In the wake of current transformation of world trade relations, stagnation in world economic development and deepening social and economic crisis in many developing countries, development agencies have to be realistic in terms of expected outcome of government’s policies and programs to eradicate poverty and enhance food security. The lifting of the enormous poverty burden on society, particular in rural areas, is the most challenging tasks for governments and peoples in most Asian and Pacific countries.
As you may recall the World Food Summit, held at the Headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization, in Rome, Italy in 1996, adopted an Action Plan, aiming at halving the number of hungry people in the world by the year 2015. Today we know that progress made on this action plan has been at most very modest. Economic conditions have worsened also in Thailand since the World Food Summit, while being a very successful agricultural export country, at the same time about 16% of its population is living below the poverty line, mostly in rural areas. The aftermath of the economic crisis of 1997 and the actual stagnation in economic development, due to lacking demand in its major overseas export markets, provide a major hurdle for policymakers to achieve its goals for poverty alleviation and food security. From this perspective the initiative by Prof. Makha and her team of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Naresuan University in Phitsanulok, to organize a major event to discuss experiences within the region in capacity building for local resources decentralization, comes most timely.
The need for innovative cost-effective models for poverty alleviation
To effectively address the negative economic development trends and strengthen efforts towards reduction of hunger and poverty within the Asian and Pacific region, there is an urgent need for innovative, cost effective and practical development strategies, having a positive impact on the income of rural households in a relative short period of time. It is often demonstrated that successful methodologies for poverty alleviation and food security are based upon a sound knowledge of local livelihood conditions and upon values, experiences and life skills of rural poor themselves. Such methodologies are often developed as part of teamwork and solid partnership between local people, their associations and experienced field level staff from development agencies concerned.
Joint UN “area based” poverty alleviation interventions
In Thailand, one recent example of such collaboration in poverty alleviation are joint UN “area based poverty alleviation activities” in collaboration with district and Tambon level authorities in the Mae Chan district, Chiang Rai province. The FAO coordinated UN area based poverty alleviation activities, facilitate joint planning and delivery on short time basis of technical assistance for poverty alleviation, using existing methodologies, training packages, for community development, assistance to poor households affected by HIV AIDS, support to women and ethnic minority producer groups and provision of grants for education of children from poor households, etc.
A national UN platform for joint action in Thailand, coordinated by UNDP, assist the Government in the development of a national framework for poverty reduction, called UNDAF. The jointly agreed UN agency poverty reduction goals and objectives cover among others (i) identification of successful strategies for enhancing gender responsive poverty reduction at national and local levels; (ii) support to community initiatives to promote rural development; (iii) the promotion of policy dialogue among stakeholders for sustainable agriculture and rural development and (iv) support to decentralization of decisionmaking for effective participation in poverty alleviation and related national development policies.
FAO technical assistance to promote economic viable agricultural cooperatives
The FAO is an UN technical expert agency for food and agriculture and it provides technical assistance to a wide range of capacity building activities for promotion of sustainable agriculture, natural resources management, fisheries, forestry and for decentralized, gender sensitive, participatory rural development.
Upon request of the Thai government FAO is providing support to promote successful small farmers cooperatives. These capacity building activities are in line with the government policy for promoting “one village one product” and for effective reduction of farmer’s debt. A practical training of trainers methodology, which has been built upon successful cooperative development experiences in the world and technical advise is made available, by the FAO rural development unit in Bangkok to the Cooperative Training Division of the Cooperative Development Promotion Department (CPD) in the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. The project aims at promotion of economic viable agricultural cooperative enterprise development based upon effective membership participation in the delivery of cooperative services and related decisionmaking. FAO assists CPD in the upgrading of cooperative development training curriculums and materials, in 5 regional training centers, including one in Phitsanulok, covering several provinces in this region. There is a genuine need for training on small-scale business planning for women village level producer groups and in general for small farmer’s cooperatives. Dairy production, organic farming, fisheries, aquaculture, marketing cooperatives will be part of a whole set of cooperative small and medium enterprise development training modules.
FAO support to disabled farmers in mushroom production and enterprise development
Another FAO successful methodology for income generation by disabled farmers has been recently developed in Thailand. The methodology provides three-month training for physical and mentally disabled farmers on mushroom production and enterprise development. Pilot training activities were implemented at the Training Center of the Department of Labor and Social Welfare, in Ubon Ratchatani province. About 40% of the ex-trainees are full-time successful mushroom entrepreneurs at village level, some have become trainers of disabled and non-disabled farmers themselves. Income gained by disabled mushroom producers and their families from daily sales at local markets varies from 5 to 10 US dollar equivalents per day. About 30% of the ex trainees are temporary/seasonal mushroom producers, being also engaged in other agricultural activities. Various other resources persons at this meeting will present other successful FAO experiences in capacity building for local resources decentralization.
ESCAP-FAO Success Case Replication of Farmers Enterprises
It is for me a pleasure to present at this session of the Asian Pacific International Conference on Capacity building for local resources management a project jointly implemented by ESCAP and FAO which is for practical reasons simply called “Success Case Replication” (SCR). The full title of this project is “ Poverty alleviation through market generated employment”, implemented in the period from mid 1994 to mid 1999 in eight Asian countries: Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Viet Nam, Mongolia, Lao PDR and Nepal. In this pilot project funded by the Government of the Netherlands, a senior economist of ESCAP, Mr. Orsini developed a unique methodology for practical local “on the job” training by successful local entrepreneurs, as trainers on small scale farm and off-farm enterprise development. The methodology has been field tested in 8 Asian countries by a small team, led by Mr. Orsini and assisted by an expert on small farmer’s organization development and participatory community development and since 1996 by FAO rural development officer in Bangkok. In total 3.332 small farmer households received the entrepreneurial training and 71% of these trainees, became successful small scale entrepreneurs, increasing their annual income on average with $ 449 US perannum. The cost effectiveness of the SCR methodology for poverty alleviation is demonstrated by the fact, that, total project implementation costs were $ 87.271, while total income generated by the newly small scale entrepreneurs reached $ 1.058.067 or a ratio of 1:12 for each dollar of project investment. Participant small farmers in Sri Lanka obtained the highest return rate, for every dollar of project investment they generated 54 US dollars in income.
In Thailand farmers from 7 provinces Chiang Mai, Lampang, Lopburi, Nakhonratchsima, Ratchburi Rayong and Nakhon Rithamrat participated in the SCR small enterprise development training including: cold soil brickmaking, production of non chemical vegetables, mushroom cultivation, coconut confectionery, baking of Chinese dumplings, integrated farming activities and farmer group administration. In total 69 villagers were trained on the SCR methodology, by the NGO ThaiDHHRA and Department of Agricultural Extension covering 12 types of small scale (group) enterprises. 58% of the trainees became successful entrepreneurs with a total net profit in first year of $ 43, 000 US against project training cost of 4,714 US dollars only. The Bank of Agriculture and Cooperatives (BAAC) undertook a second Thai SCR pilot training activity on 7 types of enterprises. 73% of the trainees became successful entrepreneurs with a first year total profit of 21,659 US against project training costs of only 1,349 US.
The ESCAP-FAO SCR methodology on small enterprise development has now successfully been integrated in FAO agricultural and rural development programs and projects. One example are FAO community level food security and poverty alleviation project activities in Myanmar and an upcoming pilot project in Cambodia in support to village level food processing by disabled people. The SCR method will also be part of FAO activities in Africa in promotion of food security poverty alleviation and sustainable agriculture, in the next two years. I am convinced that the SCR methodology will be applicable in many countries and poverty alleviation programs and hope that the methodology will find wider application in community development in Thailand and in other Asian and Pacific countries.
A brief overview of the SCR methodology for small farmer enterprise development is given below for your information and practical use in community development activities.
