The fourth Global Landscape Forum (GLF) held alongside the UNFCC Conference of the Parties (COP) brought together more than 5 500 people from 95 countries ,in person and online, to build solutions to climate change challenges through sustainable land use.As usual, youth had an active and meaningful participation in the forum.  This year’s, Youth in Landscapes Initiative (YIL) boosted soft skills... Continue reading

They travelled from different parts of the world to come tell their story at the International Fund For Agricultural Development (IFAD)’s headquarter. Josine, Alpha, Nawsheen and Rahul, are four passionate young agriculturists. Yet, their projects are completely different from each other. Meet these role models through a snapshot of their inspiring AgTalks: The bug guy Josine, is a YAPper : a... Continue reading

The youth in landscapes initiative organized its fourth annual program at the 2016 Global Landscapes Forum (November 16th), held in Marrakesh, Morocco, at the sideline of the COP22. The youth program’s specific objectives this year were to support a multidisciplinary and geographically diverse youth presence at the 2016 GLF, including a strong Northern Africa and Middle-East contribution. We particularly increased recognition... Continue reading

Eight universities from Brazil, Ghana, Morocco, Thailand, Norway, USA, Italy and Belgium took part in the Student Interactive Session during the International Symposium on Sustainable Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Improved Nutrition. This was held at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s Headquarters, in November 2016. The students expressed their concern with the current food systems, particularly impacted by... Continue reading

"When you've worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed." This is not my quote rather one by Michelle Obama. But its also one that aptly describes Madan Poudel a YPARD member from Nepal. He... Continue reading

Agriculture and food production are highly dependent on climatic conditions and a host of ecosystem services, without which it will be impossible to feed the growing population of the world.  This recognition of the inter-dependent relationship between agriculture and climate – and some of its key drivers/effects such as loss of biodiversity and land degradation among others – is one of... Continue reading

The Global Landscape Forum (GLF) 2016, an interactive platform to discuss the role of agriculture, forestry and other land uses in climate change and development, was organized on 16th November, 2016 as a side event of COP22 at Kenzi Club Agdal Medina, Marakesh, Morocco. It was my privilege to be a part of the forum as a social media reporter and... Continue reading

Imagine this scenario: What would the theory and practice of agriculture be like without any new ideas?  And what is an idea?  I don’t know. I am fixed on finding the answer.         An idea is “something” which enters the human’s conscious and subconscious mind and later gets worked on  through several complicated processes, to become what can... Continue reading

From November 9th to 11th, 2016, the City of Calabar in Nigeria played host to industry players in agriculture, health and nutrition from different countries that converged for the 2016 Nutritious Food Fair. The three-day event organised by HarvestPlus Nigeria and partners brought together close to 5,000 stakeholders in International and National Research Institutions, involved in Agriculture, Health, Education, Science and... Continue reading

My name is Norman Munyengwa, a young (23) male agriculture graduate who works as a Youth Development and Livelihoods Officer for the Zimbabwe Farmers Union.  From 25-28 October 2016, I was honored to attend a high level youth expert meeting dubbed Youth – Feeding the Future: Addressing the challenges faced by rural youth aged 15 to 17 in preparing for and... Continue reading

The year 2016 marks YPARD’s 10th anniversary, and there have been ongoing celebrations globally. Within the same breadth, YPARD India toyed around the idea of a grand celebration of the #YPARD10Years at the “4th International Agronomy congress”.  And with the support of YPARD Asia and Pacific, the idea became reality with an interesting twist to it given that the clelebrations were happening... Continue reading

The global landscape forum at Marrakech was a very interesting forum where more than four hundred participants from all over the world gathered on the sixteenth of November . These included  politicians, scientists and activists working to preserve the world’s landscape. At the forum, there were many side events, workshops and expositions of products and books about preserving the environment over... Continue reading

In Italy, there are a few strong organizations focused on paving the way for young people to start and keep working within the agricultural sector. Coldiretti Giovani Impresa is one of them. Coldiretti Giovani Impresa works mainly with young Italian farmers whereas YPARD Italy has started to create a network between young professional working or aiming to work within agriculture. Thus,... Continue reading

SIMPLE (Support of International Platform Merging Labour and Education) is an new EU project coordinated by the  Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences at the CULS ( Czech University of Life Sciences) in Prague. The project has been running since October 2016 and will end in October 2019 with its main objective  to encourage cooperation between academic (HEIs) and professional sector in areas... Continue reading

Five YPARD delegates from Central and Eastern Europe are heading to The European Forum on Agricultural Research for Development (EFARD) annual meeting which brings together 57 representatives of 27 different countries and various agricultural organizations including  AGRINATURA, FARA, FANRPAN, CIRAD, EAFF, YPARD and others. The meeting aims at paving the way for Young Professionals to engage in discussions on agricultural research... Continue reading

Impacting lives constitutes one of the main reasons for human existence and what a feeling of fulfilment one has when you work closely with smallholder farmers especially within the clan of farming communities to ensure better farming practices and livelihood! The farming of our time has changed from farming for poor people to farming as a business enterprise, with the aim... Continue reading

Anil Regmi was one of the six finalists of GFAR and YPARD’s Youth Argripreneur Project. As one of the YAPpers, he received an intensive training helping her strengthen the business plan proposal presented with measurable milestones. Anil was also able to better engage in social media campaigning activities to ensure his project gained support. In addition, he has now has a mentor to help guide... Continue reading

The agricultural production is the main economy activity in Gambia but it has declined as a result of several factors including poor rainfall distribution, weak marketing infrastructure, lack of access to credit (especially for youth and women) with limited resources base. The access to healthy and affordable food for the public is not easy, as well as the marketing of farmers’ products... Continue reading

We are delighted to welcome the YPARD Netherlands country representative, Ingrid Flink. Ingrid is a graduate with a Master’s degree in Applied Communication Science specialising in Food and Health at the Wageningen University, Netherlands. She is currently a Junior Advisor at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) for the Sustainable Economic Development and Gender unit and a member of the Prolinnova network,... Continue reading

 

Lillian Beauttah was one of the six finalists of the GFAR and YPARD’s Youth Argripreneur Project, who co-founded the social enterprise Afrika Jilishe[1], whose aim is to increase the resilience and adaptive capabilities to climate change of nomadic pastoralists and other communities within the ASALs ( Arid and Semi-Arid Lands) by making use of high tech, low cost, and innovative solutions. Her YAP proposal is to build “The African Desert Greenhouse”, an artificial, closed ecosystem that creates viable crop growing conditions requiring a minimal amount of water. Lillian was also able to better engage in social media campaigning activities to ensure her project gained support. In addition, she has now has a mentor to help guide her during this upcoming period and make sure her project does succeed.  

And now, it is 5 months later and she continues to relate her experience thus far…

What happens when you take a concept, add a generous amount of seed funding and a dash of well-targeted mentorship to it ? 

Chaos…the organised variety, that is.

6 months post-GCARD 3 and the desert greenhouse that I made my YAP proposal about is finally taking shape. Here’s a brief look into its genesis.

Partner Canvassing

There would be no use building the greenhouse if we had no potential customers lined up. Our thoughts on who would make the best early adopters were centred around;

• Whether the school was within a drought prone region – to be a candidate, the school would have to either be within an already established feeding program or suffer from the fluctuation of food prices within periods of drought.  
• Distance from Nairobi and accessibility – a closer site would allow us to make regular visits during the trial period.
• Whether the school incorporated Agricultural and Business studies within its curriculum – having the greenhouse would be a unique value addition even to the students’ studies.
• Whether the school is within a fenced compound – this contributes heavily to the security factor. 

On visiting Merrueshi School in Kajiado County, not only was our criteria met, but the school’s patron, chairman and headmaster were generous with information and genuinely seemed interested in our approach to climate smart agriculture.

Site Canvassing

With a potential school partnership secured we moved on to the next stage, one that I thought would be everything but mind-numbingly difficult—securing land to set up a  prototype. Our criteria for appropriate land included;

• Within Nairobi environs or close outskirts – the build and subsequent monitoring would require us to make daily trips.
• Water  (preferably piped) and electrical amenities available – One might wonder why we preferred to work with those already available when our final models would be completely off the grid? We felt that it would be easier to move from the known to the unknown in terms of factors for success then reverse engineer our results in terms of water requirements (thus how big a reservoir our final model would require) and electrical capacity (how many solar panels our final model would require). 
• Affordability – with regards to lease per season for a 6.0m x 11.0m plot 
• Accessibility – daily travel in what is not a particularly high car especially during the rainy season should be possible
• Climatic conditions – similar to those of arid and semi arid conditions

We hadn’t anticipated that two months in we’d still be on the search for the ideal plot of land and that accessibility would have played such a huge role. From extremely poor road conditions to perfect conditions up until it rains, we saw it all. Early in we’d seen the opportunity of leasing our greenhouses from institutions that were no longer in use but as it turns out they weren’t willing to lease out to outsiders. We then pivoted into the option of leasing land from schools in Nairobi using the same criterion we’d previously established for a partner school. We packaged this proposal as a co-curricular activity to further engage students in schools with Business and Agriculture student clubs with the added benefit of the school’s self-sufficiency on the food production front.

To our utter disappointment the most ideally located school already had a greenhouse and weren’t willing to let us use a portion of their field for another. A factor that we never expected was the rigourous nature of the Kenyan Education  System that dictates school management. In the event that our trying to engage students in this as as co-curricular activity or even the construction process of the greenhouse itself  might in any way hamper the final year students’ studies, schools would not even consider our project.

Finally at the end of our rope, we settled on pursuing a lead from an unlikely source. This plot of land was located an hour to forty five minutes out of Nairobi in the up and coming town of Kitengela. Not exactly ideal due to distance and evening traffic that would certainly be against us, but at this point in time we were out of options.

Best decision we ever made.

The property’s owner was hugely welcoming and willing to allow us to make use of his land and amenities without any cost due to his commitment to see the youth in interesting ventures succeed.

 

The Build

This we broke down into;

Phase 1: Structural – The greenhouse structure and hydroponic shelf mechanism

Phase 2: Electrical – LED lighting and sensory technology

Phase 3: Mechanical – The hydroponic system and irrigation system

Initially the idea was to build the structure and design the sensory tech from scratch but a few months into the entrepreneurship game, I understood that that was a poor idea. Why? My mind had been opened up to the power of ‘ Outsourcing’ whose cousin ‘ Do it All’ is actually a factor that has led to the downfall of many ‘once -an-enterprise(s)’

Identifying an expert for the two respective structural builds was not as difficult as I’d expected. What made this exercise difficult was the unfamiliar design and exact specifications that I was proposing to the builders.

My method to get us all on the same boat was simple but I feel effective. It encompassed running through the following with the builders and material suppliers;

• Design – has this been fully comprehended and what amendments from their expertise would they propose?
• Materials – approximate cost, quantity and variety
• Transport – cost of this to site (only after you incur charges for your own construction does this factor of production become very evident ) 
• Labour – number of men required
• Rate – per man ( once again only after you run your own construction site does it hit you that this rate should also include a meal and water ) 
• Time frame – number of days
• Start date 

Currently we’re done with the first phase and making the necessary preparations to embark on the second and third that would require us to import most of the materials.

The three months of the build have taught me not only the value of patience with yourself and others in the day’s failures but also the beauty and joy that comes when you crawl into bed tired and a bit dusty after a day of building your empire.

Find the original post on the GFAR blog.

Blogpost by Lillian Beauttah – limobachi(at)gmail.com – one of six finalists in the Youth Agripreneurs Project, a pilot project targeting young agricultural entrepreneurs (“agripreneurs”), co-organized by GFAR and YPARD. The YAP Finalists launched their projects during the #GCARD3 Global Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, 5-8 April 2016. Read Lillian’s original YAP proposal here.

Photo credits: Lillian Beauttah

 

 

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