Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

English translation below;

Pouvez-vous nous fournir des exemples d'expériences qui ont permis de réduire (ou d'éradiquer) l'extrême pauvreté par le biais d'une filière agricole?

Deux exemples particulièrement reconnus dans l’histoire permettent de prouver combien l’agriculture bien organisée peut aider à éradiquer l’extrême pauvreté, même en zone fortement peuplée. Il s’agit des cas du pays Bamiléké au Cameroun et du district Machakos au Kenya. En effet, au pays Bamiléké au Sud-Ouest du Cameroun, certains « quartiers » ayant une densité de la population avoisinant les 1000 habitants par km² sont arrivés à produire des surplus pour alimenter les villes de Douala et de Yaoundé. L’agriculture florissante a été à la base de l’éradication de l’extrême pauvreté dans cette région. Dans le district de Machakos au Kenya, la croissance de la population au cours de plusieurs décennies s’est accompagnée d’une incontestable intensification agricole et d’une amélioration de la gestion des ressources du milieu. L'utilisation de la technique de terrassement sur les plateaux pour contrôler l'érosion des sols était largement adoptée, dans la mesure où le gouvernement mettait l'accent sur la conservation des sols. Il y avait aussi une tendance à l'adoption des innovations et de changements de techniques agricoles, y compris le développement des variétés à maturation précoce. Avec le temps, la croissance démographique a conduit à une augmentation de la demande de produits alimentaires, de l'offre de travail, à plus d'innovations techniques et de coûts réduits de transaction. La productivité des terres s'est améliorée. Entre 1930 et 1990, la production en valeur par habitant a triplé, tandis que celle de la production en valeur par hectare a décuplé pendant la même période. L’extrême pauvreté y a disparu.

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

Two especially well known examples from the past provide proof of how, well-organized agriculture can help to eradicate extreme poverty even in densely populated areas. These cases are Bamileke in Cameroon and the district of Machakos in Kenya. In fact, in Bamileke in the Southwest of Cameroon, some districts having a population density approaching 1000 inhabitants per Km2 have managed to produce a surplus to feed the towns of Douala and Yaounde. Flourishing agriculture has been the basis the eradication of extreme poverty in this region. In the district of Machakos in Kenya, the population growth in recent decades was accompanied by an unprecedented intensification of agriculture and by an improvement in the management of resources in the area. The use of the technique of terracing on the plateau to control soil erosion was widely adopted, in keeping with the emphasis put by government on soil conservation. There was also a tendency to adopt innovation and change in agricultural techniques, including the development of early ripening varieties. Over time, demographic growth has led to an increase in the demand for food products, available jobs, more technical innovation and reduced transaction costs. Productivity of land was improved. Between 1930 and 1990, the value of production per capita has tripled, whereas that of production per hectare has doubled during the same period. Extreme poverty has vanished.

"Zero Hunger India:Policies and Perspectives" is a forthcoming edited book published by Brillion Publishing New Delhi.The book carries 6 preambles and 28 chapters dealing with food and nutrition security,hidden hunger due to deficiency of vitamins and minerals in the household diet,backyard farming of fruits, vegetables and spices;aquaculture; livestock rearing and food safety.Food adulteration is becoming rampant in outdoor eating places.Government of India has enacted Food Security Act-2013 making access to food a right to its citizens.The content of the book is attached.

English translation below 

Permettre aux plus pauvres de disposer d'un jardin potager, individuel ou collectif, notamment lors de la planification urbaine.

En Belgique historiquement, les logements sociaux ont été conçus avec un jardin potager qui permettait à chacun de cultiver un minimum de légumes ou réaliser un petit élevage pour s'assurer une qualité alimentaire minimale.

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To allow the poorest to have an individual or collective vegetable garden, especially during urban planning.

In Belgium historically, social housing was designed with a vegetable garden that allowed everyone to grow a minimum of vegetables or carry out a small breeding to ensure a minimum food quality

Annamrit farmers as owners foundation has been launched in January 2015 to build a strong partnership between producers (farmers) the growers of Annam (food), entrepreneurs (collectors, packer, distributor and value addition force to food), development cooperation organisers (coordinators and co-operators in food value chain) and investors (financers for storage, packing, quality control and handling of foods). The main role of the foundation is to attract the social investment sources of finance to build the food value chain with focused approach of producing, storing, collecting and distributing the pure and healthy food which should be as beneficial as Amrit (nectar).

The main actors

Collaborations between corporate sector agencies and non-profit sector actors opens up opportunities to finance the cold chain for fresh produces and other Agri value chains as partnership business models. The actors involved are mutually supportive and complementary in terms of expertise, experience, networks and access to external resources. These actors, collectively referred to in this chapter as the ‘Social Business Management Consortium’, should obviously have a shared vision on social/economic objectives as prime driver to participate in this approach. The partners that collaborate in the Apple Project can be categorised in four groups:

• Producers: Particularly the farmer groups’ organised in Farmer Trusts or any other legal form.
• Inclusive development actors: Particularly knowledge/training institutions, government and (international) development agencies and development cooperation sector.
• Business partners: Experienced and social conscious entrepreneurs to manage and operate the business activities in competitive market.
• Financial supporters: Social investors / banks and Govt. agencies. They invest in ventures with a focus on economic profits as well as social impact.

The inter-dependant structure of the model aligns all these entities and the stakeholders to work towards a single mutually beneficial goal.

English translation below

Dese hace bastante tiempo se vienen diseñando estrategias y se tienen miles de estudios para atender este tema. Ciertamente es muy complejo y no puede haber una receta única. Muchos son los contextos y muchas las posiciones e intereses en juego. Siendo necesario ubicarnos en las verdaderas  intenciones y disposición de los actores políticos y empresariales, aparte de la posición de poder que puedan adoptar los agricultores y sus familias. El quid de la cuestión, estriba básicamente en lo político y económico, son los factores fundamentales para dar viabilidad a las investigaciones y proyectos de campo, que al final deberán tratar de tener éxito.

Las estructuras económicas y sociales, no están en función efectiva de esta problemática - sino habríamos resuelto el problema desde hace tiempo -, y si bien se ha avanzado en ciertos países, la falta de congruencia en aplicar criterios de sustentabilidad de manera real, deja las mejores intenciones en el camino. Los recursos financieros no se brindan sin tener réditos altos generalmente, siendo necesario, oportunidades de financiamiento blando prioritario para optar por mecanismos de producción sostenible y con una competencia justa en los mercados locales y globales.

El acaparamiento de tierras por diferentes grupos económicos de poder es una constante que va limitando el acceso a poblaciones de escazos recursos. Las reformas agrarias quedan a la mitad en muchas ocasiones y carecen de acompañamiento sostenido hacia el éxito !. La masificación de los cultivos ( en la mayoría transgénicos ), que a degenerado en alimentación menos saludable y provoca la desaparición de los agricultores individuales ( parceleros ) o comunales, y de prácticas ancestrales que salvaguardan el ambiente y tienen mayor riqueza nutricional, ven amenazadas cada vez más sus probalididades de mercado. Los intermediarios lucran con la bendición de los ministerios y agencias de agricultura, dejándose la mayor parte de las ganancias. Este panorama es la regla, debiendo ser la excepción ! 

La gobernanza - matizada por una gran cuota de corrupción - deviene en obstáculo mayúsculo, para generar inclusión y democratización de los recursos, así como, la falta de "espacio ", ante los organismos económicos para balancear la oferta y la cuota de producción de economías de escala menor. Cuánto hemos avanzado realmente en implementar las políticas, investigaciones, discursos, declaraciones y manifiestos, entre otros ? 

Entonces, la eliminaciónd de la pobreza  extrema tiene que ver y tener un enfoque holístico que parta de una sana visión y acción política, lo demás viene por añadidura.

For quite some time, strategies have been designed and thousands of studies have been carried out to address this issue. It is certainly very complex and there can not be a single recipe. There are many contexts and many positions and interests at stake. Being necessary to locate ourselves in the true intentions and disposition of the political and business actors, apart from the position of power that farmers and their families can adopt. The key question, is basically political and economic, are the fundamental factors to give viability to research and field projects, which in the end should try to succeed.

The economic and social structures are not an effective function of this problem - we would have solved the problem for some time - and although progress has been made in certain countries, the lack of congruence in applying criteria of sustainability in a real way leaves the best intentions on the road. Financial resources are not provided without generally having high returns, being necessary, priority soft financing opportunities to opt for sustainable production mechanisms and with fair competition in local and global markets.

Land grabbing by different economic groups of power is a constant that limits access to populations with limited resources. Agrarian reforms are halved on many occasions and lack sustained support for success !. The overcrowding of crops (in the majority transgenic), which degenerated into less healthy food and causes the disappearance of individual farmers (parceleros) or communal farmers, and of ancestral practices that safeguard the environment and have greater nutritional wealth, threaten each once more their market probalities. The intermediaries profit with the blessing of the ministries and agencies of agriculture, leaving most of the profits. This scenario is the rule, it should be the exception!

Governance - nuanced by a large share of corruption - becomes a major obstacle, to generate inclusion and democratization of resources, as well as the lack of "space" before economic bodies to balance the supply and production quota of economies of smaller scale. How much have we really advanced in implementing policies, investigations, speeches, statements and manifestos, among others?

So, the elimination of extreme poverty has to do with a holistic approach based on a healthy vision and political action, the rest comes in addition.

https://www.inder.go.cr 

Community based programmes developed and implemented on Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) methodology, techniques and activities and strongly supported by Governmental political-, legal-, economical – and institutional structures at both national and local levels may be the only genuine, sustainable solution to reach the extreme poor women and the extreme poor men in rural areas.

Some national and multilateral aid agencies have been involved with various models of this kind for decades.

However, we/they need to learn, adjust and apply again from these experiences in order to continue improving the approaches although they are low cost and long-term and therefore often seen as failures.

Another challenge for FAO could be strengthening of its support to poor, landless casual male and female workers in multinational, agricultural plantations. This could for instance be in pineapple cultivation, which is both a nutritious food crop, cash crop and export commodity.

The poor casual workers need support with respect to all aspects of their livelihoods, such as from salary and working conditions to training and housing.

FAO could preferably coordinate support with other relevant UN agencies like ILO and in that way have a strong influence on national government labour laws and regulations.

My personal experience from 45 years of professional work in various research and aid agencies is that the extreme poor landless women and men are almost impossible to reach because of lack of any entry points in non-existing supporting structures.

Birgit Madsen

previously Women in Food Systems Officer, FAO HQ

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

In Ethiopia food insecurity is almost synonymous with poverty.  Hence, the effort to lift people out of poverty should start from exerting synchronized effort to enhance food security. This situation appears to prevail in many least developed countries. Food security can be attained by addressing the 3 pillars of food security through increasing food availability employing improved production technologies, creating access (economic etc) to facilitate easy distribution to enable those who cannot produce their food to buy from the market with affordable price and improve food utilization (nutrition) though nutrition education and overcome post harvest loses from the available food. The improved agricultural technology and practices should cover both pastoral and agro pastoral communities to enhance food and livestock production and support along the value chains. The intervention should focus, not only those who own land, but also the landless, women headed households etc through agricultural and non agricultural livelihoods diversification. I believe that the combination of the above measures will help attain food security, economic growth and poverty reduction and eventually poverty alleviation

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

Natural resource management should be participatory through upstream and downstream engagement. One cannot achieve sustainable natural Resource management by excluding resource owners and users (the communities). The policing and restricting access approach did not yield substantive success. It should be the resource owners and users who should protect and develop its resources (land, water, soil etc). If they are given this opportunity with proper awareness, community by-laws that illustrate the conservation, development and equitable benefit sharing they will engage not only in planting trees, but also in ensuring their survival. Cultivating awareness and leadership among University and High school students will also help to engage students in annual tree planting during school/university closure and use them as change agent in their respective communities.

I also think that there is a need to institutionalize annual tree planting campaign to ensure survival of planted seedlings and the respective institutes that planted seedlings should also take appropriate measure for ensuring the survival of those seedlings through post planting care until the seedling pass vulnerable stage

My association applied most the above suggested approach and achieved commendable results and won best practice award standing 2nd. But, resource constraint did not allow scaling up the best practice. Indeed, the developed bylaws should be approved by the regional government to scale up the initiative

Such integrated approach will enhance food security, climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation and community based tourism development

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

To my opinion, policy and practice integration and interagency collaboration is of paramount importance.

Sustainable land management, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation are closely connected to help achieve food security and thus poverty reduction and also tourism development.

Hence, policies pertaining to the above thematic areas should speak to each other and exert synchronized effort to achieve economic growth of the country.  Public-private partnership  to promote economic governance (job creation, foreign currency generation, import substitution), Social governance who civil society organization work on behavioral change, constitutional right and obligation awareness is given through CSO/NGO,CBO) and political governance where the government create enabling environment, policies strategies and political participation  will enhance sustainable human development. Also, enhancing. research/academia-extension and farmers linkage is critical to connect technology generators (Research) , technology disseminators (extension) and farmers (technology users)  significantly contributes to poverty alleviation.

In this regard, ASDA has attempted bring the academia, research, agricultural and health extension system together with a view of promoting linkages and collaborations in one of its project and plan to scale given availability of funds

Takele Teshome

Executive Director, Association for Sustainable Development Alternatives (ASDA)

1. there is no simple fit for all solutions/activities that can help use agriculture to bring families out of extreme poverty.

2. We have to follow two set of strategies to get families and communities out of extreme poverty. One, Farm level strategies for the families having access to land resources. Two, income and food security strategies for the rural communities including those who have no ownership or access to land resources.

3. Farm Strategies will include biodiversity based farming systems that can offer resilient to climate change and have the capcity to meet food and income needs of the family.

4. Community level strategies will focus on how to bring landless families in the food and income security loop. Livelihood of most of the landless families partially if not entirely depend on the growth of agriculture at community level. Development practitioners need to understand the linkages that local agricultural economy cultivates between smallholders and landless families.

5. Lok Sanjh Foundation, Pakistan has developed low cost climate resilient models of food production that can offer food security at household level. Model uses local biodiversity and resources to build a small but large enough food garden that can offer adequate food for the family in all seasons. School youth is involved in building and replicating the models in their villages.

6. For community based Food and Income Security Model, Lok Sanjh forms committees of village women representing both smallholders and landless families and engages these committees in building community based food and income security strategy. Once agreed, Village Women Committee (VMC) is responsible to implement the strategy. For instance, Village Grain Banks and Village Goat Banks work beautifully and offers both food and income seccurity. One participating woman said in one of the experience sharing meeting that her children got milk in their diets first time from the goat she got from the Village Goat Bank years after they got their mother's milk. She shared that income from the sale of some of the goats she produced from the goat she received helped her send her children to schools.

Dr. Shaid Zia

Founder

Lok Sanjh Foundation

To eradicate poverty through agriculture, blank cultivation of crops without  land suitability, fertility and capability evaluation for such crops should be discouraged. 

Question No. 1

1. By providing them the barren land that is no longer cultivated by the land owners. They can improve their living conditions by producing the food crops from the land.
2. By providing credit facilities without or minimum rate of interest with the provision of conducting off-farm / livelihood activities.
3. By generating employment opportunities to the family members of those households.
4. By providing free education facilities to the children, and free medical facilities to the family members of the households.
5. By providing opportunities of non-formal education to the households on different specially on social sector like health including reproductive health, nutrition, sanitation, and gender etc.

Question No. 2

Management of natural resources which are sustainable can have various roles in supporting the eradication or reduction of extreme poverty by accessing to the resources of the poor people. But the natural resources are varied country to country. In the case of Nepal forest, and water are major natural resources followed by land and mines. Community forestry owned by the community people are a good example to address the poverty situation of the communities in rural as well as in urban areas by accessing them to the forest.

Question No. 3

Partially yes. I cannot say that all the people from extreme poverty can find the pathways out of the sectors that are mentioned above. It depends upon the place (residing), time (rainy season, winter season) and some of the other factors like awareness, favourism in the community, and skilled or non-skilled too.

Question No. 4

Authorities should have the policies of food security in respect of eradication of poverty in rural areas as follows:

1. Policy should be focused on availability of food whole of the year with increment in food production locally. Policy should be it that if the land owner does not do farming in the land it could be provided the land to the people from poverty sector without paying tenancy to the land owner.  

Accordingly policy should be addressed towards initiation in livestock activities like cattle or buffalo farming, goat raising, and birds raising and so on.  

1. To be ensured access of poverty sector to the food.  They should have to eat the food without difficulties of infrastructure, and without shortage of money. For this purpose it would be applicable to take the policy of food rationing, and introduce the programme food for work.
2. Increase awareness of the people for not wasting the foods rather to give to the hungry people before wasting the foods.

Question No. 5

There is no specific example with pin pointing in reduction of extreme poverty through an agricultural pathway. But it can be mentioned here that one of the reasons of reducing the rate of poverty in Nepal is due to the activities conducted based on agricultural pathways.