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If There Were No Bananas
In the wealthy, northern countries of the world, we tend to take bananas for granted, a pleasant but not essential dessert food that we know comes from the tropics. What most do not know is that for much of the developing world, bananas and their very close relatives, plantains, are a staple food. If fact bananas and plantains are the world fourth most important staple food crop. Yet little research has been done to ensure the survival of this vital food crop. Grown by resource poor farmers from the Philippines to Costa Rica, bananas have been blamed for the rise in slash and burn farming and at the same time are threatened by a host of diseases that have already reduced banana harvests by half in many parts of Africa. Baobab's video, produced for the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP), shows both the level of the threat and the work being done in many countries to ensure the survival of this important crop.
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IDRC @ 30
The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has become a model for strategic use of limited international development assistance. In short maximum impact with the available resources. Their essential paradigm for thirty years has been to develop the research capacity and infrastructure that will enable emerging nations to solve their own problems. The institution celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2000 and Baobab produced a special testimonial video with voices and images from participants in IDRC projects from all over the globe. The project was unique in that all the interviews and shooting were done on location by local video crews. Shooting guidelines with set-up diagrams, framing samples and interview questions were all transmitted via the internet. The resulting ten minute video is a testament to the video production skill level now present in many developing countries.
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AQUAtox 2000
Baobab produced a video with music and a video news release package to celebrate and document this innovative project in which primary and secondary students from 90 schools in around the world learned to use sophisticated bioassay techniques to monitor community water quality. Most of the schools were in developing countries and had to show great ingenuity to overcome lack of a formal infrastructure or proper test equipment. Baobab visited participating schools in Burkina Faso, Mexico, the Ukraine, the Philippines and in Germany and Canada. The result is a video that shows how much young people all over the world care about the environment.
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Centres of Action
For this series of thirteen short broadcast items about food security in the developing countries the focus was on Asia and Africa. For 9 weeks Baobab video taped stories in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Mali, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. Each showed farmers and committed researchers working together to solve some of the most difficult problems in the hungriest part of the world. The resulting stories are available on VHS tape, Video CD or as a computer playable CR-ROM. Centres of Action was produced with the support of the Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA.
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Food Security for the World's Poorest
Baobab was proud and pleased when the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) accepted our proposal to produce a series of broadcast features about food security in the developing world. The result was eleven features that were broadcast on The Canadian Farm, a weekly rural magazine program broadcast on affiliates of the CTV television network in Canada. The series focused on participatory research work being done by research institutes of the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Baobab shot on location in Mexico, Colombia and Peru as well as in Baltimore in the USA for the series. The PBS program, Market to Market also broadcast a summary story based on Baobab's material. The series is available on VHS tape, Video CD and on computer-playable CD-ROM.
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Net Worth
In Bangladesh lack of food security is one of the greatest barriers to progress. Much of the country is flooded every year by the monsoon rains and tropical cyclones. This short feature, made for the World Fish Center, ICLARM, documents a project that enabled women to raise fish in unused ponds left behind after the rains. The impact has been profound. There is more high quality protein for rural families and women have some control over how family
resources are managed. In addition to producing the video, Baobab also wrote an accompanying booklet for the Gender Program of the CGIAR.
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Behind the Face of Impact
The Navrongo Health Research Centre in northern Ghana is breaking new ground in research into health care interventions that will make a huge difference to millions of people in Africa. The Centre caught much of the medical world's attention in 1995 when it completed a major research study into the efficacy of using impregnated bed nets for malaria prevention in children (see "Dripping the Net on Malaria" below). Now Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
has chosen to highlight the work of the researchers of Navrongo in a new 10 minute video: Navrongo -- Behind the face of Impact. It shows the people doing the research work and features interviews with local people who have seen the difference the research centre has made to their lives. The video is available in English and French.
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Stopping the White Plague
If plants were the only victims, few would care. Clodomiro Ramos is as much a victim as his beans are. A farmer in the Dominican Republic, he stands in the middle of what should have been a rich and profitable bean field. But this season because of a disease called 'bean golden mosaic' he will harvest nothing. A whole set of plant diseases, related to the one that has wiped him out, is sweeping the tropical and sub-tropical worlds. These insidious diseases have two things in common. All are devastating to crops, ruining the livelihoods of thousands of farm families and reducing the supply of nutritious food for the world's poorest and they are all transmitted by a tiny insect called the whitefly. White Plague is a short feature that, for the first time, documents the magnitude of the problem. It was shot on location in East Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico and Colombia. The video was nominated this year at the prestigious Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival in the Educational/Instructional category and was produced for the Intercenter Whitefly Initiative of the CGIAR.
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The Bean Dreamers of Africa
"Beans are everything. You think about beans, you dream beans," says Reuben Otsyula, at the beginning of Baobab's production, Bean Dreamers. Reuben is a plant pathologist with Kenya's Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), based in Kakamega, Kenya. He's lived in the region all his life. He knows what he is talking about. Bean Dreamers, a fifteen minute video, shows the important work being done in eastern and central Africa to ensure that one of the continent's most valuable sources of protein not only survives, but flourishes. Taped on location in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, farmers and scientists
tell how new research work is improving the lives of ordinary farmers and the nutrition of millions of Africa's poorest people.
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Dripping the Net on Malaria
An insecticide found in ordinary lice shampoo may be the difference between life and death for millions of African children. This was recently shown in two massive studies conducted by international scientific teams in Ghana and Kenya. If children sleep under bednets impregnated with the insecticide they will dramatically reduce their chances of dying from malaria. Baobab Productions supplied a video package to television news organizations around the world on the day the dramatic results
were published. The video news release material was used in Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Ghana and other countries. The package was produced for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO).
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Voices for Change in the Andes
To Leave Something More is an award winning documentary feature about the work of the Andean Bean Research Network. By looking at two specific projects in Ecuador, the film illustrates the commitment of researchers and farmers to work together to improve both the food supply and the environment. They do this on the precarious slopes of the Andes mountains. It is on these beautiful but dangerous slopes that many farmers must grow their crops. One of the farmer groups involved in the work has a motto that inspired the title of this film. They say: "It is always better to leave more, not less." The documentary was produced for CIAT, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture.
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Farmers' Simple Eloquence Speaks Loudly
Every Corner of the Land, another documentary feature produced for CIAT, premiered in October at the 50th. anniversary celebrations of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Every Corner of the Land tells the story of an innovative, participatory, research program in which farmers tested environmentally-sensitive methods to control crop-destroying pests. They wanted to replace the epidemic level of spraying they had been doing. The story is told with the simple but riveting words of two farmers -- Gerardo Soto Vargas and Florentino Quille and with the passionate words of Dr. Cesar Cardona, the scientist who felt compelled to help them find a way out of their chemical quagmire. Every Corner of the Land has been broadcast in Canada on CBC Newsworld's "Planet Watch" as well as on CJOH-TV's "Valley Farmer."
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Patarroyo and the Malaria Vaccine
Dr. Manuel Patarroyo, a scientist renowned in his home country of Colombia, has had trouble getting respect for his institution's work from scientists in countries like the United States and Canada. Nevertheless, he and his colleagues achieved something no well-funded northern scientists could do. They developed the world's first, safe malaria vaccine. It is also the first vaccine ever developed to combat a parasite. For eight years this work--which could have an enormous impact on the incidence of deadly malaria in the countries of the South--was ignored by the scientific establishment in the North. But not any more. We visited Patarroyo's "Institute
of Immunology" in Bogota and from the footage we shot there produced a video pack. It was released to coincide with a visit he was making to Canada, sponsored in part by Canada's International Development Research Centre. Baobab footage was included by the Canadian Discovery Channel in the set-up piece they did to introduce their interview with Dr. Patarroyo.
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Integrated Pest Management in the Andes
CHEMICAL-FREE BEANS
This four minute video pack shows how environmentally-sensitive techniques, collectively called Integrated Pest Management (IPM), can reduce much of a farmer's need to use chemical pesticides on bean crops in the Andes Mountain region of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. This video is designed as a TV news feature and is based on our longer video Every Corner of the Land.
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From Field to Lab and Back
WOMEN IN RICE FARMING SYSTEMS
Rice is arguably the world's most important food crop and in Asia women do between 40% and 80% of the physical labour involved in growing it. Improving the productivity of rice farmers is vital to the food security of the planet. But most research has failed to focus on the key areas of rice production that women control. They have dealt instead with what male farmers do. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based in the Philippines, established a special research program to redress this imbalance in farming systems research. Baobab has produced a short book, describing the workings of this special program, for the World Bank's Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
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