Mainstreaming biodiversity in agriculture, fisheries and forestry for improved food security and better nutrition
Agriculture is the science or practice of farming, including the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products while biodiversity is the variety of different types of life found on the Earth etc. It is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystems. In this context Ethiopian agriculture is exemplary to this biological diversity. Ethiopian small holders grow cereals, pulses, oil crops, fruits and vegetable. They also rear cattle, small ruminant, poultry etc. They also multi purpose trees (fodder, tree seedlings. This mixed farm system (crop-livestock and forestry ) contributes to the biodiversity. In Ethiopia, the institute of biodiversity promotes gene bank to prevent genetic erosion. International Livestock research Institute’s Fodder bank also preserves fodder. This is also being promoted at community level to maintain biodiversity. This indeed requires further integration between Academic/research with extension service delivery and farmers as end users and feed back providers. Farmers’ training centers and rural school farms can serve as demonstration centers for enhancing scaling up and achieving wider impact.
I believe that National and International NGOs can play a significant role in the dissemination process. For example the national NGO I represent made little contribution in this regard by promoting nutrition sensitive agriculture, initiating seedling production women groups, vegetable production, poultry keeping, small ruminant rearing, cattle fattening, fuel efficient stove production and agroforestry all of which attempts to reduce pressure on environment. Diversification of crop livestock production and their integration will contribute to mainstreaming of biodiversity into agriculture and producing nutrient rich food (protein, vitamin, carbohydrates etc).
1. Under what conditions can agriculture succeed in lifting people out of extreme poverty? Particularly those households with limited access to productive resources.
In Ethiopia food insecurity is almost synonymous with poverty. Hence, the effort to lift people out of poverty should start from exerting synchronized effort to enhance food security. This situation appears to prevail in many least developed countries. Food security can be attained by addressing the 3 pillars of food security through increasing food availability employing improved production technologies, creating access (economic etc) to facilitate easy distribution to enable those who cannot produce their food to buy from the market with affordable price and improve food utilization (nutrition) though nutrition education and overcome post harvest loses from the available food. The improved agricultural technology and practices should cover both pastoral and agro pastoral communities to enhance food and livestock production and support along the value chains. The intervention should focus, not only those who own land, but also the landless, women headed households etc through agricultural and non agricultural livelihoods diversification. I believe that the combination of the above measures will help attain food security, economic growth and poverty reduction and eventually poverty alleviation
2. What is the role of ensuring more sustainable natural resource management in supporting the eradication of extreme poverty?
Natural resource management should be participatory through upstream and downstream engagement. One cannot achieve sustainable natural Resource management by excluding resource owners and users (the communities). The policing and restricting access approach did not yield substantive success. It should be the resource owners and users who should protect and develop its resources (land, water, soil etc). If they are given this opportunity with proper awareness, community by-laws that illustrate the conservation, development and equitable benefit sharing they will engage not only in planting trees, but also in ensuring their survival. Cultivating awareness and leadership among University and High school students will also help to engage students in annual tree planting during school/university closure and use them as change agent in their respective communities.
I also think that there is a need to institutionalize annual tree planting campaign to ensure survival of planted seedlings and the respective institutes that planted seedlings should also take appropriate measure for ensuring the survival of those seedlings through post planting care until the seedling pass vulnerable stage
My association applied most the above suggested approach and achieved commendable results and won best practice award standing 2nd. But, resource constraint did not allow scaling up the best practice. Indeed, the developed bylaws should be approved by the regional government to scale up the initiative
Such integrated approach will enhance food security, climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation and community based tourism development
4. What set of policies are necessary to address issues connecting food security and extreme poverty eradication in rural areas?
To my opinion, policy and practice integration and interagency collaboration is of paramount importance.
Sustainable land management, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation are closely connected to help achieve food security and thus poverty reduction and also tourism development.
Hence, policies pertaining to the above thematic areas should speak to each other and exert synchronized effort to achieve economic growth of the country. Public-private partnership to promote economic governance (job creation, foreign currency generation, import substitution), Social governance who civil society organization work on behavioral change, constitutional right and obligation awareness is given through CSO/NGO,CBO) and political governance where the government create enabling environment, policies strategies and political participation will enhance sustainable human development. Also, enhancing. research/academia-extension and farmers linkage is critical to connect technology generators (Research) , technology disseminators (extension) and farmers (technology users) significantly contributes to poverty alleviation.
In this regard, ASDA has attempted bring the academia, research, agricultural and health extension system together with a view of promoting linkages and collaborations in one of its project and plan to scale given availability of funds
Takele Teshome
Executive Director, Association for Sustainable Development Alternatives (ASDA)
Dear Moderator
As to me sustainable farming system requires proper land use planning and cropping patter as mono cropping practice is the major cause for production decline due to decreased soil fertility, It also develops resistance to pests and diseases which is the main factor for production decline and food and nutrition insecurity
Inadequate understanding of food security in its full content also aggravates food and nutrition insecurity. Heavy focus on food availability while ignoring access issues and utilization where the importance of nutrition comes in.
Sustainable farming system also requires research, extension and farmers linkages to identify underlying causes of food and nutrition insecurity in order to design remedial measures. Considering the hidden hunger such as zinc defficiency, the need for biofortification, nutrition education and demonstration of vegetable meal preparation using school garden, farmers field days are essential
Regards
Takele
Gender transformative approaches
Dear All
My name is Takele Teshome, Founder and executive Director of Association for Sustainable Development Alternatives (ASDA). I was not able to actively participate in the online discussion since I was out on field trip where Internet access is difficult. I am now ready to share my thoughts and experiences in the field.
Question 1: What are the main challenges rural women and girls are facing today?
The key challenges of rural women in Ethiopia were unequal access and control over resources. Insufficient knowledge and access to information have also affected economic empowerment of women in general and women headed households in particular. Gender violence is also part of the challenge. However, although a lot remains to be done there are improvements in the recent years.
Question 2: Are we using the right approaches and policies to close the gender gap?
Noticeable effort has been exerted in areas of policies and strategies. However, practical actions to bridge the gaps are insufficient. A lot has been done to address practical gender needs such as reducing work - loads, increasing access to education, reproductive health etc. Programmes and projects are often formulated based on general need assessment, not on proper gender analysis, not on in-depth analysis of underlying causes for gender gaps and gender sensitive targets and indicators
Question 3: How can we best achieve gender transformative impacts?
AS to ASDA, programmes and project be formulated based on gender analysis to understand underlying causes for existing gender inequality and harmful traditional practices and gender violence. Research agenda should also consider gender inequalities. Feed back should also be collected not only from males but also from females using gender lense.
The population ratio between men and women in many countries is about 50:50. But when it comes female extension experts and development agents is unacceptably low. The challenge is very serious when it comes to female headed households and orphan girls (child/youth headed households.
ASDA has success stories in enhancing economic empowerment of women. It has established fuel efficient stove production, seedling production women groups, vegetable growers, poultry keepers and sheep fattening groups. These livelihood diversification options promoted skill acquisition and economic empowerment. The project also enhanced management and leadership capacities to run their business and increase self esteem.
In addition to this, ASDA established community dialogue center in one of the project districts to facilitate discussion among women groups on matters that affect their lives and come up with women driven projects and local actions. In ASDA, women participation in water users and care takers committee, social accountability committees natural resource management groups.
Women initiated and managed projects were presented to good practice competition at national level and undergone series of reviews at various levels and now short listed as top 5 best practices winners where the final ranking will be done by the panel of Judges in recent future.
Dear All
Greetings from Ethiopia
One critical challenge in the extension and advisory service is the poor linkage between technology generators (academia/research) and extension or advisory service delivery (to disseminate the technology) and farmers linkages are also weak and affects the rate of adoption. As a result of such gaps research agenda are not often demand driven (needs and priorities of women are rarely brought to research agenda. This linkage gap also affects feedback generation form the end users (farmers) to initiate technology refinement or adoption. Strengthening this linkage and involving the private sector in this linkage is very important .The proven technologies can go to mass production and supply through the private sector possibly with credit facilities in order to increase the adoption rate. In the absence of such integration and linkages the marginalized group such as women will not have access to information and the new technologies.
I also believe that emphasis on economic objectives of Extension (production increase etc. etc.) and inadequate attention to the social objectives human wellbeing, nutrition, mind set etc.) has contributed to the observed gap.
The extension service delivery should pay due attention to decrease the workload of women so as to engage them not only on practical gender needs but also on their strategic gender needs (their political participation, leadership enhancement, access to information/knowledge etc.)
Also, in many rural setting there are few female extension agents to closely work with women groups to sensitize them, building their capacity, work not only on income poverty but also on human poverty to expand women choices. This will contribute to sustainable human development and mainstreaming of gender.
Furthermore, project socio economic survey/baseline studies should address the needs of both men and women and the monitoring indicators should be gender sensitive in order to track progress using gender.
Finally, I also suggest nutrition education be mainstreamed in the Education system particularly at university level and development agents working at community level should be trained in nutrition and measurement of key nutrition indicators.
Regards
Takele Teshome, Association for Sustainable Development Alternatives (ASDA)
Dear All
As to me, first of all the national government, extension service delivery and NGOs working in the field of food security must have conceptual clarity to address food security including the 3 pillars (food availability, access and utilization) because malnutrition is often observed even in surplus producing areas.
The 2nd critical issue preventing food loss and maintaining food safety. Due to lack of appropriate storage facilities, transportation mechanisms the produced food are often lost and their quality and safety are compromised. This in turn affects nutrition. Perishable products such as vegetables and fruits do not have optimum cold storage until, suitable packing and transporting mechanism. As a result they cannot be kept for long due to their vulnerability for damage and nutrition loss.
Absence of market information along the value chains also force producers for any price the buyer is willing to give. Here, the brokers gain more than the producer. Appropriate storage, market information, setting floor price would have saved the producer (this is done for cereals, coffee etc, but not for vegetables and fruits).
The other critical area is the application of pesticides/fungicides. Urban agriculture in the outskirt of big town uses rivers that are sometimes polluted from biproducts and wastes coming from industries. This pollutes the vegetable. Some pesticides also have residual effect unless there is adequate days between pesticide application and harvesting of the vegetables to bring them to the market
Hence, if nutrition, food safety and reasonable gain to the producers are expected the above mentioned factors should be seen along the value chain.
Takele Teshome
السيد Takele Teshome
Dear Team
I encountered different difficulties that prevented my intention to contribute to the request call on food system.
I have to travel to the rural areas after you let me submit my input even after the deadline for which I apologize for the inconvenience
I cannot provide structural contribution related to the set of question and comment on the submitted contribution. But, I want to reflect what I think as key challenge in my experience which may also apply to other, Hence, have a look at the below input and If you find something useful you can integrate it into the appropriate question or contribution
1. Concept and practice of food system I not adequately understood
As you know, food system entail from site election (appropriate agro ecology for the type of crop), land preparation, pre and post harvest crop protection, harvesting, transportation up to reaching the table and fork
Food security is also ill perceived to some extent since mainly focused on food availability neglecting the other pillar. Nutrition also did not get sufficient attention on stunting of children under the age of 5
Research revealed that 8% of child death, 36%of stunting, 21% underweight, 7.14 % wasted children and inclusive breast feeding by 58% since lactating mother are not getting nutritious food
Hence, conceptual clarity and practical guidance should be improved and nutrition be given due attention to overcome stunting and wasting
2. Post harvest management challenge
Although systematic assessment findings are not available it is estimated that about 25% to 30% of the produced food are lost due to failure in supply chain management, packing material and storage. These lose is much higher in horticultural crop (vegetable and fruit) than cereal, pulses and oil crops. There I no refrigerated truck, no cold storage given the high perishability of vegetables and fruits. Hence pot harvest loss reduction should be given priority attention
3. Inadequate action on SDG
SDG achievement is only left with 7 years. But the extent of its achievement globally is not appreciable and worse in some countries. SDG achievement could have contributed to transformation of the food system (SDG2, SDG5, SDG 12, SDG 15 etc) can significantly improve the food system
4. Huge price increase
Several factors may contribute to high price increase that is not affordable to buyers/consumers
As a result of the above marginalized group employ negative copping mechanism which affects their health and the environment they live in
5. Lack of agricultural inputs and insufficient action to promote Urban Agriculture
6. Inadequate capacity of farmer organization (Cooperative, union) to promote technology and protect the interest of the constituency
7. Insufficient use of Solar, biogas energy to minimize deforestation despite available potential