Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

Dear Members, it is excellent to have this opportunity to share about my views on poverty eradication following question by question please see below. NB: THESE QUESTIONS ARE VERY GOOD. First of all, thanks to FAO Staff who have thought about these questions, and if the responses are put in action, i hope many people can come out of poverty globally:

1. Under what conditions can agriculture succeed in lifting people out of extreme poverty? Particularly wwwthose households with limited access to productive resources.

To hit the point on this question; extreme poverty can be defined as the situation where an individual or a group of individuals are lacking basic need to survive. The primary basic needs are; 1. food, 2. clothes, 2. shelter, and 4. medication facilities, 5, education facilities.  Agricultural productivity resources are; 1. good soils, 2. water (rainfall, lakes, rivers, seas, underground water), 3. forests (natural and artifical forests), 4. animals (mostly insects), 5, ultra-violate rays or sun penetration.

Extreme poverty can be solved once individuals or a group of people have access to the above mentioned basic needs. Once  the problem of lack of food is solved it means 98% of poverty is solved already. Developed countries first established good agricultural policies and solved the problem of food, then poverty were solved already. We give out alot of money to buy food, every body buys food.

We save money according to food pricing on the market. The government policies on agricultural research and extention have to be strong to meet the goals of food security and food production. Reserach in agriculture has to be regarded to meet the problems on natural resources like low rainfall and drought. Agricultural scientists (research and extentionist) have to work hard to come up with new cultivars according to climate changes. 

2. What is the role of ensuring more sustainable natural resource management in supporting the eradication of extreme poverty?

Natural resource are the major condition for agricultural production and productivity passways. Forests are necessary for rainfall cycles and synclonization. There should be good management of forests to avoid land desertification. Natural resources like soils should be well managed to avoid soil erosion and soil degradation this is basic need for agricultural production and other wealth creational facilities  and mining management. Lakes and rivers well maged for avoiding drainage and wastage of living creatures  etc.

3. Can those without the opportunities to pursue production and to access resources such as fish, forests and livestock find pathways out of extreme poverty through these sectors? 

Yes, it is possible; who are the target group of people mentioned in the second question? i can say, these are people especially living in desert areas, and urban condition; these people can come out of poverty only if they can get food at a very possible low price. How can crops & food be cheap and not expensive?  First,  this can only be meet once agricultutal production is facilitated very well and crop productivity is maximised. Secondly, facilitated agricultural comodities or food distribution is eased.

Thirdly, crops and food taxation should be reduced so that it reaches to the consumers when it is not expensive. Transportation and postharvest facilities made possible, easy distribution, food processing and storage facilities, good preservation (made possible).

4. What set of policies are necessary to address issues connecting food security and extreme poverty eradication in rural areas?

A. Agricultural policies: Redearch and extention policies (the policy of new cultivar development, the policy of cultivar extention), crop production, distribution, storage, postharvet and agricultural comodities handling policies.

B. Animal protection policies: conservation of wild and domestic animal policies, conservation of aquatic animals/inhabitats micro and macro animals policy systems. Insects or natural enermy policies

C. Conservation of (forests natural and artifical) policies, these are the major concerns of wealth creation.

D. Exploitation of natural resource policies; fishing policy, mining policy, afforastation policy, deforestation policy, rivers and lakes water usage policies.

E. International knowledge management policies on agriculture capacity projects/ capacity bulding of human resources management.

5. Can you share any examples of experiences that succeeded in reducing (or eradicating) extreme poverty through an agricultural pathway? 

 This is avery good question and am responding as a plant breeder/ crop production department: The production of new crop varieties in drought affected regions. In Uganda and Rwanda. In My MSc-research study, i had assignment of developing a maize variety in transitional agro-ecological zones of Uganda and succeded. We developed new varieties of maize which was doing better than local maize in those regions.

We look at interational crop production alliances, specifically for hunger eradication, through training agricultural scientists and crop production policy settings. Example alliance for green revolution in Africa (AGRA), succeded and still working well in hunger and poverty eradication, hope you know many others.

Rwandas economy is built on Agriculture about 98% and is currently rising simply because of strong policies in agriculture and agriculture production by the goverment now, not only Rwanda let me look on east africa at large the region to which i belong, her economy is built on agriculture, if you want to make her rich, please pay attention on her agricultural productivity.

let me stop here,

Thanks all members

We absolutely need more resources devoted to postharvest loss.  We are producing enough food on the planet.  According to the World Food Preservation Center 95% of resources are spent on food production (enough already!) and only 5% on postharvest preservation, which by the way has a much higher ROI in terms of hunger and malnutrition.  It's staggering.

We must address this from different angles, including postharvest pest control, proper planting, better transportation, low cost effective storage, and market identification/development.   PICS bags have been around since the 1980s and have proven to be an elegant, simple, cost effective storage medium for beans and grain.  There are also various solar cold storage solutions such as Evaptainers, just to name a couple of examples.

Another topic that doesn't get a lot of attention is the need for low cost basic agricultural equipment to improve efficiency.  CTI is an NGO that manufactures small scale, inexpensive processors such as mills, threshers, and grinders that do not use electricity.  Their simple machines make easy work of tasks that usually take long hours to do manually.  And there's a gender componet that's also overlooked: most of this work is done by women, and freeing up their time would certainly lead to more food for their families and to sell at market, not to mention better quality of life.  

Hi colleagues, thanks you for your contributions on this topic-Eradicating extreme poverty: what is the role of agriculture? find my contributions to the questions below: 

Under what conditions can agriculture succeed in lifting people out of extreme poverty? Particularly those households with limited access to productive resources.

One is said to be in extreme poverty when he is completely deprived of essential and basic needs for him to live. Such a person has very limited access to quality water, food shelter and services such as health and education. Extreme poverty is caused by lack of productive assets, lack of food, poor health, unplanned increased population and poor governance, political and social unrest which causes migration. This situation is a characteristic of many developing countries especially those located in the Sub-Saharan African.

In Uganda specifically where I leave, poverty continues to affect a large section of Uganda’s population. For instance, the national poverty level has increased from 19.7 per cent in the financial year 2012/13 to 21.4 per cent in 2016/2017, yet over 45 % of Uganda’s population remain vulnerable to poverty. This challenge is amplified by the high population of unemployed youth especially those below 30 years who make up to 78% of Ugandan population. The challenge is also magnified by the high refugee influx especially in the Northern and Southern regions. This kind of situation leaves many people in a vulnerable state since most of these people lack productive resources, have limited information and can be easily be won over by any kind of risks related to economics and the natural environment. This situation leaves many people in Uganda in a state extreme poverty a situation which will continue to hinder Uganda’s socio-economic transformation.

Many developing economies especially in Africa are agrarian economies where the agricultural sector is the back bone of these economies. In Uganda for instance, 72 % of the workforce and 87 % of the working poor are primarily engaged Agriculture sector. The sector also significantly contributes (23.4 %) to the country’s GDP and 76 % of households still earn some income from agricultural production. As envisaged in the situation of Uganda which is not different from other developing economies, many poor and vulnerable rural households mostly rely on agriculture for food and as source of income, therefore investing in interventions aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity, value addition and agro-processing is critical in eradicating extreme poverty.

It’s however important to note that the role of agriculture can significantly be recognized/ succeed only if Agricultural interventions are designed to address extreme poverty challenge from a social protection perspective. In other words, interventions should be designed to address multiple risks especially those related to economics, social and the natural environment. It is therefore important to create an understanding among policy makers, technical people and implementers from all actors within the social and agricultural sectors the two way relationship between social protection and agriculture.

What is the role of ensuring more sustainable natural resource management in supporting the eradication of extreme poverty?

Agricultural activities in many less developed and poor economies like Uganda depend largely on nature  such as rainfall and biological processes such as crop pollination provided by wind and insects, soil fertility services provided by microorganisms.

This indicates a crucial role of sustainable natural resource management to agricultural development and poverty reduction. Failure to sustainably manage natural resources, may results of loss of biodiversity which may affect biological processes. In addition, loss of green cover and trees may result into climate change which will obviously affects agriculture productivity. This significantly causes food insecurity, reduce incomes and eventually leads to extreme poverty to majority people especially those who entirely dependent on agriculture. For agrarian economies like Uganda where majority people derive their livelihood from agriculture and yet agriculture still depends on nature, the ensuring sustainable natural resource management is key in eradicating extreme poverty.

Can those without the opportunities to pursue agricultural production and to access resources such as fish, forests and livestock find pathways out of extreme poverty through these sectors?

Yes, not everyone has to be in production, many people/actors can derived livelihood at different nodes of the value chains mentioned above. For instance, in fish, those who do not have access to capture fish and those who cannot afford the high investment required in aquaculture, can be employed in marketing, cleaning and carrying/transportation of fish. In Uganda for instance, due to the high investment required in forests and livestock, many youth are involved in the transportation of livestock products like milk while others are engaged forest product business as timber traders/dealers. In fact, studies indicate that actors like traders  and processors gain more than producers.

What set of policies are necessary to address issues connecting food security and extreme poverty eradication in rural areas?

A blend of social protection and agriculture policies of two categories are critical;

1. Policies for increasing production, enhancing markets and business

2. Policies for building resilience of the extremely poor people towards environmental and economic risks

Dear members of this discussion forum, in brief: it is political will and policy that matters!

The questions of the moderators focus on extreme forms of poverty where people do not have access to land or required natural resources. Of course there is large knowledge and experience in this ongoing debate on how to reduce poverty, e.g. by providing access to resources and markets, advisory services and all kinds of smart agricultural technologies and social networking. However, EXTREME POVERTY can only be eradicated with a strong political will by a nation’s society and related laws and policies, helping eradicate this inhumanity. Improvement only happens with smart provision of subsidies in many aspects of daily life. One example INDIA has shown in September 2013 with its Food Security Bill. Of course there are also critical aspects to be considered, but the overall effect as such is strong and evident.

Since more than one year the NEPAL government has been preparing a similar Right to Food Act, based on article 36 of Nepal’s constitution. Also this example is important and may show future effects. Once respective policy instruments are sanctioned and regulations in place there are hundreds of well-known approaches and methodologies to fully eradicate not only the extreme forms poverty. - But the will to do this political step is essential!

So, I think for this debate it would be very interesting to share learnt lessons from India’s activities, covering the last five years on the basis of its National Food Security Act from 2013.

Who knows more on that? It would also help the interested people in Nepal to go ahead with its own program to fight extreme poverty.

Best wishes, Hans Schaltenbrand, rural development expert

Zurich, Switzerland

Dear Ana and all other friends of the forum,

No doubt that talking about agriculture is a tricky issue, becuase it is not only an issue of production enhancement or sustainability, but it is an issue which touches and integrate with all other dimensions of society but not only cash income. It is since agriculture is started viewed from cash generation point of view, how much is invested and how much is harvested, in terms of csh generated, but not nutrient transformed from elemental form to edible form.

Production is weighed on the basis of per hectare of income generated, how much it has added to GDP, therefore definitely farmers become part of race of how much they have earned from a particularly piece of land, but not how much land can be useful to feed theri family members. This whole mode of thinking ultimately result in limited production diversity of farm operations, thus increasing risks of wasting production, it has provided, but not the cash it should have brought to the family. This results the situations where farmers through away all their hard earn produciton on road. Therefore, there are many paralel fronts where inteventions are required to address.

1.     At Small and marginal farmers level, there is need of large scale awareness and motivation to adapt farming with the concept of "Family first" for nutrition/food security. This can help  in creating space for providing adaptation opportunities to small scale producers and fulfill thier food security needs.

2.     At policy level larger land-improvement need to be brought into arena of state responsibility to keep land productive, merely distribution of soil-health cards, those too without proper anaylsis will not result in true benefits.

3.      Agriculture is not an industry where one looks from the angle of profitability, rather it is a service sector, where roduction of food (nutrition) is important, where it cost you high. Thus applying angle of input-output may be utilised to decide upon minimum price, but not the deciding factor for whether to continue with cultivation or to join labour force in cities. This has resulted in situation where a large number of farms remains fallow simple becuase thier owners do not consider cultivating them as economic, but they do not find it economic to go to thier farms economic thier salaries are much higher. Therefore this demands for policy interventions that in any villages or any category of land, owned by any one, if remain fallow, would have to give "Food security" panulty to village/GP where it belongs to. I would request FAO to institute consultations on "How we can ensure use of all kind of land for bio-mass generation to utmost capacity of them and how to maintain productivity. 

4. There is need to review policies of land use conversion from "agriculture to other non-biological production uses. In India presently if some one wants to convert land category from agriculture to no-agriculture, it is criminal way where you keep land idle for three years, show no production and then it is converted to non-agriculture to other category land, I am sure all other countries might be having similar policies that facilitate easy conversion of agriculture land to non-agriculture land. This has to be seen from the angle of "social crime" where a productive land is being wasted. I am not a policy expert on land issues, but only thing I would like to bring it to the notice that soil is the backbone of agriculture and inturn food security. Thus land has to be seen from the production capacity of soil and all policies and rules and regulations are to be designed to promote production not to stp production. This can help in local and global actions to optimise resources utilisation and knowledge.

Here FAO has role to institute studies on how diffirent policies are working against or adding to better utilization towards agriclture production and in-turn food security. What are the policy changes required immediately to check on land grabbing boon.

Recently we have worked in one research program, where we focused on improving food security through interventions, and worked with 600 families, to optimise use of time (crop seasons) , spcae (productive land of different categories) and resources (rains, energy,seed,soil). The focus was on how to diversify food production within village itself and reduce dependancy on outside world. This gave way there there is need to work more on awareness, collective actions and policy aspects so as to improve production capacity and production optimization at famr level. 

This is urgent to "strengthening the agriculture and nutrition linkage, through diversification in food habits, not necessary new varieties but reviving the traditional ones. It can help in adding to good nutrition to soil and food plates both. It will demand for comprehensive program of education on production-food security linkage to younger generations. This education has to follow "community learning appraoch and immediately increasing number of institutes for knowledge building and imparting to wider community in the field food security, nutrition and agriculture.

We have to note that agriculture and nutrition are the fields where there is a wide gap between the professionally educated and practiceners, they hardely interact at grass roots level, there is need to revive traditional platforms of "Gram-Copal" which were traditional platforms of knowledge building and transformation from one generation to other. 

This will also provide glass to judge effectiveness of our present system of farming and food (nutrition sensitive farming system) and ultimately foster better nutrition , particularly that of the poor and the poorest. Year-round availability of vegetable in different agro-climatic conditions is not a big challenge, but similar products for all the communites is definitely a challenge. Each agro-climatic syustem has its own food system which can provide scope for it, but we have to recognise and respect those system, to bring low-cost micronutrients.

FAO can need to facilitate government to recognize importance of farmers, as nutrition service providers, thus providing them royalty for cultivating rather than considering them as liabilities.

Deepak

Agriculture is still a gamble at the mercy of rain God, government policy of export and import, harvest and post harvest losses, incidences of invasive pests and diseases and above all highly fluctuating and producer-farmer unfriendly prices especially fruits and vegetables.

One month back tomato prices in India fluctuated Rs 5-10/kg forcing farmers to abandon the produce in the street. So are the cases of onion, multiplier onion, garlic and potato.

Unlike in Israel where packinghouses and cool chambers are parts of collective farms India does not have such facilities. If the present post-harvest losses ranging 20-40% are reduced, the availability will go up without many inputs. Value addition and products development are getting attention. The earlier wasted cashew apple is now basic raw material for more than 25 products-juices, syrup, candy, fermented juices, wines etc.

With globalization of Indian economy, urbanization and intra and inter country migration, new crops and new food recipes are in the market. Purchasing power of people are on the rise indicating a bright future to protected cultivation with assured buy back arrangement.

For the second question:- 

2. If sustainable natural resource management is; bringing together the system of the universe directly or indirectly to contribute for productivity and moderating of, land use planning, water management, biodiversity conservation, and innovating the sustainability of industries like agriculture, mining, tourism, fisheries and forestry…for eco-system friendly use; then this can create directly an incremental productivity with healthy food system and without environmental calamities. So; this can have an opportunity to diversified engagement of participation and access to resources that can generate income. Not only income but also nutritive contribution to households and livelihood diversification can possibly applied at small scale level since the logical behind natural resource management can have a positive effect on rain fed agriculture, irrigation agriculture and supplemental agriculture. Even it makes ease things to construct hillside agricultural production (with fruit tree) with methodological application forest  fruit agricultural system with dual benefits.

Most of the  time hunger leads to  poverty. Extreme  hunger is not due to food scarcity but as a result of  food loss especially post harvest food loss.

To ensure zero hunger in Africa, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)  most be taught at all levels. Sensitization campaign of GMP is key to  zero hunger. Most of the time more than 70% of fruits and vegetables are lost as a result  of  bruising during harvesting,.

Secondly,  intensive research dissemination on alaternative means pf preserving perishable foods outside refrigeration iis required as refrigeration which is the  current practice of preserving food in Africa accounts for the largest cause of  food waste due to  inconsistent power supply. 

Dear members of the forum,

Thank you very much for so many contributions! They will be very helpful as we continue to develop the framework for our work on extreme poverty.

You have highlighted a number of important aspects that we will need to take into account for FAO's work to also reach the poorest of the poor and prevent that more rural people fall deeper in poverty:

- The need to develop more effective strategies and programmes on mitigation and adaptation that are sensitive to the roles of small scale producers and their needs. "Think global but act local", maximizing local resources, knowledge. As a follow up, I would like to ask the members of the forum to discuss on how we could move this forwards more effectively, in ways that are scalable and sustainable, particularly, on how to bring the environmental and social sectors together.

- Strengthening the agriculture and nutrition linkage. Good nutrition is fundamental for productivity, in any sector, but it also fosters better education and higher incomes for younger generations. It is important to look at the effectiveness of our current food systems to foster good nutrition, particularly that of the poor and the poorest. Where agroclimatic conditions allow, year-round vegetable production is a good option for bringing more micronutrients to the table.

- We are not fostering the agriculture sector for poverty reduction enough. Investments in agriculture continue to be below what is needed in order to tap on opportunities that exist in the sector, including organic agriculture (as demand for healthier foods from cities arise) as well as for sustainable production to foster climate change mitigation (CSA, agroecology). Resources are needed to foster and disseminate local technologies, including farmer to farmer exchanges.

- The importance of revitalizing rural areas and making the agricultural sector more attractive to the youth. Using technologies to disseminate information and knowledge (example of youtube videos) that are more specific to local needs. Creating market linkages while also helping develop territorial markets for more high quality food availability at territorial level.

As a follow up to the discussion, I would like to invite the members to further discuss and express their opinions on the following points:

- I would like to know more about the potential impact of preventing food loss and waste in poverty reduction: do you have any examples?

- Overall, while eradicating extreme poverty will require multisectoral approaches, how could agriculture be better integrated in poverty reduction strategies? Often these strategies have a weak rural focus, while most of the poor live in rural areas. How can the role of agriculture be more focused on poverty reduction and reach the poorest? Any suggestions?

- And the other way around, how can agricultural strategies be more inclusive of the poorest? What mechanisms do we have in the sector to better identify and understand the needs of this population and increase their lack of productive assets? 

In rural communities in Nigeria, security of lives and property is critical to agricultural production so that if the people are safe to go to their farms and produce food items, they can consume and sale off the excesses while also saving some for the next season's production. Failure to provide a safe production environment, people are not able to farm, leading to food shortage, hunger, and a decline into extreme poverty. 

Working with rural people in Nigeria who feed themselves from the food they produce and also make the excesses available for sale so that the proceeds from such sale can help meet their domestic needs. And a good number of people in Waring communities are suffering and are going to suffer poverty, because of food production declines, and how can they escape extreme poverty when farming is all they know and do? 

Painfully, crises destroy the natural resources, but if we can work more on building peace among communities and ethnic groups in Nigeria, where they need each other farmers need herders for natural manures, and herders need the farmers for nutritious crops and feed for their animals. 

I know that the government of Nigeria has developed policies to help with agricultural practices, but the main concern is translations into practice, unfortunately, most of these policies will not work, because they were developed by experts design from academic knowledge as against field experiences, and real time updated needs of the people and not by the people. To make is truely worth practicing, we need to make the people design what works for them, and have the people lead the process.

In Northern Nigeria where you have different kinds of crisis, terrorism in the NE, cattle rustling in NW and farmers/herders clashes in the NC, these concerns attack the main food production region of the country, and sadly, hunger and extreme poverty looms, and we need to take urgent steps to save the people and the region from extreme poverty NOW.