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Can industrialised farming make Africa feed the world? HE vision unlaldi ng across ine Mkushi plain in Zambia is al odds with the dolefu l imagery of modern Africa 10 which we have become accustomed . Three hours from the capital of Lusaka, the wheat crop
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glows under the tropical sun . A combine harvester moves
methodically across one portion of a vast field. Nearby, a giant sprinkler irrigates the soybean crop. One might as easily be stand ing on the plains of the American ti\idwf'SI or among the grain fields of the Ukraine.
These are lie ds of plenty. a productive Africa that challenges the Mrrative of connic! and hunger thai so dominates our idea of the conlinent. Mil we just inaeased the yields to 80 per cenl of world averages, Africa \ ;ould become a net exporter of food . We believe that NriCil can feed itself, and the rest of the v..orld, 100,- says Dabney Tonelli of Chayton Africa, the Britishowned company that manages the 25,OOO-acre farm at Mkushi. Chayton a cqu red a 14-year lease on the land from the Zambian government with the promise of hugely increaSing yields. providing . obs for locals and passing on skills to the small farmers who live on subsistence plots nearby. After years of misrule and corruption. Zambia, which recently elected a new government, is seen as a beacon of stability on the continenl "The political ~ nvironment is stable, excellent conditions for agriculture in terms of climate and the quality of soil. For the agricultur 11 investor. Zambia is where you want to be,~ Tonelli says. Zimbabwea n e x pertis e White fanne~ who were driven off their land in Zimbabwe have been hired to run the Chayton opera lion, bringing with the n the intensive fanning skills they have honed over decades. The farm mar ager at Mkushi. Stuart Kearns, became a full-time farmel as a teenager after his father was killed in the Bush War in what was then Rhodesia. Despite his experiences in Zimbabwe. he is optimistic about the future of farming in.lanlbia: ~Th ere is huge potential here, and I think the thing w:th Africa is that you have to keep trying again and again. Thai is something you learn when you gTO\ll up here:' Chayton promIses to -create jobs, introduce sustainable fanning methods - provide support and training to smallscale farm ers.But there are cClI'\siderable obstacles - poor infrastructure and bureaucracy stand in the way of Zambia becoming a lT1.ajor exporter 0 food to the continent. At the moment, Chayton is o nl y poducing for the local market.
-A woman working in a [arm,
Photo: goggle. com
The country's new vice president, Dr. Guy Scott. a fanner himself, was skeptical of some of the claims made by the company: MI am very skeptical because I've been around a lot, and I know what proposals look like and what justifications look like in the investment game, and I would say that 90 per cent of what is promised turns out not to be true - not necessarily bea!use of any venality or any de liberate fraud . I mean, people hope for the best. They hope it is going to work. And the government hopes It is going 10 work. And we all get each other's hopes up. And then you find 'oh dear, we didn' t actually succeed in having the social impact or economic impact we'd hoped for.' Displa cem e nt fe a rs Scott v..'Orries about the social impact of job losses due to more intensive farming, where machines take the place of people: ~ I Ulink the main problem is that the population of Zambia is about four times too big for the economy. And [ think Ihat is the danger with large-scale intensive farming; it tends to be Cilpital intensive. it tends not to create jobs M
and at the same time tends to disp lace people who are unemployed from their fallback position. which is to be subsistence fanners. Chayton acknowledges that its modemized farming methods have already led to job losses, but the company insists that as the business grows, it will create employment in spin-off businesses: ~Yes, over time some of the less skiUed work goes as a result of mechanization. but we are building a large-scale business, so over lime we are creating other jobs ,~ Tonelli says. hWhat we are able to do is train people to do highly skilled jobs, which they can continue to use in a career in agriculture or transfer to other sectors as well. ~ Loc al fe e ling The local subsistence farmers I meet say they welcome the principle of commercial farming, but have yet to see it bring any benefit to them. Chayton has only been operating in the area for a year, but Brighton Marcokatebe. a farmer in the nearby village of Asa, says other commercial farmers have fai led to help their smaller neighbors. "If they come with help then I will accept it, but so far they don', help,- he says. The villagers also complain that they cannot difference in lung structure access Cilpital. Most land among children with autism in Zambia is ol.l!ned by the spectrum disorder was slate and administered by difficult to spot at first. she village chiefs. Without any added. legal title to the land. small hWhen I was talking to farmers cannot get bank my partner about this, he loans to buy machinery and said, 'What are you talking expand their production. about?' Then I pointed it Bul according to Scoll. out to him - He started Zambia's small farmers seeing it and now he can't can look forward to a miss it," she said, beller deal: MWe' re elected is a Autism by Zambians. and their developmental disorder interests have to come causes problems that first. If their interests can with social, language and be made to coincide with communications skills and those of the international repetitive or restrictive markets or whatever. then behaviors. Because the great. But al the end of the condition has a wide range day, we are responsible for of symptoms and degrees their protection, their social of severity. autism is now protedion. ~ called autism spectrum th,t Match ing disorder. About one in 110 commitment with the children in the United Slates agreements already made has ASD, according to the with foreign investors US Centers for Disease will require considerable Control and Prevention. political skill. Ne' DYo, /< TImes New Yor/< TImes M
:, <Could airway abnormality point to autism? . A researcher h.:lS found !"\an abnonnality in the airways 01 duk ren with autismthatshesaJSmay be the first anatomic:1l marker fortheneurodevelopmental disorder. Examining While children unth ~ujsm who came in for ~ persistent cough, Dr. Barbala Stewart used a bronchoscope which can see down into the windpipe i:lI'Id the airways that t ri:,nch into the lungs - a,lI noticed something different about those branches In a \1;pical ung, the Windpipe, or trachea, branches into \'.vo main stems. From thert!, airways branch off the !tuns much like tree bf3~ches in a random, a.l:ymmelrical pattern. saId Slewart. a pediatric pulmonologist at Nemours Children's Clinic in Pensacola, Fla
But in the autistic children. those branches were instead doubled up and symmetrical. And the branches were smaller whereas in a normal lung you might have one large branch jutting ofr, in the autistic child. she'd see tv..ro, smaller branches instead.. Stewart went back and looked at the bronchoscopy results of 49 children with autism spectrum disorder and more tha n 300 kids without the condition. She found that all of the kids with autism had what she callssymmelrical"doublets in their airways, while none of the normally developing kids did. M] don't know whal the Significance of that is - But it looks like they have more of everything, ~ Stewart said. adding that all of the autistic children had normal lung function and 8
the anatomical difference mayor may not explain the cough. There:searchisscheduled to be presented Mo nday a t CHEST 201 1, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians, in Honolulu. Because Ihis study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peerreviewed journal. Dr, Daniel Coury, medical diret:lor for the Autism Treatment Network of Autism Speaks, said he wasn't sure what 10 make of the findings, since there aren't reports of children with a utism having any particular issues with their lungs. And yet. he said the warrant more fmdings research , partio.llarly whether there might be
some gene or region of a chromosome that plays a role in both brain and lung development and is associated with autism. "I've never heard of anything like this before and certainly. your first thought is, 'If autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, why would we be finding problems in the lungs?''' Coury said. "'The fael is we are thinking more and more that autism is a whole-body disorder. We are seeing some people with autism that have lower gastrointestinal problems and Immune problems. So, once you toss aside the idea that this is strictly a brain problem and think of it as a whole-body problem, this beromes possible." Airway structures begin to develop in utero during the first trimester and continue until about 20 weeks, Stewart noted. The
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