Regarding the need for data on food security and nutrition from development agronomy advisor perspective concentrating on food production, I have two major concerns.
- The first is the financial resources needed to accurately collect any data. Most host countries have a very limited tax base to support civil services. Thus, data collections must be aware of these financial limits and not expect data collection to exceed what is reasonable possible with the financial resources available. If you do insist in more comprehensive data collection than is financially feasible then the quality of the data will quickly deteriorate as numerators will fill in guesses of what the data is. Unfortunately, most scientist like to collect as much data as they can. Please review the following webpage:
https://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/financially-suppressed-economy-2/
https://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/financially-stalled-governments/
- My second concern is really a major oversight in evaluating agronomic innovations intended to promote food security and improved nutrition for smallholder communities. We tend to jump quickly from small plot research to extension/education without considering if the innovation is operationally feasible. That is, is there enough labor or contract mechanization to implement most innovation is the timely manner needed to take full advantage of the innovation. This also a community variable and not an individual farmer variable as the casual labor pool and contract mechanization is shared by multiple farmers. Who within agriculture development projects is responsible to collect and analysis data on available labor and access to mechanization, etc.? I think it falls into an administrative void between the agronomists and social scientists. At some point we much recognize that most agronomic innovations tend to me more labor intensive than the indigenous practices but do not make certain that labor is readily available within a smallholder community. We just keep badgering smallholders on the importance of early planting. Most smallholder farmers are very labor short along with the dietary calories to fuel that labor.
This also impact nutrition as most smallholder farmers are seriously undernourished with access to only about half 4000 kcal, they need for a full day of agronomic field work needed to manual produce enough to food to meet family food security needs. The result is the need to concentrate on high calorie foods to optimize economic or production opportunities and preventing adopting a more diversified diet needed for good health.
There is an easily observable proxy for operational limitations. That is timing of field operations in which for manual agricultural communities’ basic crop establishment extends for some eight weeks, well beyond a time when innovations are valid. It is essentially we recognize that this delay in not discretionary but determined by limited operational resources to manage the land and needs to be addresses as such. Also, one needs to note the success of the green revolution in paddy lands of Asia was not only the result of improved rice yields developed by IRRI working with various national programs, but more important would be the concurrent shift from water buffalo to power tillers to establish the crop. This more than halved the crop establishment period. Thus, while technology substantially increased the paddy yield potential it did not assist the farmers establish their paddy in a timely manner. The farmers did this themselves and since the development community wasn’t involved the impact of the shift to power tillers is virtually overlooked by development and hinders the effort to advance the agriculture of Africa and other developing countries.
Thus, while I am skeptical about the financial resources available to collect quality data, I would like to see an effort to take a detailed look at the timing of agronomic operations and address the operational limits smallholder farmers face. I think this would lead to increased importance of mechanization allowing a major impact on crop management, production and ultimately quality of diet for smallholder farmers and their families. Please review the following webpages and links within each:
https://webdoc.agsci.colostate.edu/smallholderagriculture/OperationalFeasibility.pdf
Thank you.
M. David Suttie