Food Miles & Kenya’s Roses

Oxfam has called on consumers to not blindly change their purchasing pattern because of the food mile concept.

from: Oxfam

Their argument that Africa’s poor deserve support is a good one but saying that hothouse raised roses are worse than Kenyan roses from a carbon footprint view forgets that roses can be grown in the garden or even a flowerpot – that is surely the smallest footprint!

Sport & Politics

What about the response below to the BBC question

from: BBC NEWS

AGRA support to Agricultural Inputs System

Am I becoming one of the conspiracy theory sector- according to the Borok-Bangsaku Blogthe Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has awarded US$13 million in grants to establish nationwide networks of rural agro-dealers in Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya.

from:Borok-Bangsaku Blog

Is this another approach to investing donor funds that act as a conduit for a reverse flow of funds out of Africa? AGRA is of course funded by Gates & Rockefeller two organisations with strong links to corporate USA. Is the long term benefit increased markets for the international input suppliers?

Justification seems to be that Zambia have increased their output through government funded agricultural inputs. This initiative is basically focused on establishing inputs retail systems – does it also subsidise the inputs or has it assured subsidisation will be subsidised. Otherwise we will just get a chain of input retailers without a market? After all Zimbabwe’s small farmers were big producers while they received subsidized inputs – that turned out not to be sustainable.

The projects will be in Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya.