Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

For today let me only focus on the first question "under what condition can agriculture contribute in poverty alleviation of the extreme poor”.

For this let’s view the technology in research and development:

1. For those households who have limited access to productive resource; access to agricultural technologies via public extension or non-public system is vital. In this case capacity development and technologies package system can accelerate the lift-up from poverty.

2. On the other direction the technologies should be targeted to the available resource that can be may be used diary, poultry, beekeeping-like using hill side development integrated with afforestation and conservation development or river bank application system.

3. On the crop production side horticultural crop at homestead level and early maturing type of production of high value crops can have a returns yet the food crop production has to be sustainable (engage them marketing system like creating a small scale cooperative development).

4. Here the big solution should come from the research and development with triangulated solution involving policy makers, and other stakeholders. There is a thought that agriculture contribution to poverty alleviation is minimal when compare to non-agricultural sector; which I disagree because agriculture has a versatile effect from food security, nutrition, market stability, employment, environmental stabilization, etc but it needs smart policy makers with different stakeholder to the issue of poverty if the optimal policy is implemented then it’s effect will accelerate trigonometrically with diversified effect and will apply diffusion its impact to raw materials and others. But it has to have a curiosity as it will affect also human health directly.  

2: The role of ensuring more sustainable natural resource management in supporting the eradication of extreme poverty? 

In order to eradicate extreme poverty by ensuring more sustainable natural resource management the first thing we as policy makers need to think about is how best to preserve our forest cover. In recent years the world has been experiencing scanty and unpredictable rain falls which are affecting agriculture in all ways. Governments need to put in policies that will discourage illegal logging and encourage more ways of preserving our forest. We need to encourage community foresting where by communities are given the full responsibilities of planting more trees and falling few ones.

Another strategy to be used in sustainable natural resource management is to encourage more organic farming.

Good Day to all members of the FSN Forum. I salute you all for availing me the opportunity to gain varied ideas on Agriculture especially from other African countries. To start with, i want to put it to any one reading my post that my specialised area of study from diploma to Bachelors level is Public and Environmental Health but i want to say that I am so much in love with Agriculture that I value it than any thing. The reason is i am an agriculturist by nature because i am born and brought up from a very tiny village in the Gambia whose main activities are only Agriculture.

Back to Question Number 1: If we want to succeed in lifting people, from extreme poverty we need to consider the following points:

1. We need to value Agriculture knowing well that every body in the world depends in one way or the other on agricultural produce. In that the first thing we need to think about are the people that are directly involved in the Agriculture Value Chain, that is the farmer, the trader, the processor and the consumer. All farmers  must have access to enough land at little or no cost so as to produce in abundance to meet every body's demand.
2. In the Gambia, for example, majority of our farmers, both in large and small scale are women. These women are involved in all forms of farming which include but not limited to: vegetable gardening, farming on different food crops, animal husbandry just to name a few. Unfortunately, these are people who are marginalised when it comes to land accquisition. In the Gambia, women dont own land but can only ''be borrowed'' based on the time they need it and this is some times difficult. Having said that women in the whole world need to legally own land to enable them do all kinds of agriculture without fear or favour.
3. Another solution to the problem is to mechanise agriculture and do away with the old ways of farming in order to produce abundance.
4. When I was in the village farming with my father, I cannot remember any time that he uses NPK (Nitrogen, Phophorous and Potassium) in his crops but instead we always use organic manure in the form of animal waste to fertilise our farm land. In this case if farmers are given adequate resources and rear animals along side other means of farming and enough space to keep and rear their animals, there will be enough and cheap manure to keep the land fertile in order to produce more.
5. Another important aspect to consider to eradicate poverty is to encourage more processing of our farm produce to reduce food waste. In the Gambia for instance, we produce lots of different fruits and vegetables during different times of the year but once the season for those fruits and vegetables have passed, you can never see traces of them. Any surplus that was not be consumed when fresh must rot and be wasted because there are no processing proceedures for them. So a lot of investment need to be put in place for poor countries in the African Region so as to:

• create more job opportunities for people especially the youths
• be able to export to other countries( such as America , EU and Asia) to boost the country's economy
• maximise produce and minimise waste.

6. Last on this but not the least, our leaders and policy makers need to close the Gender Gap in the accquisition of land especially in our traditional and cultural societies. We need to ensure that women have equal opportunities to farm lands just like theri fellow women. We all know that most of both our cash crops and domestic produces are cultivated by women using the most old and ancient way of farming, such as manually tilling the land,using hoes, etc.

Dear Members,

I am impressed by the strong linkages of the local people that brings them together for the local common cause (like) : better integrating the local livestock breed with local agriculture to reduce extreme poverty. Local breed has the capacity to - first of all - provide some nutrition to children and women, and, when improved through breeding it has strengthened local livelihoods. Examples from the rural areas of Kutch in Gujarat state for the local Banni buffalo breed helped eradicate extreme poverty during the last decade, just as the case (in Telangana state) of highlighted use of draft power of local Nallamalla cattle males for local agriculture brought some income for the families to bring them out from extreme levels. I note, the local breeds and local resources automatically adapted to whatever climate change, and saved us from planning any new actions to save from warming or climate change. Improved breeding was necessary, and interestingly, the farmers, especially the elders, knew this was the better approach. Message is: Instead of planning a major change, minor but planned alterations here and there to bring in facilitating the life-cycles (of livestock, crops and microbes) with cordial linkages among the local people to get together for the common cause - can do wonders.

Thanks,

Sadana

We can always help alleviate poverty, but its complete eradication is perhaps difficult, especially through agriculture alone, if not impossible, for many counts including inter alia:

i. Lack of distributive justice: People across the globe have unequal access to resources, including natural resources and access to opportunities that impact negatively on efforts to develop even societies.

ii. The inequities and inequalities in ranks of societies lead to unsustainable production & consumption that in turn set in a vicious circle of poverty, food insecurity, hunger & disease.

iii. One Size fit, exotic solutions offered by international players including the World Bank, IMF, WTO and others have led to lopsided development.

iv. Climate Change (CC) is further precipitating inequalities, as the poor are the one to bear the brunt of CC, being on front line.

We need to focus sharply at first instance to sustainable production and consumption, contain post-harvest losses, encouraging value added agriculture and promoting green technologies. Needless to mention that policy-deficit at global & national levels needs to be addressed and informed, evidence-based home-grown solutions need to be  offered for poverty alleviation.

No peace without food security. Food security depends on sustainable crop management. Increase in yield reduce food security issue in poor countries. So best agriculture practices (increase in yield and growers income as well as improvement in environmental quality) significantly reduce poverty and improve health of all especially smallholders (poor farmers) in developing and under developed countries.

Amanullah

Dear Members,

From my experience, I think the following concepts may lift out the extreme poverty:

1. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA): This concept is well known in Africa and Asia. In this concept, the agricultural component will be based on the local resources. For example, if we cannot grow crops then we could include poultry or animal farming, or even sometimes change the food habit. I have experience on the development of a model for CSA in the coastal region of Bangladesh.  

2. Year-round vegetables: In Bangladesh, there is some developed model of this concept of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) for various regions of the country. I was also part of this concept.

I hope these concepts can help for the best 

Zahangir

PhD student

The University of Newcastle

Australia

Hello once again members,

It is true and based on scientifc evidences that climate change has great deal of impact accelerating poverty-driven agriculture. Climate change has different effect and impact on different regions of the world. In northern Nigeria for example, may be only the learned know about the practical effects of climate change on local agriculture that leads to extreme poverty. But critical xray of the trend will highlight lack of practical knowledge and skill for managing associated agriculture-related extreme poverty. Two simultaneaous approaches are very vital with each depending on point of application and economic status of recipients:

a) Organized rural-urban farm produce marketing. This approach holds significant promises to reduce extreme poverty suffered by farm producers that have production resources yet suffer business shortcircuit. To those actors lacking production resources but can bridge the production-market demand they also have sustainable means of checking extreme poverty.

b) Strengthen agriculture-nutrition linkage. The link between agriculture industry and nutrition in our part of the world is very weak despite enormous potentials for reducing extreme poverty and improve nutrition particularly at the household and community levels.

The connecting element for these approaches is knowledge and skill given in the form of vocational training in AgFood and small food business development. Postharvest loss is very high especially perishable farm commodities. Non-perishable farm commodities are greatly underutilized with limited benefit. Both postharvest loss and underutilization of commodities occur on huge scale that made negative effect of climate change seemed irrelivant or even non-existent. But we know it is there. So the challenge really is to first of all overstretch obtainable benefits of ongoing harvests from field to market, to kitchen and table to be able to differentiate the real impact of climate change on local agricultural production and emerging associated extreme poverty. This is our situation.

Rabiu Auwalu Yakasai

Director

Food and Nutrition Vocational Center (FNVC)

Kano Nigeria

Dear all, 

I just want to remind you that if we want to eradicate or eliminate poverty and try to define role of agriculture in this context, we need to consider all or at least main drivers.

I think "climate change" is very important issue which has impact on agriculture 

And also impact on poverty and social and economic condition.

So from the beginning it is a need to put the issue on the table.

All the best wishes for all.

And hoping to be able to eradicate poverty in real term.

Mostafa Jafari

Dear all,

Coming from a country (Ghana) and having worked in a few countries where there are rich agricultural lands, it is sad to see huge masses of the populace still living in extreme conditions of poverty, of which the majority are farmers or people involved in some form of small or medium scale agricultural enterprises.

My experience has thought me that though agriculture does play a huge role in the effort to eradicate extreme poverty, there is a large gap in it's ability to do so especially from post harvest losses (i have seen firsthand, produce that should have been sold to make money go bad and tossed to the rubbish heap simply because the "middleman" who promised to buy couldn't make it in time or there were rains which made the road unpassable), a basic lack of knowledge or no entrepreneurial skills on the part of the farmer among several other reasons.

It is true that agriculture, if harnessed correctly and partnered with other sectors such as education, knowledge sharing, infrastructural development agencies among others has a huge potential to eradicate extreme poverty in order to change the current status quo with respect to poverty eradication.

Best wishes,



Lena N. Acolatse (MSc)

Nutritionist