Lord's Resistance Army

This week, the LRA commited another atrocity in the Congo. For a background on the LRA and the less-than-heroic characters in charge, go no further than the blog post from Wronging Rights.
Photo courtesy of Stoke Newington Quakers

Hand painted signs

Home made or artisanal shop signs have disappeared from European and US towns. Businesses in developing countries hire local artisans to brighten their shop fronts and advertises their wares. There is therefore alot more diversity between how shops look than in a US shopping mall or UK high street. From Uganda, here is a shop selling milk. In Mexico, these sign paintings are called rotulos. The artisans are called rotulistas and there is concern that this art is dying out. I guess as economies develop and businesses consolidate and become more capital intensive, firms will no longer need hand painted signs.

From southern Chile where fishings is still small scale, a sailor has livened up his fishing boat with dreams of New York.

Stopping organic cotton in Uganda

An article from a newspaper this week in Uganda reports that President Mseveni has "banned" organic cotton from northern Uganda. In the last few years, organic cotton production has grown rapidly there due to overseas buyers clamouring for the stuff. According to Uganda's President, the main cotton buyer Dunavant has failed to provide the organic growers with sufficient organic pesticides making them vulnerable to crop failure. The government has zoned areas where organic must be grown. If cotton production takes place outside these areas, they will be declared "illegal". It is not clear exactly what support the government of Uganda provides to cotton farmers either in the zone or without. In general developing countries have very low levels of support for agricultural extension particularly since structural adjustment programmes began in the 1990s. It is therefore unclear why a government providing so little in the way of agricultural extension would discourage the private sector in this way.

Soil conservation 2

Covering soil is a major preoccupation for organic gardeners and farmers. Just as an organic garden in Europe will have green manures to protect soil and add fertility, this pineapple field in Uganda has mulches in between the rows. The farmer below hasnt put down a mulch as he hasn't found time. As a result he has loads of weeds to deal with which will reduce his yields. Because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in his locality, labour is sparse and high cost.

Soil conservation and painful weeding

Soil conservation is very important! Without it, farmers on the steep slopes of Ugandan mountains will have nothing but rock to farm on. Organic does encourage soil conservation but not require it which seems a weakness to me. Here above Kesese, farmers dig gulleys to trap rainwater. This stops soils running away in the torrential rains. The pineapple farmer takes the same approach. He has seven children and is buying more land from his neighbour to plant more pineapples. He remarks that weeding is painful as he get spiked by the leaves and so asks for gloves and boots.

Paperwork

Organic involves a fair amount of paperwork. This means recording the names of all the farmers and mapping out the area. This process is called establishing an Internal Control System. Along comes the inspector and samples a small percentage of the hundreds of farmers in the ICS to check they aren't spraying chemicals. The ICS also gives a degree of traceability to the supply chain which buyers in Europe like...

Uganda - coffee and widows

Whereas pineapple farming seems pretty much in the hands of men (and their kids), women appear more prominent in coffee farming at least on the slopes above Sesese next to the Queen Elizabeth National Park. These ladies are widows - their men mostly died shot by park rangers for poaching.

Uganda - pineapples and poverty

Uganda is full of organic farms thanks to rich soils and direct airlinks to European markets. One of the most popular cash crops are pineapples. They are grown by smallholders with as little as one acre of land. These farmers face many challenges including pests and disease, drought, floods, declining profit margins and productivity. Organic farming requires farmers not to use agrochemicals and to build soil fertility with manures and intercropping. However, this can mean more labour, often in short supply in this one farm following an HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. Knowledge about good agricultural practice is also in short supply not least due to a non functioning extension service in rural areas (like most of Africa). This has left barren hillside churning out cash crops with insufficient soil conservation measures. These measures include shade tree planting, manuring, intercropping and mulching. The organic encourages but does not require soil conservation measures - perhaps an achilles heel of organic?