Farming Matters | 30.1 | March 2014

“Landscapes” come in different shapes and sizes: mountainous areas, drylands, forests, coastal areas, watersheds, and many more. They are always changing, and so are the strategies of the people living in them. Growing pressures on the land lead to competing claims for resources, within and between communities of farmers, pastoralists and forest dwellers, but also increasingly from pressure by larger external forces including expanding cities, tourism, mining and agro-industries.

Family farmers, pastoralists and forest communities depend on their landscapes for food, fuel, fodder, timber, medicines and more. For many rural communities, landscapes also have cultural and religious significance. Yet, these communities are often excluded from land governance structures, natural resource management and policy development.

In recent years, landscape approaches or territorial approaches have gained popularity as tools to enable researchers, policy makers, NGOs, activists, private sector players and rural communities to better understand the multiple functions of landscapes and the competing demands of different landscape users. Leading up to the December 2014 Global Landscapes Forum in Peru, Farming Matters will explore the efforts of family farming, pastoralist and forest communities in shaping resilient and living landscapes. How do they deal with the increasing pressures on their landscapes – whether internal or external, local or global?

We are looking for stories about the relation between forests, sustainable farming and resilient landscapes, and about the connection between your landscape (or territory), local culture and the regional economy. Send us your articles on the struggles to defend these landscapes from the threats of large-scale industries, mining companies and other forces.

What governance mechanisms and policies are needed to ensure that the rights of rural communities are respected? Can win-win arrangements be reached with other landscape users, allowing local communities to strengthen their agro-ecological production systems? What future do rural communities envisage for themselves and their landscapes? We look forward to reading about your experiences.

Articles for the September 2014 issue of Farming Matters should be sent to the editors before June 15th, 2014.
E-mail: info@farmingmatters.org

Related content

Guide for authors

The post Call for articles: Family farmers in living landscapes appeared first on Ileia.

The IYFF is intended to put resilient, innovative, multifunctional, creative, and productive family farmers in the spotlight – because they need more recognition. Most are small scale producers for whom farming is a way of life, with qualities well described by Jan Douwe van der Ploeg in the January issue of Farming Matters. This year aims to give long overdue credit to the 400 million producer families who feed 70% of the global population including themselves.

True appreciation of resilient family farmers should not just be a symbolic gesture of a few romantics. This year must be a wake-up call for the world’s policy makers, the entire agricultural research establishment, the private sector from village processors to multinational agribusiness, and in fact, for everyone who eats and produces food.

We need to think differently. A deeper understanding will result in mainstreaming effective strategies that address today’s major global challenges – poverty, hunger, environmental degradation and the negative impacts of climate change. How do we ensure that millions of farming families get out of the vicious trap of hunger and poverty? How can they (re)build their resilience? Turning them into vulnerable migrants filling urban slums cannot be an option. Further neglect and inaction will be far reaching, not only for farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists and forest dwellers, but for all of us.

This issue of Farming Matters presents some reflections on vulnerabilities and poverty in smallholder agriculture, and building resilience.

Edith van Walsum
director ILEIA

The post Editorial – A wake-up call appeared first on Ileia.

Survey respondents

More than half of those who responded were from sub-Saharan Africa, and almost a quarter were from Asia. But only 16% were women, and only 12% were young people.

Farming Matters is unique

The magazine focuses on family farmers yet the magazine covers many related issues both local and global. You told us that this breadth is unique and appealing, and that Farming Matters is down to earth and applicable to your work.

A ‘cloud’ was generated, where the size of the word corresponds to the number of times it was mentioned by respondents, the key message being ‘practical information on farming’.

One important reason articles remain practical is thanks to you, the readers, who continue to write and submit articles that are grounded on the real life experiences of farmers and others.

We encourage you to keep writing

We treasure the written participation of our readers. However, the survey highlighted some of the barriers that stopped many of you from writing and submitting articles. The three most common reasons were;

• (a) not feeling like an expert,
• (b) not realising that you could contribute, and
• (c) not feeling comfortable writing an article.

You are very welcome to contribute and we are not only looking for experts, all perspectives and stories are valuable (see the invitation for articles on inside the front cover).

The digital transition

We have already travelled quite far down the digital path. From June 2011 to December 2013, the number of electronic subscribers rose from 361 to 15,262 with a corresponding decline in subscribers to the paper copy from 16,907 to 937. Shifting from print to digital is not something we take lightly, and we are still thinking about how far we should go – so your input into questions of access and usability is very important. Two thirds of readers who responded to the survey are now accessing Farming Matters online.

The most favoured digital format is pdf, and about one quarter of the surveyed readers are printing out at least part of the magazine, or sometimes all of it. One in six people use the Farming Matters Android ‘app’, and half of those not currently reading Farming Matters online in some way or form, plan to do so in the future. The biggest single barrier to reading online both now and in the future was reliable internet access, especially amongst our sub-Saharan African readers. But more than half of those who struggle to get online now are optimistic that internet access will improve in the future.

Two thirds of respondents are active on Facebook, Twitter or both, and a quarter of them use these platforms to follow ILEIA or the AgriCultures Network. However, about half did not know that it was possible to follow us in this way, and a number of you suggested our social media presence could be improved with more frequent postings.

Key messages from women and youth

The visibility of role models on the pages of Farming Matters is important for both women and youth, and both groups would like to see more articles that focus on issues especially relevant to their own situations.

As suggested by the young respondents, this would be possible with a greater youth input. We agree, so please get in touch with your ideas! A practical message from the women who responded is to use existing networks and platforms to improve physical access to the magazine.

Putting Farming Matters to work

Farming Matters is not only widely read but also widely shared. Half of the surveyed readers share the magazine with 10 people or more. The ways that information from Farming Matters is used depends in part on the readers occupations.

For example, development field workers tend to share information from the magazine within rural communities, try out approaches or technologies, or use the content for training.

Researchers, however, use information from Farming Matters mostly as inspiration for further research, whereas decision makers/administrators tend to use the information to stimulate discussions within their organisation or with other stakeholders.

An ongoing process

This is a small window into the whole set of results that emerged from the readers’ survey. We have analysed all of the results in detail and we thank you once more for the useful feedback that contributes to the resilience of Farming Matters.

Madeleine Florin and Harmony Folz

The post What our readers say appeared first on Ileia.

For months, Seidu and his wife ate only one meal a day. From the plot they farmed in 2011 they only harvested three 84 kg bags of maize. “Two years ago we harvested seven bags from the same land” said Seidu.

Millions of farmers around the world are facing a similar situation. The World Food Programme estimates there are 842 million undernourished people in the world today.

Growth – but not for everyone

To better understand the causes and impacts, let’s take a closer look at Ghana. In the savannah zone where over 80% of the population is engaged in farming, the Northern Region is the third most populated region in the country. The World Bank found that between 1992 and 2006, the number of people in the north living in poverty increased by 0.9 million. Even worse, a 2012 food security survey found that 12% of the poorest households had been forced to adopt ‘zero-zero-zero’, going entire days without eating at all.

Ghana is often touted as a global success story in reducing hunger and poverty, and in 2008-09, Ghana increased agricultural production by more than 7%, one of the highest growth rates in the world at that time. Export crops grown in the wetter and more fertile south such as cocoa, cashew, cotton, palm oil and pineapple are described as the engine of growth for the whole economy. As a result, Ghana has already achieved the first of the Millennium Development Goals by halving the prevalence of hunger, and is on track to reducing by half the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per day.

Strong economic growth co-exists with chronic poverty, hunger, debt and near emergency levels of child malnutrition, also visible elsewhere in the Sahel region where over 20 million people across nine countries are struggling with food insecurity. This paradox can be explained by marginalisation, unequal access to assets, services, and productive resources, leading to increased vulnerability of farmers, particularly women, to cope with globalisation and climate change.

Because farmers are backward?

Farmer managed natural regeneration has proved to be an effective way for farmers to increase tree cover on previously degraded land. Around Bankass, in Mopti region, Mali, what used to be a treeless plain is now covered in trees. Photo: Groundswell International

Small scale farmers are backward, it is said. They lack technical know-how, economies of scale. To be competitive within globalisation, they must integrate in global value chains and adopt intensive, industrial agriculture. According to this view, farmers that are not capable of doing so have to make room for those that are. But the true facts paint a different picture – 70% of the world’s food is produced by small scale farmers, and they have proven to be highly innovative and to have great adaptive capacity.

Then when a crisis does occur, humanitarian assistance isn’t cheap. In 2011-12 alone, more than 18 million people in the Sahel required humanitarian assistance costing 1.6 billion dollars. Enabling small scale farmers to become more resilient would not only be far more cost effective, it would also be socially just.

The dominant food regime

During recent decades, agriculture and food have become increasingly shaped by international organisations and multinational companies. The Green Revolution and waves of neo-liberal reforms have given rise to systems that undermine assets such as land, local markets and a sense of community that small scale farmers rely on for their very existence.

This has transformed farming into export-focused monocropping, and encouraged the use of chemical fertilizers, irrigation and agrochemicals. Yields have certainly increased in many areas, but this type of agriculture has also resulted in the degradation of land and other natural resources, especially in ecologically fragile, drought-prone areas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that 12 million hectares of agricultural land has now become unproductive.

Local communities had to make way for development projects, mining companies, or large scale agricultural enterprises. For many, this meant displacement or resettlement in less productive areas, with communities and their social safety nets often disintegrating in the process. In addition, tens of millions of farmers were caught in a debt trap and unable to repay investments in inputs like hybrid or genetically engineered seeds, fertilizers, pesticides or irrigation.

Trade policies

Trade liberalisation and privatisation through structural adjustment programmes has increased the vulnerability of small scale family farmers. In many countries, markets were flooded with cheap, imported foods to the detriment of local farmers, processors and retailers. And industrialised countries are still pushing for trade agreements that further increase the access of multinational processors and retailers into developing country markets, including the sale of their own heavily subsidised agricultural products.

New alliance

The World Bank, major agribusinesses including Syngenta and Monsanto, and the US government have joined the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. This is a continuation of the same approach to increase productivity via large scale commercial agriculture using Green Revolution technologies. But the world already produces more than enough food to feed everyone if it were equitably shared and food waste reduced.

In short, continuing poverty and vulnerability are to a large extent an outcome of the dominant agriculture and food system. A more equitable, resilient and sustainable agriculture and food system is urgently needed that builds on the well being of small scale peasant farmers. Political will is needed for governments to invest massively in farmer exchange and experimentation on low-cost and sustainable agroecological systems linked to local markets.

Building resilience with agroecology

Agroecology

 
Agroecology sees the farm as a system built on a healthy soil as its basis. Some of the core principles of agroecology include:
 

• recycling nutrients and energy on the farm rather than introducing external inputs;
• integrating crops and livestock and increasing agrobiodiversity;
• focusing on interactions and productivity across the whole system rather than on individual species.

 
In contrast to neo-liberal modernisation, agroecology is based on techniques that are not delivered top-down, but developed from farmer knowledge and experimentation, co-created with scientists. Local knowledge systems are indispensable, and agroecology takes strength from existing socio-cultural structures such as local institutions governing natural resources.

In face of the grim challenges posed by powerful corporate forces, what is remarkable is the innovativeness and resilience of small scale family farmers, and their determination to retain their autonomy and their way of life.

In response to the vulnerabilities generated by climate change, increased population, and the penetration of the Green Revolution, many farmers across the globe have started to adopt alternative practices.

One response has been to diversify, as is the case with the beekeepers in Zimbabwe and farmers’ tree nurseries in Sudan. In areas still untouched by the industrialisation of agriculture, farmers have continued to innovate using the resources at hand and in line with local needs and opportunities. Farmers, NGOs and scientists working with them developed and distilled a set of principles from their experiences which became known as agroecology (see box).

Agroforestry systems for example have proven to be a low cost and effective way to improve soil fertility and resilience. One of the most remarkable examples has occurred in the Sahel, where a strong farmer movement has led to the restoration of millions of hectares of degraded farmland. This has come about by farmers mimicking their centuries old, traditional methods of maintaining soil fertility through the use of natural fallows. When land was much more abundant, farmers enabled the natural revegetation of land by indigenous trees and shrubs. This slowly restored soil fertility by bringing up nutrients from lower soil layers, fixing nitrogen, providing shade, reducing high temperatures, producing leaf litter, and protecting the soil from erosion.

Trees would grow back from the extensive webs of living roots and stumps lying hidden beneath farmers cleared fields and from new seedlings sprouting from seeds dropped by birds, in animal droppings or water. The practice has returned, further developed and spread from farmer to farmer as a new form of ‘simultaneous fallow’. By selecting fast growing, high biomass producing indigenous trees to grow on permanently cropped farmland through a process called ‘farmer managed natural regeneration’ (FMNR), farmers in parts of the Sahel have succeeded in reversing the long term trend of tree loss on agricultural land. Farmers used to see trees as reducing crop production because of shade. By radically increasing the density of trees and applying the innovation of heavy pruning at the beginning of the rainy season, farmers use the tree leaves as a mulch and source of organic matter.

Villagers, both men and women, have reported significant benefits. These include: improved soil fertility, improved agricultural production, increased volume of firewood for home use or sale, enhanced biodiversity, reduced soil erosion, and much improved soil water absorption and retention. Through FMNR, farmers have found a way to greatly increase tree density on their land while minimising competition with food crops. Besides pruning, trees require minimal maintenance and withstand drought. FMNR is accessible even to the poorest families. It requires no expenses beyond additional labour, but greatly increases the resilience of the farming system, especially when combined with contour bunds and other agroecological soil and water conservation techniques.

In combination with secure access to land, such an approach may make agriculture an attractive prospect again for rural youth and for future generations. Motivating the youth to take up a life in agriculture is a struggle in many parts of the world, as the young German farmers attest.

As we see in this issue of Farming Matters the use of agroecological practices leads to increased productivity and incomes for farmers, enhanced food security, improved capacity to adapt to changing climates, regeneration of natural resources and a greater autonomy for farmers. This is the experience of farmers in Bolivia, for example.

These benefits are the building blocks for decreasing vulnerability and helping to create a more resilient agriculture. They increase the ability of farming families and communities to adapt and recover from shocks and stresses. Agroecology is now supported by an ever broader part of the scientific community as the best way to sustainably improve food systems around the world. It features prominently in the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). It is strongly recommended by the United Nations Environment Programme, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and an increasing number of other influential individuals and organisations.

Agroecology as a social movement

Calling for such new policies is useless without a political commitment to social change. However, this is challenged by the powerful influence of neo-liberal thinking about agriculture. Social change, as much as developing the technical aspects of agroecology, is an essential prerequisite for ending poverty and hunger, and building resilience.

It is unlikely that rural hunger will ever be eliminated without the enthusiasm and social force of family farmers around the world. The causes of hunger and low productivity are overwhelmingly social and political. Favourable policies for agroecology are better enabled through the mobilisation of small scale farmers, and collective action also leads to more innovation and learning, as in the case of ATC in Nicaragua. This is why agroecology is also recognised as a social movement.

At the global level, redirecting governments and multilateral institutions towards supporting more equitable, resilient and sustainable agriculture and food systems requires a radical shift in priorities, research, and investment patterns. It also requires the recognition of the important role of local food systems, as is seen in Portugal. This will only come about through the power of social movements in which smallholder farmers work in alliance with like-minded organisations.

Agricultural researchers, policy makers and others who are committed to ending hunger and poverty must act now to support family farmers in developing and practicing agroecology.

Peter Gubbels

Peter Gubbels is the Director Action Learning and Advocacy for Groundswell International. He grew up in a farming family in Canada and has lived in West Africa for over 24 years.

Email: pgubbels@groundswellinternational.org

The author would like to acknowledge the following people from whose work he has drawn: Albert Oppong-Ansah (Surviving on a meal a day, IPS 2012), Christian Aid (Farmers left behind, June 2007), F. Mousseau (The high food price challenge, 2010).

The post Theme overview – Moving from vulnerability to resilience in Africa appeared first on Ileia.

Insanity, Albert Einstein once said, is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. It looks like that is what is being done in the name of poverty reduction for Africa.

There is little reflection on why poverty is deepening and ecosystems are degrading while millions of dollars continue to be poured into ‘alleviating’ poverty. Why are farmers still caught in this vicious cycle of remaining in poverty when so much money is being invested? One of the answers is the lack of understanding of agriculture as a system, and the focus on selected parts of the system such as seed or soil.

The common belief is that it is best to optimise the efficiency of a single unit of the system while disregarding the connectivity of all the parts. We plant improved varieties, add fertilizers and pesticides, and develop processes for storage and marketing. This linear model of development has succeeded in increasing production, but the problem is that the world does not work in a linear way. Life is full of surprises. Two years of drought and extreme flooding can reverse all the gains from such an approach. Publication after publication have documented the failures in conventional agricultural systems and shown their lack of resilience. Large tracts of barren and degraded lands, polluted rivers and soils, poisoned people and animals in developed countries are all evidence of this.

The Green Revolution in Africa is based on this unsustainable system. Under the guise of lifting 50 million Africans out of poverty, governments and big businesses are joining hands to ‘sell’ this approach. The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, led by governments from the North and joined by an array of companies, is succeeding in arm-twisting African governments into implementing unfavourable obligations. Changes are also being made to the continent’s own Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) through various means to suit their purpose. These are forcing African countries to harmonise seed laws with little understanding of African governance and no knowledge of farmers. These threaten the rights of farmers, destroy our biological and cultural diversity, and will help to put African heritage in the hands of multinational corporations.

We need to look at agriculture as a system, promote agroecology, and stop this impending disaster before it is too late. We need to mobilise African people and governments to reject this model and to develop home-grown solutions based on the knowledge, experience and innovation of our own farmers.

Million Belay

Million Belay is the director of the Movement for Ecological Learning and Community Action (MELCA), Ethiopia, and the coordinator of the Africa Food Sovereignty Alliance. Dr Belay is our regular columnist throughout 2014.
Email: millionbelay@gmail.com

The post Opinion: A systems approach against poverty appeared first on Ileia.

Tapacarí province near Cochabamba is one of the most vulnerable municipalities in Bolivia, with 99% of the population living below the poverty line and 89% in extreme poverty.

Challa is one of the four cantons or districts, at 3500-4600 metres above sea level, with only 300-600 mm annual precipitation and an average temperature of 6.5°C. The entire population here depends on subsistence agriculture with only very limited capacity to produce excess for sale.

Agricultural potential is very low, relative vulnerability is high, and temporary and permanent migration is one of the few alternative survival strategies. Yet, they have developed coping mechanisms that are based on a combination of local wisdom gathered over centuries, and knowledge of agroecological production techniques.

Enter the Yapuchiris

Traditional knowledge has been created and preserved over many centuries, but in recent decades much has been lost for reasons such as ‘modern’ education, the technological ‘progress’ of the Green Revolution practices, and changes in the market. And in this challenging environment, enter the Yapuchiris.

Traditional ‘leader’ farmers, they collect, create and share agroecological knowledge and risk management strategies in the local area. Blending ancestral knowledge with newly adopted practices, Yapuchiris experiment on their own land then teach other farmers and local organisations about their successes.

Anyone can be a Yapuchiri. In Tapacarí, farmers either volunteer or are elected by their community. They incorporate their varied wisdom and experiences into a process of research, dialogue, reflection, documentation, training, and exchange of knowledge. They focus on the management of different crops, experimenting with agroecological practices, preparing and testing biological inputs, intercropping, evaluating yields, weather recording, applying risk management tools, and so on. They travel around their own and neighbouring communities, sharing their experiences with other farmers in their ‘Yapuchiri tent’ at local fairs, but also via posters, flyers and radio programmes. They also collect farmers’ questions and concerns which enrich their experimentation and future research.

Local attitudes and public policies are slowly seeing the true value of how traditional knowledge and practices improve the management and resilience of farming systems. In Bolivia, the new National Political Constitution of 2009 recognises the government’s duty to protect the rights of indigenous peoples, and respect, value, promote and protect their traditions and wisdom. Although this is a great achievement, more effort is needed to translate these laws into concrete strategies and actions. Moreover, there are still no policies that focus on climate risk management, or that could support the evident local capacity in this area of the Yapuchiris.

Our research

“The most frequent threats are hail and frost which can cause losses of 50-100% in our main crops,” says Facundo Poma, a Yapuchiri from Challa district. Other climate change related problems mentioned by the farmers besides hail and frost were, too much rain, crop diseases, snow and strong winds, in order of decreasing importance. To assess the impacts of climate risks, and the strategies to address them used by rural communities, we undertook a survey of farming families in the district.

We divided farmers into three groups. First are the Yapuchiris who practice agroecology, treat plants with biological inputs and use multiple practices in response to climate threats, then farmers assisted by Yapuchiris or older parents who know and share traditional practices, and finally, farmers who use very few risk-avoidance practices.

The diversity of local responses

The survey identified a total of 34 different practices that the farmers used to manage climate risks. At least a few risk reduction practices were used by 72% of the surveyed farmers. This included all of the Yapuchiris and 82% of farmers accompanied by Yapuchiris. On the other hand, only 15% of farmers not accompanied by Yapuchiris used any such measures. We also looked at the source of the knowledge about these practices The survey found that 57% of the climate risk reduction practices were adapted from ancestral knowledge, 20% from knowledge from external institutions, 12% from farmer exchanges and 11% from farmers’ own initiatives.

Most of the practices and strategies were agronomic in nature, including the timely mounding up of soil around plants, improving soil fertility by manuring and re-ploughing, agroecological soil and water conservation measures, use of bio-fertilizers, pest and disease control, seed selection, disinfection and presprouting. Yapuchiris identify and mark the healthiest and most robust potatoes when they are flowering, to be saved for planting the following year. And before sowing seeds, they are disinfected with a paste made from special type of animal manure, or a mixture of spicy wild plant seeds, lime and sulphur.

Other strategies were socio-cultural, and included various rituals, and predicting the weather by observing natural indicators such as flowering dates of certain plants, the appearance of animals (birds, insects, reptiles), and presence of clouds, wind or rain during holidays or certain phases of the moon.

Complementary practices

The practices applied varied from one planting season to another according to the presence of climatic phenomena and to what production and risk management practices were already incorporated into the production system. Yapuchiris used a greater diversity of strategies, simultaneously or in complement, and were at least twice as likely to implement any of the risk reduction practices compared to other farmers.

Agronomic and risk management practices at system or component level are not separate in the minds of Yapuchiris, but are considered complementary in increasing buffering capacity in the face of extreme climate events.

These findings and the history of climatic events show that the impacts of natural phenomena are local in nature, and actions have to be taken first at the family and community level. Support should be focused on strengthening capacities for addressing climate risk based on ancestral knowledge and local knowledge but also modern scientific knowledge, complementing each other and offering various options.

To what extent has the use of these practices improved output and reduced production losses in the face of climate change? A survey of the potato harvest in Challa in 2013 clearly showed the positive impacts. The average yield was 8 tonnes per hectare, increasing to 13 tonnes amongst farmers that were helped by Yapuchiris, while the Yapuchiris themselves produced an average 21 tonnes per hectare. But even some farmers not assisted by Yapuchiris still use their knowledge as a reference when making decisions on production and risk management, as when asked why they use a certain practice, they replied by saying, “I watch the Yapuchiris” or “because the Yapuchiris do it”.

Ideals and constraints

The ideal would be for each community to have a group of Yapuchiris and the economic support to enable them to improve the service they provide and knowledge sharing within communities. But reality is different. There are invisible barriers which corrode the values and principles of cooperation and interrelationships and prevent sharing, replication and building. These include individualism and egoism among the rural people, and external factors that are difficult to manage. For example, modern cultural and educational influences tend to override ancestral customs such as reciprocity, solidarity and respect for individuals and nature; aspects which should be promoted within communities to contribute to achieving and sustaining well being.

In spite of the importance of Yapuchiris, limitations are evident. Firstly, it is a simple numbers game. In Challa, there are only 24 Yapuchiris who actively assist other farmers, which is clearly inadequate given that there are 1850 families spread between 27 communities in the district. Another aspect is the time required to assist and accompany other farmers without neglecting their own farms, and who should pay Yapuchiris for the extra time and travel costs needed to share their knowledge?

Efforts were made to overcome these limitations in 2013. The Yapuchiris presented a proposal to the Municipality of Tapacarí asking for resources to strengthen and facilitate their work. They also tried to encourage local education authorities to follow new policies aimed at promoting training and education of children and youth in risk management. The municipality expressed an interest but has not yet shown the political will to fully support such initiatives and take advantage of local capacities.

Building climate resilience

Using and strengthening local capacities and the role of the Yapuchiris are the best way for communities to manage climate risk and to build resilience in the face of climate change. It is also necessary to recover traditional knowledge and practices, study them and adapt them, especially given that most climate change impacts are local and actions by public entities are marginal. The lack of capacity to act and react makes communities more vulnerable to climatic events, reducing family and communal food security with effects on society as a whole. These are essential aspects that should be taken into account when defining public policies for the management of climate risk.

Sustainable agroecological production can address new climate challenges. But this requires observing, strengthening and building new capacities at the local level, and initiating dialogue that promotes and diffuses different kinds of knowledge. We hope that our findings about the role of Yapuchiris and traditional knowledge will contribute to the spread of local agroecological practices as a viable climate risk management strategy.

Tania Ricaldi Arévalo and Luis Carlos Aguilar

Tania Ricaldi Arévalo is Director of Economics and Planning at the Center for Post-Graduate Studies at Upper San Simon University, Bolivia, Luis Carlos Aguilar works for the AGRECOL Andes Foundation, and both work for the Management of Communal Agricultural Risk project.
Email: taniaricaldia@gmail.com

The authors thank the Association of Agroecological Producers of Challa District and all farmers and Yapuchiris who shared their valuable knowledge and experience, and the McKnight Foundation for financial support.

The post How Yapuchiris build climate resilience appeared first on Ileia.

Rural India has a considerable landless population, often leasing farming land, but a much larger number of smallholder farmers who presently earn much of their income from off-farm labour.

Rainfed agriculture accounts for 40% of Indian food production, occupying half of India’s arable land and is home to the majority of the rural poor. People in these areas are suffering recurring droughts, increasing debts, migration, rising farmer suicides, and a lack of public and private investments.

Furthermore, land use patterns are drastically shifting with the increasing sales of agricultural land to companies and rich urbanites.

The vision

MGNREGA has two explicit goals. These are to provide employment and income, and to create productive assets. The former is immediate and ameliorative, while the latter builds infrastructure and sustainably improves rural livelihood opportunities.

One of the main aims is to provide a universal guarantee of 100 days paid work per year for the rural households involved, with employment on demand within 15 days or workers are entitled to unemployment allowance. Men and women should receive equal pay, linked to the minimum wage and the consumer price index.

The Act puts village institutions such as gram sahha and gram panchayat at the centre of decision making, helping to strengthen decentralized governance. Permissible work includes soil and water conservation, natural resource development and infrastructure improvements such as sanitation, roads and community centres. It also allows work on private land for the very poor. Guidelines stipulate a twice-yearly social audit with transparency and accountability guaranteed through the Right to Information Act.

A bumpy road so far

After eight years of implementation, Indian policy makers, officials and NGOs are now questioning how they can reinvigorate the initial enthusiasm that accompanied the launch of this ambitious Act.

MGNREGA has substantially increased agricultural wages, especially for women, but the average annual employment per household has only reached 50 days, half of the final target. But it has been shown that the additional income has been used as capital, to increase the productivity of family farms.

Meanwhile, critical challenges remain, and many practical issues that are crucial to rural workers and farmers have still not been overcome, affecting trust and confidence. Periods of employment are considered too short and wages are not always paid in a timely manner.

A precondition for addressing these challenges is to stamp out the prevailing culture where politicians are harvesting votes, policy makers are fire fighting peripheral issues, while bureaucrats are busy making money.

Acting on the Act

The vision embodied by the MGNREGA must be receptive to the knowledge and objectives of rural workers and family farmers and is critical for building resilient communities. Investments not yet considered that would better fit the needs of rural communities include providing women with work tools to enhance their status and to reduce drudgery, upgrading workers’ skills to meet the emerging labour market, and exploring farming techniques that enhance water use efficiency.

Family farmers have the ability to trigger the transformative potential of MGNREGA. Family farmers have rich and eco-friendly ideas that can be built upon with the addition of science and technology. This is possible however, only when academics, researchers, political leaders and NGOs actively engage with family farmers while respecting their autonomy and sense of dignity. Ultimately, improving the well being of rural workers and family farmers will have a cascading impact on food security, productivity, inclusive growth and gender equality in rural India. And the Act has the potential to play a significant role.

KS Gopal

KS Gopal works for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
Email: cecgopal@yahoo.com

The post The world’s largest safety net for family farmers? appeared first on Ileia.

Around Matagalpa in central Nicaragua, coffee plantations spread across the steeply sloping landscape between humid evergreen forests, open pasture and plots of maize, beans and chayotes (christophene). This is also a land that saw war twice in the past 40 years.

First there was the revolutionary war in 1979 when the Sandinista rebels and a broad coalition of social movements ousted three generations of rule by the Somoza dynasty. Second was the bloody Contra war in the 1980s which divided the population along ideological lines, and included the final bullets of the Cold War.

Communities of coffee pickers had much to gain during the period of Sandinista land reform and many hundreds of cooperatives of family farmers were formed, as well as worker-managed coffee processing collectives. But then came the 1990 election and the agrarian counterreform, and a return to abject poverty for many.

Organising the farmers

The Association of Rural Workers (ATC) represents more than 80,000 farm workers in 13 of Nicaragua’s 17 departments and includes many landless and land-poor peasants. Since the 1990s, this association has also included a cooperative branch, the National Agricultural Union of Associated Producers, to help organise thousands of small scale family farmers who combine food production with off-farm work.

Through its participation in the transnational alliance of small farmer organisations that is La Vía Campesina, ATC also became aware of agroecology. They found it a useful and strategic tool for small farmers and their organisations to deepen territorial processes in rural areas and to increase their independence from markets otherwise dominated by transnational corporations. In 2013, the association created an internal National Commission on Agroecology to identify the most suitable methodologies for spreading agroecological practices used by other social movements, adapting them to local contexts and promoting them through their own structures. The commission includes graduates of the Paulo Freire Latin American Institute of Agroecology (IALA-Paulo Freire) in Barinas, Venezuela, a university created by and for rural social movement activists of La Vía Campesina.

Teaching farmers to be teachers

The Association of Rural Workers has the advantage of being a large organisation that includes both cooperatives and farm worker unions, as well as dynamic internal movements of rural women and youth.

The National Commission on Agroecology carried out a process of documentation and analysis (called sistematización in Spanish) of experiences in peasant agroecology from across the country such as nutrient cycling, traditional seed saving, or combining animal production with reforestation.

In doing so, they created a nationwide ‘directory’ of agroecological family farmers – including many who had never considered themselves agroecological or even heard the word before – and prepared the ground for peasant to peasant sharing of agroecological knowledge. Farmers are invited to training courses on the methodology of communication (rather than production techniques). For example, peasant farmers are trained in giving tours of their farms to other peasant farmers, how to explain what they practice and how to share their own experiences. Rather than trying to teach farmers to be farmers, the Association of Rural Workers is teaching them how to be teachers.

This methodology is inspired by the successful Campesino-a-Campesino process used by rural social movements for decades. Positive results have been seen in countries across the world, where agroecology makes the greatest territorial impact when it takes the form of a social movement among smallholder farmers. The protagonists of this movement must be the farmers themselves, including the ATC youth who carry out much of the groundwork and are vital to its development.

Agroecological farmers are the best teachers of agroecology especially when they are teaching to fellow farmers. The role of rural social movements in this setting is to provide the structure (cooperatives, territorial leadership and transportation) as well as the methodology for agroecology to multiply and spread.

Collective committment

Connecting farmers with educational institutes and local food markets is crucial in building a strong movement. In Matagalpa, the Rodolfo Sánchez Cooperative Training Center and Technical School has become a hub for small scale farmers and rural youth interested in agroecology. Workers in nearby coffee estates formed a collective in 2013 to grow food crops such as beans, maize, plantains, taro, yuca and squash on the school grounds, selling plates of fried taro, plantains and gallo pinto (red beans and rice) to students at the technical school on weekends, and using the income to purchase seeds from local suppliers.

Farmers from ATC cooperatives attended workshops on silvopastoral agroforestry systems with the aim of raising dairy cows where access to land was limited. Teach-ins and training on self-esteem and community relations have also attracted youth from nearby communities to spend time in the school. By consolidating this point of attraction in the territorial processes of agroecology, the Association of Rural Workers looks ahead to broader involvement and a deeper movement of popular educators in agroecology.

A rich social mosaic is emerging in Nicaragua, combining experiential educational processes and diversified peasant farms. This role of agroecology, when combined with rural social movements, is to build social and ecological synergies that can create resilience in local and national food systems. Resilient agriculture, necessary for our common future, is growing out of the daily efforts of peasant farmers, rural youth and their organisations.

Nils McCune

Nils McCune works for La Vía Campesina in Nicaragua.
Email: saludcampesina@yahoo.com.mx

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Brazil: Alliances for agroecological transition

In southern Brazil, growth in the agroecological movement is being reflected in the positive experiences of family farmers. This is happening when supportive government procurement policies, farmer cooperatives and local market strategies are combined. Initiatives like the Food Acquisition Programme (PAA) and the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) prioritise food purchases from smallholder farmers, and include a 30% price premium on organic products supplied.

The Cooperative of Itati, Terra de Areia and Três Forquilhas (COOMAFITT) for example, helps family farmers market their products especially through these procurement programmes. Together with NGOs, a local women’s association and a participative guarantee system for certification, they also work to upscale agroecology through local markets and ecologically-based production techniques.

Eliane, one of the farmers, says, “Now I can diversify my production and have vegetables for my children. Agroecological practices make more sense to me. We used to grow only beans and sell them at a very low price to middlemen.” This freedom of choice has become possible by marketing products through farmers markets and cooperatives. Farmers are now receiving fair prices that reflect the quality of their produce, are enjoying higher incomes, and are living proof that local sustainable food systems are possible.

For more information contact Maria Alice Mendonça at the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Desenvolvimento Rural (UFRGS), or Monique Medeiros at Programa de Pós-Graduação em Agroecossistemas (UFSC).
Email: maria.alice.fcm@gmail.com or mmedeiros@ymail.com

Romania: Sharing free seeds

Saving, multiplying and distributing seed are key activities of Eco Ruralis, a peasant association in Romania. Varieties of tomatoes, peppers, squash and other crops are displayed in a colourful catalogue of free seeds, and in 2014, more than 800 envelopes containing up to five varieties of seeds each were sent out. The association also grew by several hundred members.

One of the poorest countries in Europe, Romania has almost five million peasant farmers, a quarter of the population. But national and European policy is driving many farms out of existence. Those in Eco Ruralis say: “Peasants in Eastern Europe feel threatened by new European seed law proposals because they are not able to go through all the necessary bureaucracy and to pay for the required private safety testing. We need regulations that work for the people, not the industry.”

Hundreds of thousands of peasants already serve as migrant farm workers in Western Europe, while others, old and discouraged, stay only to face the speculative influence of large multinational investors. Seeds have become the interface of a rapidly developing agroecology movement in Romania, a country drifting towards dependence on agroindustries. Eco Ruralis remains determined to keep seeds free and available for peasant farmers.

For more information, contact Ramona Duminicioiu.
Email: ecoruralis@gmail.com

Mozambique: Building adaptive capacity

Mozambique is exposed to many extreme weather events and climate change is exacerbating the problems faced by smallholder farmers. This contributes to a cycle of increasing poverty and decreasing resilience to future shocks.

To facilitate farmers’ adaptability to these challenges, CARE International has established Farmer Field Schools in the northern Mozambican Province, Nampula through its Adaptation Learning Programme for Africa. The story of Muahera Antonio, a 32 year old mother of seven, reflects how this approach has improved food security and household resilience. Muahera’s livelihood is based on the crops she grows, but declining rainfall in recent years has meant that her yields have also fallen drastically.

In the Farmer Field School, Muahera and fellow community members learn about sustainable farming practices like minimum tillage, permanent soil cover using green manures/cover crops. As a result of applying the techniques she has learned, the fertility and water retention capacity of her soil has improved, enabling Muahera to increase her harvests. She declares that she is better prepared to face climate change now. “I am still eager to learn more and I will keep working hard to continue increasing yields to sustain my family”, she says.

For more information contact Margarida Simbine at CARE International, Mozambique.
Email: msimbine@care.org.mz or alp@careclimatechange.org, or visit www.careclimatechange.org/adaptation-initiatives/alp

India: Local seed systems for enhancing food security and farm resilience

Small millets are a resilient group of crop plants, high in nutritional value, and can grow well with few external inputs. In South Asia they also have high cultural value due to their long history of cultivation. But despite these advantages, we have been seeing a decline in the area and the number of different varieties planted. There is a need to protect and nurture local seed systems, but government research and NGO efforts were not adequately addressing farmers’ needs.

In 2011, the DHAN Foundation started the ‘Revalorising small millets in rainfed regions of South Asia’ (RESMISA) project which significantly enhanced diversity of small millet varieties in each project site after three years. This was achieved by strengthening local seed systems and bringing together various varietal improvement efforts used on four species of small millet.

The guiding methodology was farmer-led research, building on indigenous knowledge systems and complemented by gender sensitive scientific and participatory methods. The experience proved the value of traditional varieties so often ignored by formal seed systems. However, varietal improvement must be a continuous process of integrating small millet into community seed systems if it is to carry on meeting the evolving needs of farmers.|

For more information contact M Karthikeyan, Principal Investigator for the RESMISA project and Programme Leader for Rainfed Farming Development Program, DHAN Foundation, or CSP Patil, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore.
Email: karthikeyan@dhan.org

This is a summary of an article that appeared in LEISA India 16.1, March 2014.

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As the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2008-14), Olivier De Schutter has spoken out many times on the urgent need for changes in global food systems. In March 2014 he published his final report, making strong recommendations in favour of agroecology.

Why do you recommend supporting small scale farmers?

We know that small farms are very productive, and more so than large monocropping farms per unit area of cultivated land. The confusion arises because we calculate output only by looking at the commodities that these large farms deliver. And yes they are productive, but small farms combine different outputs and are much more efficient in the way they use resources.

Taking into account all the different products, yields from a small farm can be very impressive. The key problem is that we have developed a situation with industrial farming systems where we have become addicted to fossil fuels and have accelerated greenhouse gas emissions as a result. Food systems have become highly dependent on petrol, but we’re running out of oil. So in the future they may not be sustainable.

We need alternatives, and there are good arguments from the points of view of resource efficiency and resilience to support food systems that are much more agroecological and make much better use of our natural resources.

How is agroecology linked to the right to food?

First, agroecology is not the same as organic agriculture. It means understanding how nature works, to replicate the complementarities between plants, trees and animals and the natural workings of nature on your farm in order to reduce dependency on external inputs such as chemical fertilizer. This is a sustainable way of producing food as it preserves the ability of future generations to feed themselves. It supports the health of the soil much better, reduces dependency on fossil energies, and is also a low cost way of farming. So for farmers in developing countries who have little access to credit and who are much more vulnerable to risk than farmers in developed countries, agroecology is a very interesting solution for agricultural development.

You say production systems should respond to ‘needs’ and not ‘demands’.

Indeed. The problem is that once food is a commodity that responds to the laws of supply and demand, it will serve only the needs of those who have the greatest purchasing power. In other words, it will not serve the basic needs of the poorest people who have no money or not enough money to spend. Food production will be geared towards satisfying the tastes of the richest segments of the population.

Markets for land and water are increasingly global and populations with widely diverging purchasing powers in the North and the South that have to compete for the same resources. This is creating a paradox in which the luxury tastes of some parts of the world’s population are satisfied whereas the basic needs of others are not recognised and cannot be satisfied.

What is the role of consumers in changing food systems?

Consumers have much more power than they generally acknowledge, and I am hopeful that this next generation will make choices that are much more responsible and informed about the social and environmental impacts of their ways of purchasing and consuming food. In fact, 15 years ago, very few people had concerns other than to have a large diversity of cheap food available all year round. Now people are much more attentive to the impacts of their purchasing practices and they ask questions about labour rights, sustainability, food miles, et cetera. I think it’s a good thing. Does it go far enough? Maybe not. In part because it still only concerns a relatively small part of the population, the best informed and the most aware. And also because we have to accept that consuming more responsibly, also means consuming less of certain things and less meat in particular.

We are coming to realise our overconsumption of meat has a huge impact on natural resources, making land and water more scarce. Our current level of meat consumption in the EU is 75 kg per person per year on average. This is far too much for the environment and also creates a range of health problems. So a move towards healthier lifestyles and changes in how we consume food are desirable and perhaps on the horizon.

Why is access to land so important?

For many years we thought there was plenty of land available and that there would be no competition for this resource. But the 2008 global food price crisis drew the attention of many governments to the need for securing access to land because global markets were not sufficiently reliable.

There was interest for farmland not just from governments but also from private investors. This led to what many call ‘land grabbing’. Huge areas were bought or leased from 2008 to 2011, though the trend is declining slightly now. So land has become a commodity for which there is competition.

The problem is that in many regions, those who use and depend on the land for their livelihoods have no secure access to it. They risk being priced out from land markets and being evicted from the land on which they depend because someone with more purchasing power can buy it instead of them. It is becoming a serious problem, including for younger generations in industrialised countries.

Access to land for them is becoming problematic, just like for peasants in the global South. Because of the inflation in land prices, it’s becoming very difficult for 25 year-olds to start in farming today unless their parents were farmers.

For young farmers in the European Union, it is hard to enter into farming because land and machinery is becoming so expensive. It is therefore necessary to have programmes to improve access to land and to credit, and to ensure that land is used by those who treat it best.

What policies are needed for fairer and more sustainable food systems?

We need policies that are much more coherent from the local to the global. I see many examples of local food systems being rebuilt, with consumers being more active, linking with producers and supported by municipalities. Local resources can be better used to shape food systems that are more sustainable and fair for both consumers and producers. However, very often, such local initiatives are not supported by national policies or by the global framework.

Most of the time, national agricultural policies do not pay attention to local dimensions of food systems. And the global framework supports the expansion of export-led agriculture but does not support governments to take into account dimensions of food systems other than those that increase production volumes. We need more coherence across different levels of governance and much more food democracy. People must be able to hold governments accountable for the results of what food systems deliver. There is a need to move agricultural policies into food policies so that these other dimensions are taken into account. That is why issues of governance are key in achieving the transition towards sustainable food systems.

In which international body should trade in food and agriculture be discussed?

There was an attempt in the past four to five years to improve the coherence of different sectoral policies that affect global food security. That led to a reform of the Committee on World Food Security that convenes in Rome under the auspices of the FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). It is a widely representative committee, including all governments, all international agencies with a relationship to food and agriculture, the private sector, NGOs and farmers organisations, who work together to deliver recommendations for governments.

It is my hope that in future, this committee, because it is inclusive and transparent, can have greater influence in shaping reforms at global and national levels. Unfortunately, trade is very much off limits, and the committee is not authorised to discuss in any depth the impact of trade policies on food security. This is all under the mandate of the WTO (World Trade Organization).

I think that this is a mistake, and this should be seen as part of the problem. It makes no sense to discuss agricultural investment, food security and climate change and not to discuss trade, as it has such a huge impact on the shaping of agricultural and food policies.

Interview: Margriet Goris

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