Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts

Friday, 14 November 2014

Donors pledge big money to transform agriculture sector

Donors engaged in drafting the ambitious Agriculture Development Strategy (ADS) have pledged to make large investments in Nepal’s farm sector and also asked the government to endorse the draft at the earliest so that they can plan accordingly.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Thursday unveiled a scheme, as part of its commitment, to support Nepal jointly with other donors with an outlay of Rs 20 billion next year for the agricultural transformation process.
The proposed draft has recommended spending Rs 502 billion in 10 years, or around Rs 50 billion annually, including the contribution from the private sector and donors.
The strategic document that has envisioned an ambitious growth pattern in output and land and labour productivity for the next 20 years has been prepared with technical support from the ADB and 12 other development partners.
The ADS is expected to supersede the Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP) by 2015. On July 1, 2013, the ADS formulating team submitted a draft to the government. The document cost Rs 200 million and took 26 months to complete.
Amid concerns that Nepal’s farm sector would suffer from under-investment like in the past, the donor agencies who had pledged to bridge the investment gap in agriculture had been asked to appear before a parliamentary Agriculture and Water Resources Committee to clearly explain their commitment.
“We would like to see the draft finalized as soon as possible so that the development partners will be able to prepare their respective strategies for the implementation of the project under the common draft,” Kenichi Yokoyama, the ADB’s Country Director for Nepal, told lawmakers at Thursday’s consultation.
He said that the APP had not been implemented as per the objective. The APP, which was also prepared by the ADB, has been described as one of the best strategic documents, but it failed to attract investment due to a decline in donor support to the agricultural sector from the mid-1990s in the name of economic liberalization. The government followed suit by cutting farm spending.
“Experiencing the past, the new plan should be implemented in an effective manner so that it can address the disadvantaged and poor communities too,” he said. “A government-oriented approach will not be adequate to address Nepal’s farm sector as the issue is really the implementation part. Hence, there is a need for a collective approach to ensure that there is no resource gap while implementing the projects.”
Similarly, Beth Dunford, USAID Nepal’s mission director, said that USAID would be aligning its existing and new projects on agriculture with the ADS framework. “USAID is also ready to provide additional support for Nepal’s farm sector,” she told lawmakers. FAO representative Binod Shah said that the FAO would be aligning its five-year programmes with the ADS while International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) representative Basu Aryal told lawmakers that its future programmes would be part of ADS.  
Likewise, the European Union (EU) representative suggested that the government form a steering committee to effectively implement the ADS and added that the private sector’s role needed to be defined clearly in the draft.
A sub-committee under the Agriculture and Water Resources Committee formed to look into ADS affairs will be submitting the final recommendation to the main committee by the end of November.
The chairman of the parliamentary committee Gagan Thapa told the donor agencies that the draft ADS would be submitted to the government by the first week of December, and that it was likely to be endorsed by the Cabinet by mid-December.
“The parliament’s role is to be a watchdog. Hence, we have asked the government for the document to study it further and make the government feel that the issue should not be taken for granted and that the ADS should not be kept as a piece of paper,” Thapa said. “Once the draft is okayed by the parliamentary committee, it will be easy for any government to take its ownership as past experience has shown that policy documents are often put on ice.”
The ADS has targeted boosting the average annual growth rate to 5 percent from the present 3 percent for the agricultural sector, and increase land productivity to $5,000 per hectare from the current $1,600. It also aims to increase labour productivity to $2,000 from $800 per worker.
Likewise, exports of farm items have been targeted to increase to $1.6 billion from $250 million through the implementation of the ADS.
The document has envisaged increasing round-the-year irrigation coverage areas to 80 percent from the current 18 percent. One of its ambitious targets is to halve poverty in less than 10 years through an agriculture-led economy.
The National Planning Commission has said that the ADS would help the government’s goal to graduate from the current status of a least developed country to a developing country by 2022, and so the document needs to be implemented wisely.

Saturday, 30 June 2012

USDA: US farmers planting most corn since 1937


By DAVID PITT
The Associated Press
DES MOINES, Iowa —
Farmers nationwide are anticipating more profit from corn than other crops this year and planted 96.4 million acres of it this spring, the most in nearly eight decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Friday.
The new acreage number, based on farm surveys from early June, reflects a 5 percent increase from last year and is the largest amount of planted acres since 1937, when the nation's farmers planted 97 million acres of the crop.
The push is coming from higher corn prices and the expectation that corn demand will remain high thanks to exports, livestock feed and ethanol production, said Garry Niemeyer, president of the National Corn Growers board.
Farmers each fall review the prices of fertilizer, seed and other chemicals, and the price they're projected to receive from selling the grain. Many concluded that corn would be a better bet than other crops, such as soybeans, he said.
"They felt like they would probably make more money on corn," said Niemeyer, a corn and soybean farmer in Auburn, Ill.
And if the heat and lack of rain continue in corn-growing states, the increased planting could help offset losses due to the weather. A significant drought would drive up prices since demand for corn would remain strong despite a diminished supply.
However, higher corn prices mean livestock farmers have to pay more to feed their hogs and cattle, which means meat prices could climb at the grocery store. Higher prices also could impact the cost of other food that contains corn products, such as breakfast cereal, bread, salad dressing and chips.
"The good news is we did plant a lot more corn acreage this year. Because of the dry and the heat, we're losing yield by the day," said Paul Bertels, an agricultural economist with the National Corn Growers in St. Louis. "I don't think the corn supply is going to grow tremendously this year and there is potential for it to get smaller."
According to the USDA, the nation has 3.15 billion bushels of corn in storage, down 14 percent from last year's June estimate.
Iowa — the nation's top corn producer — has the most acreage devoted to corn at 14 million, compared to 14.1 million in June 2011. Illinois increased to 13 million this month from 12.6 million last year, while Nebraska inched up to 9.9 million from 9.85 million, according to the USDA.
Record amounts of planted acreage are expected in Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon and South Dakota.
The benchmark that analysts use is the price for corn that gets delivered by farmers in December, following the year's harvest. On Friday, corn for December delivery rose 1 cent to $6.33 a bushel, which is where corn has been trading this week and is significantly better than $5 to $5.50 price range the market has seen since April.
Copyright The Associated Press

Sunday, 17 June 2012

Big, small farms are battling for money


By  Mary Vanac 
Advantages in the 2012 farm bill have teeter-tottered between big agriculture and small farms, and as of now, the small farms are winning.
The Senate passed a $969 billion farm bill last week 90-8, and the House could vote on the measure this week. The bill cuts mandatory agricultural spending by $23.6 billion over 10 years.
The biggest cut — nearly $20 billion — comes in the proposed elimination of decades-old subsidies and direct payments to commodities farmers to help them manage poor weather and market conditions. This cut promises to change the balance between farms that produce commodities, such as corn, wheat and soybeans, and smaller vegetable and fruit farms.
The financial supports for commodities date to the Great Depression and were designed to secure national defense and limit the influence of powerful corporations in the market.
“At its core, the farm bill is a national-defense bill,” writes Scott Marlow, executive director of Rural Advancement Foundation International USA, a nonprofit organization in Pittsboro, N.C., that promotes conservation and sustainable agriculture. “It is about the ability of our country to feed our military in wartime.”
Replacing most of the Department of Agriculture’s price- and income-support programs with a risk-based revenue-protection program for crop and dairy farmers is expected to save $19.8 billion from fiscal 2013 through 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The risk-based system “would end the era of paying farmers for crops they do not grow and replace direct payments with a program based on current crop-year data, market prices and actual yields,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, during a conference call with reporters last week.
Rather than receiving direct payments, farmers would have a safety net that would compensate them if they sell their crops for less than the government expects them to.
The Ohio Soybean Association, the Ohio Corn & Wheat Growers Association and the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation are urging members to contact Brown and Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, to ask them to vote yes on the Senate-proposed farm bill.
However, rice and peanut farmers say the farm bill could hurt them. Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, is concerned that the bill redistributes resources from one region to another based on program design rather than market forces or cropping decisions.
“Certain commodities receive more resources than others, and crops such as peanuts and rice are left without any safety net,” Chambliss said in a June 8 newsletter by the U.S. Rice Producers Association.
Energy is a big winner in the bill, with spending expected to more than double to $1.5 billion for biorefineries and biomass facilities, renewable-energy systems and biofuels and bio-based products.
The farm bill shaves $3.9 billion from nutrition programs, but that’s a drop in a $768.2 billion bucket over the next decade. And the legislation expands spending authority for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance; Women, Infants & Children; Fresh Fruit and Vegetable; and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition programs have become increasingly important to Ohio vegetable and fruit producers who sell their products directly to the public, said Lisa Schacht, co-owner of the Schacht Family Farm and Market in Canal Winchester.
Schacht, president of the Ohio Produce Growers & Marketers Association, said the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program and the Specialty Crop Research Initiative “are truly the favored sons of the farm bill to our growers.” Spending on horticulture — including fruit and vegetable crops — is estimated to grow 35 percent to $1.4 billion under the farm bill. Spending for research, extension and related activities is projected to triple to $860 million.
“We hope the legislators recognize the value of public dollars going to help farmers expand productivity through resources or tools,” Schacht said, pointing to research at Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster.
In one project, Jeff Lejeune, a professor of veterinary preventive medicine at OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine, is studying adding beneficial bacteria to farm soil to inhibit the spread of E. coli bacteria.
Schacht compared the government’s support of agricultural research to its support of medical research for orphan diseases. “You can’t get the attention of big companies to do farm research, but the government can make it worth their while.”
@maryvanac

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