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Uneven access to labour, within rural communities, leads to actual hunger.

Service providers and decision-makers should not turn a blind eye

The reasons for under-nutrition are several, interconnected and mutually reinforced and so have to be all the attempts of interpretation and remedy. Having said that, I want to draw the attention to the following aspects, related to subsistence farmers’ sustainability and resilience:

• The “labour access” issue. Uneven access to labour within rural communities is a major determinant of food insecurity and poor nutritional status leading the lowest quintiles in Sub-Saharan Africa to trans-generational poverty.
• The “labour access” issue is poorly assessed and addressed. Social differentiation dynamics and inequality within rural communities are part of under-nutrition root-causes, yet are poorly assessed and addressed. Development practitioners, activists and policy-makers should not turn a blind eye. By doing so, several policies and field actions can result harmful.
• The way forward. Today we are equipped with public goods addressing food and nutrition security. Yet, they are not part of the professional culture of development workers so far. Effective communication between sectors and a “common language” are not yet in place. The way forward should be paved on Action-Research-Learning participatory systems. Networking and inclusive decision-making schemes, at all levels, are needed. Open debates as the current one are much helpful.

The “labour access” issue

If the reasons for the human shame of one billion hungry are several, interconnected and mutually reinforced, so have to be all the attempts of interpretation and remedy. Having said that, I want to draw attention to what I am convinced to be one of the major determinants of the structural hunger in rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Labour and growing inequality in labour access, within rural communities, lead the two lowest quintiles to trans-generational poverty and actual hunger.

The subsistence farmers’ sustainability and resilience is a core food and nutrition security issue. In the current context, the sustainability of subsistence agriculture is fragile and subsistence households are vulnerable. By definition, subsistence agriculture produces the strict necessary for the survival of the family. In a schematic way, inputs and outputs are equivalent and structural surpluses are not possible. In such systems, pursuing high increase of outputs leads to overwhelming pressure over the limited production assets; namely labour and natural resources, including land and forest. That impacts negatively on the environment and on the increasing inequality within rural communities. Pressure over environment and accentuation of inequalities further compromise the already fragile sustainability of households and ecosystems.

The persisting issue is that subsistence societies cannot produce structural, significant surpluses to be channelled, for instance, to the markets. What such societies actually do is allocating manpower unequally among its various groups. In short, someone has to go hungry so that subsistence-based communities as a whole can produce “surpluses”.

The “labour access” issue is poorly assessed and addressed

In poor rural communities relying on subsistence agriculture, not all poor are equally poor. Social differentiation is largely relying on complex systems ensuring access to labour. Labour, since ever, is a core food security factor for small farmers in Africa, yet it is poorly addressed by the mainstream development analysis and action that consider African communities as “labour-surplus economies” and put forward the concept of the small farmers greater economic efficiency relying on “greater abundance of family labour”. Moreover, the issue of power-dynamics within communities, involving access to land, labour and food, is not trendy, as the people-centred and rights’ approach mainly focuses on power (un)balance between the small-farmers / communities and the “others” (government, companies, and so far and so on); which of course is correct and relevant, yet not comprehensive enough.  

Inequality does not stop at rural communities’ gates. Development practitioners, activists and policy-makers should not turn a blind eye. Root causes of fragile sustainability of subsistence agriculture have to properly be assessed and addressed. Socio-economic research also has to come back on the agenda and in the field work. There is an issue on research, too. Research tends to be biased and self-confirming. Often, participatory research is poorly set-up and implemented with little respect for its very guiding principles as well as for scientific and methodological standards. We need robust Action-Research-Learning participatory systems. Several issues regarding the production and food systems should be back on the research agenda. We should, for instance, analyse and compare agricultural calendars by crop and working calendars discriminated by sex and age. We should have clear food systems’ profiles by crop, including production and reproduction aspects also in terms of social differentiation.

Examples from the field in drops

The issue is complex, but I will try to give some examples.

Traditional societies have developed complex systems in order to ensure access to labour because, in the subsistence agriculture, labour is the limiting factor and not land. Such aspects have been well understood by and instrumental to the colonial rule. The chiefdoms and other traditional institutions, it is truth, give rights over land, but the real aim is ensuring rights over manpower. For instance, in Northern Mozambique, there are several schemes ensuring rights over labour, among which the rights of the first born who benefits from important labour services, the dominant lineage, the “slaves”, still visible in the field, the displaced people, the crop and land rotation and land lending, just to mention some. Nowadays, a process of land concentration on the hands of few within the rural communities is taking place. In 1993, in Nampula Province, about 40-50% of the total land was held by only 25% of the subsistence producers that farmed between 4 and 5 times more land per household than the smallest 25%. The land accumulation has to be understood not in terms of property rights on land but in terms of farming capacity, i.e. the capacity of a farmer to have access to labour during the peak season. Actually, various studies show that the population does not feel that there is a lack of land. The smallholders rather complain about labour shortage (insufficient strength to cultivate and produce more, illness during peak agricultural periods, etc.).

In rural settings, seems to picture a situation where extreme poverty is very high (around 40%, i.e. the two lowest quintiles of rural population), better off situations are in phase of consolidation (around 20%, the richest quintile) and “grey” areas exist on the edge of the poverty line (the remaining 40%) moving in and out of poverty according to external conditions, such as family illness and deaths, climate hazards, loss of jobs and cash income. For most farmers food security varies with the agricultural calendar. That is, most farmers exhaust their reserves way before the next harvest. Under those circumstances, deprived from structural surpluses, particularly during the “hunger gap – lean season”, the poorest households “sell” their labour literally for a plate of beans to the “better off” that are in a process of consolidation of assets’ concentration. At this stage, selling “under-cost” their labour, the poorest households remain caught in the trap of trans-generational poverty, because the days worked in the plots of others are days lost in their own plot. And this is about a huge lost in the context of a subsistence system.  

The way forward – building blocks

1. Policy-makers should not turn a blind eye. Root causes of fragile sustainability of subsistence agriculture have to properly be assessed and addressed by a food and nutrition security policy that, fostering sustainable development, acts on several lines; for instance:

1. fosters mitigation (e.g. SSNs, provision of social services, supply of inputs);
2. defines sound and appropriate agriculture development goals effectively addressing subsistence farmers (e.g. agro-forestry, innovation, environmental friendly and fair practices envisaging labour-friendly agricultural calendars);
3. refrains from goals that impact negatively on subsistence households (doing no harm);
4. foresees integration of complementary sources of income (e.g. public works based SSNs, food processing, eco-tourism);
5. where appropriate, contemplates measures addressing transition from the subsistence system to progressive intensification of the agricultural production process (e.g. micro-finance, small irrigation, extension and training, farmers associations).

1. Today we are equipped with public goods better addressing the food security issue (e.g. the voluntary guidelines on FNS and those on land, the new FAO strategy encompassing the Right to Food, inter alia).
   1. The policy response to food (in)security encompasses production growth, market capabilities (trade and labour), social protection (social transfers), emergency assistance, governance and rights strengthening.
   2. Governance and Human Rights need strengthening on the field. It is extremely beneficial having the “public goods” that we already have in terms of FNS and we need further progress. But we also have to work out there, in the communities, in a robust bottom-up action.
   3. The public goods on FNS are not yet part of the professional culture of the development workers, starting at HQ level. Corporate culture is not conducive to such an innovative and interdisciplinary task so far. Effective communication between sectors and a “common language” have still to be developed.
2. Eventually, we have to leave behind the Washington Consensus and move forward to a smart balance between efficiency and equity, including a dramatic increase in ODA devoted to agriculture and rural development; which under the dominance of the neo-liberal paradigm has fallen from 17% in 1980 to 8% at the end of 1090s and to the 3% of ODA in 2006. (OECD report on “Aid to Agriculture”, 2001; European Parliament, 13 January 2009, On the Common Agricultural Policy on Global Food Security).

Food security and nutrition are being impacted by several changes in Earth's atmosphere. Specifically, because humans have cut down 50% of the world's boreal forests since 1950 (mostly to make paper), concentrations of atmospheric aerosol monoterpenes have been drastically reduced.

Monoterpenes reflect UV-B radiation away from the planet. Deforestation has unintentionally caused the amount of UV-B radiation reaching the surface of the planet to more than double in the past twenty years.

Elevated UV-B radiation can and must be addressed through agricultural production of atmospheric monoterpenes. If this isn't done, conditions effecting food production will continue to deteriorate.

Genetic mutation, abnormal cell growth, immune suppression, crop failure and materials deterioration are all the result of elevated UV-B radiation. In considering what crops to plant and how to address increasing UV-B, there is one crop that stands out as an agricultural tool for addressing climate change: Cannabis. I know that it is a controversial subject that many are reluctant to consider, but this inadaptability to the realities of our situation do not serve us. It is absolutely critical that all solutions be objctively considered immediately.

There is no other plant that produces the quantity of atmospheric monoterpenes in as many soil and climate conditions as Cannabis. The hemp plant is also a premier source of organic vegetable protein, essential fatty acids, esential amino acids, vitamins and minerals.

Hemp is the only plant that prodces complete nutrition and sustainable biofuels from the same harvest. The carbon sequestration profile, paper production, energy production, phytoremediation and remineralization properties of hemp, and the necessity of expanding the arable base all make Cannabis agriculure, manufacture and trade essential.

Drug policy has severely limited discussion and consideration of hemp, wasting precious time. The truth is that hemp is an imperative "strategic resource" (See Executive Order 13603, Obama 2012) without which we will not be successful in addressing climate change.

The baseline for it all should be education about the importance and value of biodiversity.

In order to do no harm it is important to avoid additional dependencies for farmers. Solutions will not come from foreign countries, they have to be found or generated on-site. If foreigners can play a facilitating role here, ok. This means: caution with subsidized fertilizers, their use has consequences, and organic locally available material is more important, and more awareness raising and knowledge is needed. For small farmers besides food security risk avoidance is most important, this means, improved seeds are often needed, but they must be produced in-country and, no hybrids please! Dependencies on scarce resources (like money) means poverty, means harm.

Reimund Kube, International Agriculturist

I am suggesting to include in the recommendations in the guidance notes and into its list of  main messages, to

1. Incorporate explicit education and training objectives  
   
    
2. Increase equitable access to education and training of the most vulnerable people, and especially rural people and women, and monitor progress in such endeavour.

Research in fact indicates that there is a high correlation between educational level and food security ( See: FAO 2007 : Education for Rural People and Food Security:” and FAO 2009: Education for Rural People: Education, Training and capacity Development in Poverty reduction and Food Security) and this is even higher than that of some agricultural inputs. Current literature indicates moreover, when education is associated with availability of credit and agricultural inputs, productivity and income increase significantly.

The research therefore points the direction to policy makers: To ensure the inclusion of rural people in the education system and to provide alternative non formal education to those that cannot get access to school or fall out. In fact, 4 out of 5 of today’s illiterates (about 800 millions) are in rural areas and in least developed countries.  The farmers field schools is a very good example of talking the education and training needs of the rural people to foster their nutrition and that of the community, and not only that. 

When planning country level action to foster food security and improve nutrition, it is good to include nutrition education in the curriculum. But it is absolutely not sufficient. Infact so many people do not go to school and will never benefit from such nutrition education. Moreover, there are many other skills for life ( like reading, numbering, solving problems; marketing;  conflict management) and other attitudes ( self esteem, solidarity, participation ; etc) and values ( justice; gender equity; respect for the environment etc)  that people develop through schooling and are needed to become empowered of one’s one life, and get out of poverty.

In conclusion, interdisciplinary work is crucial, and this means to step out of the basket. Although nutrition education is important, It is not enough. Agricultural intuitions and organizations engaged in promoting  food security and safety  need to associate with educational institutions and organization to make sure that the rural people get the same services as the rest of the population. This is the basis to overcome the poverty trap, and the knowledge divide, which are at the basis of undernourishment.

Lavinia Gasperini . FAO, Agricultural Education and Training

Enormous thanks to all contributors so far. It is really encouraging to see many people engaging in this discussion and contributing some valuable thoughts and sharing experiences from their own work.

With just a few days left of this discussion topic (ending Wed. Oct 3), we'd like to strongly encourage anyone who has wanted to contribute but hasn't found the time to please do so even briefly!

To summarize recent responses briefly, many have placed high priority on empowering women, effective nutrition education, ecological approaches to production, diversification, reduction of food waste and decreasing post-harvest losses, improving lines of communication between stakeholders, and capacity building. Likewise, there are lots of good ideas for research and support around those (and other) themes.

One theme that has not come up much so far in this Forum discussion is the concept of "doing no harm". Could correcting harms of current policies or approaches be just as important, if not more so, as capturing new opportunities to make agriculture work better for nutrition? There have been a few comments expressing concern about the potential harms to environment and local culture. How can these (or others not yet mentioned in the discussion) translate into advice that you would give to a director of planning for agriculture for policy and programmes to improve nutrition by avoiding harm?

All the best and we look forward to hearing many comments (even very brief ones) in the final few days of the discussion.

Anna and Cristina

 

Greetings from Guyana!

Firstly we must agree with Ms. Dianna DaSilva-Glasgow post, (who’s also from Guyana) and further say that indeed it is vital for any economy to match production with consumption.

With that said, below are our contributions to this interesting question:

“If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?”

1)    Recommend an inventory of the current situation of the country’s nutritional condition so as to make a proper evaluation. (By so doing it can be clear as to what really people are eating either too much of or too little of and if the portion sizes and quantities are sufficient or not).

2)    Promote the sustainable production, processing, preparation, commercialization and consumption of safe, affordable, nutritious, high quality foods. Proper food control measures can be put in place to help prevent things like food contamination through food handling and so forth.

3)    Another way to maximize the agricultural investment programme’s impact on nutrition is to specifically target the percentage of people in poverty (be it large/small) by helping them to have easy ACCESS to nutritional foods. The Government can provide food stamps and food vouchers or discount vouchers (of course this will be applicable to countries that may not have these measures in place).

4)    Promote an increase in the institutional coordination and functioning for improved nutrition. Often times many countries do not have “that” collaboration among the agricultural institutions that is needed to effectively and efficiently execute programmes.

5)    Finally, Education is the most essential tool that can be used to improve nutrition in any country. The emphasis on improving health lies solely with how the citizens view nutrition.  Community-based nutrition programmes can be implemented in varying areas in the country so as to make people aware of the importance of nutrition to everyone’s life.

1) If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?

-  establish fruit  and medicinal  trees to ensure vitamines (dry or fresh) medics and biopesticdes avalability and manage simultaneously microclimate and organic matter for soils.

- develop hydroponics near houses  to ensure the production of self made vegetables, medecinal plants and fishes without using a lot of water during the rainy season

- develop specifics  fields (children fields) that ensure women to find what is needed for children during their weaning  (companions planting of leguminous and cereal plant)

- enhance  grain storage capacity and condition and  test various germination process for  introducing fresh sprouted grain inside the diet

- use  of fruit dryer and fermentation process

2) To support the design and implementation of this programme, where would you like to see more research done, and why?

vertical cropping and aquaponie material, fermentation processing and solar sterilisation process,

Intensification is more easier to practice near houses where ashes and water fall could be controlled and stocked.  Tropical countries didn't develop aquaculture with little native fishes species.  Food storage are uneasy and specific process like fermentation or sterilisation could help

3) What can our institutions do to help country governments commit to action around your recommendations, and to help ensure implementation will be effective?

the design is biologically oriented. Ecology of terrestrial and freswater from natural and artifial ecosystem, fermentation and sterilization process in pottery, botany and zoology.

Your organization could help gouvernement

-  to make easier the access to scientific publication for young scientist

- Promote self made technology and help individuals in that way

- help to widespread the technology or technics

- encourage recording of native knowledge and knowhow

-develop recycling of urban waste for agricultural use.

Dear Members,

The remarks made thus far have been very interesting. Since, “Under-nutrition remains one of the world’s most serious but least addressed socioeconomic and health problems and is among the leading causes of child mortality” (ACF International), making agriculture work for nutrition is a tremendously important and timely issue for discussion.

If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?

1. Firstly, we would suggest an assessment of the nutritional status of the country/state or region and identify those households which are nutrition insecure buy using various indicators. This will be done so as to indicate which areas will be targeted first (based on the magnitude of undernorishment) by the agricultural investment programme.
2. We would also recommend an increased cooperation among agricultural professionals at country level and institutional level that would foster a national nutrition strategy and action plan; this would require the allocation of adequate budgetary resources. Guyana, for instance, has a ten year Food and Nutrition Security Strategy (2010-2020). One of the aims includes ensuring that children and other vulnerable groups have access to food.
3. We would support regulations that allow smallholders to have some sort of comparative advantage in terms of increased market access and opportunities, especially for nutritious foods.
4. We would also suggest adjustments in policies to be made preferable to individuals supportive of nutrition, including improvements made in food price policies, subsidies, trade policies and pro-poor policies. This would in turn encourage more investment in food nutrition.
5. Although the above points may lead to an increase in the accessibility and availability of nutritious foods, it does not give us a certainty that more individuals will consume it. This brings us to our next suggestion; using some form of moral suasion, like nutrition education, to communicate and advocate for nutrition, detailing the importance of nutrition and the consequences of under-nutrition. An important point to note is that there are also social and cultural factors that prevent some marginalized groups from eating certain nutritious foods.

Many people have contributed much to this discussion and still have room for more suggestions. Congratulations to everyone for your invaluable piece. My contributions are as indicated under the questions below.

1.    If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?

•    Identify gaps and major agricultural related nutrition challenges in the specified area. For example in Ghana it has been realized that vitamin A and iron deficient aneamia are challenges in addition to Protein Energy Malnutrition in some areas. Based on the information gathered, I’ll develop programmes to ensure diversified agricultural commodities:

o    Diversification of farm production to include high Vitamin A crops  like orange flesh sweet potato,  green leafy vegetables, oil palm production

o    Encourage animal based that the poor can afford (small ruminants, poultry and fishery production) and other local sources of animal protein

o    in addition, promote plant sources of protein like use of legumes, nuts

o    and promotion of quality staples

•    I will also build into the programme land tenure and land use planning issues to ensure security of land tenure and user rights issues so as to enable producers to sustainably manage land, improve soil fertility and other productive resources for continued production. As cities and towns expand, agricultural lands and production become extinct, so I would like to promote urban agriculture (crops, animals etc) and land use to ensure planners plan for agriculture and producers with expansion of towns and cities.

Education and awareness on changing environmental conditions including climate change will feature to cater for and prevent environmental degradation like:

o    Overgrazing  on land/ overfishing in water bodies including marine resources

o    Deforestation

o    Biodiversity loss

o    Global warming

o    Non-renewable resources

These activities on natural resource base if not well managed will lead to under-nutrition in our communities

•    Nutrition education for communities on the uses of diversified diets for different age groups, work / occupational groups and sex/ gender groups. This should be accompanied by real practice of cooking demonstrations using locally available food sources (bearing in mind the multi-sectoral nature of nutrition to include water and sanitation, hygiene, gender, health, social protection etc)

o    Identification of vulnerable groups (children and youth, females in reproductive stage like adolescence girls, pregnant and lactating mothers)

o    Micro-nutrient based farming and encourage home gardening (close to the household so that basic commodities  like fruits, vegetables, quality and quantity staples are available to the poor households easily)

o    This method will also ensure food availability during off season, and provide incomes for the household/ family

•    Provide credit for women to engage in agro- based activities from production to table (consumption)and also provide them with time and energy saving technologies that would support processing to provide long shelf lives and add value to agricultural commodities. This method will also reduce post harvest loss and make food available to households all year round

•    Ensure quality levels of agricultural commodities especially grains and cereals are free from aflatoxins, and other harmful micro-organisms. Thus food safety is very important and has implication for food handling and storage, and health of consumers.

2.    To support the design and implementation of this programme, where would you like to see more research done, and why?

•    I’ll like to see research in two main areas as not much has been done in these areas and also to make food accessible to the poor and vulnerable

o   Research to identify various nutrients from local food sources (vegetables, fruits and main staples) and its various uses in the diets of the people and how to prevent loses

o    Research into Bio-fortification of staples used by poor and vulnerable groups (especially of micro-nutrients that are lacking in staples that are frequently used (e.g cereals like rice, roots and tubers like sweet potato, yams, cassava etc)

3.   What can our institutions do to help country governments commit to action around your recommendations, and to help ensure implementation will be effective?

•    First, I’ll ensure the buy-ins of the government Ministries, Departments and Agencies sector leads, together with civil society organizations, Development Partners and in some cases the private sector

•    Encourage Food and Nutrition Policy development with relevant sector participation like Agriculture, Health, Education, Women and Children, Social Protection, WASH etc

•    Advocate for  nutrition specific budget allocation and

•    Ensure that there is proper Coordination and harmonization of nutrition programmes and there is an institution/ organization that lead in nutrition programming. Such a lead organization should be under either the Presidency or its vice’s office

•    Include and involve the most affected communities / people in nutrition programming  and encourage their participation at all levels including conducting participatory M&E in implementation of nutrition activities.

Anna Antwi

Executive Director

GD Resources Centre

Ghana