HIDALGO (U.S.-Mexico border) — U.S. Border Patrol agents Sunday detained 18 people from the horn of Africa – an uncommon but not unheard of origin for illegal migrants to the United States, officials said.

The east African immigrants – 13 from Eritrea and five from Ethiopia – were walking along a road in Hidalgo on Sunday when they were spotted, said local Border Patrol spokesman Daniel Doty.

Agents peacefully took the illegal immigrants into custody, Doty said. None of them was carrying drugs or firearms.

Doty said illegal immigrants who come from countries other than Mexico either face an expedited deportation hearing or can request political asylum in the United States. Illegal immigrants are typically deported from the country within 14 days, he said.

It is less common for a group of illegal immigrants to come to the United States from nations other than

By Jared Taylor, The Monitor

By Maureen Ryan | Chicago Tribune

A Walk to Beautiful may be the most moving documentary of the year. I spent parts of this hourlong Nova installment wiping away tears, contemplating the suffering and resilience of the young Ethiopian women profiled.

A Walk to Beautiful, which aired earlier this month on PBS stations and encores at 1:30 a.m. tonight on WLRN-Ch. 17, lets the women and the doctors who treat them at Addis Ababa’s Fistula Hospital tell their own stories. But sometimes words are not necessary. The look on the face of one woman, Aheyu, as she boards a bus and leaks urine on to the floor, tells how wretched she feels.

Like millions of women in developing countries, childbirth caused major damage to her underdeveloped body. The process punched a hole between Aheyu’s birth canal and bladder. As a result of her incontinence, her community shuns her.

A friend tells her of the fistula hospital, where free operations can fix the damage. “How can they bring you back to life?” Aheyu nervously asks of the surgery. But the fact is, these operations bring these women back to life in any number of ways.

For the Ethiopian women, being shunned by their families and villages is crushing to their spirits. Aheyu’s own mother speaks matter-of-factly about making her daughter live in a rough shelter outside the main house. But in an almost wordless scene, the mother weeps and presses scarce money in her daughter’s hand as she heads off to the hospital.

Finding sympathy and a community of other women with fistula is a revelation for women such as Wubete. “They are not revolted by me here,” says the 17-year-old patient, who talks of being married off by age 11.

This poignant film follows three women’s cases and captures daily life at the hospital, which is supported by charity. Wubete’s journey ends in an unlikely place, and the smile on Aheyu’s face after surgery is heart-piercing. Seeing women like her go from contemplating suicide to choosing colorful new clothes for their trip home is, indeed, beautiful.

(Richard Alleyne, UNICEF USA) — EAST HARARGHE, Ethiopia — UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has attributed the current surge in global food prices to a host of factors, including: escalating energy prices, lack of investment in agriculture, increasing demand, trade distortions subsidies and recurrent bad weather.

In the eastern Ethiopian province of East Hararghe Zone of Oromiya Regional State—a region with over 30 million residents—the effects of the food crisis and an extended dry season threaten the tenuous gains the country has made with regard to child nutrition.

Already among the countries in the world with the highest rates of child mortality and malnutrition, just how severe the problem becomes in this part of Ethiopia depends largely on the financial soundness of a community-based intervention model known as Enhanced Outreach Strategy (EOS). Developed and implemented three years ago by UNICEF and its partners, in conjunction with the Ethiopian government, the strategy delivers low-cost, high-impact interventions such as nutrition screenings, vaccinations, deworming pills and vitamin A supplementation to children in order to avert crisis when emergencies crop up.

Subsistence farmers throughout Ethiopia rely on two rainy seasons a year: the “meher” from June to July and the “belg” from January to February. This year the “belg” rains came late.

“Because there were no “belg” rains to speak of this year, we are seeing livestock deteriorate and crops that could not be ready for harvest,” said Samson Desie, UNICEF Nutrition Specialist in Ethiopia. “But what we’re also seeing are children who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.”

At the Bissidimo Hospital in East Hararghe, Desie explains the nutrition screening process and EOS at work:

“By conducting mid-upper arm circumference, height and weight measurements our workers at the community level are able to refer mothers with children diagnosed with moderate malnutrition to a supplemental feeding program,” said Desie. “Those diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition come here to this UNICEF supported therapeutic feeding program.”

Hospital staff members in Bissidimo prepare therapeutic milk supplied by UNICEF and known as F-75. It is administered following UNICEF feeding protocols for case management of severe acute malnutrition. In many cases mothers are also given packets of Plumpy’nut to feed their children in order to combat the effects of malnutrition. A ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), Plumpy’nut is a high protein, high energy peanut-based paste in a foil wrapper that can be administered at home rather than at feeding centers or hospitals and can be eaten without any preparation.

The number of referrals to Bissidimo and similar facilities has risen steadily since last December. One of UNICEF’s partners has been the World Food Program (WFP), which works with the government’s agency responsible for disaster prevention and preparedness in administering targeted supplemental food distribution. This distribution is meant for treatment of moderate malnutrition and prevention of severe malnutrition.

Because of the increase in global food prices, WFP has had to close down a number of supplementary feeding centers. Those in Oromiya region—where there were 118 sites—have now been reduced to 28; and in Haraghe zone where 21 sites were in operation, now only six remain open.

The head of WFP has called the current food crisis a “silent tsunami” which threatens to affect the over 70 million people globally.

“We know the system we have in place works, and we are beginning to notice behavioral change at the community level. Families are beginning to understand what to do to keep their children well nourished,” said Desie. “But if we’re unable to keep the system well oiled with resources and financing, we could end up slipping backward.”

(By ROGER THUROW, Wall Street Journal) ARSI NEGELE, Ethiopia — Babou Galgo, a 61-year-old farmer, proudly showed off his prized harvest from last season: two shiny gold medals from the regional and federal government and a slick certificate praising his “outstanding performance in increasing agriculture production and productivity.”

What he had done was boost his corn yields on his small farm in southern Ethiopia an eye-popping sevenfold over the past several years. Even more impressive, he had boosted the well-being of his family as well: With the added income, they moved out of a traditional mud-brick tukul and into a brick and concrete house furnished with a refrigerator, television and DVD player, rare luxuries for a farmer in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Indeed, not long ago, Mr. Galgo would have had no need for a refrigerator as meager yields had him struggling to feed his family. “It’s the seeds,” he says, noting the reason for his reversal of fortunes. “Hybrids.”

Africa’s nascent push to finally feed itself is turning the clock back to the early part of 20th-century America. It was in the 1930s and ’40s when Iowa-based Pioneer Hi-Bred International popularized hybrid seeds in the U.S., swelling corn yields throughout the Midwest. Seven decades later, African farmers and U.S. companies are trying to recreate the same boom that turned America into the world’s breadbasket, only this time in the harsh climate — environmental and political — of Ethiopia and greater Africa.

If agriculture has a final frontier, it is Africa. After agriculture transformations in Asia and Latin America since the 1960s, Africa remains the one place where the farming potential has barely been scratched. African agriculture has less irrigation, less fertilizer use, less soil and seed research, less mechanization, less rural financing, fewer paved farm-to-market roads than any other farming region in the world. Conflict in many parts of the continent has chased farmers out of their fields, and neglect by both local governments and international development experts have let Africa’s agriculture infrastructure fall into dire disrepair.

American farming interests, like those of agricultural icons Pioneer and John Deere, have avoided large swaths of Africa in the past, believing that farmers were too poor to pay for their products or wary of political instability that has rocked some of Pioneer’s other African operations. But now, with global grain surpluses down, demand rising and prices soaring, the calculations at home and abroad have changed and progress can’t come fast enough.

In Ethiopia, only about one-quarter of the country’s total corn area is planted with hybrid seeds. Hybrids, produced from conventional breeding to increase yields and to thrive in harsher climates and to resist pests, usually can double or triple harvests over the standard seeds passed down through generations. And there are only several thousand tractors for more than 50 million people who depend on farming to survive.

“Africa is the only continent where per capita food production is declining, so the need is there,” says J.B. Penn, the chief economist of Deere & Co. and a former undersecretary at the U.S. Agriculture Department. The present food crisis “is solved only through higher production,” adds Paul Schickler, president of DuPont Co.’s Pioneer unit. “That is what is needed in Africa, through the use of better technology, genetics and agronomic practices.”

Chombe Seyoum sees the need and potential every day. A farmer himself, Mr. Seyoum began selling John Deere equipment in Ethiopia two years ago hoping both to accelerate the mechanization of his country’s farmers and to fulfill his father’s vision. In 1968, his father bought a small John Deere tractor and introduced machine farming to his region of the country’s southern wheat belt. Several years later, Emperor Haile Selassie was toppled by a communist dictatorship, farmland was collectivized and some of the Seyoum family’s machinery was confiscated.

Mr. Seyoum studied to become an engineer. But when the communists were ousted in the early 1990s, he returned to farming and saw how far his country had fallen behind as he worked to rebuild the family farm.

Now, from his office in Addis Ababa, he sells Deere equipment — 100 in the past two years. While drought and hunger still plague parts of Ethiopia, the fertile Rift Valley and highland regions, given good weather, have the country rivaling South Africa as the continent’s largest cereal and grain producer south of the Sahara. Rising corn and wheat prices have spurred demand for machinery from farmers hoping to expand their acreage. Making up for lost time, Mr. Seyoum welcomes customers ready to purchase big-ticket machinery.

“We are in a rush,” says one customer, Abdi Abdullahi Hussein. Mr. Hussein once worked with nomadic herders before seeing the business potential in farming this year. The spring planting season was fast approaching and he badly needed a tractor. He and a partner have about 60 acres and he intends to rent the tractor to others. “Our idea is to introduce technology in our area and plow more land,” he says.

Mr. Seyoum suggests an 85-horsepower tractor costing about $30,000. Mr. Hussein doesn’t flinch at the price; He has pooled his savings with neighbors’ who will share the tractor. In Ethiopia and throughout Africa, banks are reluctant to lend to farmers who have little collateral; pooling money is a common way to raise the funds. But he cringes at the four-month delivery time from Deere’s factory in Brazil. Instead, he ponders a 65-horsepower tractor, which will be available sooner.

“We’ve got a long list of people coming to us for tractor service,” says Mr. Hussein.

As Mr. Hussein leaves, another farmer arrives to complete a purchase of a combine. Haji Kawo, like most wheat farmers in Ethiopia, plants by hand and harvests with a machine. After years of hiring others to cut his wheat, Mr. Kawo decided to get into the harvesting business himself. He figures he can pay off the $70,000 combine within a year given that there are 20,000 small farmers in his area who need harvesting service. He envisions moving from farm to farm during the harvest season much like combine services that methodically move up from the southern U.S. and into Canada.

Offering to help with financing, Mr. Seyoum sees Mr. Kawo as a model farmer who can demonstrate the benefits of mechanization to others and drive sales. Ethiopian farmers “see a success somewhere, and they want to do it, too,” says Mr. Seyoum.

Melaku Admassu, an Ethiopian who runs Pioneer’s operations here, uses the same farmer-to-farmer sales method that Pioneer employed in the U.S. He began by handing out seeds from the back of his pickup truck, particularly to farmers like Babou Galgo who worked land near the major roads so more people could follow the growth of the hybrids. At harvest time, Mr. Admassu would return with small scales to weigh the yields and compare them to the harvests of farmers who weren’t using the hybrids.

“When I heard that only 1% or 2% of the U.S. population are farmers, and they feed the whole country, I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Admassu says. “I started dreaming that if every farmer in Ethiopia increases production, we can change the whole country. We can change Africa.”

It has certainly changed lives in the Rift Valley lakes region. When Mr. Admassu first came to his village with the new seeds and advice on how to better till his land, Debebe Ayele, 47, was struggling to feed his family. “We were getting food aid,” he says. “I was ready to try anything to improve my situation.”

The new seeds were a risk. They were more expensive than the standard fare and they were new. He planted two acres the first year, then four and now he rents land from his neighbors to increase his acreage. His harvests multiplied and for the first time in his life he had regular surpluses to sell on the market. He replaced the thatched grass roof of his house with corrugated iron. He bought better furniture and better clothes. He wants his children to go as far as they can in school.

As Mr. Ayele recites his progress, Mr. Admassu beams. “When we see our farmers go from barefoot to shoes, we know that is because of increased production,” he says.

Farmer Galgo is ready for another upgrade. Sitting in his comfortable living room, beneath wall murals of Jesus and a peace dove, he tells Mr. Admassu, “I want to expand my land and buy a tractor. A big tractor, with a lot of power.”

Another tractor customer.
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Write to Roger Thurow at [email protected]

BERLIN, May 26 (Reuters) – A deal to market Ethiopia’s staple cereal, teff, to health-conscious Westerners may provide a model for ensuring the benefits of biodiversity are shared between local people and firms exploiting natural resources.

Teff, which looks like wheat and has a sour taste, is free of the protein gluten and research shows it can boost the body’s vitality and reduce fat production.

Realising its potential, Dutch entrepreneur Hans Turkensteen set up a company in 2002 to introduce the crop to the West.

But, aware of concern about “biopiracy” under which foreign companies have been accused of plundering foreign plants or animals, he worked out a deal to give some of the profits to Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries.

The case illustrates one of the most difficult issues at a May 19-30 United Nations conference in Bonn where delegates are discussing ways to protect the diversity of life on earth.

Nearly 200 countries are trying to thrash out a framework for a 2010 deal on binding rules on access to genetic resources and the sharing of their benefits.

Developing nations want to reap financial rewards from natural resources which firms in sectors from pharmaceuticals to horticulture and cosmetics are keen to tap.

“We understood teff was not ours and wanted Ethiopians, who have cultivated, conserved and refined it for centuries to benefit from its use elsewhere,” Turkensteen told Reuters.

Health and Performance Food International (HPFI) signed a deal with the Ethiopian government in 2004 allowing the firm to bring the iron- and calcium-rich cereal to the West, to sell and promote it and to help develop teff-based foods.

HPFI gives 5 percent of its net profits to job-creation projects in Ethiopia, which also gets royalties from the profits on teff seed sales and cash for land cultivated by the firm.

Apart from teff, other deals have been made giving companies access to flowers in South Africa or micro-organisms in Kenya.

DAUNTING TASK

“The complexities of the issue are absolutely enormous,” said Rachel Wynberg, co-author of a report on the subject comissioned by the U.N.’s Convention on Biological Diversity.

For example, the pharmaceuticals branch spent about $55 billion on research and development in 2006 but only a small, and unknown, part went on natural products, said Wynberg.

Wynberg says industry should get more closely involved in the U.N. talks on global rules and on compliance mechanisms.

Compounding the problems are ideological differences between firms and governments over “access and benefit sharing”.

“The negotiations are seen as a proxy for addressing huge disparities in income across the world,” Wynberg told Reuters.

Developing countries put a very high value on their genetic resources but often fail to recognise that hefty investment is needed to develop products — and often leads nowhere.

HPFI, which had 2007 turnover of 1 million euros ($1.57 million), has invested 3 million euros and four years of work in researching teff.

It is trying to breed teff seeds outside Africa and is working on gluten-free recipes for bread, cake and beer for consumers allergic to the protein, as well as food for athletes.

All sides agree on the daunting task they face but activists say getting at least a roadmap for the way ahead is crucial.

“We need to send a signal to developing countries to make sure they are respected,” said Greenpeace’s Christoph Then.

By Madeline Chambers, Reuters
Editing by Catherine Evans