as to make further importation unnecessary.

He said: “We discussed how we can boost rice production in Nigeria and start thinking about how we are going to put policies in place on how rice importation will be banned in the country.

“We have the potential, we have the human resources, and we have the arable land to grow rice. In the next two years, we will not need to bring rice from outside Nigeria. We are going to ban it.

“It is only in Nigeria, a country of millions of people, that there is no food security. We discussed the policy with the relevant permanent secretaries and CBN governor. The policy is going to be in place and we gave our commitment that we are ready to support the government policy in ensuring that Nigeria becomes self-sufficient in food production in the next two years.

“Nigeria is currently a major importer of rice. Now, the political will is in place to stop it. About nine states are going to be seriously engaged in massive rice production, so we are hoping that in the next two years, rice importation into Nigeria will be banned.  We are committed and the political will is in place.”

It would be recalled that the Federal Government had recently removed rice from import restriction list.

Ekiti State Farmers Receives N5m Support

farmers

As part of effort to encourage farmers to return to agriculture, foremost educationist and founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, ABUAD, Aare Afe Babalola, has provided N5 million to some farmers in Ekiti State.

Speaking at the maiden edition of the Aare Afe Babalola Food Security Expo, ABAFEX 2015, Babalola said the donation, being an annual event, would see the best farmer in the state carting away N1 million while the best farmer in each of the state’s 16 local government areas would take home N250, 000.

He said: “Today we are here in fulfillment of the promise we made. I can see an array of farmers with their farm produce. I can see jubilant farmers dancing all the way. I am not only happy, but thrilled that people are still happy being involved in agriculture. This Expo will be on for four days and at the end of it all, I will be physically and personally present to present the cheques to the winners and this will subsequently become an annual event”.

According to the founder, this approach will enable the country retrace its steps back to the pre-oil era.
On the place of ABUAD in the Food Security Expo, Babalola said “ABUAD is established to change things for the better. We make things happen. We are equally here to set standards and we are the first University in Nigeria to engage in this kind of venture.

“We will not stop here. We will not stop thinking. We will be devising ways of improving. That is one of the essential ele­ments of a modern university”, he added

In his remarks, Governor Fayose while commending Ba­balola for his immense contri­butions in all facets of human endeavours, also pledged to sup­port the programme with N1 million annually.

It would be recalled that Babalola had earlier made the promise of 5 million naira to farmers in Ekiti State during his investiture as Africa’s Man of the Year in Food Security by the Forum for International Green Sustainability, FIGS.

With Eggs, the Choices Are Many

When purchasing eggs

When purchasing eggs, many people read the carton to help understand how the hens were housed when producing those eggs. But is the label on the egg carton a good indicator of the hens' well-being?

The variety of options can make determining the eggs best for you and your family difficult. To help support consumer choice and provide information to sort through the confusion, the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply recently completed a three-year research study. Researchers assessed hens' well-being, egg safety and quality, affordability, worker health and safety, and environmental impact as elements of sustainability in cage-free, conventional and enriched colony hen housing.

What the researchers found might be surprising, with positive and negative aspects associated with each housing system. For instance, while conventional cage housing limits the ability of hens to exhibit natural behaviors, it also has the lowest mortality rate. Conversely, cage-free housing allows hens to nest, perch and even attempt flying, though hen mortality was more than double that of the other housing options researched. By understanding which findings are most important to them, shoppers can be confident in choosing eggs that are right for them.

"Hen well-being is an important aspect of producing eggs, but it should be considered along with many other elements of egg production," said Darrin Karcher, Extension Specialist in the Department of Animal Science at Michigan State University and CSES Project Director. "This research allows us to better understand how each housing system affects not only the well-being of the hens, but a variety of other factors. This is a valuable tool consumers, restaurants and retailers can use to make more informed decisions about which eggs are best for them."

When choosing what's best for you and your family, whether you prioritize egg cost, hens being able to exhibit natural behaviors, environmental impact or another element of sustainability, making an informed choice begins with understanding which eggs best meet your needs.