What I would like to share relates to the first question on How can smallholder farmers benefit from global value chains? and partly to the second question on What are the challenges for policy implementation in your country related to food security research?
I will refer to our experience at the German Development Institute, where I am leading a project that evaluates the impact of agricultural economic corridor development on poverty, employment, land tenure, productivity and food security. Although my main focus is on the Nacala in Mozambique, one component of my project is the comparison of the Nacala corridor with the Greater Mekong Subregion East West Economic Corridor (GMS EWEC) that traverses Myanmar, Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam. I will also refer to our recently concluded project on enterprise upgrading where we looked at factors that affected the growth of micro and small enterprises in the Philippines, Egypt and India. Finally, I will also refer to another recently concluded project on FDI in retail in India.
Smallholder farmers benefit tremendously from being integrated into global value chains. The learning that occurs when farmers are integrated into GVCs is a key component to their growth. Farmers learn about standards (for example, on chemical use), how to increase productivity (on seeds, farming techniques and practices), new technology (on machineries or mechanization) and even on communication (for example, the benefits of cooperatives, networking, ICT for agriculture). The downside of this is when smallholders could not be integrated into GVCs because they simply could not change production systems to adapt to higher standards or higher productivity levels because it is expensive, complicated or time intensive. However, even in this sense, policy makers could help farmers be competitive by supporting their venture into other employment opportunities such as becoming traders or self employed into non-agricultural or semi-agricultural businesses. Global value chains simply open up doors for smallholders and provides them the option to select what they think will improve their situation.
The problem is the HOW. Firstly there needs to be more high-quality tailored food security-related research in APEC. More funding should be provided to conduct relevant research that translates into implementable policies for the region. These researches should set out from the beginning, a monitoring and evaluation element as well as a pathways to impact component, such that, from the beginning the research envisions what kind of impact (and to whom) it will create. Secondly, knowing that food security research in the APEC is uncommon, knowledge management is critical. I am not aware if there is a consotium or an institution that gathers and manages all the food security knowledge that is available for the region. This should be one of the priorities in the APEC.
Thank you very much!
Dr. Aimée Hampel-Milagrosa
Senior Researcher
Dr. Aimée Hampel-Milagrosa