May 12, 2011

Least Developed Countries Conference IV

Istanbul, Turkey

Agriculture is the foundation for most LDC economies, and is the primary agent for eradicating poverty and hunger. The session explored the key policies needed to enable smallholder farmers to break the subsistence cycle and become small-scale entrepreneurs.

Panelists included farmers from Rwanda and Uganda explaining the importance of safeguarding natural resources, sharing knowledge, and providing local access to inputs and banking.  Speakers from the business sector talked about the capacity to improve the quantity and quality of harvests with improved inputs and good nutrients, the power of local investment, the value of extension and technical advice, and the value of research.  A leading NGO illustrated methods to foster development by aggregating smallholder farmers to have critical marketing mass and the importance of primary processing to add value in rural communities in LDCs.

Participants representing 19 LDCs, as well as a number of developed and developing countries, actively took up the discussion and highlighted the importance of best practices and the need for improved use of inputs. An increased investment in research and development is needed and one participant described the importance of furthering innovation through government funding more research and development amongst the private sector.  As well, traditional knowledge was highlighted, including the need to offer technical support to blend existing farming practices with new ones. The importance of proper pricing and insurance was also noted.

Main Conclusions

1)    Assistance is needed to break the subsistence cycle and allow smallholder farmers in LDCs to become small-scale entrepreneurs. A key factor is meeting Maputo commitments to investment of 10% of national budgets into agriculture in LDCs

2)    More work is needed to find committed farmers, committed governments, and committed donors and put them together with the private sector to scale up rural development in LDCs.

3)    Agriculture is knowledge-based. Extension services are needed to share best know how and best practices, especially through public-private partnerships.

4)    There is a need for “sustainable intensification” of agriculture to reduce rural poverty.

5)    Land tenure security is essential to allow farmers to access credit and to encourage proper stewardship.

6)    Sustainable access to water is essential for farmers.

7)    Improved infrastructure to link rural areas to cities, rail, and ports is essential.

8)    Primary and secondary processing is needed to further rural development and economic returns and improve prices for farmers.

9)    Access to markets, including domestic, regional, and export is needed.  Farm organisations, NGOs, and business can help smallholders aggregate to access markets.

10)Holistic solutions that encompass the entire cycle of production are needed.

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This is a big increase from the $4.1 billion pledged annually before 2008 and shows a transition from prioritizing food aid as a means to dealing with food insecurity issues, to addressing the longer-term solution of refueling agricultural development programmes.

Jacques Diouf of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation provided a review of the global food challenge, saying,

The current dramatic hunger situation is the result of neglect of agriculture in development policies over the past three decades. It is time to tackle the root causes of food insecurity by adopting lasting political, economic, financial, and technical solutions. We know what should be done and how to do it. Success stories do exist in Africa, in Asia and in Latin America. These experiences need to be scaled up and replicated.

In its statement, “Keeping the Promise: United to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals”, the UN General Assembly agreed to a series of policies and actions that put much emphasis on boosting agricultural development in order to meet the 2015 target. The commitments include:

• Increasing the growth rate of agricultural productivity in developing countries through promoting the development and dissemination of appropriate, affordable and sustainable agricultural technology, as well as the transfer of such technologies on mutually agreed terms, and supporting agricultural research and innovation, extension services and agricultural education in developing countries.
• Increasing the sustainable production and augmenting the availability and quality of food including through long-term investment, access of smallholder farmers to markets, credit and inputs, improved land-use planning, crop diversification, commercialization and development of an adequate rural infrastructure and enhanced market access for developing countries.
• Addressing environmental challenges to sustainable agriculture development such as water quality and availability, deforestation and desertification, land and soil degradation, dust, floods, drought and unpredictable weather patterns and loss of biodiversity, and promoting the development and dissemination of appropriate, affordable and sustainable agricultural technologies and the transfer of such technologies on mutually agreed terms.

All this comes at time when support could not be more critical. Joanna Kerr, CEO of ActionAid, addressed the General Assembly, saying,

In 2009, rich countries pledged ‘decisive action to free humankind from hunger’, including ‘substantially increasing aid to agriculture and food security’ after years of decline. It is unacceptable that these grand promises have so far yielded only $ 6 million in new money – in a year in which more than $15 trillion was spent bailing out financial companies.

The Farming First coalition welcomes the inclusion of agriculture in the proposed outcomes of the General Assembly discussions on Millennium Development Goals. To translate good intentions into real impacts on the ground, governments will need to provide a clearer path to action, greater transparency in how to achieve it, and greater partnerships, including with the agriculture sector.

Download the Farming First press release on the MDG summit.

Visit our page dedicated to the Millennium Development Goals.

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Here is the text of his speech:

UN HIGH-LEVEL PLENARY SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Roundtable 1
Intervention by IFAP Secretary General, David King
on behalf of President Ajay Vashee

September 20, 2010

United National Headquarters

Mr. President, Excellencies, Delegates and Observers,

It is an honour for me to present four key messages on poverty, food security and gender on behalf of the farm families represented by IFAP. I also bring apologies from the IFAP President, Ajay Vashee, who is unfortunately retained on his farm in Zambia.

1. Investing in small-holder agriculture is essential to reducing hunger and poverty, and underpins success with all the Millennium Development Goals, including those regarding health and well-being.
2. Funding agricultural development programs is critical to achieving the MDGs so we are counting on the G-8 countries to follow through on their L’Aquila funding commitments.
3. Programs are needed that are ‘Farmer-centred and knowledge-based’ so that the full potential of farmers, both men and women, including small-holder and commercial farmers, can be harnessed in making food security and sustainable development a reality.
4. Farmer organizations have a vital contribution to make to the development of agriculture and rural communities. Unless small-scale farmers are organized, they will remain politically powerless and economically disadvantaged. One of the keys to a successful fight against hunger and poverty is therefore having wellorganized partners to work with. Strengthening the institutional capacity of farmers’ organizations therefore needs to be a cornerstone of any strategy for reaching the rural poor.

Farmers’ organizations can contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals in four ways:

1. Policy definition and implementation, e.g. in country strategies
2. Research: defining research priorities that meet the real needs of farmers, including the special needs of women farmers
3. Sharing knowledge and information among their members e.g. on prevention of HIV/AIDS, or on technology transfer
4. Strengthening the place of farmers in the market through farmer cooperatives and commodity associations

Since the world food price crisis of 2008, agriculture has become a priority for many national governments, donors and international institutions. However, in order to translate good intentions into real impacts on the ground, governments need to work with their farmer organisations as partners in a process of continual improvement of all agricultural systems, creating rural employment, protecting eco-systems, delivering fair prices for safe and nutritious food for consumers, and allowing farmers a fair return for their work. In this way, we are convinced that the MDGs can be achieved by 2015.

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The event this week will offer a platform to debate the most effective ways at reducing poverty rates around the world. The discussion will include presentations by the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre.

Each of the reports featured at the discussion address different facets of poverty-reduction, but together they examine what works and what has gone wrong in international policy decisions, and the range of measures that countries can adopt to alleviate poverty.

The following offers a short summary of each report:

Rethinking Poverty: Report on the World Social Situation 2010: UNDESA

• Disputes the contemporary vision of poverty reduction and affirms that eradicating poverty requires actions leading to sustainable economic growth, employment creation and social development as an integrated framework of economic and social policies.

The commitment made in the MDGs is to eradicate absolute poverty by halving the number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day.

Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics: UNRISD

• Seeks to explain why people are poor and why inequalities exist, and argues that eradicating poverty requires actions that combine economic development objectives with active social policies and forms of politics that elevate the interests of the poor in public policy.

Escaping Poverty Traps (The Chronic Poverty Report 2008-09): CPRC

• Explains five main traps that underpin chronic poverty and outlines key policy responses to these areas, emphasising the need for a ‘just social compact’ between citizens and states.

The number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day declined from 1.9 billion in 1981 to 1.4 billion in 2005.

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The speech is also available to listen to in the UN’s webcast archives on May 11 within the 15:00-18:30 recording between the times of 1:04:30 to 1:09:12.

May 11 2010

Thank you Madame Chairman for this opportunity to speak on behalf of the Farming First coalition, which is supported by 127 different organizations, and specifically the Scientific and Technological Communities, Business and Industry, and Farmers’ Major Groups.

This is an example of how three Major Groups are working together to build consensus on an important issue and provide clarity in our advice to delegates and the bureau during the past two years.

The long-term engagement in and utility of the Commission on Sustainable Development needs attention. This forum has been a leader in the UN system in the role it has provided for Major Groups and its co-operative spirit. The success of CSD lies not just in process, but also in implementation.  As the CSD plays an important role as a thought-leader, we cannot stress enough the importance that CSD work with UN agencies more engaged in operational programs and with national governments. As the panelists have said, it is through the liaison with these organizations and the consistency of their use of CSD policy in their own work, that a difference can be made.

Sustainable development is tied to many other topics, such as climate change, desertification and biodiversity, which are each also being discussed in different UN bodies. How the varied outcomes feed into implementation decisions and how policy processes are coordinated are important questions which impact on stakeholders’ capacity to engage and effectively contribute to implementation.

In agriculture, we welcome and encourage the efforts by CSD and the UN Secretary General’s High Level Task Force to bring together the decisions taken in different fora so that horizontal cohesiveness is increased. Greater clarity would help major groups contribute in a more effective and targeted manner, and help us identify more easily where opportunities for partnerships exist.

As farmers and part of the Farming First coalition, we believe CSD 17 decisions set important goals and priorities for agriculture and so tracking their implementation is crucial. Therefore, we can pick no better example of where progress is needed on implementation.  Among our suggestions:

• Public-private partnerships are a powerful pathway for engagement with other stakeholders and offer an opportunity to bring together the knowledge, expertise and resources of different actors together. More needs to be done to facilitate these programs and to highlight work that is underway.

• As well, from farmers – to small to medium sized enterprises – to larger companies, it is important to engage the private sector to ensure change is sustainable and not dependent solely on aid.

• There were a large number of common themes in the CSD-17.  Those themes should be repeated in the discussions occurring within the UN, World Bank, and even the G8, including the promotion of best practices, the sharing of knowledge, the need for infrastructure and micro-credit, the establishment of fair markets, and the importance of research and development.

• We need an approach that relies on sound science and engineering, supports application of technologies and ideas in a locally-appropriate manner, and fosters best practices like integrated crop management.

• We echo the position of the women’s major group to ensure land tenure rights for farmers, particularly women farmers.

• There is a need for risk insurance to help farmers’ manage variability and improved markets to further their incomes

Madam Chairperson, Bureau members, and the Secretariat, we believe there is much to be done to see the outcomes of CSD-17 reflected in the real world. Each of our respective partners is working on projects to make a difference in the lives of farmers. We believe Hunger and Poverty deserve our action as well as our talk.  In particular, we believe the funding bodies which have offered promises of more money need to be looking at the CSD-17 principles.  For tackling hunger in the long-term demands improvements in agriculture first. We welcome the EU’s recent communique which indicated they will focus on assistance to small shareholder farmers.

As you said Madame Chair, we don’t want crisises to drive implementation and resourcing. For decades we have said agriculture needs attention. The CSD-17 policy proved timely, but that makes implementation all the more important.

Thank you.

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On 14^th and 15^th June, the UN General Assembly will gather in New York with representatives of international NGOs, civil society organisations and the private sector to provide input for the MDG Summit in New York on 20-22 September 2010.

Ajay Shriram has been selected to speak in the third thematic session ‘Sustaining development and withstanding crises’, taking place at 10am (EST) on June 15, which will look at how food security and other emerging challenges, such as water scarcity and biodiversity loss, can be addressed in the light of ongoing economic, financial, food and climate crises.

In his speech, Ajay Shriram will be concentrating on how agriculture in India, once highly productive during the green revolution but neglected over the past decade, can be transformed by keeping farmers’ requirements in focus.  He shall promote the solution of  ‘last mile delivery’, meaning delivering the latest and improved location-specific farm technology to farmers for improving crop productivity.  His speech shall also address the recommendations he made recently in an article published last month in The Economic Times.

1. Putting the crop / farmer in focus.
2. Training and certifying professional crop advisors
3. Increasing extension reach by roping in agri input dealers
4. Creation of a common knowledge pool
5. Leveraging ICT infrastructure by efficient knowledge dissemination
6. Organising farmers into groups
7. Establishing farmer-corporate partnerships
8. Adopting a concentrated , focused local approach.

Ajay Shriram’s article concludes;

The need to focus on agriculture and rapidly increase productivity stems from the requirement of ensuring food security and an all-inclusive growth for the country. Putting all the above on the ground, though feasible, is still a challenging task for the country. To achieve the coveted objectives, any delivery system has to ensure that the knowledge is latest, need based, location specific and made available timely in a manner which is simple & easily understandable by even the poorly educated farmer. No single agency would be able to do full justice. Collaboration between multiple stakeholders is probably the only way in which last mile delivery systems can be spruced up leading to a transformation in agriculture.

The hearings will be available to watch live on the UN’s webcast.

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The new site follows the CIARD manifesto to establish a ‘knowledge commons on agricultural research for development’.  Through making content accessible, developing capacities and advocating better investments, the initiative helps to disseminate agricultural knowledge in order that it may be put to use locally, nationally and globally.

On the new CIARD site, users are offered various tools:

• Evaluate their information management practices against a checklist of good practices,
• share and follow pathways towards better accessibility of information,
• contribute case studies, and
• participate in CIARD’s activities and join the network.

Users can also record their information sources or services in the CIARD ring; a portal that facilitates the sharing of sources of agriculture-related information around the world.

The new site can be viewed in English, French and Spanish and is coordinated by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR).

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During the World Food Summit in Rome in November, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon spoke of the importance of agriculture to global food security.

As reported by the UN in a press release following the summit:

Mr. Ban laid out a full, comprehensive spectrum of measures to combat a scourge gravely exacerbated by climate change and population growth that will see two billion more mouths to feed in 2050 – 9.1 billion in all – with an overall need to grow 70 per cent more food.  The steps range from immediate needs such as food aid, safety nets and social protection to the longer-term goals achieved through increased investments in agricultural development, including provision of seeds, water supplies and land to ensure higher productivity, better market access, and fairer trade, above all for smallholder farmers, especially women.

Mr. Ban suggests that the food crisis experienced in 2008 should be considered a “wake-up call” for how the world deals with future food security.

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In a Reuters article, Leslie Lipper, FAO economist and co-author of the report said that financing remains a major hurdle to greater implementation:

“A key part of the problem is a lack of financing.  If adopted by farmers, many of these practices make them better off, but in the short run they may face reduced income,” Lipper said, using the example of removing cattle to allow grasslands to recover.

In terms of contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, the report estimated that farms accounts for 10-12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions directly.  It also estiamted that $210bn would be needed between now and 2050 to help farms upgrade sufficiently to meet future yield needs.

Developing countries could raise about $30bn annually toward this investment through carbon market financing.  Measuring such improvements to the carbon efficiency of farm production is currently being researched.

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Coinciding with the summit, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has launched 1BillionHungry.org, a petition to promote an end to hunger. The web site is premised on the fact that one billion people currently live in chronic hunger.

Jacques Diouf, the FAO Secretary-General, is recorded counting out the amount of time another child soemwhere in the world dies from hunger: 6 seconds.

To support the initiative, all you need to do is enter an e-mail address and your currently country location.

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