The Broker

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Do not romanticize family farming

Rudy Rabbinge | 07 December 2009

The most important assignment of agriculture is to ensure that there is enough food for the people in this world. Family farmers can play an important role if you consider and embrace the dynamics of this group. I always find that work on marginal farms is very hard. Weeding and ploughing for a meagre crop is not romantic, but pure poverty. We have seen in many places that small-scale farmers do improve their production if you promote knowledge and innovation, such as green revolution technology. The application of agro-chemicals has greatly improved yields when applied appropriately. Yet, new generations have ambitions for other types of life: in the decades to come, many farmers’ children will move to cities or find other forms of employment. If you ignore this process, it will get out of hand, but you can also embrace it and mitigate the side-effects.

Small-scale farming has a reputation as being good for the environment, but in fact a lot of small-scale farming affects the environment badly. Poor farmers have no means to buy external inputs so they exhaust the soil. The consequent dwindling production again results in farmers producing less and becoming poorer. In my view, environmental degradation is not only a result of richness, but very often due to poverty, and poverty reduction should be the overarching objective of policies. As a society, you can choose to promote or to hamper changes in small-scale farming. The worst thing you can do is romanticize poor farming lifestyles and consolidate their underlying structures: that will result in consolidating poverty.

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justiça social e boa governança são igualmente fatores importantes

Na África a maior parte da população é rural e é nessas zonas rurais onde a pobreza é mais concentrada. A agricultura sendo a atividade mais importante nas zonas rurais africanas possui um grande potencial para tirar muitas pessoas da pobreza. Atualmente essa capacidade da agricultura tirar as pessoas da pobreza é limitada por uma série de fatores, entre eles: a baixa produtividade agrícola, a deterioração dos termos de troca e a contínua queda dos preços dos produtos agrários tradicionais de exportação africana nos mercados internacionais, a falta de investimentos adequados na investigação, extensão agrária e nas infra-estruturas físicas. A nova Revolução Verde africana pode aumentar a produção e a produtividade e, desse modo, induzir o crescimento e equidade. No entanto, para que essa estratégia seja bem sucedida ela deve ser acompanhada por políticas públicas que aumentem o acesso e posse da terra, particularmente às camadas mais pobres; aumente o acesso dos insumos (sementes e fertilizantes), através do correto funcionamento dos mercados, realize uma adequada gestão dos recursos naturais. Por outro lado, é necessário que os governos africanos façam investimentos nas (i) infra-estruturas físicas; (ii) serviços de extensão e pesquisa agrária e (iii) na educação e saúde para garantir a elevação das capacidades humanas. A paz, justiça social e boa governança são igualmente fatores importantes para garantir que essa estratégia contribua efetivamente para acabar com a pobreza e a fome na África.
Sitoe, Tomás Adriano | January 11, 2010 | Respond

Environmental degradation is result of poverty

Whilst not romanticizing small scale farming and acknowledging that small scale farmers are often forced to exploit their resources, I certainly know that they are a formidable force to be tapped to prevent major foodshortages in the the world.

To tap this force the general public needs to pay more for food. The world cannot expect the farmer to provide food and maintain the environment only at his/her own expense and labour.

The society has by and large failed to bring essential services to the farm gate. Credit, electricity, knowledge of new technology, implements which make farming more efficient,...

Where profit was to be made: seeds, agrochemicals, the commercial sector has stepped in. Not always this was beneficial to the farmer but successes are also seen and have to be acknowledged.

We all know that fertilizers and agrochemicals have been misused (especially by not so knowledgeable medium scale farmers), leading to imbalanced soil fertility (lack of micro nutrients), loss of organic matter in the soil (and with that loss of waterholding capacity), pesticide resistance.

I thus suggest that we start paying more for our food, lobby with our governments to provide essential services at the farm gate, assist the farmers to optimally use their resources before purchasing outside (LEISA) and promote that technologies are used in such a way that they improve the environment.

We do have examples of fairly large scale successes with this approach in Orissa where farming communities came from 3 months food security to surplusses within 2 years. These communities are now supporting other villages. The number of cattle has increased, new houses are build, farmers are now testing technologies. Small investments were required.
Mans Lanting | December 14, 2009 | Respond