In the coming year FAO will be focusing on supporting the country in the implementation of its Agriculture Sector Wide Approach (ASWAp) which reflects the priorities of the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy II and the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) of the African Union.

FAO will also, in partnership with the African Union Commission, the EU Commisssion and partners such as Brazil's Instituto Lula call on Member States, Civil Society, the private sector, Regional Economic Communities and Development Partners to join in the proposed partnership for "Intensifying efforts to End Hunger in Africa."

FAO's engagement in this partnership stems from the Organization's recent efforts to strengthen the identification and delivery of a focused set of products and services requested by member states in order to achieve a tangible impact at country level. Towards this aim, FAO is working with all member states to prepare Country Programming Frameworks that identify priority areas of intervention.

FAO's new decentralization strategy and this partnership provide an opportunity to achieve concrete results and maximum impact.

The results of the consultation will help shape the new sustainable development goals in the post-2015 agenda.

The Rome meeting emphasized that sustainable development goals should strongly complement poverty eradication efforts when it comes to food security and nutrition.  Furthermore, new development objectives should be agreed upon not just for developing countries but for the global community as a whole. For example, universal targets on eliminating malnutrition in all its forms (not just undernutrition, but also obesity) should be set for both rich and poor countries.

Hunger eradication

Opening the meeting, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva urged the international community to commit to the complete eradication of hunger in setting its development priorities beyond 2015 - the target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted in 2000.

"In line with the UN Secretary-General's Zero Hunger Challenge, and in close collaboration with our development partners, we agree that nothing less than the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition is what we should be striving for," he told the consultation.

Hunger was an integral part of the first of eight MDGs and one of the targets was halving the proportion of hungry people in the world by 2015.  Some 50 countries are on track to achieve this target, he noted.

Amir Abdulla, Deputy Executive-Director of WFP, urged nations "to continue to strive together to make hunger the world's number one solvable problem".

Carlos Serè, Chief Development Strategist of IFAD, emphasized that "investing in the sustainable development of rural areas and in inclusive rural growth," with a focus on smallholder agriculture, is critical for global food security and to the whole post-2015 agenda.

Building blocks

A strong consensus emerged during the consultation that a focus on nutrition should be included in the post-2015 development agenda and that nutrition was by and large missed out in the MDG process. The different dimensions of under-nutrition and the fast-growing problems of obesity and related non-communicable diseases should also be dealt with.

A broad-based approach to addressing food security concerns was strongly advocated, with sustainability and on a sustainable transformation of food systems at all levels as key for global food security.

Specifically, the need for food availability to keep pace with the projected rapid growth in global demand for food was emphasized, including through fisheries, forests and livestock, and with specific recognition of the role of smallholder agriculture. Part of the response requires continued increases in productivity - in ways that are sustainable, equitable and resilient as well as a reduction of food losses and waste within production and consumption systems. 

Responsible investment in agriculture is needed, including to make agricultural production more resilient to the effects of climate change and to economic and political shocks, while support to the agricultural sector should include targeted support to small producers.  Some suggested a specific target for gender equality and women's empowerment in agriculture, food security and nutrition. 

Rights-based approaches

There was a strong call that rights-based approaches should guide the formulation of the post-2015 Development Goals, while inclusive governance should guide their implementation.  A distinguishing characteristic of the food security and nutrition theme is that there is already significant intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder consensus around major principles and guidelines to build upon.

• Governments and their development partners need to help smallholders mobilize their own savings and gain improved access to credit.
• Stronger producer organizations, such as cooperatives, can help smallholders deal with risks and provide better market access.
• Social protection can contribute to the expansion of the asset base by the poorest smallholders.

• Improve information on drylands to support sustainable management of land and water resources.
• Scale up the sustainable intensification of agriculture and adapt production to climate change.
• Build resilience in rural communities and increase responsible investments in agriculture and rural development.
• Strengthen global food security governance, building on the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the intergovernmental food policy body.

Since 2009, the EU has been supporting a wide-ranging initiative of the government and FAO to raise nutrition levels of the rural population and stimulate their economic growth potential, known as the Swaziland Agricultural Development Project (SADP), a 5-years programme funded with over €14 million of EU and almost €350 000 by FAO.

Although it was challenging to get such a complex project off the ground, Amadou Traoré, the EU's chargé d'affaires a.i. in Swaziland feels that things are moving in the right direction. "European taxpayers are willing to show their generosity," he says, "but especially now, when Europe itself experiences financial and economic difficulties, they want to see results." 

Louise McDonald, country program manager for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for Swaziland, says that SADP's achievements have strengthened collaboration between IFAD and FAO in assisting the government and smallholder farmers. "Together, we will work on bridging SADP's activities with a US$ 47 million program to be co-financed by IFAD", she says.

Smallholders

Fundamentally, SADP is all about smallholders, says Nehru Essomba, the project's Chief Technical Advisor: "You cannot tackle rural poverty, if you don't put the smallholder farmers first."

Connecting farmers to the market is a major challenge, Essomba says. So close to South Africa with its big scale producers, the environment is extremely competitive. SADP is setting up a €1 million Marketing Investing Fund, particularly to promote niche crops that offer small farmers a comparative advantage on the market place.

Equally important is to improve the environment in which the agricultural sector operates, both institutionally and physically. While major infrastructural rehabilitation works are being prepared, policies relating to research and extension are being updated and large scale capacity building of farmers, organisations and extension workers is underway.

At the same time, SADP helps spreading good agricultural practices, important for farmers to increase their productivity, while preserving the environment and lessen the pressure on Swaziland's limited natural resources. So far, more than 2 000 farmers have been trained in a wide range of practices, including conservation agriculture and agro-forestry.

Holding on

"Food security will come in two ways: by growing your own food and by growing to sell at the market," says Dr. Robert Thwala, Principal Secretary of Swaziland's Ministry of Agriculture, explaining SADP's focus on improving crop and livestock production and on agro-business development.

In Swaziland, where HIV prevalence is the highest in the world, the most vulnerable among the rural poor are the elderly and the youth, who have lost either parents or children, as the generation in between was decimated by the aids pandemic.

A total of 340 vegetable gardens have been established for vulnerable families to grow vegetables and herbs for household consumption, or in case of excess production, for sales to community members. Over 2000 people have directly benefited from the gardens, while also receiving nutritional education, through demonstrations in food preparation and processing. 

To support the younger generation, SADP is helping youth groups set up small agricultural businesses. Sixty groups, comprising around 2 500 youngsters, are engaged in poultry farming, pig production or vegetable and field crop production. They get the equipment, tools, inputs, medicines and training to make their business run.

The Mhawu Youth Club from the Ngudzine area in southern Swaziland is raising chickens. Sixteen year old member Nomcebo Simelane finds a lot of encouragement at her club: "Your peers tell you that when you want to make your dreams come true, you should just hold on."

Moreover, the poultry business offers her a way to do just that. She hopes that she will make enough money out of it to go to university and become a nurse.

“There can be no freedom from hunger – there can be no food security - without the active participation of all sectors of society, including the private sector,” said FAO’s Director-General José Graziano da Silva at the conference.

He added that apart from important investments, financial and in-kind contributions, the private sector can make another important valuable contribution, which “is not easy to quantify, but that is crucial: the political support that the private sector can give to food security. We need to build consensus and mobilize all stakeholders towards this goal. With the private sector on board, national and international efforts to fight hunger have added legitimacy."

Integration

The conference explored ways to improve the trade conditions between transition countries and the Southern and Eastern rim of the Mediterranean. 

Furthermore, with a view to develop farming and maximize the efficiency of food chains, different models of vertical integration were discussed. Agricultural cooperatives were singled out as one of the models to support more inclusive food systems.

And as the involvement of the private sector strongly depends on agricultural policies, much attention was given to ways of fostering private-public dialogue, to ensure that key partners can make their voices heard in policy-making processes and, eventually, enrich the policies themselves, bearing in mind the special interest of millions of small farmers.

Food chain

Earlier this year, the EBRD and FAO stepped up their efforts to promote private sector investment in agribusiness in EBRD's Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region (SEMED), reflecting the two organizations' push for strengthened links with the private sector and civil society to fight hunger and promote sustainable development.

The EBRD and FAO are providing and mobilizing investment in infrastructure and equipment and improving farmers' access to finance thanks to the secured-transactions reform that will allow them to pledge crops and equipment as collateral.

The EBRD and FAO also encourage efficient use of resources, which means "more food per drop" of water and fertilizer.

Since the start of their partnership in 1994, FAO and the EBRD have implemented over 90 technical assistance projects for a total value of about USD 12 million. These projects have helped to address institutional and regulatory bottlenecks, as well as improve transparency and efficiency along the whole food value-chain in EBRD's countries of operation. 

Tackling the root causes of high food prices and hunger

by José Graziano da Silva, Kanayo F. Nwanze and Ertharin Cousin*

Two interconnected problems must be tackled: the immediate issue of some high food  prices, which can impact heavily on food import-dependent countries and on the poorest people; and the long-term issue of how we produce, trade and consume food in an age of increasing population, demand and climate change.

In responding to those challenges, we are better placed today than five years ago. We have developed new policies and new instruments, like the United Nations High-Level Task Force on Global Food Security and AMIS, the G20's Agricultural Markets Information System, which improves transparency in global markets. We also have the AMIS-related Rapid Response Forum, set up to facilitate coordinated policy responses by the major world producers and traders of key cereals and soybeans in the event of market upheavals.

We have learned that not all are affected in the same way - the urban and rural poor and people in food import-dependent countries are most vulnerable to international commodity price increases, when these are transmitted to local markets, because they spend the largest proportions of their incomes on food.

We have also learned that smallholder farmers, many of whom are also poor and food insecure, can be enabled to benefit from higher food prices and become part of the solution by reducing price spikes and improving overall food security.

We have thus adopted a twin-track approach which supports long-term investments in agriculture, notably smallholder agriculture, while ensuring that safety-nets are in place to help poor food consumers and producers avoid hunger, asset losses and poverty traps in the short run.

Many countries have social protection systems including safety nets - such as assistance for smallholder farmers, nutritional support to mothers and children, and school meals - to ensure that their poorest citizens have enough to eat; yet, these need to be expanded significantly in poorer countries. Safety nets that are affordable, predictable and transparent are an absolute must if we are to safeguard against recurring price shocks and crises.  

Small-scale food producers also need to be better equipped to raise their productivity, increase their access to markets and reduce their exposure to risk. And, of course, people need decent jobs and incomes so that they can afford the food they need and escape from poverty.

In responding to high food prices, the things we must avoid doing are just as important as the things we should do. In particular, countries must avoid panic buying and refrain from imposing export restrictions which, while temporarily helping some consumers at home, are generally inefficient and make life difficult for everyone else.

Above all, however, we must understand that high food prices are a symptom, and not the disease. So while the international community must take early action to prevent excessive price increases, it should also move to act on the root causes behind such surges.

There have been three international food price spikes in the last five years. Weather has been among the drivers of each. Droughts in some part of the world have impaired global grain production virtually every other year since 2007. Elsewhere, major floods have also caused severe damage to crops. Increased diversion of food stock for non-food purposes and increased financial speculation are among the various drivers of increased  price levels and volatility.

Until we find the way to shock-proof and climate-proof our food system, the danger will remain. In the short term, this has costs, not only for those directly impacted, but also for the international community at large. For instance, the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that every 10 per cent increase in the price of its food basket means it has to find an extra $200 million a year for food assistance.

We are vulnerable because even in a good year, global grain production is barely sufficient to meet growing demands for food, feed and fuel - this, in a world where there are 80 million extra mouths to be fed every year. We are at risk because only a handful of nations are large producers of staple food commodities, and when they are affected, so is everyone else.

The challenge - and the opportunity - is both to reduce and to spread that risk. And the most obvious way is to promote sustainable food production in poor, food-importing countries, where there is often huge potential to improve production. That would make more food available in local markets and provide jobs and income, especially in rural areas where 70 per cent of the world's poor live. We should also address the fact that, globally, one third of food produced is wasted or lost to spoilage, damage and other causes.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme are helping poor people to eat today while building their resilience and capacity to feed themselves tomorrow. But more needs to be done.

We need to invest much more in agriculture and social protection, including programmes that help poor people to access food that has become unaffordable in their local markets.

Lastly, we also need to review and adjust where applicable policies currently in place that encourage alternative uses of grains. For example, adjusting biofuel mandates when global markets come under pressure and food supplies are endangered has been recommended by a group of international organizations including FAO, IFAD, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the UN Conference on Trade and Development, WFP, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. That recommendation, made to the 2011 G20 summit in Paris, still stands today.
 
In moving to prevent a possible deterioration of the situation, we need to remain vigilant and prepare for the worst in the short run, while working on sustainable solutions for the long haul. Not to do so would inevitably mean that the world's poorest and most vulnerable pay the highest price. Getting this right will help us respond to the "Zero Hunger" challenge set by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of eradicating hunger from the globe.

*The authors are respectively the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme.

• a policy paper http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/an894e/an894e00.pdf
• a report on energy-smart food systems http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/an913e/an913e.pdf
• a study on reducing food waste http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e00.pdf

The UN food organization has also just released a dossier profiling its work towards hunger eradication, consisting of success stories and examples from the field that show how FAO is collaborating with countries and other partners to alleviate hunger, improve nutrition, strengthen agricultural economies and rural communities, and safeguard the natural resources upon which food production depends. The dossier covers the full range of FAO's activities, from helping ex-combatants in the Congo turn from fighting to fishing, to networking globally to improve information on food markets, to helping countries of the Nile better manage their scant water resources, plus more.

Learn more: FAO Impact - Turning knowledge into action

Worldwide 215 million children are child labourers, of whom around 130 million boys and girls between 5 and 17 work in agriculture, including livestock, fisheries, and forestry. Many of them are engaged in hazardous work. Only one in five child labourers is paid - most are unpaid family workers, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). Pervasive poverty is both a main cause and consequence of child labour in rural areas.

Hazardous work often harms a child's health, safety or morals. A child working in fields where pesticides have been applied, staying up all night on a fishing boat, or carrying loads so heavy that they harm the development of the child's body - all these are far too common examples of hazardous work in agriculture.

"Child labour is a human rights abuse and is an obstacle to sustainable development of agriculture and food security," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.  

"Work that harms children's health and development can have long-lasting effects into adulthood, and child labour has been repeatedly shown to have a negative impact on education. Child labour also strongly undermines efforts to promote decent youth employment, a key element in revitalizing agriculture around the world and reducing poverty," he added.

In 2006, governments, workers' and employers' organizations committed to eliminating the worst forms of child labour, including hazardous work, by 2016. In 2010, the international community has adopted the Roadmap for Achieving the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour by 2016, which highlights the predominance of child labour in agriculture.

Addressing small-scale agriculture

According to FAO, action on child labour is often focused on international markets and value-chains for export, such as the cocoa and cotton industry, but the majority of child labourers in agriculture work in small-scale, family based agriculture, including food crop production, fishing, forestry and livestock.

"It is our joint responsibility to support poor rural families so children can go to school instead of working. Every child has the right to education," Graziano da Silva added. 

While agriculture remains an under-regulated sector in many countries and the problem of child labour is complex, individual countries are showing promise through strengthened commitment and forward-looking initiatives.

The case of Cambodia

Cambodia, for example, has made concrete commitments in addressing child labour in fisheries and aquaculture. Supported by FAO and ILO, the Fisheries Administration has integrated child labour targets into its 10-year strategic planning framework and the Cambodian code of conduct for responsible fisheries. Fishing communities themselves have committed to tackling child labour at the local level as part of sustainable management of small-scale fisheries.

"We urge countries to follow the example of Cambodia - by taking concrete policy actions and making commitments for addressing child labour in fisheries and aquaculture," said Árnie M. Mathiesen, head of FAO's Fisheries and Aquaculture Department.

"Given the challenges of poverty and limited labour law enforcement in remote areas and in agriculture, the buy in, ownership and commitment of local communities is key for achieving sustainable solutions," he added. Innovative approaches that combine community ownership and agricultural solutions with rights-based action to ensure both sufficient income and food security on the one hand and effective implementation of labour conventions on the other hand, need to be developed or more widely applied.

The International Partnership for Cooperation on Child Labour in Agriculture, which brings together FAO, ILO, IFPRI/CGIAR, IUF and IFAD, aims at supporting sustainable solutions to child labour in agriculture. This partnership works closely with national ministries of labour, agriculture, fisheries, forestry as well as agricultural extension services, producers', workers' and employers' organizations, agricultural research bodies and other organizations.

FAO's work strengthening families' ability to earn decent incomes, food availability and nutrition helps empower families to send their children to school rather than to work. Programmes supporting income diversification, risk resilience, natural resource management, quality rural education and labour-saving technologies target the root causes of child labour in agriculture, thereby helping to provide sustainable solutions for addressing child labour in agriculture.

• Land and water resources, including multiple spatial layers of climate, soil, terrain, land cover, irrigation potentials, protected areas, population density, livestock density and accessibility, etc.
• Agro-climatic resources, providing major climatic indicators important for assessing crop growth, development and yield formation. GAEZ's spatial agro-climatic inventories of the prevailing thermal and moisture regimes and growing periods are used for estimating crop suitability and potential yields.
• Agricultural suitability and potential yields, including information on yield constraints, crop calendars, and production potential estimates for 11 major crop groups, 49 major crops and 92 crop types. Productivity estimates are made for rain-fed farming, rain-fed farming with water conservation and gravity, sprinkler and drip irrigation systems.
• Actual yields and production, consisting of spatially explicit crop production estimates including crop harvested area, yield and production figures for 23 major commodities.
• Yield and production gaps, which provide important information on locations with differences between actual achieved and potential attainable yield and production under different management scenarios.

In Brazzaville, Graziano da Silva warned that funding gaps to assist herders, agro-pastoralists and farmers in the ongoing rainy season in the Sahel and Horn of Africa total over $110 million and called upon the donor community to maintain its support to a hunger-free Africa.

Funding gaps for the entire year reach a total of $239 million  for the two regions.

Regional Conference

Forty-five African countries attended the FAO Regional Conference.

The meeting concluded with African countries reaffirming their commitment to ending hunger in the continent and defining which areas FAO should focus its work on to support this goal. They include increasing productivity and market access for smallholders, reducing vulnerability to threats to food and nutrition security and improving management and governance for sustainable use of natural resources.

Participants thanked FAO for its support to the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) and stressed the importance of continuing to work in its framework and of stimulating public and private partnerships and investments to develop the continent’s agricultural sector.

The next Regional Conference for Africa will take place in 2014 in Tunisia.

• Farmer Field Schools developed by FAO in Asia, and subsequently in Africa, have enabled millions of small farmers to analyze their production systems; identify their risks and opportunities and test solutions, and adopt new practices that lead to improvements in their livelihoods and food security.

• West African and Indian farmer groups have helped members to obtain short-term credit through a "warehouse receipt system". In collaboration with micro-finance institutions, they have provided storage facilities for agricultural products. The receipts are then used as guarantees to obtain short-term credit.

• In India, where a disastrous harvest can lead poor people to mortgage their lands, a women's association has provided loans to release mortgaged land and free borrowers from dealing with money lenders.

• In Cameroon, farmers' groups, collectors, buyers, resellers and researchers collaborated to select a new plantain variety that fetches a higher price than traditional plaintains. The new variety is also used to make specialty dishes and chips. This has led to the emergence of small groups, including dozens of women's groups, concerned not only with the production and sale of bunches, but also with processing the plantain into chips.

• In the Gambia, the National Fisheries Post Harvest Operator Platform is a mechanism for dialogue where governments can learn about small producers' needs while producers express their concerns and preferences.

• In Honduras, greater control over natural resources was transferred to local communities as part of the decentralization process, resulting in better land management and cropping practices. These Community Development Councils, representing rural families, participated in the Municipal Council and managed to ban slash-and-burn agriculture.

Some of the case studies also demonstrate the importance of including youth in small producer organizations and in decision-making processes.

"While highlighting the success factors for small producer organizations to thrive, these good practices can allow development practitioners and other stakeholders to learn from successful initiatives in various countries, to support them and replicate them. We hope that policy-makers and development practitioners in developing countries will build on insights from this set of case studies to promote innovative types of partnerships involving relevant stakeholders for effective food security strategies and rural development," write Graziano da Silva and Nwanze.

Support for women

Women in developing countries are among those who have benefited from rural organizations and other innovative institutions.

Women make up, on average, 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, but tend to have lower-paid, less secure forms of employment and less access than men to agricultural resources like land, livestock, farm labour, education, extension services, credit, fertilizers and mechanical equipment.

The Good practices publication shows how rural organizations, including cooperatives, can help women farmers to overcome the social, economic and environmental constraints they face, by providing services such as access to markets, information, extension, and natural resources:

• In India, members of a women's association increased their vegetable production through better management of natural resources. The women have used watershed development techniques, such as building stone bunds, or ridges, and vegetative barriers, to control soil erosion, and reclaimed 3 000 hectares of ravine lands in 73 villages.

• In Burkina Faso, a microfinance network has provided short-term credit to women in order to support their development of parboiled rice, which tends to be more marketable due to its improved flavour and nutritional values.

• A water-use association in Ghana helps women to gain access to land for vegetable production by collecting a fee for annual membership that entitles each woman to a vegetable plot.

Producer organizations combined with links to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the research community, and public and private actors also help small-scale producers, both men and women, to voice their concerns and interests in order to influence policy-making processes.

• In the Lempira Sur district in Honduras, where slash-and-burn agriculture was taking a toll on natural resources, community development councils representing rural families increased the power of communities over decision-making at the municipality level. Ultimately, they were influential in the adoption of improved natural resource management and the banning of slash-and-burn methods. They also fostered the re-introduction of indigenous techniques that were less damaging to the environment.
  
  
• In Niger, poor dispersed farmers in rural areas who are unable to get conventional bank credit are able to use their stored agricultural products as collateral, by using the "inventory credit" or warehouse "receipt" system. A cooperative provides storage facilities for the small-scale producers and the stocks work much like a savings account. The warehouse "receipt" or "inventory credit" system provides rural producers with a means to access credit.

• In eight countries across eastern, southern, western and central Africa, FAO has been helping to strengthen the relationship between farmer organizations and buyers of various products, including cotton, cassava, oil palm and rice.

• In Fiji, papaya growing has been making the transition from a traditional gardening activity to a source of farming for export. A national cooperative has helped to improve the flow of information, marketing opportunities and the quality and consistency of production.

Regional and international farmer and peasant organizations and movements, fisherfolk, youth, pastoralists and indigenous peoples have also been instrumental in policy-making processes, including the ongoing Committee on World Food Security-led Intergovernmental negotiations of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests.

Graziano da Silva has also announced that FAO is planning to open liaison office spaces for cooperatives, the private sector and civil society at the organization's headquarters.

It is crucial to build on these lessons and step up efforts to enable the world's most vulnerable people to withstand future shocks and produce the food they need to live active and healthy lives.

FAO's "Information Products for Nile Basin Water Resource Management" project has established modern hydrological monitoring and reporting systems across the Nile Basin, helped government authorities harmonize data-gathering, and produced a series of comprehensive surveys of water use and agricultural production.

"Up until now, there has been very little systemic study of how the Nile's waters are used — or could be used — to grow food, and key pieces of information that would allow for what we call 'sound water accounting' have been missing," said Pasquale Steduto, head of FAO's Water Development and Management Unit.

"The data this project has acquired and the information products it has produced will fill these gaps and let the governments of the region make the most of the Nile's resources," he said.

Narrowing window of opportunity

The population in the Nile basin — currently around 200 million people — is expected to increase by between 61 to 82 percent by 2030, according to an FAO report on the project presented at a meeting of governments in Kigali today.

At the same time, "environmental degradation, drought, weak institutions, low financial capacity, inadequate infrastructure and social instability conspire to perpetuate poverty in the region," it notes. Some of the eleven countries that share the Nile — Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — are among the poorest in the world.

And although the waters of the Nile have great potential as a lever of social and economic development, high demographic growth rates and accelerating pressures on land and water resources "narrow the window of opportunity for reversing the negative trends in the region," according to FAO's study.

Reducing the pressures on the Nile will require increasing the efficiency and productivity of water use along the entire food production chain, from farm to fork, building farming systems that are more resilient to climate change and enhancing trade in agricultural commodities among the countries that share the basin, said Steduto.

Knowledge and tools

Agriculture already uses more than 80 percent of renewable water resources in the Nile basin, FAO's work shows, and the potential for increasing water supply, say by draining wetlands or reducing evaporation in resources, is extremely limited.

"Nile water allocation has therefore become a near zero-sum game," said Steduto, explaining the rationale behind the FAO-Italy project. "So it becomes very, very important that water authorities have detailed information for good water accounting, and planning tools that let them weigh the costs and benefits of their policies and their resource management choices."

The "Information Products for Nile Basin Water Resource Management" project has consolidated spatial  information on water and agriculture in the region; a forecast of the region's future food requirements; a survey of the types of farming systems practiced along the Nile and; an analysis of possible future scenarios for water management and agriculture development.

Additionally, 18 technical manuals on water measurement techniques and technologies were developed and disseminated. Hundreds of staff in water management and agriculture agencies received training, including in negotiation skills.

A wealth of Geographic Information System (GIS) data on water, land and agriculture was acquired. Better data permitted the creation of the Nile Decision Support Tool (Nile-DST) — software that models the entire Nile system and allows planners to assess the trade-offs and consequences of different possible development scenarios.

At the same time, says Steduto, the project has strengthened a shared vision of natural resource management and sustainable developments among the governments of the Nile. "Only through a joint effort of the riparian countries can a sustainable future be designed and built," he said.

The $5 million Information Products for Nile Basin Water Resource Management project was financed by the government of Italy as the last of three projects it funded in the region for a total investment of $16 million.

• The enormous economic contribution of unpaid work must be recognized, and measures must be implemented to reduce and redistribute the burden of housework.
• Public works programmes can support gender equality in rural employment, especially if beneficiaries are genuinely involved in designing them.
• Promoting quality female education in rural areas and reducing gender gaps in primary and secondary schooling will improve women's access to decent employment.
• Non-traditional agricultural exports can generate quality employment for women and men, but women in particular are vulnerable to lax enforcement of labour standards.
• A package of complementary policy measures is needed to address the many gender differences in rural employment. The measures should include legal reforms that promote gender equality; social safety nets; assistance to organizations supporting farmers, women and youth; child care programmes; education; and better access to information and labour markets.

The cornerstone of the report's analysis is the United Nation's Decent Work Agenda, which focuses on better jobs, social protection, universal application of labour standards and promotion of equitable rural institutions.

The agencies also launched a set of seven action-oriented policy briefs for practitioners on key aspects of rural employment and decent work that identify specific challenges, and successful approaches to tackle them.

"I'll pull my women together and we will do this together. We will share what we learn in workshops and field practice."