O.k., here’s the new one and it is actually posted!
There have been success stories and land degradation stories solicited by the UNEP and presented on the website http://www.oasisglobal.net/successes.htm
Look at some of the stories, comment on what you see is common between them, and how this relates to the video we watched in class “The Oregon Farming Story”.
Responses are due no later than Saturday night (1/24/09) by midnight (12:00)
15 comments:
The link Mr. Macdicken provided above doesn't work if you just click on it (it takes you to a non-working, different site all together). So before you all cry baby and give up, just copy the address itself (http://www.oasisglobal.net/successes.htm) and put in your address bar.
Most of these stories have a center piece to their success: Community. In Tanzania, where deforestation is a major threat, there was (unsurprisingly)improvement when the community bonded together towards a common goal: "When forest care was decentralized to local communities, the management and protection of these woodlands improved remarkably."
In all of the other stories I read, community played a key role in saving the land. Whether ideas were spread from farm to farm or whether young and old bonded together to care for something mutually, the result has always, ultimately, been successful. A lot of times, these farmer's successes lie simply in that they work together and exchange ideas together, putting their own personal beliefs to the side momentarily.
In the movie we watched, “The Oregon Farming Story,” you could say this rule of success applies, also. We were told that the main farm we followed had been around for over three generations. We saw how the family of farmers had to work together, doing things they didn't necessarily like to do, but in the end, the farm thrived. Towards the end of the movie, when the farm was on the brink of destruction, the farmer had to extend his reach for help to loaners and he had to ask his fellow farmers what they did to survive.
Working together, making thoughtful and intelligent decisions, and building community is the essential formula for ANYTHING to be continuously successful.
I'm not sure that I agree with Zack's theory that decentralization is the answer to soil degradation problems, at least for countries that are already industrialized. Governmental regulation can have effects that are more wide spread and permanent. The other drawback to leaving agriculture strictly to the hands of the farmers is that many of them aren't practiced in sustainable agricultural policies. For example, in the video that we watched the farmer talked about how he stopped tilling because it became illegal. Had he not stopped tilling he would have slowly degraded the soil until he could no longer use it and had to sell his land at a low price and move. But the state helped fix this problem. The same farmer also talked about how he would compensate for a drop in crop prices by harvesting more of that crop (which in turn would lower the price even more). If the government stepped in and paid farmers to not harvest sections of their land (I forget the official word for that) then the price of the crop would stay high and the farmers would get a decent amount. There isn't just one easy solution to the problem, though, or it would have already been fixed.
I noticed one factor that was prevalent in all of the stories I read and the video was government subsidies and aid. The degree in which the government or non-governmental agency provides support differs within each specific situation, but almost all farmers find it neccessary to have something that will stabilize them economically beyond their profits. Many of the stories described the success farmers living in developing countries experienced after they received some form of government based education on how to develop more modern and sustainable farming techniques. A specific example is the ADP's in the Kano and Sokoto States which helped teach local farmers to grow more stable crops. These projects also helped to give the community a better irrgiation system for harvesting their food. The movie also included a variety of farmers who relied more on government subsidies and loans to get through the year. They rely on those subsidies to help them maintain their farms when they are producing less in a given season. I drew a major comparison between developing and developed countries both in the movie and while reading the online stories. It appears that developing countries are receiving more aid not only for their economic benefit, but also aid that is directed towards providing them with a sustainable future. Whereas in developed countries, the government is merely putting them into a cycle of debt as they continually try to pay off the loans they were originally given. This raises the question as to how much, and what type of government aid should be given to farmers. Do you think that it is better to purely monetarily fund them? Or to give them less money and more education? I would like to know what some people think about this...
In these stories I don't think that the theme is that communities work or that governments work, but rather, that communities supported by governments work. In many of the cases a government funded a program allowing one or two individuals in a community to view new methods that might increase production. Those individuals then spread the innovations to their communities and those communities succeeded because of the cooperation. Without government support, the community would never have had the opportunity to learn about these foreign innovations or see them put into practice, and without the willingness of the community the government programs would never have been successful. I think it is not a matter of which is more effective, the government or the community, but rather a symbiotic relationship between the two. The government puts up the initial funding and the idea, and the community follows through. The same thing can be seen in the video "The Oregon Farming Story". The government helps by subsidizing the use of land and crops, but in the end the community works together in order to make the programs feasible.
By the way, at least for me the link didn't work, I had to copy and paste it manually.
With the introduction of any new thing, be it a product or an idea, there is bound to be mishap. People tend to become set in their ways, or when they finally decide to change, it happens en masse, causing difficulties for something that is young and unrevised. For farming techniques and technologies this is even more true. Farming is one activity that is in the hearts of many people, still a wholly traditional affair, with the children taking over the parents farm and raising their children in the same ways and with the same values. When you ask someone to change the entire way that they do something you have to give them some pretty damn good evidence for it, otherwise nothing is going to happen, especially if the person is doing well already. If they aren't, especially pertinent in Africa, it becomes much easier to convince them. If you are shown that you can produce twice as much food from a field by adopting a new technique or seed, you are going to be hard pressed not to do it even if it is "white mans mischief".
The link between stories by UNEP appear that all of the countries use modern technology and newer techniques to help battle agricultural issues. The video relates to these success stories because farmers that were interviewed were struggling to find irrigation methods that would be substantial enough to produce a good crop outcome. I also noticed that farms that were excelling were motivation to struggling farmers in the same area.
Like some other people have said before, innovation in technology, reforms and sustainable agricultural practices are very important to agricultural success. One example was when, in the movie we watched, farmers started using computers to help with their import/export economy, and to track weather patterns. Interaction in the community and the government was also a common factor. Farmers, the community and the local government have to work together to get the product going, the economy stable, and reforms passed that will help with water conservation and a stable product export.
The main similarity I saw between the success stories was the impact that new technologies and techniques had on the agriculture of any given region. For example there was much improvement through the use of the zai technique, small-scale irrigation systems, soil/water conservation methods and the adoption of diverse cropping practices. I do agree that in order to successfully introduce the modern techniques each region had to have a sense of initiative through the community as well as substantial aid for new projects. As a few have already pointed out one has to come before the other. Still, the amount of support from both the community and the government varied from region to region whereas the implementation of new methods repeatedly had the same effect (in a there’s no way to go but up, sort of way)- dramatic improvements on the agriculture/land of the region. And it certainly didn’t hurt that most farmers were more than happy to share new technologies and techniques with neighboring communities who were also struggling with land degradation issues. In the case of “The Oregon Farming Story” video we watched in class, the farmers welcomed new and improved irrigation methods and some, as mentioned above, adopted forms of computer technology as a means of organization and weather tracking.
All these stories have in common the factor of working together as a community, including the government. This could include finding new methods (soil/water conservation, crop and livestock system improvement...) or government funding (ISWC, PFI) or projects to help things such as rice irrigation. This relates to the video "The Oregon Farming Story" because the farmers in the video were searing for methods to use on their farms.
The main thing all these stories have in common is their communities are being supported by the government, allowing them to search for new and more effective methods to farm. Without the support of the government the communities wouldn't have had the chance to learn about these innovation from other places or if they did wouldn't have had the resources to test them. This related to the video because the farmers in the video were looking for new methods that would help them increase their efficiency thus cutting their costs and increasing their profits.
I tired all last night to get this up but it this stupid blogger.com error message came up over and over again. hopefully it works now.
i could definitely just say that all of these stories have the common theme of community being backed by government, but i think we got that by now. It is important for people to work together when facing such a large scale problem, and of course the efforts brought forth by the governments really help push towards success.
One other thing i noticed is that every person within each given story was working towards a single common goal, using more or less a single approach method. The uniformity of the community's efforts along side the government set them up for the rehabilitation of the farming lands
YES! it worked!
Ya...error message 4 me 2. pretty sketch... As i thumb through these lovely stories one thing dawned upon me. There is one thing in common; a divine sense of community bound together like the wall of Helms Deep. Technology, the foundation of a civilization, was the x factor in bringing these communities back to prosperity. Centuries of hard work were challenged by man's ability to one up his ancestors. With this support system backed by the government spearheading the issue I felt as though success was a near requirement...
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