Mailbox

We are publishing on our 'Mailbox' page extracts of letters sent to the editorial team at CTA. These letters have been selected for their potential interest to other readers of Spore. We shall also be publishing correspondence arising from CTA's Question and Answer Service. Readers are therefore invited to send us further information on subjects covered in Spore.

Spore would also be pleased to receive short articles and news items on agriculture and rural development in ACP countries; these will be considered for publication in our 'In Brief' pages. Finally, under the heading 'Viewpoint' we will continue to publish personal opinions on the subject of agricultural development in general.

Please send your correspondence to Spore at CTA in the Netherlands (see back page for our address) and please note that we are unable to return manuscripts. dams on these streams for the development of irrigated agriculture has made all these efforts valueless, and the situation of trout fishery that has already started to deteriorate by the unproper action of some people has highly been exacerbated.

Without the conservation and development of capture fishery being the top priority, to plan or perform any development work of fish farming will be of no value."

MARKET ORIENTED AGRICULTURE

· Million Tadesse, Alaba, Ethiopia: "Make the bulletin as a multidisciplinary one; mostly I found CTA focusing on the agronomic part of agricultural development. What about the socio-economic aspects?"

Spore: This proposal fits very well with the conclusions of the recent CTA seminar on Priority information themes for ACP agriculture: priority should be given to information on economic/marketing aspects of agricultural production.

CIPRE TAKES UP THE CHALLENGE

· Jean-Blaise Kenmogne, Cercle International pour la Promotion de la Creation, Bafoussam, Cameroon: "Following the article which was published in Spore 62 (French version) and Spore 63 (English version) on compost making, many people have written for more detailed information on how to make compost from household waste. In order to respond to all these requests, we have decided to produce a small technical booklet on how to make and use compost."

SPORE AS A TEACHING AID

· Jean Kudadje, Cercle des Jeunes pour l'lntégration et le Développement des Communautés Villageoises, Lomé, Togo: "I would like to express my admiration for your efforts to improve Spore. In my view, Spore is a most effective means of communicating information for helping to improve the work of community development organizations in the ACP countries. My introduction to Spore has enabled me to establish an organization which is beginning to show results."

INFORMATION FOR FARMERS SHOULD COMPLEMENT RESEARCH

· Gyamera-Antwi, Kumasi, Ghana: "Your article captioned New horizons hr. African rice that appeared in Spore 64 of July-August edition gave much useful information on rice production in Africa. Readers' hopes and aspirations were raised when the article further highlighted the efforts that WARDA is making to release new varieties in 1997 that will be resistant to RYMV. This is a laudable effort indeed.

Since the virus disease is new in Africa, a more realistic approach should be adopted in educating the rice farmers on the symptoms, epidiomology and economic importance of the virus so that if the disease strikes, necessary precautionary measures will be adopted to arrest the situation before it gets out of hand. It is in the light of this that an extension bulletin on RYMV should be produced to serve as extension guide to enlighten rice farmers on RYMV."

COMPETITION FOR WATER RESOURCES

· Ampalu Bedasso, Adabba, Ethiopia: "I have found Getting Africa hooked on fish farming to be a very important article. It has said a lot to teach some NGOs, whose unplanned and unstudied operations is damaging promising resources. Adabba (Ethiopia) is found at the vicinity of The Balie Mountains National Park and here there are some streams into which trout were introduced in the 1960s from Kenya.

Since then great effort was made to promote the development of this most popular sport fish of the world and the potentially high revenue yielding trout fishery had been doing well. But the construction by some NGOs of diversion

TERMITES: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (CONTINUATION)

· Kwame Attah-Tutu, Sefwi Juaboso, Ghana: "I read from your magazine Spore an article by Dr Yao Tan on the above topic. He wrote about the cathedral mounds made by the termites as being very poor in minerals and organic content. In Ghana we have been taught that it is very rich in minerals and organic materials and for that matter can be mixed with ordinary sodium chloride mineral salts, mashed or pounded into mortar, dried and supplied to livestock as salt licks."

PESTS DO ATTACK TEF!

· Mulegata Seyoum, Gondar, Ethiopia: "I would like to comment on Dr Tsedeke Abate's statement at the CTA seminar about tef pest attack as indicated on page 4 of May-June Spore edition. Tef is attacked and highly infested by grasshoppers, red tef worm, African bollworm, army worm, sorghum shoot fly, and other pests in our region, whether a farmer cultivates varieties of tef in a rotating manner or not. Great production losses are caused on tef year to Year by these pests. It is not clear as to how the researcher Dr Tsedeke Abate advocates to the CTA audience "Tef is remarkably free of pests in Ethiopia."

A ONE MAN ONLY JOB

· Fentahun Mengistu, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia: "While I was reading the article Diet for drain dodgers in Spore No 63, my attention was drawn to the photo picture depicted where drain oxen are seen pulled by a farmer in the front and the other man behind the oxen who are also probably attending the proper performance of the work. This tillage operation, I think, can be performed just only by a single farmer.