Tag Archives: agriculture
Nigeria: Can Bamboo Address Deforestation and Erosion in Nigeria?
BY ALEX ABUTU, 21 AUGUST 2013 Every year, according to statistics from the Centre for International Forestry Research, Africa loses forest cover equal to the size of Switzerland and Nigeria alone is estimated to lose about 350,000 – 4000,000 ha of its forest reserve annually and this is regarded as one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. As the trees across the country vanish, the land dries; the soil erodes and becomes barren leading to low agricultural yield, alarming desert encroachment, desertification and uncontrollable erosion. Experts at a recent meeting on the state of the nation’s forest identified firewood and charcoal as the leading drivers of deforestation but the country lacked alternatives to firewood and charcoal which have become the energy sources for middle class and low income Nigerians especially those in the rural areas. A lot of propositions have been advanced as options government should consider in addressing the drivers of deforestation and this include the need to articulate policy framework that address the out-dated forest laws in operations in the country, better mechanism for the implementation/enforcement of best forest management practices, reduce firewood and charcoal consumption and forest tenure system for local communities. However, Mr Badru Ola Muyideen of the forest department of the Federal Ministry of Environment is of the view that the introduction and massive cultivation of bamboo remained Nigeria’s best option to reduce deforestation, address desertification as well as cushion the impact of climate change on Nigeria. According to him, bamboo can serve as firewood and can be burnt as charcoal. “This way we don’t have to cut down trees which take forever to grow but we can harvest bamboo yearly and use it as we want.” Bamboo is a common plant which the country is currently not exploiting in the quest to address the mirage of environmental challenges confronting the country. Bamboo is a tribe of flowering perennial evergreen plant in the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. In bamboos, the internodal regions of the stem are hollow and the vascular bundles in the cross section are scattered throughout the stem instead of in a cylindrical arrangement. The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent. The absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, even of palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering. Bamboos are some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Bamboos are of notable economic and cultural significance in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Sun-Saharan Africa, being used for building materials, as a food source, and as a versatile raw product. Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, with reported growth rates of 100 cm (39 in) in 24 hours. However, the growth rate is dependent on local soil and climatic conditions, as well as species, and a more typical growth rate for many commonly cultivated bamboos in temperate climates is in the range of 3-10 centimetres per day during the growing period. Some of the largest timber bamboo can grow over 30 m (98 ft) tall, and be as large as 15-20 cm in diameter. However, the size range for mature bamboo is species dependent, with the smallest bamboos reaching only several inches high at maturity. A typical height range that would cover many of the common bamboos grown in the United States is 15-40 feet, depending on species. Bamboo is a kind of grass which explains the speed of growth. This means that there’s lots of it, and when it’s harvested it grows itself back again quickly enough not to leave a dent in the eco-system. Unlike all trees, individual bamboo stems, or culms, emerge from the ground at their full diameter and grow to their full height in a single growing season of three to four months. During these several months, each new shoot grows vertically into a culm with no branching out until the majority of the mature height is reached. Here in Nigeria conscious effort have not been paid to the importance or relevance of bamboo in addressing erosion, desertification nor deforestation. Nigerians still rely heavily on hardwood as source of energy and this according to medical experts is dangerous. It is a women and children’s job to collect firewood and as the demand increases so they have to walk farther distances to find. Most of the firewood cooking is done indoors resulting in air pollution which kills over a million Nigerian women and children annually according to the Bureau of Statistics. Dr Samuel Ike, conservationist said that Nigeria can solve most of the environmental challenges it is facing with the introduction of bamboo into the affroestation programme. “You cut down a hard tree and it takes decades to grow back but cut down a bamboo and before you know it has grown back. Unlike hardwood, bamboo is renewable and regrows after harvesting just as grass regrows after cutting,” he said. According to him, the bamboo roots have the potentials to grab onto the soil and hold it fast, “plant bamboo on a steep slope or riverbank and it prevents mudslides and erosion.” “This is the plant needed for the afforestation programme and even the Great Green Wall project where millions of trees are expected to be planted. A meeting of stakeholders on sustainable development of bamboo and rattan in Nigeria recently urged the federal government to implement a Food and Agriculture Organisation’s recommendation that each country set aside 25 per cent of its total land mass for forest conservation through the establishment of bamboo plantations. According to the stakeholders, such development would ensure that all relevant research institutes in the country work on how the country would benefit maximally from the plant. As the nation move to address flood, erosion and other environmental challenges, the inclusion of bamboo in the aforestation programme would go a long way in saving the soil and provide jobs and incomes for rural dwellers. Continue reading
Analysis – Lower Crop Prices A Pain For Deere, But Farmers Are Fine
http://s1.reutersmed…r=CBRE97E0YUC00 By James B. Kelleher CHICAGO | Thu Aug 15, 2013 1:32pm BST (Reuters) – Wall Street’s frosty reaction on Wednesday to Deere & Co’s ( DE.N ) latest quarterly earnings is no surprise given the recent sharp drop in agricultural commodity prices. Farmers buy fewer tractors and harvesters when corn and soybean prices are down. But the dramatic drops in corn and other prices over the past year are not causing a lot of pain on the farms. At least not yet. With income at records highs, farmland fetching top dollar and balance sheets strong, a drop in grain prices in the face of another record crop is hardly a sign of doom for growers. Lower prices are generating a lot of uncertainty around Deere, however. For the world’s largest maker of tractors and harvesters, as goes the price of corn, so too goes the price of the company’s shares. Deere prefers to talk about the correlation between farm cash receipts and the sales of its distinctive green and yellow equipment. And it is true that the two move up and down in tandem. But the correlation between its stock price and the price of corn on the Chicago Board of Trade is pretty high, too. That is why the last few years have been so good to Deere: Both corn prices and farm income were on a tear. For decades, corn prices hovered between $2 (£1.29) and $3 (£1.93) a bushel, but they surged as high as $8.49 a bushel during last summer’s drought. Supplies were tight, even as demand from China and other emerging markets increased along with rising corn-based ethanol use in the United States. Net farm income has doubled over the past five years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. Surging corn prices and rising production have been big factors. Farm balance sheets are strong, too. Net farm assets have risen by nearly $700 billion since 2009, according to the USDA, while net debt has gone up by just $40 billion. That is why the last few years have been so good to the top and bottom lines at Deere and its rivals in the farm equipment space, including Agco Corp ( AGCO.N ) and CNH Global NV CNH.N. Between 2009 and 2012, Deere’s farm machinery sales grew 60 percent and its diluted earnings per share jumped 270 percent. Deere continues to benefit from flush farmers. In the results released on Wednesday, Deere said its profit jumped nearly 30 percent, even though sales were only up 4 percent. The company, in a nutshell, was able to sock it to farmers price wise. But the company’s shares, which have underperformed the broader market all year long, fell as much as 3 percent following Wednesday’s report. The disconnect is all about expectations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday forecast a record corn harvest in 2013, which pushed the price down to $4.55 a bushel, near a three-year low. Now farmers – notoriously conservative – are widely expected to cut back on spending for equipment and acreage, which have also spiked in recent years. No one is expecting a catastrophic decline in the purchase of tractors, combines and other farm implements. Deere believes farmers’ cash receipts will fall 4 percent next year after a sharper 8 percent decline this year. Why would a 50 percent drop in corn prices result in a much more modest hit for farmers? Well, cash receipts are a function of both quantity and price. Corn was a lot more expensive last year, but the drought cut into yields. What’s more, farm income can include all kinds of non-crop revenue such as government payments, and crop and revenue insurance. Farmers also have lots of storage capacity, so they do not have to sell at current prices. They can store their grain instead. Add it up. Lower expected farm receipts + lower corn prices = double trouble for Deere shareholders. That is why many analysts who cover Deere, including Adam Fleck at Morningstar, expect the next few years to be tough for the company. “We’re a far cry from the farm crisis of the 1970s and 1980s,” said Fleck. “But the cold hard fact is farmers can always run a tractor one more year.” Lower corn and soybean prices, combined with the possibility of lower farmland values and higher interest rates, are coming together in a bad way for equipment manufacturers already facing several years of really difficult comparisons. Unlike farmers, Deere does not have a bin where it can store unsold farm equipment. It can’t stockpile tractors and combines and wait for the farmers to return. Deere, and perhaps its stockholders, might just have to tough this one out. (Additional reporting by Gavin Maguire.; Editing by David Greising and Andre Grenon) Continue reading
Farmland Values Sway Owners
By: Amy Mayer Farmland values may begin to fall as commodity crop prices come down. This wheat grew earlier this summer in southwest Iowa. (Amy Mayer/Harvest Public Media) Buy? Sell? Hold? These are the options for cropland owners, whether they currently farm, are retired farmers or never worked the land themselves. How the recent high land values influence that decision obviously depends on a family’s particular circumstances. This connection was explored in our “Changing Lands, Changing Hands” series this summer. David Klein, vice president and managing real estate broker at Soy Captial Ag Servcies in Bloomington, Ill., said the market in Illinois has been stable. And that makes it attractive for buyers he describes as “believers in farmland.” These are people who would rather invest in land than leave their money sitting in a bank. “Right now there’s still a lot of cash being spent,” he said, as opposed to land being purchased with mortgages. Cropland values have gone up every year since 2003, except for 2009. And from 2010 to 2011 in the Northern Plains the USDA estimates the value of farm real estate increased nearly 27 percent. This sustained period of high values prompts some observers and economists to wonder whether farmland is in a bubble that is destined to burst. “Our farmland market here has continued to be pretty stable,” Klein said. He recently tweeted the sale of 240 acres of prime cropland in Edgar County, Ill., when it sold for $12,017 per acre. He said that’s a price right in the range of where Illinois land is selling, with some sales he calls outliers yielding as much as $15,000 to $16,900 per acre. Klein said investors looking to maximize return are more likely to buy larger tracts of land, at lower per-acre prices, while farmers may purchase “the farm next door,” spending more per acre on a smaller overall purchase. “Illinois did not rise as high as Iowa on some of the higher highs,” he said. Last year, a record sale in northwest Iowa captured $21,900 per acre. An article this week in the Wall Street Journal suggested cropland values may be in decline: Cropland values in the Midwest already are losing steam after a surge of nearly 80% in the past four years to an average of $6,980 an acre. The latest appraisals done by farm lender Farm Credit Services of America show that land-value gains slowed in the first six months of the year. Purdue University forecasts a decline in land values in parts of Indiana in the second half of 2013. For now, though, one result of the high land prices that Michael Duffy, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University, has noted is that young people are taking a different view of returning to a family farm business. “Our students here,” he said, “some of them, the 4.0 students, they’re going back to the farm. They see this as an opportunity.” Duffy said that is consistent with other boom periods in land values. Other young people from farming families may choose to hold onto inherited land that they have no intention of farming because they believe they can make money renting it. Duffy expects the data from the 2012 Census of Agriculture is likely to show growth in the percentage of farmland owned by people younger than 35. But, Duffy said, as commodity crop prices come down, land values will, too. “It is less certain the speed they will fall,” Duffy wrote in a paper for Iowa State Extension, “but it appears at this time land values will correct more slowly over a period of time.” So Duffy does not predict a crash like the farm crisis of the 1980s, but the best time to sell may have passed — at least for now. Continue reading
