These last weeks I have been occupied with writing - professionally - and this has sucked out any energy that I might have for whimsical blogging, about the weather or why my local flock of geese should be served with ASBOs. I'm preparing a research / advocacy document for a group of UK NGOs involved in promoting smallholder farming in Africa. It's extremely bizarre to be writing about such things when snow is falling from the sky. It's hard to get my head around drought when it hardly ever stops raining or snowing, or around hunger when the biggest challenge of my shopping week is getting my hands on some fresh coriander at this time of year.
The development world is very introverted and has its own internal discourses and a whole range of acronyms. I often feel like an outsider trying to get my head around the names, mandates and aspirations of all the intergovernmental (and non governmental) advisory committees and the hundreds of agencies and think tanks, with varying degrees of influence, different positions and constituencies.
There's a bit of a battle going on in the development community these days, particularly over the future of farming in Africa. There is widespread acceptance that substantially more resources need to be focused on African agriculture. These resources will probably materialise - after decades of shameful neglect. What is at stake is how they should be spent.
There are those who argue that a massive increase in productivity is required to feed the billion or so hungry Africans and that the best way to achieve this is by intensifying production through conventional means (high yielding varieties - including drought resistant GMOs- fertilizers, stronger market linkages etc.). This implies focusing on areas (and groups) that show high potential. Others, (including my clients) argue that using "off-the-shelf" technologies will not solve the problems of hunger and poverty, which can only be effectively addressed by strategies that build on local capacity, both ecological and social. Indigenous knowledge, farmer experimentation and empowerment, agroecology and conservation and organic agriculture are the key words for this group. And of course there are also numerous intermediate positions.
It's a fast moving debate. Last week Shivaji Pandey, the Director of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation's (FAO) Plant Production and Protection Division (PPPD) endorsed Conservation Agriculture (CA) as an essential tool in the world’s struggle to meet the growing demand for food and feed, alleviate poverty and protect natural resources. This week the United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) strongly endorsed organic agriculture as one of the most promising options for Africa to meet these challenges. (Do you see what I mean about the abundance of acronyms in development discourses? Will anyone sign up to Treaty On the Non -Proliferation of Acronyms? It could be known as TONPA).
One aspect of the speech by the Secretary-General of UNCTAD, Supachai Panitchpakdi, who launched this briefing is worth sharing. He said "A billion people in Africa go to bed hungry every night - a sign of the permanent food crisis facing the continent. How can a world that raises millions of dollars to rescue financial institutions tolerate such a situation?" How indeed? There's two questions there. One is how we tolerate it. The other is what we can do to change it.
My first step to changing it was to go higher tech, to install Skype on my PC and to make it work. I needed some information for this report from a contact in Zimbabwe and the e mails were not getting through. There is a slight feeling of dislocation between cause and effect.
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4 comments:
Really an excellent summary; thanks for posting it. I especially like the question about why we throw unimaginable sums at bankers with little reflection or oversight, but cannot spare pennies on that bailout dollar to relieve such obvious human suffering.
Population policy still seems to be central to this crisis: agricultural reform will still fail if the needs of the people exceed the carrying capacity of the land or the sustainable yields of its crops. Are the agencies devoting any time to this multiplier?
Population is not seen so much as the pressing issue these days as it was when both India and China instituted Draconian policies to defuse their anticipated population time bombs. People living on a dollar a day or less exert a lot less pressure on their environments than rich people. Fertility rates fall with better economic opportunities and a reasonable expectation that your children are going to live. So most development agencies are more focused on changing the situation of the poor rather than trying to change their behaviour. By contrast in some African countries agriculture is in crisis so many people have been lost to HIV/AIDS.
'point taken, but I am left with two questions:
The argument is often made that fertility rates fall as economies develop, but that's not a law; its a truism based on observation. In emerging societies, cultural or religious pressures may work against the trend. For example, Saudi Arabia has reported a 20% decline in birthrate from 1990 to 2000, but they are still supporting 5.5 live births per woman.
The other question is that poor people exert less environmental pressure than rich ones. I expect that poor people would be more likely to live off the land than rich ones, putting more pressure on wood for fuel and rivers for sanitation? They would also be moe likely to move on as scarce food and water resources are used up than more settled, wealthier people? Finally, while they may individually put let pressure on the land, if they are substantially more numerous, thee collective effect may still be greater?
Thanks, Dave
I made a rather lax reply for which you have rightly picked me up. Birth rates (and nutrition and health) are also highly correlated with gender roles ad womens' empowerment. Which is why you find 'gender' is a key thematic line in nearly all donor agencies' programmes.
On point 2 there are pastoralists and settled farmers - two very different cultures- which sometimes have beneficial relationships (trade etc.) but (probably more often) come into conflict with one another, especially over scarce resources. Of course poor people are more directly dependent on natural economic resources, wood and natural supplies of water - but ultimately we all are. Many of the conflicts today are between meeting local needs and endangered in global commodity markets. For example the extraction of water for export horticulture in Uganda around Lake Victoria is sucking the lake dry and affecting those who depend on it for fish and irrigation. Equally the NL's ecological footprint - i.e the land it would need to grow all it consumes is eight times the size of the country - (I am not sure if this covers food or food and fuel or how minerals are accounted for). Clearly the land in Brazil that is being used to grow Soy to feed Dutch cows and pigs for us to eat to much meat and dairy products cannot be used by other local inhabitants who might have a more legitimate claim to it. Its a systemic problem - the prevalence of obesity in the world almost mirrors that of mal-nutrition We are living way beyond the carrying capacity of this planet and it is the poorest who get to carry the can. And yes we could do things more efficiently and equitably and I suspect if we don't Mother nature is going to give us a huge smack round the face.
Sorry - I think I should go and watch cartoons this evening and lighten up.
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