The preceding sections suggest a multitude of options for interventions wherewith FAO, with partner agencies and intended beneficiaries, could assist national and decentralized governments to improve farm-family and rural-community livelihoods in Asia's rice-growing ecozones. Section 1.6.2 previewed how those options would be constituted as a "menu of packages" for consideration by the rice-system stakeholders - including member governments and prospective donors. It is indeed helpful that among those governments and donors there is strong political commitment to combat hunger, poverty and deprivation.
The interventions menu, presented in the following sections 5.2 - 5.4, features technological objectives, socio-economic objectives, and institutional and infrastructural objectives. It accommodates the needs to address the interactive triplet of food-security/human-nutrition, poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability; it is consistent with this document's vision and goals, and with the four components of the FAO-facilitated Special Programme for Food Security: Identify constraints; Diversify enterprises; Intensify production; and Strengthen water management. The menu is consistent also with the (draft) World-Bank (2001a) Rural Development Strategy and with FAO's (2001a) Global Farming Systems input to that Strategy. And consistent also with the global hunger/poverty-reduction strategy of Dixon et al (2001 Box 9.2): Deploy science and technology; achieve sustainable and increased productivity of natural resources; enhance human capital and access to agricultural information; and refocus institutions and policies.
Interventions would correspondingly seek to facilitate increased investment in rice-system smallholdings and in the families of the smallholders and of the rural landless, and particularly in rice-system women. Such investments would expect to achieve for those prospective beneficiaries - and for other rice-system dependants - the preservation and augmentation of income and employment opportunities and of assets and entitlements, and the strengthening of safety nets. Interventions and investments would expect to identify and to utilize community-specific comparative advantage and strengths - including any advantage obtainable through imports substitution. Among rice-dependent ecozones and communities, the technological, socio-economic and institutional interventions would collectively enhance the primary-production and added-value benefits from rice-system food crops (both poor-people's staples and higher-value foods), from feed and cash crops, from small-holding livestock, from fish (in some situations) and from agroforestry products (in upland ecozones); and in the longer term, perhaps from bio-fuel crops.
Interventions would be implemented holistically through a multi-stakeholder, multi-agency, multi-disciplinary coalition. As FAO (1998b) aptly states: "Partnerships of wide range are essential for food security". Indeed, for the alleviation both of food insecurity and of poverty, the holistic approach implies interventions that extend beyond the capacities of FAO. Thus, integrated (decentralized) rural development requires attention to education, particularly for girls and women, to health care, particularly maternity care, to infrastructures, including domestic and agricultural water, to transport for persons and goods, to rurally-sited storage and processing facilities and to savings/credit initiatives, perhaps featuring initiatives and incentives for remittances from the urban-migrated males.
The requisite partners, stakeholders and agencies would expect to include the beneficiary communities, locally-active NGOs, faith groups, academia, and private-sector companies and finance institutions, local and national agricultural-extension personnel, national and international agricultural research centres, various national ministries and component agencies, and several UN agencies. It is, however, necessary to caution that in some rice-growing countries there are constraints to inter-ministry collaborations and programmes, and that all UN agencies - including FAO - have finite mandates.
Nonetheless, we here specify the many UN programmes and agencies that, like FAO, have mandates and programmes that address issues of rural hunger, poverty and development. It is noteworthy that many of these agencies, and similarly several national and multi-national agencies, have representation in Bangkok - as does FAO through its Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. Those UN programmes and agencies, whether or not represented in Bangkok, include: International Fund for Agricultural Development, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Capital Development Fund, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Development Fund for Women, United Nations Children's Fund, United Nations Environment Programme, World Food Programme, World Health Organization, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, United Nations Population Fund, International Labour Organization, and (through its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility) the International Monetary Fund.
From the "menu of packages" for prospective interventions, initial choices would be made by member governments, thereby ensuring congruence with their national policies, strategies and workplans: all interventions would thus be nationally-driven and not donor/facilitator-driven. Within countries and riceland communities, locally-specific choices would be made - to the extent that is possible and realistic - by the participant communities and farm families. However, as previewed earlier, the menu includes innovative interventions of which farm families could not be expected to be aware, and thus not likely to feature in village-level appraisals and "demand-driven" development portfolios.
The prospect to have collaborative action by several UN agencies permits particularly that interventions could be undertaken within the mandates of the UN Development Group, the UN Development Assistance Framework, and the UN Joint Consultation Group on Policy. Moreover, interventions could be accommodated within appropriate thematic groups of the multi-UN Agency Administrative Committee on Coordination and its Network on Rural Development and Food Security and its Sub-Committee on (Human) Nutrition. Such thematic groups operate by commodity, activity, and geography, and are expressly encouraged to seek new activities and synergies. Thematic groups relevant to rice community food security have active links to the World Bank Focus Programmes in Bangladesh, China, India, the Philippines and Viet Nam.
Targeting of prospective beneficiaries should - as with the selection of interventions - be accomplished in partnership with national agencies. The requirements are to target the vulnerable and the hungry/poor, and to do so through mechanisms, possibly of self-selection, that provide disincentives to the non-poor. Available mechanisms for identifying the poor and vulnerable, and among them the chronically poor and vulnerable, include the multi-component poverty-and-assets-quantification procedure of IFPRI (2001), and the emergent FAO-coordinated Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping System (FIVIMS). Agronomic targeting, important for national food security and for local poverty alleviation, can be achieved through the procedures of crop and livestock yield-gap analyses, supplemented by considerations of the available markets and infrastructures. The broad-scale indications (Dixon et al 2001) of candidate poverty-escape mechanisms - for East Asia and for South Asia and for their rice-rice-based and rice-wheat-based systems - can usefully complement the foregoing targeting mechanisms.
Operationally, and as previewed earlier, the interventions to which FAO would expect to make the major contribution, and which are listed in sections 5.2 to 5.4, shall expect to be implemented through a twin-twin-track strategy. In this strategy, the first twin pair would have one "track" for the non-irrigated ricelands, with the second "track" for the irrigated lands. In the second twin pair, one track would accommodate near-term interventions (2002 - 2006), and the second the medium term (2002 - 2012).
Within the first pairing, interventions in the non-irrigated (less-favoured) lands would expect to increase productivity, employment, and income, and hence help lessen rural hunger and poverty. These less-favoured lands comprise the rainfed-lowland (including deepwater) rice systems and the upland systems; in the latter there are many very poor families who depend for part of their subsistence on upland rice. Correspondingly, interventions in the irrigated lands that accommodate the intensive rice-rice-based and rice-wheat-based systems would help increase national food production, thereby enhancing food supply and security to rural and urban consumers, while increasing the income of the smallholder families. This twin-track strategy would thus expect to be fully compatible with the existing directives in the participant countries' medium-term agricultural-development plans.
Also in congruence with national plans, emphasis would be accorded to the non-irrigated ricelands. Such emphasis would be consistent also with the international-aid pro-poor and pro-hungry priorities as formulated in various high-level forums - e.g. the Doha and the Monterrey summits, and the June 2002 World Food Summit - and consistent also with the economic and social justifications presented in this document. For these non-irrigated lands, investments can be considered to comprise a payment of part of the costs of lessening rural poverty and of conserving natural resources.
The second twin-track pairing acknowledges that many useful interventions can be implemented in the near term using available and developing technologies and procedures - particularly in the irrigated and more-favourably-rainfed areas. However, other interventions shall require a longer timeframe - as in the deeper-water and upland ecozones, where there is likely to be need for technological and social adaptations and evaluations. In all ecozones, longer timeframes shall be needed for aspects of policy redirection. New-technology interventions, as for bio-fuel-crop evaluation and livestock-management innovations, shall also require longer timeframes. Moreover, interventions - at both time scales - shall indeed involve technological, socio-economic, and institutional and training activities, variously addressing aspects of primary-production, added-value, and supports and services - whether for crops, livestock, fish, or agroforestry products.
For both irrigated and non-irrigated systems, the nature of the interventions would be the demonstration, adaptation, and facilitation of adoption for proven and documented best-practice procedures and technologies. There would be a complementary programme of success-case replication - variously accommodating the pertinent assets and strengths of the individual participant communities.
Rice-growing countries that might wish to be supported to journey along the irrigated "track" or on the non-irrigated "track" - or on both - may tentatively be identified using the current statistics for poverty and for intensity of hunger. For the irrigated "track", eight countries devote appreciable fractions of their riceland to intensive rice-rice or/and to intensive rice-wheat systems. Those eight are Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam. A ninth country - DPRKorea - is by climate unsuited to rice-rice cropping. However, DPRKorea is evaluating the intensive winterwheat-rice and potato-rice sequences, and may wish to consider whether some of the methodology and technologies here proposed might be relevant to its wheat-rice and potato-rice sequences.
For the non-irrigated "track", eight low-income and food-deficit rice-growing countries have at least 10 percent (and often much more) of their riceland in one or more of the categories of rainfed lowland, rainfed floodprone/deep-water, and rainfed upland. They comprise Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, DPRKorea, Laos, Nepal, Philippines and Viet Nam. Those eight and possibly Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand, may wish to consider whether any items from the "menu of packages" would be appropriate to their lowland-rice smallholdings farms - and especially to the women-managed smallholdings.
The menu of best-practice packages is in sections 5.2 to 5.4 presented in summary format. That format will enable various stakeholders to make an initial appraisal and prospective commitment to specific menu items and to the strategy here proposed. As highlighted in several preceding paragraphs, FAO is able and willing to assist member governments in making such appraisal, and in ensuring congruence with their national agricultural/rural-development plans. FAO would also assist in attempts to quantify the added value that derives from multi-disciplinary multi-stakeholder interventions. Subsequently, FAO will prepare a portfolio of semi-detailed proposals for those menu items that are favoured by stakeholders. Section 5.5 summarizes the indicative outputs expected from the proposed interventions.
Some items within the menu of packages shall be suitable for formulation as pilot projects incorporating best practices and success cases. As such, they might be particularly appropriate for inclusion in programmes to strengthen devolution of administrative/technological functions - as was recommended by the United Nations Capital Development Fund. Other items would be candidates for sponsorship through FAO as sub-regional or as single-country technical co-operation programmes.
The urgency and the political will for pro-poor food-security action - as shall be emphasized in the June-2002 World Food Summit - is immense. Action is needed immediately to combat current hunger - particularly among the very young. Additionally, family-oriented and policy-directed interventions must help achieve the vital socio-economic and socio-political goals of providing to the younger generation of poor and hungry persons - both males and females - a realistic expectation that their lifestyles and livelihoods shall be more agreeable than those of their parents. Such interventions must commence now if the younger generation's aspirations for year 2030 are to be met.
Options for technological interventions, and for which FAO could act as a facilitator of adaptations and adoptions, are here presented in relation to primary productivity, to value-adding processing, and to sustainable resource management. They are formulated within the context of food security and poverty alleviation, and of a holistic and participatory implementation in which key non-technological aspects - as of the fuller involvement of women in rural-livelihoods development - would be "main-streamed".
Technological interventions would comprise demonstrations and supports to the smallholding adoption of proven best practices and success-case experiences, with some supplementary applied studies. They would target the poor-people staples - including rice - but also feed crops and some higher-value non-rice crops. They would target also the rice-smallholding livestock, fish, and agroforestry products, and would utilize the beneficial synergies and interactions among the several farming-system components. Interventions shall thus be location-specific, and would correspondingly expect to be guided by participatory appraisals, with and for the beneficiary communities, of both the technical/agronomic and the socio-economic/cultural constraints. Those appraisals, similarly, would be mindful of the prospective, location-specific, poverty-escape mechanisms, and of the implications for intensification and diversification of the farming-system components.
Within the twin-twin-track strategy, the interventions here proposed are segregated according to their applicability to non-irrigated, to irrigated, or to all rice-based systems. They are code-referenced for ease of follow-up and administration, and are categorized as to whether appropriate for near-term or for medium-term support and implementation. They are described in summary.
The identifier alpha-numeric codes are constituted and sequenced as follows:
T: Technological intervention; E: Economic or social intervention; I: Institutional or infrastructural.
B: Both non-irrigated and irrigated rice systems; N: Non-irrigated systems; I: Irrigated systems.
C: Crops; L: Livestock; F: Fish; A: Agroforestry; P: Policy; V: Value-adding; T: Training, information and capacity strengthening; S: Sustainable natural resource use.
2: Identifier number within the preceding codes.
The following technological interventions may be applicable to the non-irrigated rice systems (rainfed-lowland, deepwater, or upland) and also to the irrigated systems.
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T.B.C.1: |
Use of existing GIS and FIVIMS databases and analytical agro-ecological procedures and of existing constraints analyses and community-assets appraisals to explore location-specific cost-effective technological options for rice/non-rice - including agroforestry - and for rice/rice/non-rice and rice/wheat/non-rice sequences, relays, mixtures, and inter-croppings that are compatible with feasible farming systems and with accessible inputs and markets and infrastructures and for which the requisite cultivars can be acquired nationally or through FAO international assistance. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.N.C.2, I.N.S.2, I.I.P.1) |
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T.B.C.2: |
Strengthen within-community technologies and procedures to acquire and to manage and increase supplies and quality of seeds for preferred cultivars - traditional, modern, vitamin/micro-nutrient-enriched, and hybrid - for rice and non-rice crops (including feed crops). |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to E.B.T.1, I.B.P.3) |
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T.B.C.3: |
Facilitate and support, for rice and non-rice crops, operator-safe and effective control of weeds, pathogens, pest-insects, molluscs (irrigated systems), and (to the extent practicable) rats and birds through training-and-demonstration programmes and taxation and regulatory regimes to improve labelling and to lessen excessive use and mistimed applications of pesticides and to incorporate biological, biotechnological, and threshold-level controls where appropriate. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to I.B.P.2) |
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T.B.L.1: |
Assistance to enable smallholders to benefit maximally from the expected increase in demand for livestock products by availing of small-farm crop-livestock synergies, including opportunities to produce livestock feeds. Interventions confined to areas where smallholders may expect to be price-competitive against large-scale enterprises, and where livestock-yield-gap analyses suggest potential for much-increased productivity. Assistance through facilitated access to improved breeds/hybrids of poultry and of ruminants, and to quality stock for such breeds/hybrids. Assistance also through guidance on technologies to supply and augment feeds from own-farm crop products and by-products, and for crop-nutrition strengthening using livestock manures and composts. Location-specific livestock options may include native chicken, and native and hybrid duck; and for irrigated and favourably-rainfed areas: cattle for fattening and for dairy, pigs, and possibly improved buffalo for meat (South-East Asia); and for upland and less-favourably-rainfed areas: sheep and goats. Guidance and support correspondingly in livestock housing (including communal housing), feeding, reproductive and health management, and in micro-finance and post-production and marketing activities. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.V.1, E.B.V.2, E.B.T.1) |
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T.B.V.1: |
For smallholder livestock: assistance to provide or strengthen post-production added value through introduction in villages and/or townships of proven appropriate-technology procedures for slaughter and dressing for poultry and ruminants, and through training/facilities for meat inspection for food-safety-conscious markets and supermarkets. Guidance/assistance also on technology for incorporation of livestock products into low-cost protein products for rural communities and their school-lunch services. For smallholder dairy enterprises, assistance to utilize new milk-preservation technologies using lactoperoxidase and combined pasteurization/packaging. Guidance also on technologies to enhance the added value achievable for hides, horn, fibre and feathers. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.L.1 and E.B.V.2) |
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T.B.V.2: |
For smallholders and communities, technological and market-research support and guidance for a set of options for value-adding processing of rice-system food products and by-products into noodles, breakfast cereals, sauces, soups, beverages, desserts and baby foods. Support also to community-scale production of brown rice and of rice-bran derivatives for health-conscious consumers, and of livestock-feed supplements through micro-biological processing of rice straw. Guidance and assistance also - and particularly for farm-family women - on known procedures to lessen post-harvest losses during processing and storage. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to E.B.V.1 and E.B.T.1) |
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T.B.S.1: |
Agronomic and socio-economic appraisals/investigations - perhaps in partnership with donor-country and NGO and local-academia specialists - of the potential for renewable-energy bio-fuel crops to be grown post-rice in irrigated and in non-irrigated ecozones. Agronomic investigations, perhaps targeting the tropical and sub-tropical Miscanthus and Pennisetum purpureum, to identify ecozone-specific cultivars and management practices, and to estimate prospective annual production and energy content. Technical studies to determine the suitability and annual bio-fuel requirement of existing prototype medium-scale electrical-power generators, and of their congruence with national and regional-growth-triangle energy strategies. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to E.B.S.1 and I.N.S.1) |
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T.B.S.2: |
Facilitate a rice-system crop and livestock management that assists the global commitment to lessen agricultural-nitrogen flows to the aquatic and atmospheric environments, and that thereby increases rice-production efficiency and net income, and improves rice-soil "health". Technical guidance and supports to the understanding and adoption of environment-friendly decision-support systems and tools, including the "LEAD Toolbox" for livestock-excreta management, and the site-specific-nutrient-management and nutrient-exclusion-plot procedures and the leaf-colour-card tool for achieving balanced and efficient rice-crop fertilization. Efforts also to optimize the utilization and effectiveness of the rice-systems' soil-and-plant-analysis laboratories, and particularly their P-and-K-advisory programmes. |
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Initiate applied studies, which use procedures already validated by FAO, to identify - and subsequently to increase seed-availability for - farmer-acceptable N-efficient rice cultivars. Quantify for those cultivars the agronomic and economic efficiencies of combinations of manufactured fertilizers and livestock manures when used in conjunction with appropriate rice-plant-population density, seed quality, and pest and water management. Supplementary studies to use for fertilizer-regulatory purposes a rigorous, distributor-acceptable methodology to evaluate simultaneously up to twenty proprietary fertilizer blends and compounds, growth-promoters, soil conditioners and micro-nutrient cocktails. [These various studies might appropriately be undertaken by national agencies mandated to operate "at the interface between extension and research".] |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.I.C.2, I.B.P.2, I.B.S.1) |
This section groups those technological interventions that are applicable to the non-irrigated rice systems: rainfed-lowland, deepwater and upland. For the more-favourably-rainfed lowlands and for the deeper-water systems there are newly proven technologies and procedures that can be commended for demonstration to and evaluation by farm families. For the upland systems, there are prospective income-generating initiatives wherewith to supplement the resource-conserving procedures of SARM and of ILMT.
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T.N.C.1: |
For favourably-rainfed lowland rice, demonstrations and supports to programmes of integrated rice-crop management based on the rice-check methodology with its farmer-group collective procedure of observe, measure, record, interpret, act, and with its agronomic emphasis on appropriate land preparation, sowing date, rice cultivar, plant population (whether transplanted or direct-seeded), pest control, water management, and leaf-N-guided nitrogen management, and with its accommodation of responsible target yield and farm-family risk strategy. Supplemental options to supply/evaluate candidate rice cultivars - including hybrids, new-plant-type, and vitamin-enhanced; and opportunity to sponsor and undertake collaborative breeder/farmer rice-cultivar development to increase yield potential in high-price traditional deepwater-rice cultivars. Options also to evaluate improved intermediate-technology tools - including treadle- or diesel-powered water pumps, cono-weeder, serrated sickle, and seedling-nursery protection against virus vectors. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.I.C.1, T.I.C.2, I.N.S.1, I.N.S.2) |
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T.N.C.2: |
For medium (0.3 - 1.0 m) deeper-water-rice and for favourably-rainfed-rice regimes, demonstrations and supports to evaluate/adapt best-practice and success-case experiences for cultivars and management for monsoon-season rice and for high-yielding post-monsoon (cool-season) rice. Corresponding evaluations for success-case pre-monsoon and post-monsoon cropping-system options: sequences, inter-crops, mixtures, relays, and ratoons, and their candidate rice cultivars (including rainfed new plant-type) and intermediate-technology tools. Supplemental options to supply/evaluate candidate non-rice cultivars - including maize, oil-seeds, pulses, bio-fuel crops, and niche-specific high-value herbs, spices, colorants and pharmacia. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to E.B.T.I, E.B.T.3, I.B.S.1, I.N.S.1) |
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T.N.A.1: |
For upland-rice agroforestry systems, provide supports, guidance, and assistance for income-generating initiatives wherewith to supplement the resource-conserving procedures of SARM and ILMT. Candidate initiatives include diesel-powered pumping of pond water to higher-elevation fields, within-farm interceptor plots to retain rainfall-runoff water, intermediate-technology tools, and niche-specific options for high-value crops - notably medicinal crops, and herbs, spices, and colorants. Options also to evaluate candidate upland-rice cultivars (including "aerobic-rice" cultivars) and to disseminate seeds thereof, and to sponsor and undertake collaborative breeder/farmer rice-cultivar selection and development. Initiatives also - with supportive Agenda-21 incentives - to assess and to grow carbon-sequestering crops and bio-fuel crops, and to maintain biodiversity-conserving crops, livestock, and habitats. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.B.C.1, T.B.S.1, E.B.V.1, E.B.S.1, I.N.S.1, I.N.S.2) |
This section groups those technological interventions that are applicable primarily to irrigated rice systems. For these irrigated systems, there are several newly-proven and emerging technologies. Enhanced dissemination of these technologies can be expected to impact quickly and favourably on rural food security and poverty reduction.
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T.I.C.1: |
Support and guidance to area-specific agronomic assessment of irrigated-rice yield gaps and their components, assessed for currently-used cultivars, and for hybrid and new-plant-type cultivars, and for each rice crop within rice-rice and rice-rice-rice sequences. Corresponding determination of realistically attainable smallholder yields, and hence of responsible target yields within representative smallholder-household strategies to accommodate socio-economic and climate/pest risks. [These findings shall help target interventions, and shall be pertinent also to favourably-rainfed lowland rice.] |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.C.1, T.I.C.2, I.B.P.4) |
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T.I.C.2: |
For irrigated systems, and for each rice crop within multi-rice sequences, and in relation to the locally-responsible target yield: demonstrations and supports to programmes of integrated rice-crop management using the rice-check methodology with its farmer-group collective procedure of observe, measure, record, interpret, act, and with its agronomic emphasis on appropriate land preparation, sowing date, rice cultivar, plant population (whether transplanted or direct-seeded), pest control, water management, and leaf-N-guided nitrogen management within a regime of site-specific balanced nutrition. Such regime to provide or replenish the nutrient off-takes, sustain "soil health" and minimize nutrients wastage. |
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Supplemental opportunity for farm-field determination of indigenous nutrient supplies capacity and hence for information-guided nutrients applications. Options also to demonstrate/evaluate water-saving procedures of post-dry-season shallow tillage and of non-continuous soil submergence. Opportunity to supply/evaluate candidate rice cultivars - including hybrids, new-plant-type, and vitamin-enhanced; and to evaluate improved intermediate-technology tools - water pump, cono-weeder, serrated sickle, and seedling-nursery protection against virus vectors. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.I.C.1, T.N.C.1, I.B.P.2, I.I.S.1) |
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T.I.F.1: |
Demonstrations and support for rice-fish systems that incorporate indigenous and introduced finfish, shrimp and crab: featuring management of the stocking, spawn and fingerling supply, supplementary feeding, health and hygiene, and fish-refuge and harvest and post-harvest procedures. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to E.B.V.2, E.B.T.1, I.B.T.2, I.B.S.1) |
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T.I.S.1: |
Demonstrations and support for paired-row irrigated-rice-geometry systems that facilitate rice-phase management and that permit prompt, rice-stubble-free minimal-tillage establishment and fertilization for post-rice coarse grains, oil seeds, field vegetables and pulses. For constrained soils, guidance and support to procedures (through Agenda-21) of carbon sequestration and bio-fuel production, and for saline soils, additionally, to procedures of conjunctive use of brackish and sweet waters. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.C.1, T.N.C.2, T.I.C.2, I.I.S.1) |
This section proposes interventions to help improve the income-generating opportunities and the general wellbeing of rice-system dwellers, including the rural landless. The interventions thus seek to strengthen the processing and marketing of rice-system products, to strengthen rice communities' access to information, training, and adult education, and to enable rice-farm families to profit from their endeavours to improve the local, regional and global environments. On-farm and off-farm activities are proposed, variously in production and in processing, and also in agriculture-support services. Some activities extend beyond FAO's mandate and expertise: it shall thereby be necessary to forge partnerships with those agencies and stakeholders that can complement FAO's expertise and experience.
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E.B.V.1: |
Community-specific guidance and support to identify market opportunities and price-competitive processing, packaging, distribution, and sales procedures for rice products and by-products - including high-value (and vitamin/micro-nutrient-enriched) health foods and convenience foods, and foods that incorporate ingredients from other rice-system crops, livestock and fish. Corresponding support to rice-farm communities to produce and market high-value low-bulk non-perishable products from non-rice crops - notably medicinals, spices, herbs and colorants. Support also to community-based service enterprises - as of small-scale rural transport, or of price-competitive repair, hire, or contractual supply/operation of rural equipment. For each enterprise, whether production or service, assistance in business management and in meeting start-up and tooling costs, and in complying with legal and administrative requirements. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.V.2, E.B.V.2, I.B.P.1) |
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E.B.V.2: |
For rice households tending livestock: Assistance and support to producer groups and co-operatives to identify market opportunities and price-competitive processing, packaging, distribution, and sales procedures for meat, eggs, and dairy products, and for hide, horn and feather products. Support - where cost-effective - for the construction in villages and/or townships of appropriate-technology facilities for slaughter and dressing for poultry and ruminants, and for ensuring appropriate hygiene and food standards for food-safety-conscious markets and supermarkets. Assistance to assess feasibility, and to provide facilities, for using slaughterhouse blood meal as a low-cost poultry-feed ingredient. For rice-system dairy enterprises, assistance to initiate and to operate milk-preservation technologies using lactoperoxidase and combined pasteurization/packaging. |
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For ricefield finfish, shellfish and eels: assistance, including tools and facilities, to adapt and adopt proven technologies to produce, package, and market high-protein long-shelf-life products. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.B.V.1, T.B.L.1, T.I.F.1, E.B.V.1, I.B.P.1) |
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E.B.S.1: |
Legal, technical, economic and marketing assistance to examine feasibility and cost-effectiveness - within the Agenda-21/Kyoto-Protocol financial supports and provisions for sustainable land utilization and within national power-generation strategies - of riceland employment-generating programmes of carbon sequestration, permanent land set-aside, and electricity generation from bio-fuel grasses and/or rice hulls. |
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Legal and administrative assistance to determine eligibility and suitability within national pro-poor food-for-work programmes of maintenance/restoration of sloping lands (ILMT and SARM) and of irrigation structures. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.S.1, I.B.P.2, I.B.S.1, I.I.P.1) |
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E.B.T.1: |
Strengthening of course materials and of skilled extensionists - female and male - to facilitate technical training and adult education for rice-smallholder families. Adapting where appropriate whole-family-training procedures to strengthen female members' technical knowledge and to access those members' agronomic and socio-economic expertise, and to engage the interest, enthusiasm, and modern knowledge of the near-adult children. Adapt and adopt existing training modules (including NGO-prepared modules) of best practices, success cases and decision-support systems for rice and non-rice crops, livestock, and ricefield fish, and for sustainable resource and common-properties management, and for value-adding and post-harvest technologies and enterprise management. Modules also that feature the available and prospective hand-tools that conserve employment but lessen drudgery: for pre-harvest and post-harvest tasks, for community-based service enterprises, and especially tools designed for women's use. |
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Forward planning of farmers' field school curricula for the transformed rice-system agriculture of 2010-30: featuring skills in managing new types of rice plant and of oil crops, feed crops and bio-fuel crops; skills in modern techniques of poultry- and ruminant-livestock management; and in managing the complexities of the integrated farm system, including financial and value-adding and marketing aspects. |
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Development of skills - technical, administrative, financial, and within existing seed-regulatory regimes - for rural women to expand and direct community-based seed-management enterprises. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.C.2, T.B.S.2, E.B.T.2, I.B.T.1, I.B.T.2) |
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E.B.T.2: |
Rice-community adult education - within multi-agency curricula addressing diverse rural topics - featuring aspects of financial management both of enterprises and of households, of nutrition, health, hygiene, and sanitation, and of the formation and operation of groups, associations and co-operatives. |
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Women-specific sessions to emphasize aspects of maternity care and of mother-and-child micro-nutrition so as to enhance nutritional use of available food and lessen the incidence of low-body-mass females, and to describe and encourage home-garden contributions to family nutrition. Guidance also on incorporation of livestock products into low-cost high-protein foods for rural communities and their school-lunch services. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.B.V.1, E.B.T.1, I.B.P.3, I.B.T.2) |
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E.B.T.3: |
Multi-agency support for rural information and knowledge sharing: to and from farm families, to and from extensionists and researchers and NGOs, to and from micro-finance and agricultural-inputs suppliers, and to and from non-agricultural rural entities. Utilizing multi-media channels: farmers' field schools, whole-family seminars, workshops, monitoring tours, brochures, reports, and television/radio; provision as appropriate of internet/telephone facilities for market-information access. |
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Use of low-cost soft-wares for translation and for co-publication in national languages of high-quality training/extension/best-practice materials and manuals - particularly for risk-prone rainfed-rice systems - that are currently available in English-language only. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.N.C.2, T.I.C.2, E.B.T.1, E.B.T.2, I.B.P.1) |
The following interventions are proposed to help strengthen national rural-development institutions - centralized and devolved, and to assist the upgrading of rural infrastructure, and to support initiatives to formulate and to implement pro-rural, pro-smallholder, pro-employment, and urban-migration-countering policies. All interventions shall require to be consistent with and supportive of the nationally-defined rural-development strategies. They must be consistent also with the particular assets and strengths of the intended beneficiary communities. As with some interventions suggested in preceding sections, so for the interventions here listed, and particularly among interventions for infrastructures that support social services, several extend beyond FAO's mandate and expertise. Correspondingly, for the rural-areas social services for education, health, and domestic water and sanitation, there is crucial need to strengthen not only the infrastructures, but also the scope and quality of the services. There is thus compelling need for multi-agency multi-stakeholder initiatives.
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I.B.P.1: |
Assistance to develop a national policy that strengthens rural infrastructures and transport/communications connections and hence enables rural areas to attract employment-generating enterprises to cost-competitive production environments. Complementary policies - perhaps of medium-term tax incentives - to supplement that attractiveness to individual, urban-based, established companies. |
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Within that strengthened pro-rural national policy, support to construct or refurbish rural market halls and storage and food-processing and packaging facilities, buildings and start-up premises for value-adding enterprises and micro-finance services, and to provide or upgrade communications, economic links, and transport for persons and goods to identified urban and peri-urban markets. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to E.B.V.1, E.B.V.2, I.B.P.2, I.I.P.1) |
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I.B.P.2: |
Policy assistance correspondingly to halt and reverse the downward trend in national investments in agriculture and rural development - notably in agricultural extension and adaptive research, and to encourage, through taxation incentives, private-sector investment in smallholder agriculture. Assistance also to identify and to repeal anti-smallholder and agri-agriculture policies, and to identify and remove impediments to the operation of existing policies, statutes, and regulations, and to initiate pro-rural and pro-smallholder policies that reward sustainable natural-resource management. Assistance, correspondingly, to strengthen the rights of smallholders and of governments in aspects of intellectual property and of indigenous germplasm. |
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Legal, regulatory and policy assistance to identify and phase out anti-rural and anti-smallholder bias in national regimes of taxation and fiscal policy; and to identify and phase out perverse subsidies that encourage and reward environmental degradation and resource misuse: particularly those for fertilizer, pesticides, livestock-feed concentrates, water, tubewells, electricity and credit. Assistance to ensure that taxes on labour are repealed and replaced by taxes on natural resources. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.S.2, E.B.V.1, E.B.V.2, E.B.S.1, I.N.S.1, I.I.S.1) |
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I.B.P.3: |
Policy and legal assistance to review and to strengthen national policy to enable rural families - and especially woman-headed families - to acquire and to retain legal access to social and financial services and to agricultural-extension services, and to the assets and entitlements of land and land markets, water, common properties and rural employment. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to E.B.V.1, E.B.V.2, E.B.T.2, I.I.S.1) |
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I.B.P.4: |
Analytic assistance to generate policy-guiding data and interpretations that impact national pro-poor food-pricing strategy and rural food-security trends and forecasts. Determining, for smallholdings of various sizes and for landless share-croppers, the balance of own-farm production and consumption for staples and other food crops. Quantification of national and sub-national trends, using 6-year rather than 10-year time segments, and for comparison against human-population and food-demand growth-rate forecasts, in yield per field day for key crops, and in annual production for key crops and livestock, and in the all-agriculture- and in the food-production indices. Analyses also, using non-linear models, for trends in yield gaps for key staples. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.C.1, T.N.C.1, T.I.C.1) |
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I.B.T.1: |
Guidance and assistance to national and devolved governments to strengthen institutions and develop human capacity to support the formation and operation of rural producer groups, associations and co-operatives, and to assist those groups and associations to participate with civil-society and community-based and non-government organizations in formulating and implementing rural-development policies and programmes. Assistance, where needed, to improve the mechanisms wherewith powers become legally devolved from the national ministries, and to familiarize national and local agencies with the content and implication of those mechanisms. Within an overall strengthening of national and devolved agricultural-extension and adaptive-research services, strengthening of institutional capacity to assist small-business-development agencies, and to lessen administrative/legal constraints to co-operatives formation and to rural off-farm employment - including landless-person employment. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to E.B.V.1, E.B.V.2, I.B.P.1, I.B.P.2, I.B.P.3, I.I.S.1) |
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I.B.T.2: |
Support to strengthen national capacity to extend the scope and efficiency of micro-finance services for rice-growing communities. Demand for such services is expected increase, as value-adding enterprises increase in number and size, and as expansion of rice-system livestock generates requirements for medium-term credit to purchase animals and feeds and to construct housing. Assistance, where needed, in aspects of regulation and standardization, and in establishing procedures for identifying the very poor families that most need financial and "safety-net" services, and for providing to those very poor clients the intensive training that shall enable them to understand and to utilize financial services. Advice and technical assistance on computer software and database hardware and operation for rural micro-finance networks. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.B.L.1, T.B.V.1, T.B.V.2) |
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I.B.T.3: |
For agricultural trade within countries, support to institutional capacity in strengthening and regulating fair-trading practices. For international trade, training and capacity development for individual countries and for country groupings to enhance capabilities to exert influence in the congresses and committees of the World Trade Organization, and thereby optimize their benefits of membership. Guidance particularly on procedures of the General System of Preferences, of the Committees on Provisions of Technical Barriers and Trade and on Provisions on Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, and on effective utilization of the Advisory Centre on WTO Law; assistance also to adapt national policies and strategies so as to enhance access to WTO "Safety-Net" and "Green-Box" benefits. Support to establish and operate developing-country groups and growth triangles that can enhance bargaining power for international purchase or sale of agricultural commodities and products. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.N.A.1, E.B.V.1, E.B.V.2, I.I.S.1) |
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I.B.S.1: |
Enhanced sustainability of natural resources and of communal man-made rural infrastructures, through "safety-net" programmes, institutions, training and policies that enable socially and environmentally desirable construction and maintenance to be undertaken through food-for-work by the self-selected very poor - particularly in remote upland and deepwater areas. Qualifying food-for-work activities could include own-farm SARM and ILMT constructions/plantings, large-area pest-control campaigns, on-farm water-conservation measures, irrigation-system maintenance, and repair/maintenance of market halls, fish-landing jetties, and farm-access roads and bridges. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.N.A.1, E.B.S.1, E.B.T.1, I.I.S.1) |
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I.N.S.1: |
For non-irrigated ricelands (and possibly for saline irrigated lands), strengthened national and devolved capacity to initiate, guide, implement, monitor, and regulate programmes of carbon sequestration - whether in soil or in standing crops. Attention particularly to fragile or degraded lands, community-managed forest lands and lands currently subject to shifting cultivation. |
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(Near-term activity; linked to T.N.C.2, T.N.A.1, E.B.S.1, T.I.S.1) |
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I.N.S.2: |
Support - within watershed and agricultural-development programmes - to construct communal, small-scale rainwater-impoundment and livestock-watering facilities, and inter-linkages where appropriate. Guidance and assistance to design and install water-inceptor plots on upland holdings. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.B.C.1, T.B.L.1, T.N.A.1, I.B.P.1) |
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I.I.P.1: |
Strengthening existing institutional capacity, at national, province/state, and irrigation-system level, to formulate, within national water-sector plans, rice-system irrigation policy for the near, medium and long terms. Guidance on component policies for modernization, operation and maintenance of older systems, within national modernization strategies that are mindful of the concerns for accountability, system-management capability, management incentives and user empowerment, and for equitable treatment for upstream and downstream lands and for those dependent on groundwater and those on gravity-flow water. Assistance in designing and presenting system-modernization training for all irrigated-sector stakeholders. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.I.C.1, E.B.S.1, I.B.P.1, I.B.S.1) |
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I.I.S.1: |
Guidance and capacity strengthening, for all stakeholders, in the ongoing formulation, implementation, and regulation of policies for within-system irrigation-water allocations that increase sustainable rice-smallholding production. Assistance to define and enact equitable, possibly contentious, systems of water rights and water obligations, and of water markets and water pricing, and of transitional pro-poor safety nets. Strengthening of national and devolved capacity to facilitate the formation and operation of water-users' associations, and to formulate policies that promote and enforce productive farm-level water use. |
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(Medium-term activity; linked to T.I.C.2, T.I.S.1, E.B.S.1, I.B.P.2, I.B.P.3, I.B.T.1) |
In all aspects of policy intervention, an FAO (1997d) guideline is apposite: When policy interventions are needed, it is best to look first at changing incentives to encourage behaviour in line with the desired behaviour, and that a key element is that the incentives get the prices right - for prices that reflect the costs to present and future generations. But in situations that require the imposition of controls rather than of incentives, it is worthwhile to recall that FAO and other partners can help mobilize external resources to assist democratic governments to initiate necessary but unpopular policies - including abolition of "perverse incentives" - for which the costs of interventions now are likely to be much less than the costs of remedies in Year 2015 and thereafter.
Outputs intended and expected from the suggested interventions are several. Those outputs, like the interventions to which they relate, shall be specific to particular countries and provinces/states, depending on those countries' selections from "the menu". The candidate interventions are variously proposed for the near term and for the medium term. However, many of their outputs and impacts on rural hunger, poverty and other livelihood indicators shall be manifest only in the long term, and at different times in different countries and ecozones. Nonetheless, quantifiable progress towards the desired outputs should be detectable in the medium term. Interventions-programme monitoring and evaluation would correspondingly expect to quantify progress towards intended outputs both during and after interventions. It should similarly quantify the synergistic and added-value benefits that are expected to derive from interactive multi-agency, multi-disciplinary activities and contributions, and from the synergies among technological, institutional, social and human-developmental, and policy and infrastructural interventions.
For all types of rice ecozone, whether irrigated or non-irrigated, interventions would in some countries result in a near-term quantifiable increase in public-sector and perhaps in taxation-induced private-sector investment in smallholder agriculture and rural development. Quantitative increases also in public-sector investments in rural infrastructures, connections and communications, and in the numbers of policy, regulatory, and fiscal enactments that together strive to encourage urban-based companies to locate employment-generating entities in rural areas. For the irrigated ecozones, there would be expectation of substantive enactments, policies and investments to modernize appropriate irrigation systems.
Enactments also of pro-smallholder, pro-rural policies, and identification and amendment/repeal of anti-rural fiscal and taxation policies. There would be complementary, documented, strategies to replace taxes on labour by taxes on natural resources; together with legally-enacted and operational procedures and funding for food-for-work programmes - for the landless and for the poorest smallholders - that improve the natural-resource base of smallholdings and common properties and that maintain/refurbish communal farm-access roads, jetties, market halls, and irrigation systems. Additionally, crucial and quantifiable enactments, either national or devolved, to strengthen, codify, regularize, and enforce smallholders' rights and obligations of access, tenure, and usage of natural resources and their markets - especially of land and of water. Outputs, also, of legal and regulatory procedures and resources to phase out those perverse subsidies that encourage and reward environmental degradation and resource misuse.
Facilitated by those fore-mentioned policies and enactments, pro-rural donor funding would enable quantifiable outputs as strengthened institutions and as newly-constructed or renovated physical structures, infrastructures, and linkages that would support expanded rural micro-enterprises - in production, processing and services. In non-irrigated watershed areas, such structures would include a quantifiable number of rainwater impoundments: the majority of them to supplement local needs for water for crops, livestock, and domestic supply, but some to recharge downstream aquifers.
The definition and development of those fore-mentioned policies - and of the large-scale scale planning and policies for national food production and food security - would be assisted by the suggested intervention to upgrade and make operational and more current the data-analysis procedures to quantify time trends in yields and productions.
Interventions to strengthen rural-support institutions and service suppliers, and particularly the agricultural-extension institutions and the rural-inputs suppliers, would bring important outputs. Such outputs would be quantified by the numbers of male and of female personnel receiving specialist instruction, and by the increase in knowledge, competence, and confidence of those personnel, and by the improvement in service from inputs suppliers. Quantified additionally by the extent to which that increased knowledge and its associated decision-support methodologies was acquired and applied by the rural beneficiaries - notably in their development of micro-enterprises and in their adoption of improved technologies of production and processing.
Correspondingly, multi-agency broad-based adult education, and whole-family rice-system-oriented technical and enterprise-management training, and women-specific health/nutrition/maternity training, would expect to bring quantifiable near-term benefits in household food security and food safety and in quality-of-life, and quantifiable medium-term impact on the incidence of low birth weights (males and females) and of low body mass index in infant and pre-school females.
Similarly, locally-accessed multi-media information/communications services, and a much-increased number of functional multi-stakeholder user/producer groups and associations, together with accessible micro-finance providers that have adequate data-management systems and procedures to target the very poor, would expect to result in a significant and measurable near-term increase in the numbers of small rural-business formations.
The fore-mentioned policies and the associated economic and social interventions, are complemented by the technological interventions proposed for primary production and for value addition. For primary production, quantifiable outputs would be the numbers of location-specific options (and adoptions) for profitable rice-based crop sequences and mixtures that are newly made feasible by the interventions-facilitated strengthening of water, market, and other resources, and by new options for cultivars and their seeds and for sequence-oriented agronomic management.
For irrigated and for favourably-rainfed lowland ecozones, there would be medium-term quantified increase in rice productivity and profitability through adoption of farmer-group rice-check procedures to achieve appropriate target yields, and through farmer actions to remedy quantified yield-gap components. Correspondingly, for deeper-water and rainfed lowland ecozones: expectation of increased adoption of productive and risk-lessening pre-monsoon and post-monsoon cropping patterns, including cool-season high-yield rice, using interventions-facilitated cultivar/seed imports and supplies. For upland areas, donor-assisted interventions would expect to initiate and sustain a measurable increased production and sale of high-value low-bulk crops and products.
For all rice ecozones, and for rice-system crops, livestock and fish, the more-widespread adoption of best practices would be apparent in district-scale productivity statistics. Such adoption would be facilitated by interventions-strengthened extension capacity, local-language manuals and decision-support tools. Prominent among the best practices is the use of high-vigour seeds: interventions would increase measurably the production and use of such seeds. Additionally and vitally, they would increase the number of active and profitable community-based and women-directed seed-production-and-marketing enterprises.
Best practices would expect to result also in a favourable increase in the numbers of farmers adopting environment-friendly procedures of balanced and more-efficient crop nutrition, of pesticides application, of water conservation, and of livestock-excreta management. Sustainable resource management and employment creation, would similarly be enhanced if the proposed technological, economic and legal appraisals should justify and help initiate cost-effective programmes for carbon sequestration and bio-fuel production in some types of riceland.
Outputs from crops-livestock synergy would be manifest as an increased competence for such synergy within the national extension services, and quantified increases in rice-farm livestock (and possibly fish) numbers and income. Increases also in synergistic use of products, by-products, and waste products, and in ricefield production of post-rice oil-seed and coarse-grain livestock feeds. Increased numbers and quality of rice and non-rice cultivars, and of breeds of ruminants, poultry and fish, would also quantify sustainable outputs achieved from interventions to promote these synergies; as would increased protein content in school-lunch foods and in rural-household diets.
From the technological interventions to increase post-harvest added value, outputs would be indicated by increases in numbers of micro-enterprises and of product types - and in rural-community sales - for rice-based and livestock-based food and non-food products; indications also through decreased processing and storage losses. Community-level outputs represented also by enhanced technical competence and by increased numbers of facilities for hygienic processing, preservation, presentation and inspection of meat, egg and dairy products from riceland livestock.
Outputs from the marketing supports and guidance that complement the technological and small-infrastructures interventions would be quantified by increased number, variety, and revenues of community-based service-oriented micro-enterprises. Quantified also by more-widespread adoption of an interventions-enlarged set of opportunities for processing, packaging, distribution, and sale of marketable and long-shelf-life food and non-food products from riceland crops, livestock and fish. The required forward-looking extension/training materials would be generated as an output from the interventions-assisted forward planning of farmers' field school curricula.
A medium- and long-term output from the strengthening of institutional capacity to facilitate intra-national and inter-national (WTO) fair trade would be that the marketable products from riceland micro-enterprises maintained or increased their share of national and/or global agricultural markets. Additionally, a strengthened influence at WTO would help procure "Green-Box" and other safety-net protections for the poorest riceland families.
As was previewed above, the major outputs of rural-livelihoods interventions must be quantified improvements to the wellbeing of rural families and communities and to the lessening of their hunger and poverty. Rural families and communities require also a realistic perception and expectation of a brighter future within their rural environs.
However, during this strategy's timeframes, many processes and factors beyond the interventions here proposed shall strongly influence riceland hunger, poverty and wellbeing. Nonetheless, established monitoring/evaluation procedures would permit some assessment of the impacts on those entities of the interventions here proposed. Within those broad entities, assessments would expect to quantify impacts on household incomes, nutrition and empowerment - for smallholder and for landless families; and to quantify impacts also on the productivity of smallholdings and on the profitability of micro-enterprises.
For communities, districts and countries, monitoring of wellbeing would be made for various of the outputs specified earlier: notably for increments in rural investment, infra-structural constructions/renovations, and services, for enactments of policy, taxation, and regulatory reforms, for the numbers of new producer groups/associations, for the aggregate sales by new micro-enterprises, and for the quantity and quality of human-resource development - in institutions and in households and particularly for women.
Monitoring of district- and larger-scale agricultural-productivity trends might best be accomplished through analyses of total and single factor productivities and of inputs-use efficiencies, supplemented by determinations of the numbers of adoptions of the more-productive cropping/farming systems and of the high-value/low-bulk-commodity crops that are included among the here-proposed interventions. Monitoring of natural-resource-system sustainability, and perhaps of resilience, would expect to adopt the procedures used to assess SARM and ILMT programmes.
At household scale, monitoring of nutrition, hunger, poverty, wellbeing, and aspirations and expectations would adopt established procedures of baseline and recurrent sampling, and would be structured to disaggregate findings for children and for adults, and for males and for females. In monitoring the profitability of various types of micro-enterprise, and of smallholding activities both individually and in the aggregate, assessment would be made through standard costs/returns procedures.
Operationally, and at all scales, monitoring and evaluation would expect to be participatory, and to involve all stakeholders - and notably among them the intended beneficiaries, local and national agencies and civil-society groups, inputs/services suppliers and donors. Procedures would necessarily be country- and perhaps district- and rice-ecozone-specific. They would include multi-stakeholder specifications for progress criteria and indicators, and would feature strengths-and-weaknesses analyses. They would highlight lessons learned and make consequential interpretations and recommendations for adjustments and strengthenings of interventions content and procedure
To the extent possible, the evaluations would quantify also the added-value benefits expected from multi-agency, multi-disciplinary activities, and from the synergies among technological, institutional, human-developmental, and policy and infrastructural interventions.
The preceding text and analyses catalogue the many constraints and challenges to the lessening of rural hunger and poverty, whether generally, or specifically within the Asian rice-based livelihood-support systems. Fortunately, there are many technological, social, economic, institutional, and infrastructural opportunities wherewith to address those constraints and challenges. Encouragingly, recent forecasts for rice-country GDP growth at Year 2003 permit optimism that there can be increased national resources wherewith to help combat hunger and poverty.
Additionally, and as confirmed in the March 2002 Monterrey Consensus and the June 2002 World Food Summit, there is an international willingness and a political and social commitment to provide external resources wherewith to augment those national resources. This commitment derives in part from a strengthening recognition that it is in the interests both of developed and of developing nations to eliminate hunger and poverty, to lessen rural-urban migration, and to manage sustainably the natural and the man-made production resources.
Thus, in addition to the outputs expected from the proposed interventions, it is hoped that this publication shall engender within a knowledgeable and influential readership a heightened and quantitative awareness of the essential features and importance of these vital Asian rice systems. Engendering an awareness particularly of the geographic and human scope of those systems, and of their immense potential to sustain and improve livelihoods for an increasing population, and to accelerate the progress in lessening the global totals of hungry and poor persons - and especially of hungry and poor children.
It is hoped to strengthen awareness also - in an increasingly globalized and interdependent world - of the economic, social, and environmental significance of the ricelands and of the 3 billion persons who depend upon them for an often-substantial part of their daily food. And within that significance, to emphasize that a food-supply system that is so large and so pro-poor as the rice system has the potential to impact - favourably or adversely - on the world's food security and hence on its politico-economic stability. In which context, it is pertinent that for all concerned, aid for agriculture is much preferable both to food aid and to crisis-relief aid.
This publication shall therefore be shared with the many national and international agencies and groups - public-sector, private-sector and civil-society - that constitute the stakeholder community for these Asian rice-based livelihood-support systems. It shall in particular be shared with those several UN agencies that have concern for the alleviation of rural Asia's hunger and poverty - including the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the United Nations Development Programme. It shall be shared also with the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research and with various of its component International Agricultural Research Centres. It shall be shared with bilateral and multilateral sponsors of programmes of rural development and poverty alleviation, and with the two regionally active development banks: the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.
Through this sharing, FAO's Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific shall seek responses to the message here presented. Responses shall be sought particularly to determine which of the interventions presented in Sections 5.2 to 5.4 would be priority candidates for incorporation into the national food-security/poverty-alleviation programmes within the major rice-growing countries. There would be complementary enquiry as to the prospects for donor and national-resource support to the proposed strategy, interventions and investments. And enquiry also among the prospective partners in the multi-stakeholder, multi-agency, multi-disciplinary endeavour that is here envisaged.
