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Nigeria: Can Bamboo Address Deforestation and Erosion in Nigeria?
BY ALEX ABUTU, 21 AUGUST 2013 Every year, according to statistics from the Centre for International Forestry Research, Africa loses forest cover equal to the size of Switzerland and Nigeria alone is estimated to lose about 350,000 – 4000,000 ha of its forest reserve annually and this is regarded as one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. As the trees across the country vanish, the land dries; the soil erodes and becomes barren leading to low agricultural yield, alarming desert encroachment, desertification and uncontrollable erosion. Experts at a recent meeting on the state of the nation’s forest identified firewood and charcoal as the leading drivers of deforestation but the country lacked alternatives to firewood and charcoal which have become the energy sources for middle class and low income Nigerians especially those in the rural areas. A lot of propositions have been advanced as options government should consider in addressing the drivers of deforestation and this include the need to articulate policy framework that address the out-dated forest laws in operations in the country, better mechanism for the implementation/enforcement of best forest management practices, reduce firewood and charcoal consumption and forest tenure system for local communities. However, Mr Badru Ola Muyideen of the forest department of the Federal Ministry of Environment is of the view that the introduction and massive cultivation of bamboo remained Nigeria’s best option to reduce deforestation, address desertification as well as cushion the impact of climate change on Nigeria. According to him, bamboo can serve as firewood and can be burnt as charcoal. “This way we don’t have to cut down trees which take forever to grow but we can harvest bamboo yearly and use it as we want.” Bamboo is a common plant which the country is currently not exploiting in the quest to address the mirage of environmental challenges confronting the country. Bamboo is a tribe of flowering perennial evergreen plant in the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. In bamboos, the internodal regions of the stem are hollow and the vascular bundles in the cross section are scattered throughout the stem instead of in a cylindrical arrangement. The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent. The absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, even of palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering. Bamboos are some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Bamboos are of notable economic and cultural significance in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Sun-Saharan Africa, being used for building materials, as a food source, and as a versatile raw product. Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, with reported growth rates of 100 cm (39 in) in 24 hours. However, the growth rate is dependent on local soil and climatic conditions, as well as species, and a more typical growth rate for many commonly cultivated bamboos in temperate climates is in the range of 3-10 centimetres per day during the growing period. Some of the largest timber bamboo can grow over 30 m (98 ft) tall, and be as large as 15-20 cm in diameter. However, the size range for mature bamboo is species dependent, with the smallest bamboos reaching only several inches high at maturity. A typical height range that would cover many of the common bamboos grown in the United States is 15-40 feet, depending on species. Bamboo is a kind of grass which explains the speed of growth. This means that there’s lots of it, and when it’s harvested it grows itself back again quickly enough not to leave a dent in the eco-system. Unlike all trees, individual bamboo stems, or culms, emerge from the ground at their full diameter and grow to their full height in a single growing season of three to four months. During these several months, each new shoot grows vertically into a culm with no branching out until the majority of the mature height is reached. Here in Nigeria conscious effort have not been paid to the importance or relevance of bamboo in addressing erosion, desertification nor deforestation. Nigerians still rely heavily on hardwood as source of energy and this according to medical experts is dangerous. It is a women and children’s job to collect firewood and as the demand increases so they have to walk farther distances to find. Most of the firewood cooking is done indoors resulting in air pollution which kills over a million Nigerian women and children annually according to the Bureau of Statistics. Dr Samuel Ike, conservationist said that Nigeria can solve most of the environmental challenges it is facing with the introduction of bamboo into the affroestation programme. “You cut down a hard tree and it takes decades to grow back but cut down a bamboo and before you know it has grown back. Unlike hardwood, bamboo is renewable and regrows after harvesting just as grass regrows after cutting,” he said. According to him, the bamboo roots have the potentials to grab onto the soil and hold it fast, “plant bamboo on a steep slope or riverbank and it prevents mudslides and erosion.” “This is the plant needed for the afforestation programme and even the Great Green Wall project where millions of trees are expected to be planted. A meeting of stakeholders on sustainable development of bamboo and rattan in Nigeria recently urged the federal government to implement a Food and Agriculture Organisation’s recommendation that each country set aside 25 per cent of its total land mass for forest conservation through the establishment of bamboo plantations. According to the stakeholders, such development would ensure that all relevant research institutes in the country work on how the country would benefit maximally from the plant. As the nation move to address flood, erosion and other environmental challenges, the inclusion of bamboo in the aforestation programme would go a long way in saving the soil and provide jobs and incomes for rural dwellers. Continue reading
Emerging Markets Have Farther To Fall
Kenneth Rapoza , Contributor INVESTING | 8/20/2013 Emerging Markets Have Farther To Fall Emerging market investors worried about this guy: Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy. The market will get a better sense of so-called “tapering” of QE in the FOMC meeting minutes due out on Wednesday. Barclays Capital expects more pain for emerging market equity and bonds, in the meantime. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife) The emerging markets have farther to fall and they can lay the blame on Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve for their sad-sack performance over the last several days. On Tuesday, the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM) was trading slightly lower following Monday’s 1.86% drop. Will investors buy on the lows? Of course they will. But is this a market ripe for deeper corrections? It sure is, says Barclays BCS +0.34% Capital analyst Koon Chow in London. Risky assets continue to be weighed down by rising rates in the U.S. Ten year Treasury bonds are now yielding 2.83%. In London trading hours this morning, European equities followed the downbeat tone in Asian markets. Meanwhile, high yielding currencies like the Brazilian real are bearing the brunt in the forex markets. And it’s not over yet. This underperformance is likely to continue as the starting point of Fed tapering nears, said Chow in his daily note to clients today. Right now, all eyes are on the Fed Open Market Committee Meeting (FOMC) minutes coming out on Wednesday. The risk associated with the FOMC minutes is whether the Fed has begun discussing a possible change in its threshold rate for unemployment as a means of continuing its QE program. Remember, Bernanke said that he would not step on the break of quantitative easing until unemployment levels were comfortably below 7%, or at the very least, trending downward. Unemployment has been trending downward, but at a slower pace. Any discussion of a move away from waiting for lower unemployment will likely to be viewed as a dovish surprise by the market and may lead to a near-term rally for global bonds. Equities would also bounce. The noticeable lack of a broad dollar rally, despite the sharp moves against high yield currencies, suggests that the market may already be positioning for such an announcement. One of the problems right now with emerging market investing is fund managers are allocating out of them faster than anyone expected. The positioning in emerging markets is still problematic, said Chow, although arguably slightly less negative in equities than in fixed income where global institutional and retail positions are still large. This would suggest that there can be some asymmetry in emerging markets in the months ahead, with greater risks of disruptive moves in fixed income than in equities. Fund managers do not want to be caught holding the same positions, with the same weighting post-QE as they were during QE. This is driving the bulk of the moves in the market these days. Meanwhile, the investment patterns in developed markets seems different. While in emerging, investors have had asset allocation shifts that look more like “risk reduction”, developed market positioning is suggestive of only the early stages of the great rotation out of fixed income to equities, Barclays’ Chow said. The stock of cumulative retail inflows (as opposed to institutional) to developed market equities since early 2009 is actually negative. But institutional investors have not seen such a radical exit from their emerging equity positions. Since the financial crisis, the cumulative position of retail investment into developed market equity mutual funds is still negative ($239 billion less), but it has been offset by large institutional flow into the market ($364 billion), according to Cambridge, Mass. based fund trackers EPFR Global. EFPR Global data also shows that investment outflow from emerging markets is suggestive of broader risk reduction. Investors in retail funds have nearly completed their exit from emerging. They have also reduced their bond holdings by about 25% from multi-year highs in May. The flows from institutional funds, by contrast, have been “stickier”, said Chow, and sold in moderate amounts of both equities and debt since late May. “Although the institutional investors’ decisions should be more long-term focused and therefore naturally less likely to exit, the fact that they have not reduced their positions significantly is an unhelpful positioning technical and they may need to see a further drop in prices to buy,” Chow said. He expects more volatility, and downside risks. Technically speaking, emerging equity looks better than bonds given the considerably more advanced overall exit by both retail and institutional at this point, Chow said. A look at the assets wealthy investors assumed would return the most for their portfolios this year. Continue reading
US Land Prices ‘Surge’ Despite Fall In Ag Profits
15 th Aug 2013, by Agrimoney.com Farmland prices in major US agricultural states defied weakening farm incomes to maintain strong gains – in some cases, accelerating – although many bankers feel they may now “have peaked”. Farmland prices in Plains states including Kansas, the top wheat-growing state, and Nebraska, a major corn and soybean producer “surged further” during the April-to-June quarter, the US central bank said. Prices of non-irrigated farms were 18.3% higher than a year before, with those of watered land soaring 25%, faster than the 21% growth recorded in the first three months of the year. “Despite expectations of weaker farm income, district farmland values continued to set records,” the Federal Reserve’s Kansas City bank said. The period “marks the ninth consecutive quarter in which irrigated cropland values have risen more than 20% year over year”, with lingering dryness in some area increasing the premium over land without access to water supplies. Weak income prospects The increase defied dents to farm income from weaker winter wheat yields and prices, and falling cattle values, “although an uptick in hog prices improved profitability for some hog producers”, the bank said. And prospects for farm takings remain “weak for the rest of the year throughout the district”, given weaker prices of corn and soybeans, harvested in the autumn. “Not only would lower crop prices reduce farm income, but persistent drought in parts of the district could limit yield potential, particularly in areas without irrigation,” the Fed said. “With lower expected prices and the possibility of a poor harvest,” lenders contacted for the Fed survey “expected farm income to be less than last year in each state in the district”, which also includes Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico and Wyoming. ‘Overall wealth’ However, it was a dearth of other investment opportunities, for farmers enriched by a strong period for farm incomes, rather than hopes for agricultural returns which was incentivising land purchases “Bankers indicated that expected farm income was not the main factor contributing to the value of farmland,” the Fed said. “Instead, bankers cited the overall wealth level of the farm sector, supported by several years of strong income, as the primary driver of farmland values. “Low interest rates and a lack of alternative investment options were also noted as significant factors.” Price forecasts Nonetheless, lenders expressed doubts as to how long this effect might last in the face of weakened revenue prospects. “While most bankers expected farmland values to remain at current levels, an increasing number of respondents felt farmland values may have peaked,” the fed said. “More bankers also expected farmland values to drop after harvest likely due, at least partially, to expectations of lower farm income,” although the decline was expected to be less than 10% over the next year. Weaker farm prosperity has already become evident in farm credit markets, with loan demand rising for the first time in three years, and repayment rates on borrowings weakening too, and expected to keep falling. The data follow a debate at an investor call by Deere & Co on Wednesday at which analysts persistently questioned forecasts by the tractor maker that cash farm receipts, a key indicator of machinery purchases, will fall only slightly in 2014, despite tumbling crop prices. Continue reading
