During this week's online meeting John Dada was able to give the UK-Nigeria team an update about the Attachab Eco-Village project.

Following the successful initial progress the French Embassy have just released the 2nd installment of their grant.

John reported that the classroom / manager's residence is nearing completion as is the borehole.
On Monday the construction of the overhead water tank and the installation of a solar pump are scheduled to commence.

John explained that they are using compressed bricks work for the build.
He also reported that as of today (Wednesday 30th November) there are over 20 young men working at the Attachab site.
John said:

" We have created a small employment opportunity in the village"

This is very important for the local community where unrest and turmoil (especially amongst the unemployed youth) is still high as was sadly demonstrated by the recent civil unrest.

John explained:

This update from Frances was sent from rural Nigeria to the UK this morning.

Wednesday's weekly online meeting between the UK and rural Nigeria came up against a familiar enemy - connectivity problems. Initially things looked bleak as we faced a long time delay with receiving and sending Skype messages. However, following a quick exchange of SMS messages the meeting was finally able to start, allowing John Dada to appear online for half an hour to bring us up to date with the latest news.

We were pleased to hear that the ESSPIN programme is now well underway and are looking forward to seeing the photos.

John also informed us that preparations for the Sickle Cell Awareness Day Celebrations had entered the final phase.

However we were especially excited to learn that over the last two months a series of training courses has been under way at Fantsuam Foundation. John said that virtually every family in their village had now attended one or more of these sessions. He has asked a member of his team to send me photos and a short summary of the training taking place.

Hi Vijay

Sorry you could not make it to February First Thursday, but I know you are very busy at present. You would have met some interesting people including members of the Dadamac team in Nigeria. It would have been interesting to compare some of the eco-developments there, such as growing Jatrohpa, with what is happening in India

I mention Jatropha because at our UK-Nigeria meeting yesterday we were told that "we are raising a nursery of 2000 jathropha palnts we intend to transplant when the rains begin"

Regarding Jatropha in India, I have just seen this article which says "Cultivation of the jatropha was prioritised a year ago by the Indian Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav. Disused railways lands were to be put aside for growing the crop. Brazil’s biodiesel company, Biomasa, plans to plant two million hectares with jatropha this year, and it is believed jatropha will surpass sugar cane as the principle source for bioethanol in Brazil."

It seems there are many innovative appraoches to agriculture being tried in various places, and it will be interesting to gradually get local detailed perspectives on some of them.

What do you think?

Pam

Hi Vijay

I am glad that you chose the article on "Pushing up Farm Productivity" to share with us. It looks as if several group interests are overlapping around the topic of food production, and eco-friendly solutions.

I am very aware of approaches to food production and methods of growing things at present because Marcus Simmons is still sharing details of his recent trip to Africa. He was in Benin and Nigeria - and the main focus of his trip was permaculture. He went to Benin to learn more about permaculture as applied in West Africa, then went to share those ideas at Fantsuam and Attachab Eco-Villlage.

I particularly like the bit in the article "Pushing up Farm Productivity" that said "It is not the farmer who makes the food: he is only a facilitator. Food is actually made by plants. Therefore it is important to understand the requirements of plants and supply them without restrictions in order for plants to deliver food. Since plants do not talk, their needs are understood through research and experimentation."

There is a difference in emphasis between the approach in the article and a permaculture approach, as the article seems to refer to artificial fertilisers, and permaculture favours natural fertilisers and composting - but there is a shared concern to be more aware of the needs of the plants.

Until recently my experience with fish had been limited, to say the least. In all honesty, it had consisted of watching my children win goldfish at a fair - and the occasional cod and chips supper!

However over the last 18 months the subject of fish farming has captured my attention and I have been lucky enough to have my eyes opened to the many and varied challenges involved. (Although I'll be the first to admit I still have a great deal more to learn!)

I first heard about fish farming in 2008 during one of our weekly online meetings with John Dada and the Fantsuam Foundation. John had established a fish farm at FF and I was shown photos of the concrete fish tanks for the first time and introduced to the odd-sounding term 'fingerlings' (or baby fish to you and me!)

I soon learned that the protein from the fish was an important tool in the fight against HIV and Aids, something actively addressed by Fantsuam's Positive Concern programme.

John and Fantsuam have gone on to build two fish ponds at Attachab EcoVillage this year, with advice from Marcus Simmons. John intended to fill them with water from a tributary of the River Wonderful, but the gradient proved insufficient to accommodate the pump that he was offered.

Dear Pam,

Here is an interesting piece on the role that pulses and oilseeds play in nutritional security. Though the article talks about the state of Indian agriculture, it has some interesting points on increasing agricultural productivity.

In order to progress, the mindset with regard to the following two factors needs to change, says Dr Lux Lakshmanan, Director, California Agriculture Consulting Service. Factor no 1: It is not the farmer who makes the food: he is only a facilitator. Food is actually made by plants. Since plants do not talk, their needs are understood through research and experimentation. Factor no 2: The mindset that assumes that breeding is the solution to all maladies has to change. Nurturing of plants is several times more important in crop productivity improvement than hybrid seeds per se.

Hi Vijay

Given your interest in food security and wider issues surrounding it you may like to see this video about Climate Food and Developing-Country Livestock Farmers ILRI film:

In my mind it connects with John's vision for a model farm development at Attachab Eco-village and why it is important to develop models of good practice and effective ways to share them.

Of course at Fantusam Foudation many initiatives are inter-related, so this is also relevant to the idea Cicely was promoting for helping farmers through the Internet services provided by Zittnet. (You may remember this idea and our excitement around trying to win some serious prize money which I covered in my blog.)

Hi Pam,

When I began discussing about a learning group on food security, I was only thinking of agriculture and farmers. But over this week, I began to realise that food security is a far bigger area than that: it also encompasses issues like availability and access, and most importantly, nutrition.

Now, I don't how many people will agree with me that nutrition also forms a part of food security. But to me, the circle of food security is incomplete if a huge chunk of a country's population continues to wallow in hunger, despite high agricultural productivity and foodgrain output.

A case in point is India. Despite being a booming economy and one of the food baskets of the world, nutrition deprivation is widespread among India's children.

According to India’s third National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) of 2005-06, 20 per cent of Indian children under five-years-old are wasted due to acute undernutrition and 48 per cent are stunted due to chronic undernutrition.

Hi Pam,

I enjoyed the chat that we had on the way ahead for Dadamac.net. I think it is a good starting point to take the discussions further about the evolution of the site.

Now to get on with my post for the Open Letter section, I have been looking at some interesting articles on the farm sector. The more I read about it, the sadder I feel about the farm community across the world--more so in developing countries.

As the global population surges by a few billions over the next few decades, farmers are going to face more pressure than ever to produce food in the face of challenges like climate change, shrinking agricultural labour (caused by movement of people from villages to cities), and shortage of land to till.

In a recent article, Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, says as the rural and farm population gets reduced, agriculture will increasingly become more capital- and knowledge- intensive to produce more and higher quality food for bigger and richer urban populations.