The Forum is quite a good avenue to share knowledge, congrats to the organisers.
All questions are interesting but I will base on all questions except for question two.
1. How can smallholder benefit from global value chain?
There is only two ways i can discuss that will make me answer the question.
first; smallholder farmers need to be part of plan/program/policy making, which will make him/her acquire information all the time on the value chain, its challenge, its length and benefit of breaking some stage. the small holder farmers are very knowlegeable about agriculture practices in their local area but blind of the value chain. Most of the time decision are made for them, which simply make them loose benefits. this includes removing some stage that reduce smallholder farmers profit such as middle men, who always take advantage of information they have for both ends (farmers and consumers) to get all junk of profit (that should have gone to farmer).
Seccond way: Reduce all Nuisance tax that charged farmer in all stages of value chain. The nuisance tax are given fancy name such as levy, tall or contribution but all chop the profit of farmers. Removing all taxes will make the value chain smooth and smallholder farmers can reach global market. this goes with transparency of information to smallholder farmers.
3. challenges for policy implementation:
The policy implementation are major setback for food security policy implementation, researchers and policy maker always come out with very good policies, but mostly were not involving all stakeholders, especially smallholders farmers. This goes to question one of having participatory approach and transparent on the information. Most the smallholder farmers who are major stakeholders are ignored in the process of developing policy which inturn became difficult in the implementation, leaving the policies shelved.
4. Youth participation in a dialogue.
Its interesting question for discussion which can be discussed all year long. on my side i would like to categorise in three main area.
First. Food security is agriculture, which in most cases is done by experience and aged people who happen to inherit, doing agriculture as subsistance, or doing it because they have nothing to be done. In simple words they happened to be in agriculture by defaults (not their original choice).
Second; Food security (agriculture) has so many challenges, one being slow in payback for investment. As we know youth like fast paying business, since have so much to do with money. so they dont participate in dialogue as is not making them earn money or think that is time wasting.
third: Govements, and community does not have good environment that favour youth to engage in such a dialogue. most people engage in dialogue that pay back, and since agriculture needs land and land is always occupied by elders, and only way youth to get land is by waiting until the parents retire from agriculture, die, or buying land. Of which none of this suites youth, so they simply find another area that will make them active and benefit.
Of these three points: youth will participate is food security dialogue if it made with "Swag" (attractive to them). This can be done by making fancy programme that can be accessed in social media, like wechat, whatsapp, facebook and come out with funny video clips, or pictures that make them comment or participate.
The Forum is quite a good avenue to share knowledge, congrats to the organisers.
All questions are interesting but I will base on all questions except for question two.
1. How can smallholder benefit from global value chain?
There is only two ways i can discuss that will make me answer the question.
first; smallholder farmers need to be part of plan/program/policy making, which will make him/her acquire information all the time on the value chain, its challenge, its length and benefit of breaking some stage. the small holder farmers are very knowlegeable about agriculture practices in their local area but blind of the value chain. Most of the time decision are made for them, which simply make them loose benefits. this includes removing some stage that reduce smallholder farmers profit such as middle men, who always take advantage of information they have for both ends (farmers and consumers) to get all junk of profit (that should have gone to farmer).
Seccond way: Reduce all Nuisance tax that charged farmer in all stages of value chain. The nuisance tax are given fancy name such as levy, tall or contribution but all chop the profit of farmers. Removing all taxes will make the value chain smooth and smallholder farmers can reach global market. this goes with transparency of information to smallholder farmers.
3. challenges for policy implementation:
The policy implementation are major setback for food security policy implementation, researchers and policy maker always come out with very good policies, but mostly were not involving all stakeholders, especially smallholders farmers. This goes to question one of having participatory approach and transparent on the information. Most the smallholder farmers who are major stakeholders are ignored in the process of developing policy which inturn became difficult in the implementation, leaving the policies shelved.
4. Youth participation in a dialogue.
Its interesting question for discussion which can be discussed all year long. on my side i would like to categorise in three main area.
First. Food security is agriculture, which in most cases is done by experience and aged people who happen to inherit, doing agriculture as subsistance, or doing it because they have nothing to be done. In simple words they happened to be in agriculture by defaults (not their original choice).
Second; Food security (agriculture) has so many challenges, one being slow in payback for investment. As we know youth like fast paying business, since have so much to do with money. so they dont participate in dialogue as is not making them earn money or think that is time wasting.
third: Govements, and community does not have good environment that favour youth to engage in such a dialogue. most people engage in dialogue that pay back, and since agriculture needs land and land is always occupied by elders, and only way youth to get land is by waiting until the parents retire from agriculture, die, or buying land. Of which none of this suites youth, so they simply find another area that will make them active and benefit.
Of these three points: youth will participate is food security dialogue if it made with "Swag" (attractive to them). This can be done by making fancy programme that can be accessed in social media, like wechat, whatsapp, facebook and come out with funny video clips, or pictures that make them comment or participate.
I submit my simple contribution!!