As is explained in the introduction, interim assistance has been extended to Southland conditional on the government producing an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP). The first draft I-PRSP contained a chapter entitled “Rural Poverty Reduction and Agriculture” which, with the agreement of the World Bank, was left blank, pending a stakeholder consultation, scheduled for early 2003.
The government has decided to set up a Secretariat to facilitate the national discussion about the Rural Poverty Reduction and the National Food Security Strategy to be described in the text of the PRSP Chapter on this topic. The government has stated its desire that the strategy commands a national consensus, and the stakeholder consultation will have a diverse membership, including representatives of political parties presently not in the government. The Secretariat comprises a small group (not more than ten) people, including officials drawn from various government ministries, two representatives of civil society organizations (farmers’ organizations, service-providing NGOs), a representative of a national inter-bank committee on lending to agriculture, a representative of the national agricultural exporters association, an academic researcher and the chair of a policy studies institute which is known to be broadly sympathetic to the political opposition.
You (i.e. participants in the Southland exercise) have recently been appointed as members of the Secretariat. You have held your first meeting, in September 2002, to prepare for the early 2003 Stakeholder Consultation. Your chairman has told you that the first step is to prepare a Secretariat Document on Critical Issues in Policy Reform for Agriculture, Food Security and Rural Poverty Reduction, which will be used to inform and structure discussion at the Stakeholder Consultation.
When your Secretariat Document has been drafted, it will be circulated to participants in the forthcoming stakeholder consultation. It is anticipated that in this forum, in which a wide range of views and interests are represented, there will not be complete agreement. However, your paper should be regarded as a tool for developing the widest achievable national consensus on:
Major challenges facing the agricultural, rural and food sectors in maximizing their contribution to economic growth, food security and poverty reduction;
Key policy and institutional issues;
Possible lines of solution to these challenges and issues.
Furthermore, because of the heterogeneity of the backgrounds and interests of Members of the Secretariat, there are likely to be substantial debates within the group as this document is drafted. In the spirit of the PRSP process, participants are advised to present the point of view of their particular interest group, and to ensure that this has some recognition in the final text. However, they must also be prepared to seek compromise, and to accept that the final document will not be entirely satisfactory from the point of view of their particular professional constituency.
Thus the report must be as persuasive as possible. Technical issues will have to be identified, but it will be essential to explain these with language which is clear and limits use of technical and institutional jargon. Where jargon is used, it should be explained to make the basic ideas accessible to a more general audience.
A Secretariat Document should consist of no more than 2000 words, plus a short “Technical Appendix”. You have considerable latitude as to the content and structure of the Document, but you have been told that it must include:
(i) A commentary on recent developments within agricultural and food sectors, with particular relevance to rural poverty and food security;
(ii) A list of “key challenges for policy and institutional reform” which might comprise section headings for the PRSP chapter, together with text explaining your selection;
(iii) Text under each “key challenge” very briefly explaining the nature and importance of the challenge, and noting possible policy options and recommending the group’s preferred option;
(iv) A short Technical Appendix which reports, very briefly, the results of any quantitative analysis that the Secretariat may have carried out to illuminate problems and possible solutions. This might include, for example:
Recent trends in production, consumption, and international trade for relevant products;
Key factors in the macro-environment affecting the agricultural and rural sectors;
The current status and distribution of poverty and food insecurity;
An analysis of growth rates of incomes of sectors which may be required to reduce poverty.
