Congratulations on this gargantuan task. My comments, obviously, concentrate on points that I think could be improved but there is much that is excellent.
I think it would be good to be clearer up front about the fact that this particular study is situated within the mandate of the CFS: that of promoting food security and guaranteeing the right to food. This would authorize you to state some points and recommendations more unequivocally. Examinations of the relation between investments and small-scale producers undertaken in other contexts and with other mandates could produce different results and recommendations, but that is not the objective of this study.
The CFS request to the HLPE included undertaking a comparative assessment of strategies for linking smallholders to food value chains in national and regional markets and an assessment of the impacts on smallholders of public-private etc. partnerships. The civil society/social movement participants fought hard to get the words I have italicized included in the wording of the decision box. It seems to me that, although the draft zero report does touch on the various strategies it does not really conduct a comparative assessment of them, nor does it discuss the impact of PPPs. I realize that the HLPE team is inevitably composed of people with different views. However, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to recognize this and clearly present a range of options/readings where these exist. As it is, on some of the most contentious points the zero draft report presents these different views as though they were complimentary, which they most often are not, and the result is confusing (e.g. the para. following box 3 on pg. 32, or para 2 on pg 41).
In this line, it might be good to state clearly at the outset that (simplifying, of course) there are two different narratives that confront each other: one that maintains that smallholder agriculture is essentially archaic and that the only solution for enhancing food security is to “modernize” it by incorporating those farmers who can make it into corporate-led value chains and giving the rest social protection treatment VS one that maintains that smallholder agriculture is the basis for food security and a host of other benefits and should be supported in line with its own logic, not by trying to incorporate it into some other logic. This would give you a clearer framework for comparative assessment of strategies. It would also provide a stronger basis for arguing in favour of support for smallholders – not just for the sake of it but because (at least according to one of the two narratives) they are the major pillar of food security and sustainable food systems for many developing countries.
I think it would be good for you to clarify the terminology up front. The CFS request talks about smallholders, but there are several other terms such as “small-scale producers” and “family farmers”. You do this to some degree in paras 3-5, but it should be in the Exec Summary as well. The fact that behind the term “smallholder” one is talking about a model of agriculture that contrasts in many ways with that of industrial agriculture and that provides a host of benefits beyond production could be clearer. The “sustainability” part of the equation could be strengthened. You risk having the agroecologists rise up in arms (p 59)!
Regarding markets, there is a clear statement on this in the last para. of section 2.3.1 but elsewhere in the report the discourse is a bit less clear. The discussion about different types of markets does not adequately address the issue of how they score (differentially) in terms of “the conditions that govern smallholders’ participation in the market economy”. The report doesn’t illuminate the “value chain” buzz word sufficiently (box 8 is tendentious) and doesn’t come to grips with the issue of somehow reconciling the financial benefits generated through sale of commodities with the overall, diversified logic of the “exploitation familiale”.
You might want to consider introducing a dimension of future-oriented scenarios. With climate change and an intensified energy crisis the policy arguments for promoting sustainable smallholder production will also be intensified.
You don’t seem to have given enough weight to conflicts of interest between the corporate private sector and public goods. The issue of the impacts of profit-oriented corporate concentration along the food chain on food security and the right to food cannot be ignored.
The justification for a National Smallholder Vision and Strategic Framework isn’t strong enough yet. How would it relate to a food security/right to food strategy, and to an agricultural policy (in which presumably one would want smallholders to be at the center, as in ECOWAP)? And of course implementation is the big problem. I’m sure you are planning to work on this for the final version.
The report is a bit weak on women in food production and on human rights. Opportunistically, you might try to get more mileage from the International Year of Family Farming.
On a more cosmetic tone, once you have finalized the content it would be great if the HLPE secretariat could arrange for a top quality English mother tongue editing.
Nora Mckeon