I get by with a little help from my friends

Last Sunday, I travelled across France and deep into the Southern Alps mountain range to the tiny village of Glandage where I am enrolling into a social experiment.

A batch mate from my agricultural development economics MSc has settled down there with her husband and children after many years spent working in Bolivia. They have started a farm on a small plot of land in a narrow mountain valley where they grow old forgotten varieties of vegetables. They also have plans to produce lamb. However, to have a sizable flock, they need more land, which they could not afford to buy with their current capital. Rather than going to the bank to request a loan, they have decided to constitute an agricultural land group with 45 of their friends. This is a legal framework in France (Groupement foncier agricole) that is relatively rare. It allows several individuals to create a group to own agricultural land collectively and decide in a collective manner how to manage it. Co-ownership is very common for buildings in French cities; this is likewise co-ownership of agricultural land. In this case, my friends Christophe and Margot would become our farm tenants and the lease contract would specify that they are allowed to use our land to graze sheep and cut wood.

The land the group is planning to buy is currently on a very steep slope and unused. It is thus slowly and naturally becoming forested, which does not make it useful for agriculture. The plan of the co-owners and their farmer, once all the legal procedures are over, is selectively to cut trees on the land so that it opens up and becomes suitable for natural pasture grazing by the ewes and their lambs.

There is no economic incentive for the grouped land owners. On the contrary, we decided on Sunday that the contract creating the group should specify that individual investors should not expect to sell their share of the common land at market value! So what are the motivations of the land's co-owners? Among those that were voiced at the group meeting this Sunday: to help out friends who want to settle as farmers and make sustainable use of under-utilized agricultural land; to engage in a model of common ownership of land that is different from the more common individual property model; to allow Margot and Christophe to see people from time to time as they launch group activities on their very remote farm, etc.

I say it is above all a social experiment because every year, the farmers will invite the land co-owners for a lamb barbeque accompanied by the farm's vegetables. We had a wonderful communal feast last Sunday. We were invited to bring a drink or some dessert. So in addition to the lamb and vegetables, we had locally brewed beer, delicious wines, freshly plucked apples and pears, cakes galore and a selection of handicraft chocolates prepared by a local couple with cocoa beans they selected themselves in Ivory Coast. I can also tell you that the lamb meat was delicious! I have no doubt that Christophe and Margot will manage to find a good and remunerative market outlet for their naturally grazing mountain lambs.

With a little help from my friends
Beatles, Sgt Pepper's lonely hearts club band, EMI 

Auf Wiedersehen

When two agricultural economists bid farewell to another agricultural economist colleague, they don't write mathematical equations, they sing!
At least, that's what my colleague Nils Teufel and I did to say goodbye to our fellow colleague Signe Nelgen who left Nairobi a few weeks ago to relocate in Washington DC. We surprised her with a special farewell song I adapted from Mozart's Magic Flute and gave her husband and her some African animal mini-totems to protect them along the way.

All present contributed food and portable chairs; another colleague had even brought their BBQ! It was a great farewell party.

Drei Knäbchen trio
Zauberflöte, W.A. Mozart, RIAS Kammerchor & René Jacobs, Harmonia mundi

Photo: ILRI/Eliza Smith

When Joyce washed all our troubles away

You would imagine that the Maasai women of Olepolos village in Southeast Kenya would be blessed by living just underneath Mount Kilimanjaro.

Unfortunately, that was not the case as far as access to water was concerned. Until recently the women in the village had to hike a 30-km round trip up the mountain to the forested slopes on the Tanzanian side of the border to collect fresh water from a stream. But yesterday was a happy day in the village as it saw the inauguration of a water bore hole constructed by Water is Life Kenya thanks to co-funding from the Rotary Foundation (Rotary Clubs of Muthaiga, Kenya, and Dover Colonial, USA).

I was privileged to be invited by Joyce Tannian, Director of Water is Life Kenya, to the opening ceremony of the new bore hole. I know Joyce from singing together in the Nairobi Music Society choir, so it was very interesting to discover that water management was another important side of her life. The ceremony featured songs, dances and lots of speeches! Joyce sang and got rewarded with a complete beaded Maasai dress and numerous bead necklaces strung by the Maasai women of the village. The representative of the Muthaiga Rotary Club, Wafula Nabutola, got a live goat! After four hours' road drive from Nairobi to the town of Oloitoktok, another hour of dusty, hilly and pot-holed tracks up Kilimanjaro to reach Olepolos village, and over two hours and a half of official ceremony, it was very comforting to be served an enormous plate of simple but heartening and nutritious food: rice, braised cabbage, two pieces of goat meat, three pieces of chapati, a quarter avocado, half a banana and a slice of orange.

Water is Life Kenya has drilled a water borehole; it is connected to a cistern, which in turn feeds water into two taps. The project also delivered additional separate men's and ladies' latrines, and a livestock water trough. The villagers and Joyce told us how this infrastructure had revolutionized life in the village. Although the women are still lugging jerrycans of water on their heads and backs, they do not have to walk as far to get it as before. This frees up a lot of their time which can be put to more productive use.

Furthermore, the bore hole has now become an active community site where news is exchanged and business transactions concluded. Two women have set up stalls to sell produce there; another sells hot tea and cooked food. An entrepreneur has even erected a hut for a small grocery store next to the bore hole taps. The water bore hole has thus transformed a dry savanna spot into a vibrant community site.

However, more infrastructure development is still needed: the community still lacks electricity and a tarmac road. As we left the village, everybody told us to take the tarmac road back to Oloitoktok to avoid eating more dust. We were all surprised as we had not been told about this road to get to the site. The village chief directed us along a dirt track straight up the mountain and then announced: "We are now in Tanzania!" This is where we found a beautiful tarmac road going through the lush forested slopes of Kilimanjaro just ten kilometers away from the dry and dusty landscape we had just left in Kenya. My fellow Kenyan travelers from the Muthaiga Rotary Club were amazed by the large forest plantations and by the good quality of the road network in this remote area. When we crossed the border again, the sign "You are now entering Kenya" was followed immediately by the tarmac road's disappearance, replaced by yet another dusty and pot-holed track. It really did look greener on the other side...

Oh happy day
Edwin Hawkins Singers, Oh happy day, the power of gospel, NPL

If you invest your tuppence... you'll be part of plantations of ripening tea, tanneries!

Discover the linkages between finance and the livestock industry in developing countries by clicking here.

Fidelity Fiduciary Bank
From the original soundtrack of the film Mary Poppins, Walt Disney Video

Photo: ILRI

I'll state my case, of which I'm certain

Two weeks ago I went to a conference in Cape Town to present some of the work I do on identifying African success stories of agrifood marketing chains that are inclusive of smallholder farmers.

I was put on the spot there by an unexpected question in a plenary session of the conference. Not satisfied with the response I gave, I had the opportunity to think more about it during my solo ascension of Table Mountain: 2 hours up from the city side, 20 minutes sandwich lunch break on the summit with the two-oceans view from Maclear's Beacon and 3 hours down into the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens.

The result: read about why I have gone into agriculture and agribusiness here.

My way
Frank Sinatra, My way the best of Frank Sinatra, Reprise

Adapted to these models

Read how I had to adapt my scientific methods to the interest of our local partners in Thailand and Cameroon here.

Adaptation
The Weeknd, Kiss land, Motown Universal

Photo: ILRI/Jo Cadilhon

It's so warm here and this heat gets me down

Read here on how I nearly melted away from undertaking fieldwork in the arid drylands of North Senegal.

Something cool
Jane Monheit, The lovers, the dreamers and me, Concord Music Group