The developing world's small-scale farmers are hungry for change

Mon, Oct 30, 2006 page9

The developing world's small-scale farmers are hungry for change

Since the UN last pledged to help reduce world hunger, an extra 25 million people have joined the list of the world's undernourished. Now small-scale farmers are insisting on being heard
- By Patrick Mulvany and John Madeley / THE GUARDIAN
When governments meet today and tomorrow in Rome to assess how far they have gone towards meeting their pledge to halve hunger by 2015, the mood will be somber.
The goal is moving out of sight. New figures from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will show not a reduction but an increase of more than 25 million chronically undernourished people since 1996.
The figure now stands at more than 850 million, and is testament to how current global policies, far from working, are consigning the hungry to stay hungry.

So what is going wrong? Let's go back to 2002, when the UN World Food Summit pledge was last reviewed. Then, the parallel Forum for Food Sovereignty, organized by non-governmental groups representing small farmers and people around the world at the sharp end of hunger and farming, concluded that the problem was not a lack of political will, as the FAO asserted, but the opposite -- too much political will.
The advances of trade liberalization, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering and military dominance, it said, were now the main causes of hunger.

Since then, the situation has gotten worse. The world's food system -- from the seed, livestock and agrochemical industries to transport, processing and retailing -- is now controlled by even fewer corporations, which take an ever larger share of the price paid by consumers.
Farmers worldwide are being forced to accept lower and lower farm gate prices until they can no longer go on. As a result, there is now an epidemic of farm bankruptcies and farmer suicides in many countries.
The problem is being exacerbated by the way we use diminishing land and water resources. The appetite for industrially produced livestock -- fed on grains and starchy vegetables -- consumes millions of hectares of land that could be used for food production. Equally, vast areas of land in developing countries that were used for intensive farming in the "green revolution" that started in the 1960s are now poisoned by pesticides, as well as salinized by poor irrigation.
Now yields are stagnating and the pressure is mounting to convert land to produce biofuels for the affluent.
British Environment Minister David Miliband has recently spoken of the need for "one planet farming." This minimizes the impact on the environment of patterns of food production and consumption, and maximizes its contribution to renewal of the natural environment.
Miliband's backing of such a scheme perhaps heralds a shift in policy, and last Tuesaday a vision of how this might be achieved was published in a conference report reflecting the views of small-scale farmers -- views that, unfortunately, are largely ignored, neglected or actively undermined by the international development community, despite their local food systems being so vital for alleviating hunger.
Michel Pimbert, program director for agriculture and biodiversity at the International Institute for Environment and Development, one of the report's authors, listened to smallholder farmers in France, Indonesia, India, Peru, the Philippines, Senegal and the UK over a three-year period.
"All the small-scale producers I met asked that their voices be heard in the choice of policy for food, farming, land and water use. That is why we organized the conference," he said.
The farmers -- from 30 countries -- who participated in the conference were eloquent about how farming for small producers is much more than just a food production system.
Edgar Gonzales Castro, from Peru, said his vision of the future was "traditional" agriculture aimed at satisfying the food and livelihood needs of farmers and their families, rather than generating profit and accumulating wealth.
"What matters is that, on the family plot of land, farmers and their families have a range of crops to fill the cooking pot," he said.
Peter Ooi, a Thai farmer, said there was a belief that international trade and the modern agrifood industry have denied farming's potential to be responsive to local conditions and to enable people to make a living. National policies should protect farmers and domestic markets properly, but this is rarely the case, he said.
One farmer observed that the migration of peasants from Central America to the US and other rich countries was closely linked to the lack of support for small producers.
Another stressed the need to produce as closely as possible to the market in order to minimize transportation, and hence the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.
Climate change and deforestation were seen by people in Latin America as responsible for lower rainfall and drought. This is now a major problem for food production, they stressed, with the less frequent but heavy rainstorms and lack of trees causing erosion, reducing soil quality and producing lean harvests.
Small-scale, largely organic farming, using local resources such as natural fertilizer and diverse seeds from local sources rather than bringing them in from far away, could play a key role in combating climate change.
The report says that free market, neo-liberal economic policy has encouraged and justified the elimination of small-scale food producers in developed and developing countries.
Farmers and indigenous peoples are seen as "residues" of history -- people whose disappearance is inevitable. Through-out the world, small farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples are increasingly being displaced.
"When governments decide to hold public consultations to help guide their decisions, policy experts as well as representatives of large farmers and agrifood corporations are usually center stage, not small-scale producers, consumers and their organizations," Pimbert said.
Worldwide, the message of the report is that small-scale farmers -- the majority of growers in the world -- want radically different policies from those being promoted by governments such as Britain.
The call is for policies to start from the perspectives and needs of food producers and consumers rather than the demand for profits that has underpinned UK policy.
If Miliband's "one planet farming" means, however, that the UK government, at home and abroad, will only support farming practices that will provide healthy, local food, maintain livelihoods for local producers and conserve resilient landscapes, then there is common ground with small-scale farmers.
But if it means a uniform "one planet food system" for all, this will accelerate the hunt to source food globally as cheaply as possible. It would result in a continuing decline in food quality, with ever higher social and environmental costs, and be lorded over by fewer and fewer transnational food agribusinesses.
It would lead both to greater hunger and increasing obesity, and see the eradication of ever more farmers and further loss of farmland.
If the governments meeting in Rome are listening, they need to take these farmers' views seriously enough to influence policy that will fovever banish hunger.
Patrick Mulvany is senior policy adviser at Practical Action. John Madeley writes on agricultural issues.
A dispatch from the frontlines shows the harsh realities of an African country and its struggle
Denis James, a smallholder farmer with a family of 10, lives in a village in central Malawi. He describes the problems his people face:
"There are 67 households here in Kholongo, and the food situation is really bad. There's nearly nothing in the village at all. A few people have some maize flour, but that's all."
"We planted our crops on Dec. 18 last year but we have not had enough rain, so our crops did not grow. It rained sporadically until Feb. 14, and then there was nothing. The crop was badly damaged and now we have no food left at all. People are relying on earning a bit of money from cutting down trees to sell for firewood, but the price we get for it is almost nothing. We get less than US$2 for a cartload."
"There are some families in really bad shape already. A few have moved permanently from the village in search of work. I myself am thinking of moving out, but I am the chief's uncle, with a family of 10, so I cannot. If we did go, it would be to the big tobacco estates, but I would earn only enough to survive. There we would get somewhere to live and a very little food, but the owner deducts everything at the end of the year so we would have nothing because the price of tobacco is so low now."
"Since 2002 we have had only one reasonable year of rains. Three of the last four have been bad. It's never been this bad before. There is a big problem with the climate here. Perhaps it has something to do with the trees we are cutting down. In the village no one is allowed to cut down the trees, but we go to the nearby forest. There used to be many trees there. Now there are not. There are few trees left. This was all a forest, but now we are wood dealers. We take the wood to Madisi, a town about 8km away."
"It's much harder to farm now than when I was young. We grow maize here to eat, and tobacco to sell, and vegetables, but the rains are affecting everything. We never had to apply fertilizer then, but now we do, and still we do not get as much from our crops as we used to. We are learning to grow different crops and to compost, but it's not enough."
"The soils are exhausted, and the number of people in the village has increased a lot. We are lucky now to have one meal a day. We all eat in the evening because that way we have some energy in the morning. We have no fertilizer or seeds for the coming year. We have prepared the land and we are waiting for the rains, but I have no idea where the seed will come from. Some people will ask their relatives, but no-one has much."
"How else can we earn money? We honestly do not know. People are sharing food now and it will get worse."
"No one has helped us. We don't expect it. Last year, 14 households were given some maize but that is all. I am encouraging everyone to diversify to grow different crops, but it needs money for the seeds and fertilizer."
"I need about US$15 to fertilize about half a hectare of land, and roughly the same for seed, but where will that come from? Everyone is in the same situation. By [next month], people will start eating wild roots. The community recognizes that it should plant trees and compost the fields. We know we should not destroy it, but we must live."
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