The haves, can afford to be rude, arrogant, etc., about the resources they have accumulated and deposited in banks, mostly meant for the sustainability of the poor producers(have nots), used for trade and or FDI, take over and making the smallholder producers slaves on their own lands and to produce high cost mono crops to serve the commodity boards, thus continuing to keep them hungry, malnutrition, poor, deep in debt and ultimately forcing them to commit suicide.
Public funds are meant for public good to meet the needs of the resource poor smallholder producers to set up and staff their producer org/ company (PC) intervention to provide services for ‘things that work’:
• analysis of and filling gaps in basic knowledge (Ken Cassman),
• agricultural research & education systems (ARES) to meet the needs of the rural poor
• a bottom up approach, IIED’s rural ‘Jury’ and involving all stakeholders
• following low cost sustainable agriculture of the area to produce nutritious food
• clearer measures for assessing needs and success,
• smallholder friendly IAR4D that works successfully and in the local area,
• no more ‘demonstration and pilot projects’ by ARES,
• connecting technological improvements to real improvement,
• innovative solutions to problems, rather than develop solutions decided in advance,
• ARES moving towards cross-disciplinary smallholder friendly integrated agriculture
• Human(GP/ MBAs in agriculture) and institutional (PCs) capacity development
• producing to meet the communities nutritious food needs and at PC gate price.
• evidence based programming at scale to improve nutritious food production,
• value addition to increase shelf life of produce to mitigate post harvest losses
• improving purchasing power, net incomes, livelihoods and long term sustainability,
• reducing hunger, malnutrition, poverty, suicides and the effect of climate change
• enabling IAR4D in the short time, all stakeholders as equal partners
Subhash
M. Subhash Mehta