How rural communities can benefit from bioenergy development

5 March 2012, Rome - FAO has released a suite of guidance documents and policymaking tools that governments can use to help rural communities benefit from bioenergy development and ensure that biofuel crop production does not come at the expense of food security.

Materials released by FAO's Bioenergy and Food Security Criteria and Indicators (BEFSCI) Project include: methodologies for assessing the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of bioenergy production, indicators that can be measured when doing so, recommended good practices, and policy measures for promoting sustainable bionenergy development.

"In a few months the international community will gather for the Rio+20 conference to explore new ways to combat rural poverty and promote sustainable development. Undertaken responsibly and where appropriate, bioenergy production can offer farmers and rural people the opportunity to take part in building a new green economy, and can help counter the effects of decades of underinvestment in developing world agriculture and rural areas," said Alexander Mueller, FAO Assistant Director-General for Natural Resources Management and Environment.

Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, the BEFSCI project was initiated to study the complex relationship between bioenergy and food security and help policymakers make informed decisions regarding bioenergy development.

The project has generated a number of products, including: a web-based tool for assessing potential food security impacts of bioenergy projects; a comprehensive list of methodologies and indicators to assess the impacts of bioenergy on food security at the national level; a set of good environmental practices to minimize negative environmental impacts; and a compilation of socio-economic practices currently being implemented by producers that provide examples of how bioenergy development can foster rural development and enhance food security.

The project also assembled an inventory of management and policy measures that can be used to address negative social, food security or environmental impacts of bioenergy production. And it has explored how to better include smallholders in global bioenergy value chains.

Additionally, a BEFSCI briefing paper identifies and analyzes various policy instruments that governments and planners can use to require or promote good practices in bioenergy. "The paper looks at the pros, cons and appropriateness of these various instruments, so that governments who are just beginning to wrestle with these issues can learn from the experiences of others," explained Heiner Thofern, who heads up the BEFSCI project at FAO.

Why Teach if you get No Respect???

As I prepare myself to walk the picket line today, as teachers in British Columbia walk off the job to protest legistlation which will dramatically damage the school system, I was thinking about why Teachers are so undervalued.  Why do we teach if we get no respect?  Here's a little video to give you a boost about how important teachers really are.

Guest Bloggin'

I'm thrilled to say that I am a Guest Blogger over at Teaching in High Heels today.  Click here to hop on over and check out Gladys' fabulous blog or you can find a link to her blog on my sidebar.  Below is my guest post...

Hi Everyone

My name is Sandra Farrell and I teach Grade 2 in Vancouver, BC, Canada.  My blog is Sandra's Savvy Teaching Tips.  Click here to go and take a look.  I just love to read comments, and when I have the time, I love to comment on other blogs too!  Please tell me what you think.  I've only been a teacher blogger for a few months.  Although, I have a papercrafting blog which I've been doing for almost 4 years now.

 I have been teaching for almost 20 years (gasp!)  I started my teaching in half-day Kindergarten.  I moved on to ESL full-day Kindergarten in an enormous inner city school for 8 years.  I've been at my current school for almost 10 years and I have taught Grade 1 and 2 since I arrived here.  I love, love, love teaching Grade 2!!!

In the year 2000 I spent a year teaching in New Zealand. At that time, New Zealand was at the forefront of developing early literacy education.   If you are a young teacher, you may not realize that Reading Recovery was developed in New Zealand.   All of those little leveled books that we use now, come out of this program.  PM readers was the original New Zealand prgram, but now many other publishers have developed great programs as well.  Before that, children learned to read with Basal Readers.  But I digress...  My point is that when I was in New Zealand I leard a lot about teaching reading from some very experienced and successful teachers.   The most important thing to do when teaching reading is to make sure that your children READ EVERY DAY, and that your low readers also READ TO YOU.

 I know that all of you realize that your students need to read EVERY DAY.  What you may not realize is that each student should read TO YOU every day.  Of course, that happens only in a class of 8 students right?  And who has that these days?  Your readers who are below expectations should definitely read to you every day.  Even if it's just part of a story.

So what do you actually do when your students are sitting in front of you reading?

What I want to show you are a seet of specific strategies.  You can download these little posters for FREE at the bottom of this post.  These are presented in no particular order as each child is a unique learner.

LOOK AT THE PICTURE - Ah yes, look at the picture.  Seems obvious right?  You would be amazed at how many children need to be taught this.  Doing a picture walk is a great way to model this.  Discuss the picture and what clues the children might find from it.

LOOK AT THE FIRST LETTER   - Again, looking at the first letter seems obvious, but many children will look at the whole word, and then say what they think it says instead of sounding it out.  Focusing on the first letter draws the childrens eyes directly to the text.  Sometimes the illustrations are not very clear either and so looking at the text helps a lot.

STRETCH OUT THE WORD - this strategy helps a child find all the sounds in a word.  Also, stretching it helps them blend the sounds together and helps them with meaning.  Using a rubber band and stretching it when saying the word can help too.

SKIP AND RETURN  -  This strategy words well when building fluency.  Sometimes the meaning of the sentence comes out with the other words in the sentence.

LOOK TO THE END  -  I am always amazed at the number of children who simply drop the endings of their words.  Now I teach in a highly ESL environment, so that probably contributes, but every year I have a number of students who need to focus on the endings of their words.

FIND A CHUNK THAT YOU KNOW - or Chunking as it is commonly called.  This is where studying word families really helps.  When children learn part of a word, they can sometimes apply that when trying to work out tricky vowel combinations or silent letters.

GO BACK AND READ IT AGAIN - I was fascinated to watch this skill develop in my own son.  He is a natural reader and had beginning sight words and sounds before his fourth birthday.  (just a little Mommy braggin here)  But you know how you NEVER have the time to read with your strong readers every day, one-on-one.  This was my first opportunity to watch closely a child who was developing all these skills by himself.  And this particular skill was one that he uses EVERY TIME he finds a word he doesn't know.  He figures out the difficult word, and then goes back and reads the sentence again to get the full meaning.  You can hear in his intonation once he understands the meaning.

DOES IT SOUND RIGHT - This skill doesn't work for every child, especially your ESL learners, but I use it when it's pretty obvious that the sentence doesn't sound right.  

This is very similar to finding a chunk that you know.  When reading with some children I will use my fingers to cover part of the word and ask the children to say the sounds that they can see.  It's amazing when they suddenly 'get it'

So there you have it.  I hope you enjoy these reading strategy posters.  When I taught Grade One I taught all these strategies at the start of the year and then referred to each strategy over the year.  With Grade Twos I tend to go over them all at the start as a review, and then refer to them as I need them during the year.  It's amazing to see the little ones look up and try to decide on a strategy, or for me to point out a strategy poster in order to remind them of something they could do when they get stuck on a word.

So if you would like to download this FREEBIE

CLICK HERE

Please drop by my blog and let me know what you think of these posters!

http://savvyteachingtips.blogspot.com/

Thanks

Sandra

Wow - am I behind or what???

Wow, I need to get back into regular posting.  I have so many ideas and photos from the past few months that I really want to share with you.  Sometimes life can be really crazy though.

warning - scroll down if you want to avoid the complaining and get to the teaching stuff  :)

I think I posted pictures of our house flood a few months ago.  Well, putting the basement back together has been another story in itself.  Let's just say that it's causing a lot of stress.  Part of the problem is that we hired my BIL to work on part of it, and his marriage (to my SIL) is crumbling and unfortunately he cannot separate us as his family, from us as his clients.  So let's just say we finally had to fire him and hire someone else.  Needless to say, Brad is busy trying to do a lot of the work himself.  Last weekend he tiled the basement and then I helped him grout it the next day.  We have flipped 3 other houses, but this was supposed to be our final move, and this house was not supposed to need work right away - but sometimes fate just takes these decisions right out of your hands.

The biggest stress in our house right now is financial, as I'm sure many of you have experienced lately.  Starting on Monday, the Teachers Union in British Columbia is going on strike.  My hubby is a teacher too, so it's a big financial hit.  And although we have house insurance, the flood uncovered some other major repairs that were not covered.

And to top it all off, our cat nearly died.  He ate a bird and it somehow made him very sick.  He may look like a cat, but he's actually a dog in a cat's body.  How many cats do you know that come when you whistle?  He's a really important part of our family and he's only 9 years old.  But it looks like he's pulling through so that's a relief.

OK - now it's safe - back to the teaching stuff!!

Firstly, I wanted to post up some photos of how I put together the heart pop-up card that was included in my free Valentine's Unit. 

Click Here for a free copy of the Valentine's Unit. 

Oh, BTW, apparently I cannot spell Valentine's properly and I've fixed up a few spelling mistakes, so now you can get the updated version. I know Valentine's Day has passed, but if you are a super organzied person, you just might want it for next year.

Now on to the pop-up card.  I apologize in advance if you find it confusing.  I took photos of several different cards so they are all different colours.

Here are the two pages from the Pop-up card  One is the blackline master (below) and the other is the instruction sheet. (on the left)

First I copied the  blackline master onto coloured paper.  The children coloured the heart as brightly as they could with a red crayon.  Then they cut it out.

Then I helped them fold the card as in the instruction sheet above.  To the right is a photo of the yellow card folded closed.  The missing corner is where the heart folds in.

Then I attached the colured paper card to a white cover.  You need to fold the larger white cover in half and then line up the folds (as with the pink card below).  I glued down one side at a time.

So when the card opens, the heart pops up!  Below you will find a few more photos to show you exactly what I mean.

 

You can decorate the cover any way you want.

I apologize for the photo below, but for some reason, Blogger keeps on turning this one sideways when I load it.  So if you lean to the right it's easier to see.  This is how my class decorated the cover.  We punched hearts out of tissue paper with a heart punch (which was an event in itself) and then made a colourful heart collage.  I precut the rectangle fo them to glue to, and then they trimmed off the extras when it was dry before they glued it down to the cover.  The red heart image and sentiment is a Stampin' Up! stamp.  I stamped it onto paper for each child and they cut them out and glued them on top of the collage themselves.  This way every child got a colour copy of the sentiment.

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial.  Please leave a comment as I love to hear what you think!

Atelier d’initiation au partenariat pour chaine de valeur soja au Benin

1er au 03 mars 2012. Benin. Centre Anouarite d’Abomey Calavi. Atelier d’initiation au partenariat chaine de valeur soja au Benin.

Objectif global
L’objectif global du présent atelier était l’initiation et le développement d’un partenariat public privé (PPP) autour de la chaine de valeur soja au Benin.

Objectifs spécifiques
De façon spécifique cet atelier avait pour objectif de:

• Mobiliser les acteurs pertinents ;
• Développer une compréhension commune au sein des parties prenantes sur les enjeux et la vision du projet en partenariat ;
• Elaborer un plan de travail assorti d’un plan de répartition des rôles entre acteurs pour le développement de la proposition complète et la mobilisation du financement ;
• Identifier les potentiels Partenaires Techniques et Financiers (PTF) ;
• Adopter d’une charte des valeurs pour le fonctionnement et la viabilité du partenariat public-privé soja au Benin.

Démarche méthodologique
La démarche méthodologique adoptée au cours de cet atelier était participative pour faciliter la pleine participation et l’expression des points de vue de tous les participants. Divers outils participatifs ont été utilisés à cet effet. Une alternance de travaux en plénière et de groupe a permis d’échanger sur les principales préoccupations liées à la viabilité de la chaîne de valeur soja dans un processus multi acteurs.

Agricultural Innovation Systems: An Investment Sourcebook

by:  The World Bank

Agriculture and Rural Development Series
English; Paperback; 680 pages; 8.5x11
Published February 21, 2012 by World Bank
ISBN: 978-0-8213-8684-2; SKU: 18684
This book can be downloaded here (8 MB)
Research, education, and extension investments, while usually necessary, are often insufficient alone to bring knowledge, technologies, and services that enable farmers and entrepreneurs to innovate. Efforts to strengthen research systems and increase the availability of knowledge have not increased innovation or the use of knowledge in agriculture at the pace or the scale required by the intensifying and proliferating challenges confronting agriculture. Agricultural Innovation Systems: An Investment Sourcebook contributes to the identification, design, and implementation of the investments, approaches, and complementary interventions most likely to strengthen agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and to promote innovation and equitable growth. The Sourcebook provides a menu of tools and operational guidance, as well as good practice lessons, to illustrate approaches to designing, investing in, and improving these systems.

Managing the ability of agriculture to meet rising global demand and to respond to the changes and opportunities will require good policy, sustained investments, and innovation—not business as usual. Experience indicates that aside from a strong capacity in R&D, the ability to innovate is often related to collective action and coordination, exchange of knowledge among diverse actors, incentives and resources available to form partnerships and develop business, and an enabling environment. While consensus is developing about what is meant by 'innovation' and 'innovation system,' no detailed blueprint exists for making agricultural innovation happen at a given time, in a given place, for a given result. That said, the AIS approach, which looks at these multiple conditions and relationships that promote innovation in agriculture in specific contexts, has moved from a concept to a subdiscipline with principles of analysis and action.

Drawing on approaches that have been tested at different scales in different settings, this Sourcebook emphasizes the lessons learned, benefits and impacts, implementation issues, and prospects for replicating or expanding successful practices.

The Sourcebook reflects the experiences and evolving understanding of numerous individuals and organizations concerned with agricultural innovation, including the World Bank. It targets the key operational staff who design and implement lending projects in international and regional development agencies and national governments, as well as the practitioners who design thematic programs and technical assistance packages. The Sourcebook can also be an important resource for the research community and nongovernmental organizations.

ICT and agriculture in the context of "green growth"

5-16 March 2012. This year's Sustainable Development Network (SDN) Forum, titled Green Growth for All, was held at the World Bank headquarters in late February. Panel discussions and training sessions focused on operations centered on green growth. The sessions highlighted the profound threats and opportunities created by both climate change and increased environmental awareness, making a discussion on "green growth" in agriculture urgent and critical.

Information and communication technologies hold real promise to meet these threats and opportunities in two particular areas: 1) as tools for land use planning and management, and 2) as risk management tools for climate change adaptation.

Given the importance of green growth in the agriculture sector—and the potential for ICT to contribute—ARD hosted the second e-forum on “ICT Innovation for Green Growth” in partnership with FAO and the e-agriculture community. This forum will explore how ICT is being used to reduce the climate effects that stem from agriculture. It also explores how ICT can increase climate-smart agricultural practices. Subject matter experts, who will respond to questions and provide insights on this topic, include:

• Bruce Campbell: Director of Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security Program (CGIAR)
• Marjory-Ann Bromhead: Adviser on Natural Resource Management (World Bank)
• Ademola Braimoh: Soil scientist and GIS Specialist (World Bank)
• Rodomiro Ortiz: Professor of Genetics and Plant Breeding (Swedish University of Agriculture Sciences)
• Elizabeth Dodsworth: Global Director for Knowledge Management (CABI)
• Eric Seuret: Technology Consultant (Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture)
• Pierre C. Sibiry Traore: Remote Sensing Scientist & Head of GIS (ICRISAT)
• Pai-Yei Whung: Environmental Adviser (World Bank)

http://www.e-agriculture.org/forums/current-forum

This forum serves as a continuation of the on-going debates during SDN week and at the World Bank, and will be linked to the content of the "ICT in Agriculture" Sourcebook.

Jamal Saghir, Director of the Sustainable Development Department (Africa Region) at the World Bank, highlights the importance of climate-smart agriculture in addressing climate change in Africa specifically in the following video: