Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

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    • 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

    • The organic linkages between hunger and poverty are well established, the link can further be extended to limited access to physical resources, particularly good cropping land and irrigation water. We at VAAGDHARA also used to consider this as quite applicable reasons behind higher degree of malnutrition among small and marginal farmers in indigenous tribal community in Banswara district of Rajasthan, India. It was participation in LANSA supported action research program which helped us to extend our notion that it is also a play of lack of knowledge, efficient utilization of resources as per their capacity, and also following the practice of "nutrient flow in a cyclic manner.

      This research program helped us to work with 600 indigenous small and marginal farmer families (30 groups of 20 families each) and move them above in reducing hunger (both in terms of quantity and quality). In this program we utilised approach of "Participatory learning and Action" to facilitate thinking process of participating groups and families. The process only helped to change mind set of these small and marginal farmers from the dilemma of farming for market or farming for family and to be specific farming for nutrition. The yearlong process of PLA focusing on nutrition sensitive farming system worked on the aspects of

      • Resource assessment and planning according to existing capacity of resources (land type, soil type, moisture availability etc.)
      • Improved "food diversity" from cultivated only to collected, cultivated and processed
      • Efficient utilisation of family resources, where importance was also given to so called wastelands as forest food patches.

      Our experience in this learning events is that Nutrition Sensitive Farming System approach can help reducing hunger, even hidden hunger (low nutrient intake) to great extent and slowly-slowly help them move out of clutch of "nutrient poverty" may not be "currency poverty". It will demand for changing attitude that best nutrition come from purchased food only, that too with higher cost food items. This is behaviour change process also thus group approach yields better as it gives space for reflection to participating families as well as facilitators.

      VAAGDHARA

    • Dear Friends,

      Good Day

      We were looking for the answer to question of "What interventions do you think are needed to increase the agriculture sector resilience to environmental stressors, especially among smallholder farmers?" our experience indicates following points as important.

      1. More or less policies of present day agriculture department are restrictive for diversity, mainly they focus on limited crops and varieties. Agriculture officers follows conventional extension programs which are of givers mode, not respecting farmers knowledge.

      2. As for as small and marginal farmers are going through dilemma of traditional versus market controlled, nutrition oriented vis-a-vis cash generating. VAAGDHARA believes some where farmers need dual approach of nutrition sensitive farming with market approach, taking benefit of community awareness about the fresh and chemical free food.

      3. There is need for strengthening a network of farmers led institutional platforms which will have interactive farming, research, education, and marketing. Unfortunately present day agriculture promotion institutions are in two parallel streams one is scientific & government institutions another is administrative department of agriculture management, which do not have concurrence  at many front.

      4.In this direction we have been using approach of creating local level farmers network, we are also moving towards traditional institution of "Gram Chopal" to take this agenda forward. In this direction we would like to collaborate with other agencies and groups who are active with this approach.

      5.Improvement in farm diversity through tools like "What we produce - What we consume" and focusing on concept of reducing "Food Mileage" could be really helpful in this direction

      Thanks 

      Deepak

    • Dear Friends,

      Good Day,

      I am really very fortunate that LANSA provided me with the great opportunity to look into the background of agriculture with the lens of system and nutrition. We as an organisation, VAAGDHARA tried to interact with the local community in Banswara district of Rajasthan, India and document their perception as system.  We also tried to look at the existing farming practices from the angle of their impact on environment linking them with different goals as stated in SDG 2030. 

      Our findings are associated with two approaches mostly discussed within the purview of Sustainable Consumption and Production, that are a linear model of farming and a circular model of farming. We would share our findings in separate write-up. 

      Our research has tried to work with farms on adapting diverse food items. Our experience in this field demands for widespread diversity in food system and linking it with the cutlivation.

      In our findings, an increase in food diversity and agriculture diversity is important for building the resilience of small and marginal farmers to face environmental stressors.

       

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