Sunday 18 August 2013

Google paves way for Glass ads with 'pay-per-gaze' patent

Aug. 16, 2013

Dive summary:?

  • Google took?a step forward in bringing ads to Google Glass with a patent on a process it calls "pay-per-gaze."
  • The patent doesn't specifically mention Glass, but it mentions a "gaze tracking system" that requires a "head mounted gaze tracking device" and other descriptors that point to Glass.?
  • According to the patent, a user's gaze can be tracked to tell when they view an ad; advertisers would then be charged each time a user "gazed"?at an ad.?

From the article:?

"Individual privacy isn't completely thrown out the window, though. The patent states that 'personal identifying data may be removed from the data and provided to the advertisers as anonymous analytics'?and mentions possible incorporation of an opt-in or opt-out feature."

?

Source: http://www.marketingdive.com/news/google-paves-way-for-glass-ads-with-pay-per-gaze-patent/162028/

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Saturday 17 August 2013

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New Jersey governor to sign law easing pot use for sick kids

By Victoria Cavaliere

(Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Friday acted on new legislation that will make it easier for children and teenagers suffering from serious illnesses to obtain medical marijuana.

Christie agreed to sign the so-called pot-for-tots bill if the New Jersey legislature makes changes, including removing wording that would have reduced the number of required physician recommendations for children.

He also agreed that children should be allowed access to edible forms of marijuana besides lozenges, considered difficult for young patients to use properly, but asked for tighter language in the bill to be sure only minors can get the medication.

Christie agreed with other parts of the bill, including eliminating the three-strain cultivation limit on authorized dispensaries, which would allow growers to develop products tailored for individual patients, including some adults, according to proponents.

Christie, who is running for reelection as New Jersey's governor and widely considered a contender for president in 2016, gave his "conditional" approval to the bill but sent it back to the legislature with the suggested changes.

"I am making commonsense recommendations to this legislation to ensure sick children receive the treatment their parents prefer, while maintaining appropriate safeguards," he said in a statement.

New Jersey is one of 19 states with a medical marijuana program, but the state's rules have made it difficult for young patients to enroll in treatment, according to proponents of the bill.

The legislation has been sitting on Christie's desk for nearly two months and his conditional approval comes two days after he was confronted at a campaign stop by a Scotch Plains father whose 2-year-old suffers from Dravet Syndrome, a potentially deadly form of epilepsy.

Brian Wilson urged Christie in a restaurant full of voters to sign the bill saying, "Don't let my daughter die."

Wilson said the kind of marijuana that helps stop his daughter's seizures currently is grown only in Colorado.

Christie acknowledged that marijuana is a controlled substance under U.S. federal law and "implementing a state controlled program while the drug remains illegal has raised numerous challenges." The administration of President Barack Obama has discouraged federal prosecutors from pursuing people who distribute marijuana for medical purposes under state laws.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Prudence Crowther)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jersey-governor-sign-law-easing-pot-sick-kids-224543877.html

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Kendrick Lamar 'Ain't The King,' Papoose Says On 'Control' Freestyle

Brooklyn MC had previously said he and Kendrick were on the 'same page,' but it doesn't look that way on his new track.
By Rob Markman

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1712476/papoose-kendrick-lamar-control-response.jhtml

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Friday 16 August 2013

Cartes sworn in as president of Paraguay

ASUNCION: Conservative businessman Horacio Cartes was sworn in as president of Paraguay on Thursday, amid slowly improving relations with South American neighbors damaged by the 2012 ouster of leftist president Fernando Lugo.

As cathedral bells pealed, Cartes prayed for "wisdom, prudence and justice to fulfill my duty to serve the noble Paraguayan people."

Cartes, 57, whose election on April 21 returned to power the Colorado party of the late dictator Alfredo Stroessner, took the oath of office in the gardens of the presidential palace.

He used his inaugural address to pledge a "war on poverty" in a country where 39 percent of the seven-million people are poor.

"If in five years, we haven't substantially reduced poverty, all our work will have been for nothing," he said.

He also reached out to the leaders of neighboring states attending the ceremony, saying his "strong predisposition is to maintain cordial bilateral relations rather than aggravate differences of the moment."

"Our intention is that we become closer. Understanding and cooperation honor us," he said.

Conspicuously absent at Cartes' inauguration was Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, a close leftist ally of Lugo who was pointedly not invited to the ceremony. Also missing were the leaders of Ecuador and Bolivia.

But the presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Peru were there, signalling an end to the international ostracism Paraguay experienced in the wake of the political crisis two years ago.

And Maduro sent Cartes a letter of congratulations, pledging to do everything in his power for a "prompt return" of Paraguay to Mercosur.

Paraguay was suspended from the South American trading bloc in June 2012 after its Congress abruptly impeached and forced out Lugo, who was blamed for the deaths of 17 people in a clash between police and armed peasants.

Mercosur's presidents said in July that the organization would lift the suspension after Cartes' inauguration, but Paraguay has said it will not return to the trading bloc as long as Venezuela holds its rotating presidency.

Cartes met separately on Wednesday with Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff and Chile's President Sebastian Pinera.

On Thursday after the ceremony he held talks with Uruguay's President Jose Mujica, Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, and Peru's Ollanta Humala.

"We had a good exchange of views," Kirchner said afterwards.

Cartes' designated foreign minister, Eladio Loizaga, has said the new government would pursue relations with Mercosur members Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay bilaterally.

Unasur, a regional security organization that also suspended Paraguay over the Lugo ouster, announced over the weekend that it was lifting the measure in view of the April elections, which it said were held "with total normality and broad citizen participation."

Cartes replaces Federico Franco, a Liberal party leader who has led the country since Lugo's ouster.

Also at the inauguration were Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou and Prince Felipe?of Spain.

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/cartes-sworn-in-as/778250.html

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Megafauna Extinction Affects Ecosystems 12,000 Years Later

A researcher describes how his mathematical model based on heat diffusion reveals the critical role played by large animals in dispersing nutrients


Glyptodon

MEGA MUCKER: Megafauna such as Glyptodon were muck-spreaders. Image: Flickr/Jan Stefka

Editor's note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation UK, an online publication covering the latest research.

By Chris Doughty, University of Oxford

If Earth were like a human body, large animals might be its arteries, moving nutrients from where they?re abundant to where they?re needed. Currently the planet has large regions where life is limited by a lack of key nutrients such as phosphorus. The Eastern Amazon basin, for example, is composed of trees that grow relatively slowly due to limited phosphorus. Likewise, animal life in much of the central Amazon is limited by a shortage of sodium.

As recently as 12,000 years ago, much of the world looked like an African savanna. South America teemed with large animals which overlapped with stone age humans, including several species of elephant-like creatures, giant ground sloths, and armadillo-like creatures the size of a small car.


Skeleton of Megatherium, the giant tree sloth.
Image: Ballista

In South America, most nutrients originate in the Andes mountain range and are washed into the forests through the river system. However, on dry land, these nutrients are in short supply unless they are transported by animals in their bodies and deposited in their dung. While small animals distribute nutrients over small distances, large animals have a much greater range. For instance, big animals have larger home ranges than small animals, they eat more, and they have longer guts. When these large animals became extinct, their habitat lost not only them but the nutrients they moved.

With colleagues, I developed a mathematical model, similar to one used by physicists to calculate the diffusion of heat, to estimate the ability of animals to distribute nutrients. The model is based on the body size of the animal, drawing on existing data of their fossilized remains. From this, we can estimate how much the animals ate, defecated, and the range and distance they travelled.

Our model indicated that large animals are not just important, but disproportionately more important than small animals for spreading nutrients. This model allows us to calculate the ability of animals to distribute nutrients anywhere on the planet at any time, if the animal?s average size and distribution is known. It can also be used to estimate the effects of past extinctions, such as those in the Amazon. And furthermore it can forecast the effects of potential events in the future, for example the effects on soil fertility in Africa if elephants became extinct.

We found mass extinctions of large animals in the Amazon 12,000 years ago switched off this natural nutrient pump by a massive 98%. Vital nutrients such as phosphorus were no longer spread around the region but became concentrated in those areas that bordered the floodplains. Even thousands of years after the extinctions, the Amazon basin has not yet recovered from this step change. Nutrients may continue to decline in the Amazon and other global regions for thousands of years to come.

People add nutrients to the planet by using fertiliser in agriculture. However, while large animals tend to distribute nutrients, we tend to concentrate them. Large animals such as cattle are now fenced and unable to spread nutrients around the way free-ranging creatures once did. So today, certain areas have too many nutrients (areas near agriculture) and other areas too few (natural ecosystems).

On today?s planet, the supply of nutrients in the soil is determined by river deposits or nutrients that are airborne. Yet this analysis suggests that we may be experiencing a peculiar post-extinction phase in the Amazon, and probably many other parts of the world where large animals once played a vital role in fertilizing their landscape. If humans contributed to the mass extinction of big animals 12,000 years ago, then the human impact on the environment at a global scale began even before the dawn of agriculture.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/ScientificAmerican-News/~3/halzBOKTQ_4/article.cfm

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GOP pushes rising stars amid calls for solutions

BOSTON (AP) ? Republican officials are looking to promote a fresh group of diverse rising stars to help resolve their election woes, while frustrated party elders insist that all Republicans must offer more solutions for the nation's most pressing issues.

The calls for change come nine months after a painful 2012 election in which the GOP lost the presidential race and a handful of close Senate contests. A tug of war over the Republican Party's future is on display as conservative activists and party leaders from across the country gather in Boston this week for the Republican National Committee's annual summer meeting.

"We have to get beyond being anti-Obama," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared at the gathering Wednesday, offering a particularly harsh critique of Republican strategy on health care.

Gingrich said congressional Republicans would have "zero answer" for how to replace the president's health care overhaul when asked, despite their having voted repeatedly to repeal the measure.

"We are caught right now in a culture, and you see it every single day, where as long as we're negative and as long as we're vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don't have to learn anything. And so we don't," Gingrich said. "This is a very deep problem."

While there is little sign of GOP unity on solutions for immigration, health care or a looming budget standoff, RNC officials are launching a program to highlight a new generation of Republican leaders ? largely younger and more ethnically diverse ? to help broaden the party's appeal among women and minorities, groups that overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama in the last election. The program supplements an ongoing effort to expand Republican outreach among minority communities across the country.

Women voted for Obama by an 11-point margin in 2012, and they have not backed a GOP candidate for president since Ronald Reagan's successful bid for re-election in 1984. Although last year's nominee, Mitt Romney, improved on John McCain's margin of victory among whites in 2008, Romney fared worse than McCain among Hispanic and Asian voters, who make up a growing share of the U.S. population.

The RNC on Thursday was introducing the first four members of its "Rising Stars" program:

?Karin Agness, founder and president of the Network of enlightened Women, or NeW. The Indiana native started the organization for conservative university women in 2004 while at the University of Virginia.

?Scott G. Erickson, a San Jose, Calif., police officer for 15 years and a writer for The Foundry, the blog of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.

?Marilinda Garcia, a Hispanic and New Hampshire state representative first elected at 23. Now in her fourth term, she serves on the executive board of the immigration reform group Americans by Choice.

?T.W. Shannon, an African-American and speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. The Lawton native is a business consultant and an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation.

The panel will be featured during a discussion Thursday that is expected to be the first of many high-profile appearances designed to help the party shed the image that it is too old and white. Republican officials have long fought that stereotype, but RNC communications director Sean Spicer says this time will be different.

"We have the resources and the bandwidth to be able to actually promote these people," Spicer said. "We just weren't in the position to do that years ago."

Indeed, the committee has crafted plans, backed by new staffing, cash and online tools, to ensure that the fresh faces aren't forgotten after this week's meeting.

Press aides have been assigned to help drive media coverage focused on demographic groups instead of geographic regions: youth, women, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and African-Americans. And the RNC has created an online database for the first time that allows staffers to quickly find fresh faces for media interviews. For example, an RNC spokesman said the tool could quickly locate a female Hispanic mom from New Jersey for a relevant media interview.

Officials hope that promoting new faces will help deliver more votes in next year's midterm elections and beyond, although critics in and out of the party suggest that may not be enough unless the party adopts a more solution-oriented message. Republican leaders have been slow to embrace solutions on issues critical to minority voters, particularly immigration.

House Republicans are resisting a comprehensive immigration bill that passed with bipartisan support in the Senate. An RNC report released this spring concluded that the GOP "must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our party's appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only."

Asked about the party's so-called identity crisis, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said it would take time to resolve.

"I have to focus on the things that I most control," he said, citing effort to add staffers and improve data sharing.

In the meantime, Priebus, too, said his party must focus on solutions.

"We have to be a party that promotes a positive plan for the future," he said, while declining to take a position on a possible Republican-backed government shutdown this fall. "I think we've done it, but I think we've got to do a much better job."

__

AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-pushes-rising-stars-amid-calls-solutions-073011633.html

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Ecko Unltd Spray


Looks aren't everything, and a fun design can't make up for a device performing poorly. The Ecko Unltd Spray looks striking, taking Marc Ecko's graffiti aesthetic and turning it into a Bluetooth speaker that looks like a can of spray paint. It's gimmicky, but surprisingly functional and simple to use. Sadly, at $159.99 (direct), it needs to do more than look good and work easily. A speaker needs to sound good, and with a very strange sound profile that leans too bright, the Spray simply doesn't. If you can spend a little more, you can get far superior sound from the less gimmicky-designed Editors' Choice?Bose SoundLink Mini.

Spray Paint Design
The Spray looks like a spray paint can. In fact, despite its all-around metal grille, a casual glance could easily make you think that it is a can of spray paint. It's a 14.6-ounce black cylinder that's 2.6 inches in diameter, with a clear plastic cap that makes it 8.2 inches long (7.8 inches without the cap). While it's a cylinder, the front is clearly shown with a rectangular rubber Ecko Unltd logo on the grille and the view of the speaker's twin drivers behind the grille.

The cap covers a "nozzle" that gives the speaker most of its spray paint aesthetic and serves as the control system. A large metallic sticker on the back of the speaker, just above the micro USB and 3.5mm audio input, offers detailed instructions on how to use the Spray?while giving it even more of a faux-can aesthetic by appearing like a warning label. The clear cap is curved at the top to serve as a stand, letting you place the Spray horizontally. While it's cylindrical, the Spray is meant to be placed with the drivers facing the listener; it's not designed to be omnidirectional like the UE Boom.?

To use the speaker, just take the plastic cap off and press the nozzle down until it turns on. It will automatically go into pairing mode the first time you use it. After that, just hold the nozzle down for several seconds when it's turned off to go into pairing mode. After it's connected, the nozzle serves as a button and twist dial that can adjust volume, shuffle between songs, and accept phone calls. It's a surprisingly clever way to control the speaker while letting it keep its unique look (and distinguish it from other cylindrical speakers, like the Logitech UE Boom). The large nozzle is also easy to learn and use, thanks to its intuitive twist design. It turns left and right and can be pressed like a button, which is all you need to control a Bluetooth speaker.

Performance
The Spray can put out a good amount of sound for its small size, but its sound profile is strange even for a portable speaker. The deep bass is non-existent, and the speaker seems to bring out the higher bass and lower mids to compensate, resulting in bass guitar and synth riffs standing out against a complete lack of actual thump. Mids and high-mids sound overly bright, and treble response gets downright tinny at times. In the opening of The Heavy's "How You Like Me Now," the bass and horns both stood out against the other instruments, with the prominent bass line giving the song a "wobbly" feeling and the already characteristically bright brass almost squealing, while the drums had almost no impact outside of the high attack of the snares.

Bass response at higher volumes becomes atrocious. In our bass test track, The Knife's "Silent Shout," the Spray distorted the deep synth notes with notable pops and crackling, and the intro to the song sounded particularly buzzy. This is slightly surprising because the bass was barely there to begin with on the speaker; I hoped it would just ignore the bass material entirely, rather than try and reproduce it.

The Ecko Unltd Spray's unique design is quite functional and visually striking, but it's not enough to carry its mediocre audio performance. It can get loud and it sounds decent, but it can't seem to break past "decent" into genuinely "good." We would have liked it a lot more if it cost $100 instead of $160. If you have the wiggle room in your budget, spend the extra $40 and pick up either the Editors' Choice Bose SoundLink II, which offers vastly superior sound quality, or the UE Boom, which offers great sound quality (though not quite as good as the SoundLink II) and a rugged, flexible design.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/ninp7-aEFRQ/0,2817,2423166,00.asp

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Thursday 15 August 2013

Talks resume as Israel frees Palestinians, pursues settlements

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli and Palestinian negotiators reconvened U.S.-brokered peace talks in Jerusalem on Wednesday amid little fanfare and low expectations, dogged by plans for more Jewish settler homes on occupied land.

An Israeli official, who declined to be named and who was briefed on the talks that were held at an undisclosed Jerusalem location, described them as serious and said the parties agreed to meet again soon.

No details were given on the subject matter of the talks. The parties have agreed to refrain from revealing information in order to raise the chances for success, officials said.

The resumption of negotiations, after a first round in Washington last month that ended a three-year stand-off over Jewish settlement building, followed Palestinian celebrations overnight as Israel released 26 of their jailed brethren.

Optimism was in short supply before the first official meeting in Jerusalem, a holy city at the heart of their conflict, in nearly five years.

"Israel will resort to feints and evasion and put up impossible demands in order to say that these negotiations are fruitless and to continue its policy of stealing land as it has done until this moment," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official tasked by President Mahmoud Abbas to comment on the talks.

Israel has published plans for 3,100 new settler homes in recent days, drawing U.S. and other international concern and deepening Palestinian distrust.

Tzipi Livni, Israel's chief peace negotiator and justice minister, said on her Facebook page before the teams met: "Today, I will continue the important mission I began - to achieve a peace agreement that will keep the country Jewish and democratic and provide security ... for Israel and its citizens."

Israeli cabinet minister Yaakov Peri said a "long and exhausting trek" lay ahead. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has set a goal of nine months for an agreement to be reached.

"Both for the Palestinians and for us, the hourglass is running out. We will not have many more opportunities to resolve this dispute," Peri told Army Radio.

PRISONER RELEASE

In the small hours of Wednesday, Israel freed the 26 Palestinians jailed between 1985 and 2001, many for deadly attacks on Israelis. Their release, coupled with Abbas's dropping of a demand for a settlement freeze before talks could begin, helped to pave the way towards negotiations.

Joyous crowds, fireworks and V-for-Victory signs greeted the former prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The scenes did little to boost optimism in Israel about prospects for peace.

"I think that today is a sad day to start negotiating about peace with people who accepted murderers as heroes," said Erez Goldman, an Israeli resident of Jerusalem. "I cannot see that anyway these peace negotiations are going anywhere."

Few on either side see swift resolution to longstanding problems such as borders, settlements, the status of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

Yet neither Abbas nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to attract blame for putting the brakes on U.S. attempts at peace, a product of Kerry's intensive shuttle diplomacy. Negotiations are set to continue every few weeks in venues including Jericho in the occupied West Bank.

Israel says it supports Kerry's nine-month timeline but in the past few days has rattled world powers by announcing its plans to increase its settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas it captured along with the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel quit Gaza in 2005 but wants to keep East Jerusalem and swathes of West Bank settlements, seeing them as a security bulwark and the realization of a Jewish birthright to biblical land. Most world powers deem the settlements illegal.

Nearly 600,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among 2.5 million Palestinians.

Speaking to reporters in Brazil on Tuesday, Kerry said he had a "very frank and open, direct discussion" in a phone call with Netanyahu.

Kerry appeared to associate the new settlement announcements with internal Israeli politics, saying "there are realities of life in Israel that have to be taken into account here".

Such construction helps to mollify pro-settler factions in Netanyahu's rightist coalition government, one of which, the Jewish Home party, opposes Palestinian statehood and tried unsuccessfully to vote down the prisoner release.

Despite anger from the families of some victims, Israel has promised to free a total of 104 inmates in the next few months. Thousands of Palestinians, many of them convicted on security-related charges, remain in Israeli jails.

"I never expected to see him again. My feelings cannot be described in words. The joy of the whole world is with me," said Adel Mesleh, whose brother Salama Mesleh was jailed in 1993 for killing an Israeli. "I am happy he was freed as a result of negotiations. Negotiations are good."

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Noah Browning, Ali Sawafta and Hamouda Hassan in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by David Stamp, Will Waterman and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/talks-resume-israel-frees-palestinians-pursues-settlements-062239512.html

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Wednesday 14 August 2013

Former ?Bachelor? Star Gia Allemand In Critical Condition On Life Support

What is wrong with Gia Allemand?Gia Allemand, the 29-year-old season 14 “The Bachelor” star, is in critical condition after being rushed to the hospital on Monday night with a mystery illness. Allemand is hospitalized in the ICU at the University Hospital in New Orleans on life support. Gia, who is dating NBA Basketball player Ryan Anderson of the New Orleans ...

Copyright - Stupid Celebrities Gossip 2013. If you see this content on any other website, it has been stolen. Please report.

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/08/former-bachelor-star-gia-allemand-in-critical-condition-on-life-support/

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The Right Way to Eat Breakfast For Weight Loss - Health News and ...

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Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, because of so many reasons. But you need to make sure that you?re doing it right. If you?re trying to maintain or lose weight, here are some things to consider when enjoying your first meal of the day.

Eat it soon: Studies have found that eating breakfast jump-starts your metabolism, and not only that, it can help ensure that you don?t feel so starved later that you make bad eating choices for lunch or dinner. To take advantage of your body?s fat-burning potential, try to eat breakfast soon after waking up.

Go for filling: Stay away from foods that can lead to a midmorning crash. Instead, opt for meals that are full of slow-digesting nutrients to help keep you satisfied throughout the morning; high-fiber, high-protein breakfast options are a good choice for feeling full and energized. And make sure your breakfast doesn?t have too much sugar in it ? here are seven low-sugar, high-protein and fiber breakfast ideas that fit the bill.

Watch out for portions: A big breakfast can help fill you up, but you don?t want to overdo it. Check out our handy chart of what servings sizes should look like, and keep calories in check with this list of the amount of calories in typical breakfasts.

Source: http://news.health.com/2013/08/13/the-right-way-to-eat-breakfast-for-weight-loss/

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The Future Of Nigeria Lies In Agriculture | RISE NETWORKS

(By?Skoll World Forum)

?We were not looking at agriculture through the right lens. We were looking at agriculture as a developmental activity, like a social sector in which you manage poor people in rural areas. But agriculture is not a social sector. Agriculture is a business. Seed is a business, fertiliser is a business, storage, value added, logistics and transport ? it is all about business.?

In the 1960s, before it turned to oil, Nigeria was one of the most promising agricultural producers in the world. Between 1962 and 1968, export crops were the country?s main foreign exchange earner. The country was number one globally in palm oil exports, well ahead of Malaysia and Indonesia, and exported 47 percent of all groundnuts, putting it ahead of the US and Argentina.

But its status as an agricultural powerhouse has declined, and steeply. While Nigeria once provided 18 percent of the global production of cocoa, second in the world in the 1960s, that figure is now down to 8 percent. And while the country produces 65 percent of tomatoes in west Africa, it is now the largest importer of tomato paste.

Nigeria?s minister for agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, reels off these statistics with regret as he discusses the country?s deteriorating agriculture sector. ?Nigeria is known for nothing else than oil, and it is so sad, because we never used to have oil ? all we used to have was agriculture,? he says.

Nigeria?s oil has come at the detriment of the agriculture sector, he claims, ?and that is why we had a rising poverty situation. We were having growth but without robust growth able to impact millions of people because it is not connecting to agriculture.?

That might explain why Nigeria?s economic statistics are so puzzling. While the country has been posting high growth figures, and makes it into Goldman Sachs? ?Next 11? emerging markets group, absolute poverty is rising, with almost 100 million people living on less than a $1.25 a day. The National Bureau of Statistics says 60.9 percent of Nigerians in 2010 were living in absolute poverty, up from 54.7 percent in 2004.

But it is not just oil that has hollowed out the agriculture sector, with knock-on effects on poverty rates. Restrictive trade policies also had an effect, especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tariff increases, a rise in import licenses and duties, and export bans and tariffs ? as well as a centralisation of marketing of agricultural produce through the formation of crop-specific commodity boards ? all created a lumbering, inefficient private sector, as well as opening up many opportunities for corruption. Today, Nigeria has transitioned from being a self-sufficient country in food to being a net importer, spending $11bn on imports of rice, fish and sugar. ?It just makes absolutely no sense to me at all,? says Mr Adesina. ?My job is to change that.?

Not everything is in the minister?s hands, of course. Climate change poses a threat to Nigerian agriculture ? the World Bank recently predicted an up to 30 percent drop in the country?s crop output due to erratic rainfall and higher temperatures. But when it comes to achievable changes, Mr Adesina seems well placed to act on what lies within reach, combining an encyclopaedic knowledge of his country?s agriculture sector with a clear strategic vision.

While ministers? portfolio?s are often fast-changing, giving them limited time to develop expertise in any given sector, Mr Adesina has a strong background as vice president of policy and partnerships at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra), and a decade at the Rockefeller Foundation. He was appointed by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon as one of 17 global leaders to spearhead the Millennium Development Goals. His energy is palpable, and he looks well positioned to engineer a major turnaround in Nigerian agriculture.

The change needed, he says, requires a shift in mindset. ?We were not looking at agriculture through the right lens. We were looking at agriculture as a developmental activity, like a social sector in which you manage poor people in rural areas. But agriculture is not a social sector. Agriculture is a business. Seed is a business, fertiliser is a business, storage, value added, logistics and transport ? it is all about business.?

He wants to change the sector?s image, putting it at the forefront of national development. ?Agriculture is the future of Nigeria. And agriculture that is modernised, that is productive, that is competitive. We must be a global player,? he says.

Nigeria?s respected finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, speaks positively about Mr Adesina?s reforms to date ? especially in cleaning up the corrupt fertiliser industry. Now, rather than directly participating in the delivery system for fertiliser, the government leaves that to the private sector and only provides the subsidy. This change has tackled 40 years of corruption, and ended it ? Mr Adesina claims ? in 90 days.

Ms Okonjo-Iweala says it has been easier to work with Mr Adesina than previous ministers. ?It is not only about doling out subsidies which do not reach farmers,? she says. ?That was frustrating for me the first time [I was finance minister]. Now he came and cleaned up the fertiliser issues.?

Nigeria is now seeking to add 20m metric tonnes to the domestic food supply by 2015 and to create 3.5 million jobs through agriculture. This requires more sophisticated thinking about the value addition of individual crops ? cassava being but one example. ?We are the largest producer of cassava in the world, at 40m metric tonnes, but I want us to become the largest processor of cassava as well,? Mr Adesina claims. ?We can focus on using cassava for starch, dry cassava chips for export to China, cassava flour to replace some of the wheat flour that we are importing. So we are restructuring the space for the private sector to add value to every single thing.?

Financial linkages

Finance is the critical catalyst to growth, and in Nigeria it has proven hard to link the two. ?You find that only 2 percent of all bank lending in Nigeria goes into agriculture ? a sector that is 40 percent of GDP and 70 percent of employment. The reason was because banks could not find the money trail in the agriculture sector,? Mr Adesina says.

That is beginning to change, with banks starting to look again at the opportunities offered by agriculture ? which in part follows the reforms implemented by Mr Adesina?s administration to root out corruption and improve efficiency. Last year, his ministry developed a facility with the Central Bank of Nigeria ? helped by donor assistance from the UK, German and US development agencies ? called Nirsal, an agribusiness initiative that provides risk management, financing, trading, and strategic solutions.

The $50m facility, which leverages $3.5bn, reduces the risk of agricultural lending by providing credit risk guarantees and brokerage services to buyers and sellers of agricultural commodities, including structured buyer forums. It also, selectively, buys on its own account to bring stability to markets. In addition, Nirsal offers advice designed to connect suppliers with downstream buyers.

This is part of a market-smart initiative, ?rather than a heavy handed intervention in the sector. ?With banks you cannot beg them to lend because they are taking care of their people?s money, so you create the value and they see the value and lend,? he says.

While banks have often had a high perceived risk of lending to agriculture, the terms can be competitive if the sector functions well. Mr Adesina worked directly with the managing directors and chief risk officers of Nigeria?s banks in order to tackle what he saw as a misperception of risk, at least if the sector?s flaws ? including inefficiencies and corruption ? could be cleaned up. ?What we have shown the banks is that agriculture gives as high and competitive a rate of return as other sectors if structured properly. But for banks to lend, we had to fix the agricultural value chain. Now the banks are all exploding on agriculture in Nigeria.?

The percentage of lending by banks to the sector was just 1 percent in 2010 ? now it is 4 percent, with a target of 10 percent. Last year, banks embarked on lending to seed companies for the first time in Nigeria. ?We did an assessment at the end of the season,? recalls Mr Adesina. ?The central bank governor asked the banks how much money did you lose lending to these guys last year? All the banks said zero percent. This year we expect the banks to lend $400m to seed companies alone. The reason their losses are zero is because we have changed the way we structure our agriculture sector.? The best performing stocks in the Nigerian Stock Exchange are now not banks, but agricultural companies.

Crucially, it is institutional reform ? rather than simply heavier public spending ? which can best unleash financing in the sector. ?I do not think that throwing money at anything solves problems. It is all about policy reforms, creating incentives, getting the private sector in there, getting financial markets behind agriculture. Our goal is to become an agriculturally industrialised economy. Nigeria should be like Brazil, as far as I am concerned,? says Mr Adesina.

?Of course you need public financing of critical things like infrastructure, roads, and irrigation facilities ? those are public goods that governments are obviously spending money on. But the greatest way is through the private sector.?

(Source: Forbes)

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?Opinion pieces of this sort published on RISE Networks are those of the original authors and do not in anyway represent the thoughts, beliefs and ideas of RISE Networks.?

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Source: http://risenetworks.org/2013/08/12/the-future-of-nigeria-lies-in-agriculture/

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