Tag: Southern Innovator Issue 3

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Farmers Weather Fertilizer Crisis by Going Organic

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Around the world, large-scale agriculture relies on the use of chemical fertilizers. But increasing expense and decreasing supply of fertilizer is driving up the cost of food, and in turn contributing to the overall food crisis.

According to a soon-to-be-released UN report, prices have shot up and will stay high for at least three years. Prices have almost doubled and in some cases risen by 500 percent over 15 months.

The fertilizer crisis is caused by several factors. Anhydrous ammonia, which is the source of nearly all nitrogen fertilizer, needs natural gas, and the price of gas has risen sharply. Other fertilizer ingredients like phosphorous, potassium and potash are also increasingly expensive. Fertilizer needs to be transported long distances to get to farmers, so costs have risen with the soaring price of oil. And finally, the rise in demand for food has put the price of fertilizer up, as countries hoard supplies for themselves.

The 1960s ‘Green Revolution’ in agriculture made developing-world farmers dependent on supplies of fertilizers, pesticides and artificial irrigation. Monoculture cash crops became the norm. Yields were doubled, but at the expense of using three times as much water by accessing groundwater using electric pumps. This and fertilizer pollution has caused widespread damage to soil and water. In India, for example, 57 per cent of the land is degraded, according to Tata Energy Research.

In Cambodia, farmers are reaching back to past practices for answers to the fertilizer crisis. One is to go organic. Taking this approach has many health and environmental advantages – and, best of all for farmers, it keeps costs down.

Khim Siphay, a Cambodian farmer, has found he gets bigger crops of rice and vegetables while paying a lot less for fertilizers.

“Using pesticide or fertilizers kills important insects, and causes the soil to become polluted,” he told Reuters. “I use compost and it helps keep the soil good from one year to another. All of my family members help make the compost.”

The push to organic methods for Cambodia’s 13 million people relying on agriculture for a living comes from a non-governmental organization, the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC). It has successfully moved to organic methods, starting from just a handful of 28 farmers in 2000, to the current 60,000 – and received an endorsement from the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture.

CEDAC says farms using the organic methods have been able to increase rice yields per hectare, while the seeds needed have fallen by 70 to 80 percent. By using a “System of Rice Intensification”, the mostly small-scale farmers are able to get more out of the land, with less labour. Add to that the fact that organic rice gets a premium price on world markets, and the result for the farmers has been a rise in income from US $58 to US $172 per hectare.

“The important point of organic farming is that farmers don’t need to spend money on fertilizers and pesticide so they spend less money on farming,” said CEDAC official Yang Saing Koma.

“They can sell the produce for a higher price. Also they can avoid being infected by pesticides and they will be healthier. It is also good for the environment,” he said.

Rice and other produce can be used to feed chickens to produce organic poultry and eggs – another bonus for farmers looking to raise the value of their produce.

“I started doing organic farming outside my rice paddy, but then I noticed production was double, so in the next season, I decided to grow organically on all of my land,” said farmer Ros Meo. “I spend less money now and I can grow more and I am not sick as I was before, my health is now good.”

Going organic in Cambodia is something that is becoming more attractive to the country’s growing middle class, and the government hopes the country will gain a reputation as an organic producer.

Another approach to cheap fertilizer comes from Caracas, Venezuala. Marjetica Potrc, an artist and architect who works closely with impoverished communities, has come up with a “dry toilet” which collects human waste and converts it to fertilizer.

Developed after spending six months in the barrios of Caracas, the dry, ecologically safe toilet was built on the upper part of La Vega barrio, a district in the city without access to the municipal water grid. It is a place where about half the population receives water from municipal authorities no more than two days a week.

Published: March 2014

Resources

  • South African company Eat Your Garden: It provides urban dwellers and food businesses with their own food gardens bursting with juicy and tasty foods whilst at the same time reducing carbon footprints, and creating employment and provide training, helping poverty alleviation.
    Website: http://www.eatyourgarden.co.za/
  • Soil Association: The organization that establishes the standards necessary for food to be called organically grown.
    Website: http://www.soilassociation.org/
  • Patrick Kamzitu, a farmer in Malawi, on the impact of fertilizer prices:
    Website: www.guardian.co.uk/environment

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/21/agribusiness-food-security/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/building-an-interactive-radio-network-for-farmers-in-nigeria/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/05/30/carbon-credits-can-benefit-african-farmers-thanks-to-new-system/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/10/cheap-farming-kit-hopes-to-help-more-become-farmers/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/01/indonesian-food-company-helps-itself-by-making-farmers-more-efficient/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/23/kenyan-farmer-uses-internet-to-boost-potato-farm/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/21/a-new-african-beer-helps-smallholder-farmers/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/11/09/pocket-friendly-solution-to-help-farmers-go-organic/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/26/perfume-of-peace-helps-farmers-switch-from-drug-trade/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/23/putting-worms-to-work/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/17/small-scale-farmers-can-fight-malaria-battle/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-3/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-5/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/10/urban-farmers-gain-from-waste-water/

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

SOS Shops Keep Food Affordable for Poor, Unemployed

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

As the global downturn bears down on country after country, governments around the world are introducing austerity measures to try to keep their economies going. Many countries are now facing financial crisis and the need for loans and support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Formerly comfortable people are going from regular employment to unemployment or erratic employment, and growing numbers of people are finding it hard even to afford basics such as food.

In Balkan nation Serbia, trade unions have come up with a solution: they are called SOS Shops and they feature food and other products priced at as much as 70 percent less than regular shops. By cutting back on the profit margin for the products, the store can make drastic cuts in prices.

In the capital, Belgrade, the shops are run by trade unions in partnership with a local retail chain, Jabuka. The Association of Free and Independent Trade Unions uses Jabuka to run the stores. Anyone with an income below 20,000 dinars (US $280) a month can receive a special card to shop at the SOS stores.

In Jabuka’s other stores, the profit margin is 20 percent, and in rival stores it can be over 30 percent. Jabuka also makes savings by sourcing locally and suppliers offering discounts of between 15 percent and 25 percent.

“The prices there are 30 to 50 percent lower than in major supermarkets,” Jabuka manager Milorad Miskovic told IPS. “It’s a hard time for many people, so we decided to lower our margin of profit to only five percent at the SOS shops.

“SOS shops are intended for the socially handicapped. SOS shops offer goods at lower prices to Serbian citizens earning minimum wages or pensions lower than RSD 20,000, to the unemployed, to the displaced from Kosovo and the citizens on the dole (welfare).”

Hard hit by the global downturn, Serbia has seen its recent boom times disappear quickly. The country had enjoyed average yearly growth since 2000 of 6.7 percent.

The country is currently negotiating bridging loans with the IMF (www.imf.org). The conditions for the loan mean severe cuts to public sector wages and tax rises.

According to the Serbian Statistical Office, Serbia has lost 10,000 jobs a month since the beginning of 2009. The official unemployment rate is 14 percent, and the government believes half a million people now live below the official poverty line, out of a population of 10 million.

“Many people have lost their jobs and the main problem is that the middle class is now poor. That is the real problem,” Nebojsa Rajkovic of the Association of Independent Trade Unions told the BBC. “The government prepared a social programme to deal with the economic crisis in Serbia, but it was not enough and that is the reason the union devised this project.”

This month, the Jabuka trade company opened its third SOS shop in Belgrade. The shop, the largest SOS shop so far, will be opened in the Mirijevo neighbourhood of Belgrade, and it will offer a wider range of products.

The unions plan to open 100 social supermarkets this year. Basic staples like bread, milk and potatoes are the cheapest goods. Unlike other supermarkets, the stores feature local brands and products made in Serbia: a boost to local producers in the economic downturn.

In order to stop hoarding of the cheap food or people buying a lot and then selling it for a profit, the amount that can be bought on one shopping trip is limited. For example, just three bottles of cooking oil are allowed each time.

“Most people in Serbia are finding things difficult financially. We only have maybe five or 10 percent of the population who don’t have financial problems,” continued Rajkovic.

One customer, 26-year-old Milica Marjanovic , found the shops provided much-needed support to her unemployed family. “My mother, my sister and I are unemployed. We don’t get any social benefits,” she said to the BBC.

“There are a lot of unemployed people in Serbia, life is hard for a lot of people and they can hardly manage.

“Many families don’t even have what is basic for living. So, these shops are welcome.”

Published: May 2010

Resources

The Co-operative Food: This pioneering network of supermarkets offers both affordable food prices for customers and good prices and terms for suppliers. They are a founding member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). This is an alliance of companies, trade unions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working together to improving working conditions in supply chains.
Website: http://www.co-operative.coop/food/

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-3/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Brazil’s Agricultural Success Teaches South How to Grow

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Inflation, environmental stresses and population and economic growth are testing the world’s food supply systems. There is a strong need to boost yields and improve the quality of food.

Between now and 2050 the world’s population will rise from 7 billion to 9 billion. Urban populations will probably double and incomes will rise. City dwellers tend to eat more meat and this will boost demand.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reckons grain output will have to rise by around half but meat output will have to double by 2050 to meet demand.

Two pioneering approaches to growing food in Brazil offer valuable lessons to countries looking to increase their food production.

One is taking place in Bahia state in north-eastern Brazil. On Brazil’s cerrado (savannah) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerrado), enormous farms grow cotton, soybeans and maize. One of them, Jatoba farm, has 24,000 hectares of land: vastly larger than comparable farms in the United States.

On the Cremaq farm in the north of the country in Piaui state, a transformation has taken place. Once a failed cashew farm, it is now a highly modern operation. Owned by BrasilAgro, it is benefiting from clever agricultural innovation that gets results.

BrasilAgro’s approach is to buy derelict or neglected farms and give them a high-tech makeover. The ‘makeover’ includes radio transmitters tracking the weather, SAP software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG), a well-organized work force under a gaucho (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaucho), new roads criss-crossing the fields, and a transport network of trucks to quickly get the food to ports for export. Piaui is an isolated place with few services: it can take half a day to get to a health clinic. Dependence on state welfare payments for survival is the norm for many residents.

Brazil, over 30 years, transformed itself from a food importer to one of the world’s major food exporters. It is now considered alongside the ‘Big Five’ top grain exporters of America, Canada, Australia, Argentina and the European Union. Importantly, it is the first tropical nation to do this.

The value of Brazil’s crops rose from US $23 billion in 1996, to US $62 bn in 2006. It is the world’s largest exporter of poultry, sugar cane and ethanol, and there has been a tenfold increase in beef exports in a decade.

Brazil made these impressive achievements with few government subsidies. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), state support accounted for just 5.7 percent of total farm income in Brazil from 2005-07. In the US it was 12 percent, while the OECD average is 26 percent and the level in the European Union is 29 percent.

And despite frequent alarming reports, much of the farming expansion has not happened at the expense of the Amazon forests.

The agricultural success is down to Embrapa (http://www.embrapa.br/english) – short for Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária, or the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation. A public company set up in 1973, it has turned itself into the world’s leading tropical research institution. It breeds new seeds and cattle and has developed innovations from ultra-thin edible wrapping paper for foodstuffs that turns colour when the food goes off to a nano-tech lab creating biodegradable ultra-strong fabrics and wound dressings.

Its biggest achievement has been turning the vast expanses of the cerrado green for agriculture. Norman Borlaug, an American plant scientist often called the father of the Green Revolution, told the New York Times that “nobody thought these soils were ever going to be productive.” They seemed too acidic and too poor in nutrients.

Embrapa uses what its scientists call a “system approach”: all the interventions work together. Improving the soil and developing new tropical soybeans were both needed for farming the cerrado. The two together also made possible the changes in farm techniques which have boosted yields further.

Many believe this approach can be applied to Africa as well. There are several reasons to think it can. Brazilian land is like Africa’s: tropical and nutrient-poor. The big difference is that the cerrado gets a decent amount of rain and most of Africa’s savannah does not (the exception is the swathe of southern Africa between Angola and Mozambique).

Another approach that Brazil has been pioneering is making small, family farms sustainable and productive for the 21st century.

There has long been a tension between those who believe in very large farms, agribusiness and mono-crops (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono-cropping), and those who believe in having a large number of smaller farms with a wide variety of crops and animals.

But small farms have endured. The livelihoods of more than 2 billion people depend on the 450 million smallholder farms across the world. With their families, they account for a third of the world’s population.

Family farms are critical to weathering economic crises and ensuring a steady and secure food supply. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) (www.ifad.org)called in 2008 for small family farms to be put at the heart of the global response to high food prices and uncertain food security.

In Brazil, this call is being answered by a bold initiative to create what is termed a “social technology”, combining a house building programme with diverse family farms.

The Brazilian farmers’ cooperative Cooperhaf: Cooperativa de Habitacao dos Agricultores Familiares (http://www.cooperhaf.org.br) – a World Habitat Awards winner – combines housing and farm diversification to support family farmers.

“Family farming is very important for the country – 70 percent of food for Brazilians comes from family farming,” said Adriana Paola Paredes Penafiel, a projects adviser with the Cooperhaf. “The government wants to keep people in rural areas.”

“We see the house as the core issue,” she continued.  “The farmers can improve their productivity but the starting point is the house.”

Started in 2001 by a federation of farmers unions, the Cooperhaf works in 14 Brazilian states with family farmers. In Brazil farmers have a right to a house in the law and the cooperative was formed to make sure this happened.

“We promote diversification to make farmers less vulnerable: if they lose a crop in macro farming, they lose everything. We encourage diversification and self-consumption to guarantee the family has food everyday. We help to set up a garden.”

The concept is simple: a good quality home acts as an anchor to the family farm, making them more productive as farmers. The farmers receive up to 6,000 reais (US $2,290) for a house, and can choose designs from a portfolio of options from the Cooperhaf.

As in other countries, the Cooperhaf and other co-ops encourage markets and certification programmes to promote family farmed food and raise awareness. Penafiel says promoting the fact that the food is family farmed is critical: to the consumer it is healthier, fresher and contains fewer chemicals than imported produce.

“Most agri business is for export,” said Penafiel. “If we don’t have food in the country, food for poor communities would not be available. This enables farmers to be more autonomous, not having to buy fertilizers and equipment and take on too much debt. That approach is not sustainable as we saw with the so-called Green Revolution.”

Published: September 2010

Resources

  • Africa Project Access: A South African company specializing in projects in sub-Saharan Africa and getting them finance. Website:http://www.africaprojectaccess.co.za/
  • Silk Invest: A specialist investment fund targeting the fast-growing markets of Africa and the Middle East. Website:http://www.silkinvest.com/
  • Olam: A global food supply company in ‘agri-products’ that got its start in Nigeria  and shows how a Southern brand can grow and go global and overcome the difficulties of cross-border trade. Website: www.olamonline.com

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Palestinian Olive Oil’s Peaceful Prosperity

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

The economic devastation of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine) has brought much hardship to the Palestinian people. The United Nations under the UNRWA mission has been working to lesson the hardship for over 60 years (http://www.unrwa.org). But there is only so much it can do.

However, several business initiatives are creating strong Palestinian food brands to improve the reputation and awareness of Palestine around the world. In particular, Palestinian olive oil has led the way and enjoyed strong sales in countries like the United Kingdom.

Since 2004, the Palestine Fair Trade Association (PFTA) (http://www.palestinefairtrade.org) has been leading the movement of fair trade producers in Palestine, linking small Palestinian farms in fair trade collectives and cooperatives across the country.

Zatoun (http://www.zatoun.com) – or Zaytoun (http://www.zaytoun.org) as its known in the UK – are olive oil and soap brands using the Arabic word for olive. Olive oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil) is a popular cooking and seasoning oil and is sought after for its health benefits. Most of it is cultivated in the Mediterranean region, with Spain the largest single producer. Like wine, the quality of the olive oil varies greatly and the bouquet and viscosity of the oil play a big role in how consumers select a brand. The trend in the past 10 years has been for consumers to be more selective about the olive oil they buy and to be more informed about the choices available. This increasingly sophisticated consumer choice is what is helping the Palestinian oil succeed.

Another factor is the growing global popularity of the traditional Mediterranean diet. Research has linked it to the prevention of cancers, obesity and cardiovascular diseases, and an aid to food digestion. Olive oil and olives make up one of the six key groups of foods that are part of the Mediterranean Diet. The other elements are grains, fruits and vegetables, legumes and nuts, dairy products and fish.

The Zatoun brand of olive oil uses its profits to help olive tree farmers and their families in Palestine.

The brand is also hoping to alter public perceptions of Palestine. As its website states, “Zatoun helps to create a context based in ordinary everyday life to view and discuss the situation in Palestine-Israel. No longer is it an abstract geopolitical issue involving power elites and undefined national interest.”

The Zatoun brand is led in Canada by Robert Massoud, winner of the 2004 YMCA Peace Medallion. Zatoun is sold in Canada through peace groups and social justice and faith groups and is “intended as a tool to help promote their work and bring home the message that the struggle of Palestinians is ultimately one of human rights and social justice.”

The olive oil is certified fair trade under the Institute for Marketecology (IMO) (http://www.imo.ch/index.php?seite=imo_index_en) in Switzerland. The brand is operated as a not-for-profit with volunteer labour and the entire cost of the product goes to the farmers, customs and shipping costs, and promotion and administration. Each 750mL bottle sells from between CAD $15 (US $14) and CAD $17.50 (US $17.22) and each bar of soap is CAD $5.00 (US $4.90).

In the U.K., the Zaytoun brand was started by British women Heather Masoud and Cathi Pawson, also in 2004. The Palestinian olive oil has benefited from sales promotion during the United Kingdom’s annual Fair Trade Fortnight: a highly publicized promotion over two weeks that has consistently raised the profile of all Fair Trade products. Palestinian products were profiled during the 2009 event.

The Zaytoun brand is certified with the World Fair Trade Organization (www.wfto.com) and has been able to break through to sales in British supermarkets as a result. Having this certification is key to being accepted for display on the supermarket shelves. By being certified, the farmers are able to get guaranteed above market prices for their olives. This makes it easier to plan and invest in the farm and the community and avoid the wild fluctuations of market prices. It is common around the world for farmers to be bankrupted and impoverished when market prices crash and fall below the cost of growing and harvesting the product.

“We have been working for the Fair Trade certificate for four years,” Nasser Abufarha, chairman of the Palestinian Fair Trade Association told the Guardian newspaper. “Fair Trade will increase our sales, and bring us new markets and widen our reach.

“We have given farmers hope,” he said. “An economic exchange that recognises Palestinian farmers’ rights and respects the value of their connection to their land, after marginalization under Israeli occupation, is a major accomplishment.”

Olives are Palestine’s biggest crop, and critical to the local economy. The industry employs more than 100,000 people and its economic health affects many more. But the ongoing conflict has harmed the olive industry in many ways, from the bulldozing of orchards to make way for the Israeli security fence – over 1,100 hectares olive orchards were cut off by the fence in the West Bank village of Anin alone – to clearing fields for the building of new settlements.

For some of the farms, fair trade has meant access to outside markets they haven’t had for 40 years.

The Palestinian olive oil is in a market with fierce competition. In the UK, the oil can retail for £14.49 (US $23) a litre, while some Italian olive oils can be had for just US $9. But the Palestinian olive oil has a number of advantages in the marketplace: consumers have shown a willingness to pay the premium to support the farmers and Palestine, and most importantly in the competitive world of food sales, food connoisseurs rave about it. Food and wine writer Malcom Gluck called Zaytoun olive oil “one of the aggressive yet pungently attractive olive oils I have tasted”. He believes it easily ranks alongside the best Sicilian, Cretan and northern Spanish oils.

Another Palestinian company having success with the olive products is the Anabtawi Group (http://www.anabtawigroup.com/index.php?a=1&lid=3&lid1=24). Based in Nablus in the West Bank, it started in 2008 the Al-Ard Palestinian Agri-Products Company and sells Al-Ard extra virgin olive oil, virgin olive oil and an olive oil soap. Operating on a large scale, the group has the largest olive oil storage facility in Palestine and provides training and support to the farmers. It also undertakes marketing of the products in new markets including Latin America.

Ziad Anabtawi, the company’s president and CEO, told the Brazil-Arab News Agency “Palestinian olive oil is known worldwide for its high quality and its very striking aroma. It is ‘premium’ and organic by nature. Farmers grow the product the traditional way. They do not irrigate the olive trees, [irrigation] comes from rainwater and we do not use any chemicals.”

The Palestinian experience shows it is possible to create new economic opportunities for farmers under even the most arduous political and security conditions.

Published: October 2010

Resources

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-3/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022