Hartwig de Haen, Assistant Director-General, Economic and Social Department (ES), FAO
Let me welcome you to this first Expert Meeting on the Documentation and Measurement of the Roles of Agriculture in Developing Countries, on behalf of the Economic and Social Department of FAO and the Agriculture and Economic Development Analysis Division, in particular.
I am very glad to see so many friends and colleagues among this expert group. As the subject of the meeting determines, it is a highly interdisciplinary group, although I do admit that economists prevail. This is an opportune time to be addressing the subject of agriculture's diverse roles. When examining the fundamental issues of food security and poverty alleviation, we need to make all possible efforts to ensure that agriculture receives more recognition in poverty alleviation strategies, and that food security and the fight against hunger are recognised as essential elements of any successful effort to reduce poverty.
At present, various efforts are being made to increase recognition of the importance of agriculture, at least in the fight against hunger and poverty. However, we also need to acknowledge that agriculture, as a whole, continues to be undervalued in certain circles. If this meeting can contribute to the ongoing debate, not only on the strict economic roles that agriculture plays, but also on its contribution to economic development and - in a comparative fashion - to other sectors of the economy, I think we can make progress in drawing a clearer and more comprehensive picture of the roles of agriculture.
The Roles of Agriculture (ROA) Project is financed through extrabudgetary funds from the Government of Japan and is in support of our Regular Programme. One of FAO's responsibilities is to increase awareness about the roles that agriculture plays in development, not only in regard to production, but also in relation to the social, cultural and environmental implications of agriculture.
The FAO's Strategic Framework, adopted at the 1999 FAO Conference, stresses the need to improve policy environments and institutional frameworks in developing countries in order to generate sustainable increases in the availability and accessibility of food and other agricultural products. The ROA Project contributes to this strategic objective. The Project forms part of FAO's work in pursuit of sustainable agriculture and rural development (SARD), particularly those aspects that concern comparative analysis of the various roles of agriculture in terms of their contributions to equitable development.
This objective is further elaborated in FAO's Medium-Term Plan under the programme entity entitled "Contribution of agriculture to poverty alleviation, rural development and food security" which calls for "reports and technical publications providing comparative analysis of the economic and other roles of agriculture for equitable development". For those of you who are not familiar with FAO's priorities and programmes, it would certainly be helpful to look at the Medium-Term Plan document to ensure that what we do under the ROA Project is fully in line with our Regular Programme's objectives and strategies, as approved by our governing bodies.
It will be useful, during your discussions, to compare this project's theme, the roles of agriculture, with the other concept that we frequently use - sustainable agriculture and rural development (SARD). There is a slight distinction between the two: SARD has a spatial, rural dimension, and refers to the sustainable development of agriculture, fisheries and forestry in rural areas; sustainability includes the economic and technical as well as the social, cultural and environmental dimensions. The objectives of the ROA Project are broader. They extend to the externalities that agriculture may have beyond rural areas, i.e. for society and the economy at large. The Project is not only concerned with the effects that agriculture has on the people living in rural areas, but also with the externalities produced by agriculture inside and outside the agriculture sector. The two concepts are, however, closely related and, although the ROA Project goes beyond SARD, it includes it in many ways.
The ROA Project is also unique in the sense that it is an applied research effort. In this case, we have taken the opportunity to use extrabudgetary resources to examine fundamental issues in much more depth - through empirical studies and case studies in various countries - than would normally have been possible through our Regular Programme activities. This provides the Economic and Social Department with a renewed opportunity to conduct joint research and studies and establish networks of centres of excellence worldwide. Such partnerships will help us to play our role of catalyst and leader in such interdisciplinary and inter-institutional work.
The specific objective of the ROA Project is to explore and document the benefits of agriculture in developing countries. It will take stock of existing knowledge about agriculture's negative externalities, but I emphasize that it is our objective to put a special effort into documenting and highlighting the positive contributions that certain functions of agriculture make to the economy and society at large. One of the reasons for this is that these positive externalities and public goods are often overlooked and undervalued. This does not necessarily mean that we will look at the entire set of agriculture's roles, but rather that we will try to identify, in a systematic fashion, the beneficial implications of agriculture for the economy, the environment, food security and society. We are aware of the great challenge that this implies, since benefits are rarely ever absolute. Benefits are, in reality, relative in comparison with other situations, other sectors and alternative courses of development. So, trying to establish the benchmark against which to measure and value such effects is certainly a challenge. But, at least this is the start of a research effort in that direction, and so we welcome you and thank you for helping us in this effort.
In my opinion, the greatest challenge facing this Project is to be theoretically sound and credible, in spite of not having the opportunity to carry out a complete comparative analysis to compare the roles of agriculture with those of other sectors of the economy. The Project will be limited to comparing various farming systems in different regional, agro-environmental and socio-economic contexts. The main approach, then, is to carry out country case studies. However, a word of warning, we cannot avoid looking into the comparison between agriculture and what would happen without that agriculture, or at least without that same level of agricultural activity.
I have already mentioned that this Project is fully in line with our Regular Programme. In this context, during one of FAO's Governing Council sessions it was asked whether the Project might be seen as dealing with non-trade concerns and intending to analyse issues that are similar to those included in the concept of "multifunctionality of agriculture" (a concept on which FAO member countries have not yet reached agreement).1 As I informed the FAO Governing Council: the Project does not deal with trade implications of the roles of agriculture and their related policies, at least not in a direct manner. But everyone who reads the future findings of this Project is, of course, free to interpret and deduce his or her own policy implications. All member countries of FAO will also be free to make use of these findings, which will be published and belong in the public domain. It will be up to researchers, policy-makers and member countries to use their own discretion in accepting or rejecting the findings, and in interpreting them within their own particular situations.
The main output of the Project will be empirical information to improve understanding of the benefits that the roles of agriculture contribute in developing countries. We expect that an important by-product of the work will be an agreement on methods for producing such information, which could also be used by analysts and policy decision-makers in developing countries themselves.
In FAO, we believe that it is important to raise awareness of the critical, as well as the positive, roles of agriculture. When we look at the developing world, we see how stressed and undervalued agricultural production systems are; we see how much hardship rural people have to face, including conflict, civil strife and the widening gaps between rich and poor. It seems obvious to us that there are still many unanswered questions about the best way of making agriculture, and agricultural development as part of rural development, more sustainable, and of maximising its contribution to overall social and economic development. In this sense, the attempt to look at, or create awareness of, the positive roles that agriculture can play in economic development, if provided with the right environment, is certainly essential for development in general. Of course, hunger and poverty are important issues, but so too are the sustainability of environmental resources, social stability and cultural development, if developing countries are to succeed in improving agriculture. The ROA Project attempts to address these issues.
With these words, I want to welcome you again on behalf of the Economic and Social Department and, in particular, the Agriculture and Economic Development Analysis Division. I wish you a productive and fruitful debate.
Thank you.
1 Member countries have explicitly agreed that they have no agreement on what it means and on what FAO's role could be regarding multifunctionality.
