This painting hangs on my sitting room wall. The image does not do it justice. It is beautiful: an untitled impressionistic oil painting of a nomadic group of people in Northern Kenya. I bought it about 14 years ago at a small exhibition in Nairobi entitled "The Last Africans".
My main memory of the Last Africans exhibition is a brief and impromptu introductory speech delivered by my friend and and former colleague, Matthias Schmale. Matthias was a compelling speaker, not least due to his sincerity, and he took this occasion to speak eloquently about his sadness that the era of the pastoralist and nomadic life practiced across most of the African continent was coming to an end: that the traditions and modus vivendi of the Turkana, the Karamajong, the Rendille, the Samburu and, most iconic of all African pastoralists, the Maasai, were dwindling into scattered tourist exhibits amid the farms, settlements and towns created through population growth, the march of technology and urban development. His lament was not romantic: it was for the impoverishment to us all brought about by the reduction of cultural diversity.
My reading matter over the past week has been a collection of papers selected by Nigel Halford of the Rothamsted Institute in UK, entitled Plant Biotechnology. For a non-scientist, much of this book has been extremely difficult to understand, but I was keen to try to improve my understanding of transgenics/genetic modification and its impact. Included in the anthology is a short paper published by researchers from the University of Cape Town on the potential for inserting a "water-efficiency" gene into maize, the staple crop for most of East and Southern Africa. The authors are in no doubt that this would be a positive move, as it would allow the cultivation of maize to spread into areas hitherto too dry for farming.
Clinging on in ever more marginal areas, the pastoralist way of life appears to be an inevitable casualty of the modern world. As Einstein, in his wonderful 1949 essay entitled "Why Socialism" observed "The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient."
My main memory of the Last Africans exhibition is a brief and impromptu introductory speech delivered by my friend and and former colleague, Matthias Schmale. Matthias was a compelling speaker, not least due to his sincerity, and he took this occasion to speak eloquently about his sadness that the era of the pastoralist and nomadic life practiced across most of the African continent was coming to an end: that the traditions and modus vivendi of the Turkana, the Karamajong, the Rendille, the Samburu and, most iconic of all African pastoralists, the Maasai, were dwindling into scattered tourist exhibits amid the farms, settlements and towns created through population growth, the march of technology and urban development. His lament was not romantic: it was for the impoverishment to us all brought about by the reduction of cultural diversity.
My reading matter over the past week has been a collection of papers selected by Nigel Halford of the Rothamsted Institute in UK, entitled Plant Biotechnology. For a non-scientist, much of this book has been extremely difficult to understand, but I was keen to try to improve my understanding of transgenics/genetic modification and its impact. Included in the anthology is a short paper published by researchers from the University of Cape Town on the potential for inserting a "water-efficiency" gene into maize, the staple crop for most of East and Southern Africa. The authors are in no doubt that this would be a positive move, as it would allow the cultivation of maize to spread into areas hitherto too dry for farming.
In this connection, recent press publications in Kenya have reported that considerable applied research in WEMA (Water Efficient Maize for Africa) is underway - with the potential to open up new low rainfall areas in Kenya for the cultivation of maize. Kenya needs it: the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, recently forecast a shortfall of about 1 million tonnes (30% of Kenya's annual consumption requirements) due to patchy rainfall. This is nothing new: 8 years out of 10 Kenya struggles to grow enough maize for its burgeoning population - mainly due to reliance on rainfall for water requirements, depleted soils, and the widespread use of poor quality planting material.
Advances in agricultural technology over the last 100 years have supported massive population growth. Through effective selection and breeding programmes, plant breeders have produced ever more productive crop varieties. The Haber-Bosch process for utilising atmospheric nitrogen has provided the necessary source of nutrition for these varieties. And now, transgenic technologies offer the potential to accelerate conventional plant breeding through the production of uber-crops capable of resistance to herbicides, drought, soil salinity and who knows what sort of adverse conditions. But these advances carry a cost. One wonders what the consequences of WEMA's introduction will be for Kenya's pastoralists and biodiversity as the area under cultivation of maize expands.Clinging on in ever more marginal areas, the pastoralist way of life appears to be an inevitable casualty of the modern world. As Einstein, in his wonderful 1949 essay entitled "Why Socialism" observed "The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient."
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