Spring harvest, El-Shohada, Egypt, April 27, 2012. Marco Salustro/International Fund for Agricultural Development
July 05, 2015
Population growth and climate change are two of the
greatest challenges facing humanity today. It’s no exaggeration to say that we
are living in a time of population explosion: 2050 is just thirty-five years
away and the global population is projected to rise to 9.6 billion by then—some
30 percent more than today’s figure of 7.3 billion, and a rise of more than 50
percent since the beginning of this century. Some projections for the year 2100
put the global population at sixteen billion.
With this increase in population
comes the pressing need for more food. Estimates show that by 2050 food
production must increase by as much as 60 percent over 2005 levels to meet the
inevitably rising demand, while increasing prosperity and changing diets will
generate further pressure to produce more. At the same time, climate change is
radically altering crop-growing conditions in many parts of the world and
increasing the frequency of extreme weather events that severely disrupt poor
people’s lives and agricultural production. The rhetoric around these issues is
becoming so familiar that we are in danger of ignoring the messages.
How will we feed the 9.6 billion?
This is often the first question asked, but it should be rephrased: How can we
sustainably produce enough food for the 9.6 billion while ensuring that people
from all social groups can access the food they need and protecting the
environment for our children?
Producing more food to feed a
growing population is an easy answer to a complex question. It’s not
incorrect—but it’s definitely insufficient. We know from the situation today
that producing enough food is no guarantee that no one goes hungry. Although
figures released in the annual United Nations hunger report, The State of Food Insecurity in
the World 2015, show a reduction in the
proportion of people who are chronically undernourished, their numbers still
stand at 795 million. Yet we are told that the world produces enough food today
to feed every one of us.
The quantity of food produced is just one part of the
equation. The quantity of food wasted is another—with some sources estimating
that up to 50 percent of the food produced doesn’t reach our plates. Food waste
occurs at every step of the supply chain: during harvest, storage, processing,
marketing, and when consumers consign it to the bin. Then there’s
accessibility—can people afford the food they need for a full and healthy life?
And lastly, there’s the issue of sustainability—can we produce sufficient food
using methods that do not deplete and despoil natural resources?
Inclusive
Growth
A critical part of the answer to these questions—a key
to fighting hunger and feeding a growing world—involves empowering the
smallholder farmers. The food system is highly complex, and interlinked with
equally complex systems as diverse as the weather and international trade
regimes. And it often seems as contradictory as it is complex. Consider the fact
that the smallholder farmers who produce most of the world’s food—as much as 80
percent in some developing countries—are often also the very people who are
both poor and hungry.
Although more than half of the global population is
now urban, about three-quarters of poor and hungry people live in rural areas
and the majority of them depend on the world’s 500 million smallholder farms
for food and income. Yet these critical producers—many of whom are net buyers
of food—are often unable to adequately feed their own families.
The concentration of hunger and poverty in the very
areas where food is produced means that to tackle the big challenges at the
roots, we must focus on rural women and men and on their communities. By
investing in sustainable and inclusive economic transformation in rural areas,
we can effectively respond to the need for more equitable access to food today,
at the same time as we build a resilient food system that will be equal to the
challenges of tomorrow.
The beneficial effects of agricultural
growth in reducing hunger and poverty are well known—and go far beyond the
production of greater quantities of food. In resource-poor low-income
countries, gross domestic product (GDP)
growth driven by agriculture is at least three times as effective in
cutting poverty rates as growth in other sectors.
Significantly, agricultural
growth that is underpinned by the development of smallholder family farming has
been shown to be more inclusive. Smallholders with higher incomes spend more on
rural food and non-food products, creating markets for local businesses to
thrive and generating further employment and income gains. This creates a
virtuous cycle that results in better market opportunities for everyone—and
higher and more stable incomes for rural people, enabling them to have more
secure access to nutritious food.
Prospering communities on
reclaimed desert land in Egypt demonstrate how inclusive rural transformation
can change people’s lives. The West Noubaria Rural Development Project, funded
by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), has enabled
young settler families to make a decent living and create vibrant communities
on land that was once desert. Over 45,000 settler households—or about 250,000
people—benefited from the project’s interventions. The target population
included unemployed graduates, smallholders, and displaced farmers. About 15
percent of the settler households were headed by women.
The project, located north of
Cairo and west of the Nile Delta, aimed to strengthen community infrastructure
and services and build capacity in agriculture and marketing. The project built
or repaired nearly four thousand houses, nineteen schools, fifteen clinics,
eighteen kindergartens, twenty event halls and youth centers, and ten mosques.
It supported the establishment of more than twenty community development
associations to give local residents a voice and enable them to manage the
social infrastructure.
Extension services were provided to farmers where
crop, livestock, and water management technologies were demonstrated.
Irrigation canals were repaired and localized irrigation (drip and sprinkler)
was introduced to adapt to the sandy soils of the desert. This allowed water
saving of more than 30 percent. To boost producers’ access to market, six
farmer marketing associations were established, with membership of nearly one
hundred agricultural cooperatives. During the lifetime of the project, the
marketing associations entered into 138 sales contracts with twenty-seven marketing
companies for a wide range of crops, including tomatoes, potatoes, beans,
artichokes, peppers, onions, oranges, grapes, and peaches.
An independent impact assessment
carried out at the end of the project in 2014 shows improvement across most
indicators in comparison to 2006 and 2009. Households in the villages where the
project was active have higher literacy rates, enjoy better sanitary and
housing conditions, own more assets, have higher incomes and savings, and are
more food secure than those from villages outside the project area. The
improvement of education, health, and other social services in the project area
also attracted more settlers, contributing to the growth of thriving
communities.
When the project closed last year, the completion
report noted that the project area had been transformed into a region that is
recognized for its quality production of high-value fruit and vegetables. It
supplies national fresh produce markets, the food processing industry, and
export companies. Net annual farm household income for a typical settler family
of four increased fourfold and was about $8,850—well above the poverty
benchmark of $456 per person.
Poverty
and Hunger
The centrality of agricultural and smallholder
development to inclusive growth helps explain why economic growth alone does
not necessarily lead to significant improvements in food security and poverty
rates for all sectors of society. Despite GDP growth in many developing
countries—including some of the poorest—hunger has often persisted. In many
cases, smallholders and their families have been left behind as growth policies
focus on a narrow range of extractive industries. In addition, lack of
agricultural development leaves expanding urban populations reliant on food
imports, with predictably disastrous consequences, as seen during recent global
food crises.
Growth that has not been inclusive is one of the
reasons why, according to a recent report of the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, the global gap between rich and poor is at its
highest level for thirty years. The report also underlines the fact that rising
inequality is a drag on economic growth as well as a threat to social cohesion.
Only inclusive growth underpinned by better livelihoods for smallholder family
farmers can generate the income and employment gains that sustainably reduce
hunger and poverty. Investing in smallholders and enabling these women and men
to boost productivity levels and strengthen their access to markets is central
to driving any inclusive growth agenda.
Inclusive growth also requires prioritizing social
protection schemes. Many of the countries that have reached the first
Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people in the
world by 2015 have schemes that ensure income security and access to better
nutrition, healthcare, and education. This enables the more vulnerable people
to tap into the benefits of economic growth and take advantage of employment
opportunities.
Inclusive development also means better two-way connectivity
between rural and urban areas. Although popular discourse tends to portray
urban and rural areas as separate and distinct, in reality, cities, towns, and
villages are linked by flows of labor, goods, resources, services, finance,
communications, and information, as well as human ties between families and
across generations.
By 2030, about 60 percent of the global population
will be living in cities. As the world becomes increasingly urban, rural areas
and economies need to adapt and transform so that they can more efficiently and
sustainably provide greater amounts of food, clean water, and environmental
services to satisfy urban and rural demand. And as urban and rural economies
become more interdependent, they also need to be better connected to each other
to generate positive dynamics of inclusive and sustainable development.
Responsible investments in the rural space to increase people’s access to
communications, infrastructure, and services will be central to building
resilient interconnections between rural and urban areas.
In some countries, urbanization is already being
accompanied by stronger linkages between rural and urban areas, with more
intense flows of people, money, and goods. The increasing integration of food
supply chains is a good example of this. However, rural-urban connectivity is
still inadequate in many regions—in terms of services, infrastructure, and
institutions. For infrastructure in particular, the gaps are immense and can
hamper investment in agricultural value chains. Such gaps can also result in
rural people being forced to engage in urban economies or rural-urban supply
chains on very unequal terms. This typically leaves them with unstable incomes
that make it difficult for them to sustainably afford sufficient and nutritious
food.
Improving rural-urban connectivity—together with
rising demand for agricultural products—creates new opportunities for food
companies to build mutually beneficial partnerships with smallholders. The
potential benefits of these arrangements are multiple: profits, increased
incomes, inclusive growth, and rural transformation.
The scope for agribusiness companies and commercial
processors to work with smallholders is greater now than ever before. New
technologies are enabling smallholders to increase their productivity at the
same time as they are reducing the costs of doing business with these key
producers. In addition, there is now strong support among the public sector,
donors, and development agencies for inclusive agribusiness practices that
prioritize integrating smallholders into value chains.
However, functioning partnerships between agribusiness
operators and smallholders also require a broader inclusive business
environment—infrastructure, institutions, training, and access to efficient,
transparent markets. Unfortunately, in the rural areas of developing countries,
these elements are still rarely all in place. Governments and development
partners need to address this as a matter of urgency through suitable policies
and investments.
Building the necessary trust between agribusinesses
and smallholders is not always straightforward. IFAD plays a crucial role as an
honest broker in facilitating public-private producer partnerships that
explicitly address the needs of smallholder farmers.
For example, in the African
island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, IFAD brokered a partnership in 2003
between the French chocolate company Kaoka and an export cooperative that
brought together about three thousand cocoa smallholders. Kaoka provides the
farmers with technical and commercial know-how, as well as access to European
markets. The company buys dried cocoa beans at premium prices, based on
negotiated contracts and according to ethical schemes. Because the farmers are
providing Kaoka with high-quality products, they have been able to gain organic
and fair trade certification.
Following the success of this
first partnership, four more have been established—with CMC Malongo and
Hom&Ter Développement in France, with Cafédirect in the United Kingdom, and
with Slow Food International in Italy. These new collaborations have broadened
the range of products bought from smallholders to include organic coffee and
pepper. As a result, about 5,500 farmers now enjoy stable access to niche
markets, exporting over 1,300 metric tons of quality produce annually and
earning a fair return.
Challenge
of Gender Disparities
Hunger and poverty are often
mentioned in one breath, but they are not the same thing. Rather, they are
interlinked and can create a vicious circle. Poverty is defined as a
deprivation in well-being that leaves people without the ability to acquire the
basic necessities required to live a dignified life. Poverty causes hunger
simply because poor people cannot afford to buy the food they need. The resulting
food insecurity and malnutrition damages their long-term health and that of
their children, thus critically reducing people’s physical ability to work and
fulfill their potential, and keeping generations truly trapped in poverty.
The causes of poverty and hunger include, but are not
limited to: race, ethnicity, disability, location, age and gender. Indeed,
although there is still a dearth of sex-disaggregated statistics, we have
enough to know beyond doubt that hunger and poverty disproportionately affect
women and girls. As a result, the significance of women’s empowerment for
inclusive development is increasingly recognized.
Many interrelated factors contribute to gender
disparities. These are often connected to entrenched norms regarding gender roles,
work distribution, and rights. According to a recent report from UN Women, in
terms of workload women spend almost two and a half times longer than men
carrying out unpaid care work—principally with children and elderly people.
This has a massive impact on their capacity to earn money, educate themselves,
enjoy free time, and interact with others outside the home. As a result of this
and other factors, fewer women than men have a cash income in the less
developed regions, and a significant proportion of married women have no say in
how their cash earnings are spent. In more developed regions, women are
overrepresented among the older poor. And they are more likely than men to be
poor when living on their own in rich and poor countries alike. In many countries,
households headed by single mothers are more likely to be poor than those
headed by single fathers. Work is ongoing in many sectors to gather the data
that is necessary to create a more accurate picture of women’s lives.
The proportion of women receiving services from
IFAD-supported projects has risen steadily over recent years, from 43 percent
in 2007/2008 to 48 percent in 2013. In areas such as micro-entrepreneurship,
business skills, and community management, women make up over 75 percent of participants.
The organization has developed innovative ways to work with women and men in
rural areas to address gender inequality, enabling households and communities
to work together effectively to find solutions to poverty and food insecurity
and malnutrition.
Women’s empowerment is a hugely complex undertaking
and it is often difficult to assess where to start in order to make the most
difference. Working with partners, IFAD is pioneering the household
methodologies—innovative ways of working with women and men in rural areas,
starting at the household level where gender inequality is often most
tenaciously rooted. Household methodologies shift the focus of development work
from things, such as assets, resources, and infrastructure, to people—their
daily activities, workloads and interactions, and their hopes and ambitions.
The methodologies are based on the increasing understanding that households are
often not egalitarian units that share resources and benefits. Instead, women
and men in the same family may pursue largely different livelihoods, have
different responsibilities, and reap greater or lesser rewards.
Using these groundbreaking approaches, trained
facilitators or mentors work either through groups or at the individual
household level to support families in developing a household vision of where
they would like to be in three to five years’ time. This provides the
inspiration for household members to assess their current situation and to draw
up step-by-step plans for a better future. People often discover that gender
inequality at the household level is one reason that they remain trapped in
poverty. Renegotiating domestic divisions of labor to share women’s workloads
or to enable women to engage in activities that generate income can benefit all
family members. Women and men are also encouraged to make changes outside the
household by joining self-help groups and accessing financial services.
IFAD is currently using household methodologies in
projects in Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Uganda and is reaching
about 100,000 people. Participants report improved productivity, higher
incomes, decreased domestic violence, greater familial harmony, greater
resilience in the face of shocks, and increased happiness. Another important
change that takes place is that women gain in confidence and their
participation in decisions inside and outside the household increases. IFAD is
leading the drive to take household methodologies to scale and they have been
included in the design of new projects in Ghana, Laos, and Mozambique.
Empowering
the Youth
Statistics show that farmers in
many countries today are old and growing older. This is a trend that we
urgently need to reverse. Harnessing the dynamism and innovative energy of
young people is key to the development of sustainable food systems that will be
needed to feed 9.6 billion people by 2050. Equally, the agriculture sector must
play an important role in providing decent work for young women and men in
rural areas, because even under the most optimistic projections, urban sectors
will not be able to provide jobs for all the young people entering the labor
market in the coming decades.
The potential returns of investing in young people are
enormous—in terms of food security, poverty reduction, employment generation,
as well as peace and political stability. In many countries where food security
challenges are particularly stark, large proportions of the population are
young. Children under the age of 15 account for around a quarter of the
population in developing countries while youth (those aged 15 to 24) in many
cases comprise up to a further one-fifth of the population. In Africa, more
than 60 percent of the population is currently below the age of 25.
Projects cited in IFAD’s Annual Report 2014 fund a
range of activities tailored to the needs of young women and men in rural
areas, enabling them to gain useful job skills and to play a part in the
development of their communities. In Senegal, where a huge 47 percent of the
population is under the age of 15, IFAD has partnered with village sports and
cultural groups to reach young people and help them develop business proposals.
More than four thousand young women and men have received funding to become
agroentrepreneurs in their own villages, stemming the tide of migration.
In the Caribbean, the global economic crisis has hit
young people particularly hard. In 2014, IFAD approved a three-year program to
improve the business skills of a thousand young women and men in Belize, Cuba,
the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, and Haiti. By developing a strategy
for rural youth employment shared by governments and partners, the project also
aims to boost public resource allocation to the sector, which will indirectly
benefit several thousand more young people. In Moldova, credit lines have been
made available for young farmers and sixty-four small and medium-sized
enterprises have taken financing for a total of $6 million.
Adapting
to Global Warming
Climate change, and the
increasingly frequent extreme weather events associated with it, hit the
world’s poor farmers hardest. Temperatures are more extreme, rains are
unpredictable, droughts are more common, and what once grew well in a certain
area can no longer be relied on. These changes have significant impacts on food
systems, as well as the ecosystems and water supplies they depend upon. In
addition, violent storms and devastating floods wash away crops and destroy
homes and infrastructure. While world leaders edge toward a binding agreement
that might put the brakes on carbon emissions, poor rural people live their
daily lives on the frontline of a warmer world.
IFAD runs the largest global financing source
dedicated to helping smallholder farmers adapt to climate change. Since it was
established in 2012, the Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme
(ASAP) has approved a total of $209 million in grants to strengthen poor
producers’ resilience, help them manage risks, and enable them to adapt to
changing conditions. ASAP funds a range of approaches in some of the world’s
most climate-vulnerable contexts. For example, in Egypt and Sudan, climate
financing is supporting the development of a dynamic agricultural information
and response system. This will give early warning of events such as storms,
pest outbreaks, heat waves and frosts, and advice on the timing of irrigation.
Bangladesh is another country that is extremely
vulnerable to climate change and the risks are particularly high in the
southern charlands, where some of the poorest people live. IFAD is constructing
infrastructure to help protect people and their livelihoods. More than 1,200
kilometers of all-weather roads have been built, together with cyclone shelters
for forty thousand people and twenty-two livestock refuges. About ten thousand
hectares of land have been reclaimed with dykes, and trees have been planted to
protect the shoreline. More than twenty thousand women and men have joined
natural resource management groups to promote sustainable practices that
protect natural resources.
A Precious
Opportunity
Because inclusive rural transformation must be a
keystone of our response to the challenge of sustainably feeding the world’s
growing population, there is an urgent need to boost the financial resources
that are invested in agricultural and rural development.
Global leaders, policymakers, donors, and private
sector actors are holding two meetings on the challenge this year: the Third
International Conference on Financing for Development will take place in Addis
Ababa in July; and a UN summit in New York in September will adopt the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—a new, universal set of goals, targets,
and indicators for development. A new global agreement on climate change is
also on the agenda for later in the year.
Economic transformation of rural areas is central to
the realization of the SDGs and this requires first and foremost strong
commitment and action at the national level, together with continued support
from the international community. Governments must direct a larger share of
domestic public resources toward financing public goods in the rural sector,
and back them up with enabling policies. It is also vital that domestic and
international public financing are used to foster inclusive and responsible
private investment in smallholder family farming. Public financing must be used
to create an enabling environment to leverage additional private investment
across food value chains. This encompasses public goods, services, and
institutions.
In 2015, the world has a precious opportunity to
refocus priorities, policies, and investments toward achieving development that
is inclusive, sustainable, and people-centered—and that enables everyone, now
and in the future, to access sufficient and nutritious food. By focusing
efforts and finance on the rural areas and the family farmers that provide so
much of our food, we can begin to answer the complex question of how to feed
the 9.6 billion and leave no one behind.
Kanayo F.
Nwanze is serving his second term as president of the International Fund for
Agricultural Development, a United Nations agency focused on rural poverty
reduction. From 1996 to 2006, he was director general of the Consultative Group
for International Agricultural Research’s Africa Rice Center, which played an
instrumental role in introducing and promoting New Rice for Africa known as
NERICA, a rice variety developed specifically for the African landscape. From
1987 to 1996, he served as principal scientist at the International Crops
Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India. On Twitter: @knwanze.