Challenging the stereotypes: small-scale black farmers and private sector support programmes in South Africa

This report represents one of the outputs of a research and social dialogue project undertaken over 18 months. It explores a number of private sector partnerships and projects launched in support of black farmers – some of them highly innovative, others of dubious merit. Hardly a week passes by without news of some new initiative to ‘train’, ‘help’, ‘empower’ or otherwise assist ‘small-scale black farmers’. The findings of this research suggest that many of the current programmes of support on offer from the private sector are built on somewhat shaky foundations. These are often based on problematic assumptions and normative ideas about what constitutes desirable agricultural development, most of them deeply (if not consciously) informed by the experience of fostering a successful large farm sector in South Africa in the past. The problems that many small-scale black farmers experience in their attempts to enter the competitive world of formal value chains suggests that a fundamental re-think is now required

Impact of Climate Trends and Drought Events on the Growth of Oaks (Quercus robur L. and Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl.) within and beyond Their Natural Range

Due to predicted climate change, it is important to know to what extent trees and forests will be impacted by chronic and episodic drought stress. As oaks play an important role in European forestry, this study focuses on the growth response of sessile oak (Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl.) and pedunculate oak (Quercus robur (L.)) under contrasting climatic conditions. Analyses cover both site conditions of their natural occurrence (Southern Germany and Northeast Italy) and site conditions beyond their natural range (South Africa). The sites beyond their natural range represent possible future climate conditions. Tree-ring series from three different sites were compared and analysed using dendrochronological methods. The long-term growth development of oak trees appears to be similar across the sites, yet the growth level over time is higher in the drier and warmer climate than in the temperate zone. When compared with previous growth periods, growth models reveal that oak trees grew more than expected during the last decades. A recent setback in growth can be observed, although growth is still higher than the model predicts. By focusing on the short-term reactions of the trees, distinct drought events and periods were discovered. In each climatic region, similar growth reactions developed after drought periods. A decline in growth rate occurred in the second or third year after the drought event. Oaks in South Africa are currently exposed to a warmer climate with more frequent drought events. This climatic condition is a future prediction also for Europe. In view of this climate change, we discuss the consequences of the long- and short- term growth behaviour of oaks grown in the climate of South Africa for a tree species selection that naturally occurs in Europe

Comments on the Green Paper on land reform 2011

As we have indicated in our earlier press release, the document released as a Green Paper by the Department Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform is a great disappointment. The Green Paper is the product of a drafting process taking two and a half years. This has been a secretive process in which the South African public has been kept largely in the dark. The Ministry and its Department have shown themselves to be unwilling to learn from their mistakes, and unwilling to consult with civil society, stakeholders and expert opinion. Instead of providing a Green Paper based on an honest assessment of the past fifteen years of policy implementation, it has refused to learn from experience, both from its own mistakes and successes, and from encouraging innovations that are taking place on the ground, often despite inadequate or misguided state policy. Instead it has produced a vague document that develops general recommendations on the basis of general principles. The result is a Green Paper that fails to answer the key policy questions facing land reform in South Africa

Exploring the branch wood supply potential of an agroforestry system with strategically designed harvesting interventions based on terrestrial LiDAR data

Agroforestry systems hold potential for wood and tree biomass production without the need of felling trees. Branch wood harvesting provides access to considerable amounts of lignocellulosic biomass while leaving the tree standing. Aiming at alternatives for wood provision, we assessed the actual woody structure of a silvopastoral system in the African Savannah ecoregion, utilising terrestrial LiDAR technology and quantitative structure models to simulate branch removals and estimate harvesting yields. In addition, the stand structure and harvested wood were examined for the provision of four types of assortments meeting local needs, and operational metrics for each treatment were derived. The stand had large variability in woody structures. Branch harvesting interventions removed up to 18.2% of total stand volume, yielded 5.9 m3 ha−1 of branch wood, and delivered 2.54 m3 ha−1 of pole wood quality, retaining on average more than 75% of the original tree structures. Among the most intense simulations, a mean of 54.7 litres (L) of branch wood was provided per tree, or approximately 34.2 kg of fresh biomass. The choice of an ideal harvesting treatment is subject to practitioners’ interests, while the discussion on aspects of the operation, and stand and tree conditions after treatment, together with outputs, assist decision making. The partitioning of tree structures and branch removal simulations are tools to support the design of tending operations aiming for wood and tree biomass harvesting in agroforestry systems while retaining different functional roles of trees in situ.Supplementary File S1. Figure S1: Individual tree point clouds identified by colours (up), leaf-on mode evidenced by intensity values (middle), and the leaf-off point clouds (bottom); Figure S2: Stand-level wood assortments available in linear meters for each simulated harvesting treatment; Figure S3: Boxplots of the absolute branch volume removal in each harvesting simulation with the red crosses representing treatment means; Table S1: QSM-derived tree parameters for trees in the stand (n = 66); Table S2: Optimised QSM input parameters for each tree; Table S3: Summary of available assortments and yields per harvesting treatment.Supplementary File S2 contains the assessment of assortments on a tree basis for each harvesting simulation.The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The article processing charge was funded by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and Art and the University of Freiburg in the funding programme Open Access Publishing.https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forestsdm2022Plant Production and Soil Scienc

Efficacy of the Enquiring About Tolerance (EAT) study among infants at high risk of developing food allergy.

BACKGROUND: The Enquiring About Tolerance (EAT) study was a randomized trial of the early introduction of allergenic solids into the infant diet from 3 months of age. The intervention effect did not reach statistical significance in the intention-to-treat analysis of the primary outcome. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine whether infants at high risk of developing a food allergy benefited from early introduction. METHODS: A secondary intention-to-treat analysis was performed of 3 groups: nonwhite infants; infants with visible eczema at enrollment, with severity determined by SCORAD; and infants with enrollment food sensitization (specific IgE ≥0.1 kU/L). RESULTS: Among infants with sensitization to 1 or more foods at enrollment (≥0.1 kU/L), early introduction group (EIG) infants developed significantly less food allergy to 1 or more foods than standard introduction group (SIG) infants (SIG, 34.2%; EIG, 19.2%; P = .03), and among infants with sensitization to egg at enrollment, EIG infants developed less egg allergy (SIG, 48.6%; EIG, 20.0%; P = .01). Similarly, among infants with moderate SCORAD (15-<40) at enrollment, EIG infants developed significantly less food allergy to 1 or more foods (SIG, 46.7%; EIG, 22.6%; P = .048) and less egg allergy (SIG, 43.3%; EIG, 16.1%; P = .02). CONCLUSION: Early introduction was effective in preventing the development of food allergy in specific groups of infants at high risk of developing food allergy: those sensitized to egg or to any food at enrollment and those with eczema of increasing severity at enrollment. This efficacy occurred despite low adherence to the early introduction regimen. This has significant implications for the new national infant feeding recommendations that are emerging around the world

Enquiring About Tolerance (EAT) study: Feasibility of an early allergenic food introduction regimen.

BACKGROUND: The influence of early exposure to allergenic foods on the subsequent development of food allergy remains uncertain. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine the feasibility of the early introduction of multiple allergenic foods to exclusively breast-fed infants from 3 months of age and the effect on breastfeeding performance. METHODS: We performed a randomized controlled trial. The early introduction group (EIG) continued breastfeeding with sequential introduction of 6 allergenic foods: cow's milk, peanut, hard-boiled hen's egg, sesame, whitefish (cod), and wheat; the standard introduction group followed the UK infant feeding recommendations of exclusive breastfeeding for around 6 months with no introduction of allergenic foods before 6 months of age. RESULTS: One thousand three hundred three infants were enrolled. By 5 months of age, the median frequency of consumption of all 6 foods was 2 to 3 times per week for every food in the EIG and no consumption for every food in the standard introduction group (P < .001 for every comparison). By 6 months of age, nonintroduction of the allergenic foods in the EIG was less than 5% for each of the 6 foods. Achievement of the stringent per-protocol consumption target for the EIG proved more difficult (42% of evaluable EIG participants). Breastfeeding rates in both groups significantly exceeded UK government data for equivalent mothers (P < .001 at 6 and at 9 months of age). CONCLUSION: Early introduction, before 6 months of age, of at least some amount of multiple allergenic foods appears achievable and did not affect breastfeeding. This has important implications for the evaluation of food allergy prevention strategies

Challenges experienced with early introduction and sustained consumption of allergenic foods in the Enquiring About Tolerance (EAT) study: A qualitative analysis.

BACKGROUND: The early introduction group participants of the Enquiring About Tolerance study were asked to undertake a proscriptive regimen of early introduction and sustained consumption of 6 allergenic foods. It was envisaged that this might be challenging, and early introduction group families were presented with an open-text question to express any problems they were experiencing with the regimen in recurring online questionnaires. OBJECTIVE: We sought to analyze these open-text questionnaire responses with the aim of identifying challenges associated with the introduction and regular consumption of allergenic foods. METHODS: Three combinations of interim questionnaire responses were selected for analysis, representing the early period (4, 5, and 6 months), middle period (8 and 12 months), and late period (24 and 36 months) of participation in the Enquiring About Tolerance study. Responses were assigned a code to describe their content and subsequently grouped into themes to portray key messages. A thematic content analysis allowed for conversion of qualitative codes into quantitative summaries. RESULTS: Three main challenges to allergenic food consumption were identified. First, some children refused the allergenic food, causing a sense of defeat among caregivers. Second, caregivers were concerned that allergenic foods might be causing a reaction, triggering a need for reassurance. Third, practical problems associated with the regimen compromised caregivers' capacity to persist. CONCLUSION: Understanding the challenges experienced with allergenic food introduction and sustained consumption is the necessary precursor to developing specific communication and support strategies that could be used by caregivers, practitioners, policymakers, and key stakeholders to address these problems

The admixture of Quercus sp. in Pinus sylvestris stands influences wood anatomical trait responses to climatic variability and drought events

IntroductionForests are threatened by increasingly severe and more frequent drought events worldwide. Mono-specific forests, developed as a consequence of widespread management practices established early last century, seem particularly susceptible to global warming and drought compared with mixed-species forests. Although, in several contexts, mixed-species forests display higher species diversity, higher productivity, and higher resilience, previous studies highlighted contrasting findings, with not only many positive but also neutral or negative effects on tree performance that could be related to tree species diversity. Processes underlying this relationship need to be investigated. Wood anatomical traits are informative proxies of tree functioning, and they can potentially provide novel long-term insights in this regard. However, wood anatomical traits are critically understudied in such a context. Here, we assess the role of tree admixture on Pinus sylvestris L. xylem traits such as mean hydraulic diameter, cell wall thickness, and anatomical wood density, and we test the variability of these traits in response to climatic parameters such as temperature, precipitation, and drought event frequency and intensity.MethodsThree monocultural plots of P. sylvestris and three mixed-stand plots of P. sylvestris and Quercus sp. were identified in Poland and Spain, representing Continental and Mediterranean climate types, respectively. In each plot, we analyzed xylem traits from three P. sylvestris trees, for a total of nine trees in monocultures and nine in mixed stands per study location.ResultsThe results highlighted that anatomical wood density was one of the most sensitive traits to detect tree responses to climatic conditions and drought under different climate and forest types. Inter-specific facilitation mechanisms were detected in the admixture between P. sylvestris and Quercus sp., especially during the early growing season and during stressful events such as spring droughts, although they had negligible effects in the late growing season.DiscussionOur findings suggest that the admixture between P. sylvestris and Quercus sp. increases the resilience of P. sylvestris to extreme droughts. In a global warming scenario, this admixture could represent a useful adaptive management option

Agroforestry : an appropriate and sustainable response to a changing climate in Southern Africa?

CITATION: Sheppard, Jonathan P. et al. 2020. Agroforestry : an appropriate and sustainable response to a changing climate in Southern Africa? Sustainability 12(17):6796, doi:10.3390/su12176796.The original publication is available at: https://www.mdpi.comENGLISH ABSTRACT: Agroforestry is often discussed as a strategy that can be used both for the adaptation to and the mitigation of climate change e ects. The climate of southern Africa is predicted to be severely a ected by such changes. With agriculture noted as the continent’s largest economic sector, issues such as food security and land degradation are in the forefront. In the light of such concerns we review the current literature to investigate if agroforestry systems (AFS) are a suitable response to the challenges besetting traditional agricultural caused by a changing climate. The benefits bestowed by AFS are multiple, o ering ecosystem services, influence over crop production and positive impacts on rural livelihoods through provisioning and income generation. Nevertheless, knowledge gaps remain. We identify outstanding questions requiring further investigation such as the interplay between trees and crops and their combination, with a discussion of potential benefits. Furthermore, we identify deficiencies in the institutional and policy frameworks that underlie the adoption and stimulus of AFS in the southern African region. We uphold the concept that AFS remains an appropriate and sustainable response for an increased resilience against a changing climate in southern Africa for the benefit of livelihoods and multiple environmental values.Publisher's versio