Message-ID: <199604051522.JAA07577@major.cei.net> Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 09:22:47 -0600 From: carol cross <mailto:solync@CEI.NET> Subject: Should we focus on rural or urban development? To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Hi, I am Dr. Carol Cross. I want to start a debate on rural versus urban development. I would like to have feedback on the Rural AgroIndustrial Center (RAIC) model of development described below.Q: Why is there rural migration to urban areas ?
Every day, more and more poverty stricken peasants and campesinos, landless and on worn out lands, leave their homes in the rural areas of the tropics and migrate to the cities seeking a better way of life. There are schools in the urban areas and caring parents fight their way to the cities in the hope of a better way of life for their children, only to succumb to the numbing destructiveness of the cities. Usually they find greater poverty, disease, crime, prostitution and a wide variety of social ills in the shantytown they develop at the edge of great cities. Most of them never find work. Their children are increasingly discarded (there are over 150,000,000 street children in the world today). The World Bank and other aid organizations develop project after project in urban areas offering technical assistance and support.
Q: What is the answer that I propose to this problem?
Develop the rural areas so that people will not have to leave to find work and "a better way of life"?" I propose that we need models for profitable rural development that could create "a better way of life" in the rural areas of the world. These projects for development should stand on their own, be sustainable, and must be business-focused projects.
Q: What is a Rural AgroIndustrial Center, or RAIC, which is my proposed new approach to or paradigm for rural economic development?
A RAIC is a community-based Rural AgroIndustrial Center (RAIC) which is a large-scale (low-tech, intermediate-tech or high-tech) integrated rural development project. It is based on transforming traditional agricultural crop raw materials , agricultural and forestry wastes, as well as new crops such as kenaf into value added products in the local area before they enter the marketplace. This new approach to develop agroindustry in rural areas is designed to drive economic recovery and development locally.
Q: What does business have to do with development?
Without a return on investment, a project based only on donor input will falter should such input be unavailable. Therefore, while RAICs could and should involve a public/private partnership, it should be so structured that within a few years, the project will be profitable.
Q: Won't the need for donor organizations diminish?
There are needs in developing countries that are not being met. Donor funds will be made available for additional RAICs which conceivably could be needed in every agricultural region of a 50 mile radius.
Q: How will the RAICs grow if donor organizations pull out?
Investment will flow to these projects if they are profitable from within the country as well as from international sources. Once it is seen to provide a strong return on investment, RAICs will become the investment of choice and capital flight may become a thing of the past in some countries. Such projects must be profitable or they are not "sustainable". Nothing can be sustained that does not return more to the effort than is inputted.
Q: How does the local rural area benefit from a RAIC?
The activities of a RAIC can serve as a focal point for economic development in the community and be the community's key to maintaining agriculture as the mainstay of the economy. It creates jobs for local people, develops and supports local infrastructure and community projects such as schools and strengthens the community's pride and self esteem. A RAIC can serve as the beginning of a local industrial park. A RAIC will develop a products using the new/ "old" crop kenaf as a profit center. It will enable local farmers to sell their agroresidues instead of burning them. The RAIC can create a business education partnership in the community. RAIC staff can develop mentoring programs for local youth. A RAIC can serve as a conduit for technology transfer and training programs. A RAIC can generate wealth and involve ownership by all segments of the community through sale of stock. A RAIC, as it adds modules, will provide a training ground for lifelong learning for local people
Q. Why are the RAICs established in rural areas?
Farming communities tend to be small in population and have a wide dispersal due to large land parcels required for farming. In order to create industries from the farmers' production, a central processing area is required. Here low value raw materials including agroresidues such as bagasse and cereal straws combined with newly directed crops such as kenaf, Reed canary grass, Crotalaria, and Leucaena can be brought in for processing. In order for this processing area to succeed in meeting the needs of rural economic development, the RAIC will need to be centrally located in an agricultural area so that it will be economic to haul materials to it.
Q: How can RAICs be established in rural areas?
A RAIC is a business enterprise that consists of a consortium of land owners, farmers, entrepreneurs, researchers, state and national government agencies, in-country and/ or international investors. It involves coordination of planning, investing, supplies, building, training, production, packaging and marketing.
Q: How can a RAIC fit the needs of the area?
RAICs can be structured so that the developing entity can select or choose the Modules they desire. They select the ones that fit the area's resources, needs and interests. The RAIC will then be in a position to profitably produce agribased products from alternative crops like kenaf, Reed canary grass and Crotalaria, which can easily be grown in the tropics, combined with agricultural wastes such as sugar cane bagasse and rice, wheat and other cereal straws.
Q: What kinds of modules are suggested?
Most of the suggestions I make involve combining kenaf with agroresidues such as rice straw, wheat straw, sugar cane bagasse and/ or forest wastes but they can also involve other crops.
Some suggested modules include but are not limited to: a kenaf plantation; low tech livestock feed; a kenaf separation plant (core from stem fiber); fuel briquettes; ecologically sound field and tree crop production of foodstuffs (such as sweet sorghum and Leucaena nitrogen-fixing trees); ecologically sound food processing ; nonwood paper; building materials; reforestation center; reclamation center; sustainable logging and certified forest products; production of organic fertilizers and soil amendments; the SAMEI(TM) Strategy for natural cosmetics/ perfume industry development; canewood products from bamboo, rattan, florals and handicrafts, aquaculture projects, bagged silage system, feed pelletizing plant, kenaf remediation products, kenaf fabrics, and Integrated Farming systems.
Q: Does a RAIC meet sound business practices?
* It is easy to get a project started; low-tech modules include a cut-and-carry system to feed livestock to replace cutting of the Rain Forests for grazing cattle. * A RAIC can begin with one or two modules and increase in capacity as investment and local expertise develop, using resources from the first module to begin the second and following ones * It has multiple projects to spread the risk * It can be developed at many levels and from many entry points * It can select products that have a wide growing marketplace * It can create products that are marketable at more that one level of production such as raw materials, basic processing, secondary processing, high tech processing * It can select processes for end products with either small scale or large scale equipment * There is already much ongoing research on production, processing and utilization of the kenaf and other plant products in universities and by consulting firms
Q: Does a RAIC meet environmental parameters?
RAICs are not only designed to be economically sustainable, but they are based on sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry and ecological balance. The term I have developed to describe this gestalt approach is EcoAgroForestry(TM).
* RAICs are based on renewable resources (agroresidues, perennial and annual plants as well as fast growing nitrogen fixing trees; only plantation trees would be harvested and reforestation would be part of the plan) * They are based on a balance of plant and animal species * Environmentally friendly products are selected * Green (sustainable) products are selected; e.g. replacing firewood by making briquets using kenaf and agroresidues * Raw materials such as kenaf, that are acceptable or adaptable to local growing conditions without greenhouses, etc., are combined with agroresidues
Q: Why is kenaf specifically chosen for RAICs?
Kenaf has high protein content and is succulent haylage at 60-80 days. Cattlemen are seeking environmentally sound crops that can be profitable. And that is why local cattlemen as well as cattlemen all over the tropics are looking at kenaf. Kenaf adds value to the agroresidues such as wheat straw, rice straw, rice hulls, etc. These agroresidues are presently being produced in large numbers in the tropics. Up to now most of them are being burned or otherwise disposed of, creating environmental problems. By adding kenaf to agroresidues a high quality livestock feed can be produced. Kenaf at 120 days has less protein but excellent fiber for nonwood paper and fabrics. Long term industrial developments for kenaf are being explored by researchers. This research will expand the profit centers based on kenaf. Potential industrial uses for kenaf include a livestock feed pelletizing mill, building materials, cloth for clothing and bags, paper pulp, litter, oil absorbent, fertilizer and many more.
EcoAgroForestry based rural community development (RAICS) can spur local economic development in agricultural areas while reducing the public's growing environmental concerns. RAIC products offer safer and more responsible alternatives to nondegradable plastics, fossil fuels, and nonrecyclable materials. And the best part is, these RAIC products may not only alleviate depressed economics, and lessen human impact on land and water but also may offer a wide range of profitable opportunities to farmers, researchers, entrepreneurs and investors.
Q: Are RAICs limited to agroindustry plants?
A RAIC may include on 100+ hectares, a satellite feeder project. It may include 50+ hectares of kenaf; a market garden; 10+ hectares of Papaya trees; 10+ hectares communal tropical fruit orchard; 25+ equity sharing houses -low income built from local materials with no down payment in exchange for each one mentoring one street child (rural development includes bringing children off the city streets and garbage dumps back into a community, into a productive and potentiating environment); communal housing for 100 street children; a NatureTourism project; a Community Center with communal cafeteria and day care center; a small business and artisan incubator and computer center with access to the Internet with rental of space and time for using equipment by residents to develop small scale businesses.
If you are interested in how to participate in the development of a RAIC, contact Dr. Cross at Innovative EcoAgroForestry Technologies, Inc., Post Office Box 5208, Pine Bluff, AR 71611 USA FAX 501-367-8736; FAX 501-367-6127; EMAIL mailto:solync@cei.net
YOU CAN PROFIT FROM A RAIC!
About Dr. Carol Cross: Dr. Cross is a native of Monticello, Arkansas. She grew up on a small scale subsistence farm, using animal powered tools and implements. Some of the activities she gained expertise in was land clearing, plowing, cultivating, harvesting, haying, livestock care (cattle, pigs, goats, horses and mules, ducks, geese). She helped with horse logging and learned how to farm as a small scale subsistence farmer, using organic methods, manure and no pesticides.
She taught school in the Chicago Public Schools for 4 years then attended Oregon State University. She entered a doctoral program at the University of Oregon in Ecology and earned a doctorate in Biology in 1975, with an emphasis in theoretical plant population ecology. She then taught at the University of Oregon. Afterwards she traveled to Honduras and worked with campesinos and Indians teaching agricultural skills, living there about 8 years. She also served as a Mined Land Reclamation Specialist with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation .
She resumed small scale farming in Arkansas and has spent about 10 years formulating EcoAgroForestry, a new paradigm of development based on sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry and rural agroindustrial development. Through her group the EcoAgroForestry Trade and Development Center (EAFTDC) she is sponsoring a conference called the EcoAgroForestry Century Conference to be held in September 1996 in Southeast Arkansas. It is focusing on sharing methods for creating new systems for rural community development based on rural industrial development through sustainable use of agricultural and forestry resources combined with kenaf. She is pioneering the use of kenaf for tropical livestock feed. One project presently underway in the EAFTDC is the development of a small, portable machine for kenaf decortification.
She is presently writing several books, a) "The EcoAgroForestry Century" and b) "Kenaf and AgroResidues for Rural AgroIndustrial Development", which should be available in September at the conference. Plans are underway to start a school for those wanting to create EcoAgroForestry Village Business Incubators (VBI) in the tropics. The school is to be placed in Belize in October/November 1996.
By the middle of April, the EcoAgroForestry internet network will be started with Dr. Cross's home page up on World Wide Web on RAICs as well as the EcoAgroForestry (EAF) mailing list. To join, email Dr. Cross at mailto:solync@cei.net and request to suscribe to EAF-L.
Dr. Cross says, "Because of my wide rural and city experiences both in developing countries and the USA, my focus on rural agroindustrial development is deliberate. Farmers in our area took a beating last year from the commodity prices they received for their crops. It's time for a change, for farmers to begin developing value-added products. I recently spoke at a meeting of the Kellogg Foundation site visit here in the Arkansas Delta. Despite the long history of racial animosity, people are beginning to come together around the concept of rural agroindustrial development and Rural AgroIndustrial Centers (RAICs) in particular. Here in the Delta in Southeast Arkansas (called the "Third World" of the West by the New York Times), a group of innovative indigenous people, both AfroHeritage and Caucasian are banding together to create a new model for rural development called Rural AgroIndustrial Centers (RAICs). The idea of RAICs here in the Delta, where farmers can process their raw materials and create products that can be sold in local, national and on world markets makes sense to them. This RAIC movement is being spearheaded by Dr. Carol Cross, Director of the EcoAgroForestry Trade and Development Center (EAFTDC).
Carol Cross, PhD EcoAgroForestry Founder (501) 367-6127 (Ph) 2801 Olive, #35A, Suite 113 (501) 367-8736(FAX) Pine Bluff, AR 71611 Email: mailto:solync@cei.net Together we Can Create A Sustainable World Through EcoAgroForestry (Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Forestry and Rural AgroIndustrial Development). Form Consortiums & Develop a EcoAgroForestry Village Business Incubator (VBI) or Rural Agroindustrial Center (RAIC), NOW! Become an EcoAgroForestry Entrepreneur and Regreen the EarthHome!