MALNUTRITION: Somalia: "It is a colossal outrage that the lessons of previous famines have been ignored," says Oxfam.

GENEVA, 27 July 2011 (IRIN)

Analysis: Horn of Africa aid must also build long-term resilience

 Photo: Dan Delorenzo/OCHA

The carcass of a camel that has succumbed to drought lies on a roadside in northern Kenya

The images of starving children bear grim witness to the extent of the crisis affecting millions of people in the Horn of Africa, but they also symbolize a failure to act in time, say aid experts.

"It is a colossal outrage that the warnings went unheeded, that the lessons of previous famines have been ignored," says Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam.
The crisis in the Horn of Africa, triggered by drought, conflict and high food prices, is affecting at least 11.6 million people, with two regions of southern Somalia suffering from famine. And the situation may well deteriorate.
But the crisis, experts say, could have been mitigated by mobilizing the necessary resources ahead of time. There is increasing evidence that helping people become more resilient to the naturally recurring cycles of drought is far more effective than responding after disaster has struck.
It is also sound use of donor money, they say. As such, helping farmers find alternative livelihood options, or teaching them to grow drought-resistant crops, is far more effective than providing food aid when the harvest has failed.
"We have hard evidence, including from Africa, that we need only five Swiss francs [US$6.20] per capita per annum to build up resilience,” said Mohammed Mukhier, who heads the Disaster Risk Reduction unit at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
“If you take the emergency response and emergency operations, you might need 200 francs [$250] per capita to deliver relief assistance for periods of just three or four months."
Humanitarian agencies and donors agreed at an emergency meeting in Rome on 25 July that the response to the crisis must address the immediate needs of the desperate population and help build resilience to avert similar crises in the future.

Risk reduction
Using donor money wisely is particularly urgent in view of the threats posed globally by natural disasters, including increasingly frequent storms, floods and droughts. Advocates of the risk reduction strategy argue that donors can no longer afford to provide funding for disasters primarily after the fact. The cost is rising and compromising regular development investment.

 Photo: OCHA

Intergrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) for eastern Africa

Yet, warnings of impending disaster in the Horn of Africa went largely unheeded.
"Measures that could have kept animals alive – and provided milk, and income to buy food – would have been much cheaper than feeding malnourished children, but the time for those passed with very little investment,” said Simon Levine, of the Overseas Development Institute. Now, "it is far too late to address anything but the worst symptoms", he wrote on the website of the independent British think-tank.
While massive funding often goes to post-disaster response, funds for preparedness and contingency planning are relatively scarce. Risk prevention is often hard to fund as it does not generate the same kind of media as a high-profile emergency response. Government donors answer to taxpayers and need to demonstrate impact – something that is difficult to do when disaster has been averted.
With donors mobilized - even if funds pledged still fall well short of the US$2 billion needed – the focus in the Horn of Africa is now on emergency as well as long-term assistance.
“Short-term relief must be linked to building long-term sustainability," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "This means an agricultural transformation that improves the resilience of rural livelihoods and minimizes the scale of any future crisis. It means climate-smart crop production, livestock rearing, fish farming and forest maintenance practices that enable all people to have year-round access to the nutrition they need."
Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), stressed that building resilience in farming and herding communities required a long-term commitment. "But time - as we can see from the devastating situation in the Horn of Africa - is running out,” he told delegates at the meeting in Rome.
The challenge of seeking to avoid future food insecurity crises in the Horn of Africa is daunting. Conflict has severely hampered development and relief efforts in Somalia, and affects the mobility of pastoralists and their livestock, which is key to food security in the region.
But disaster risk reduction is increasingly seen as a humanitarian imperative, crucial to battling poverty and achieving sustainable development.
“Building resilience of farming and herding communities in East Africa requires a long-term, sustained commitment on the part of the region’s governments and the international donor community,” said Kevin Cleaver, IFAD's associate vice-president.

"The rains will fail. But let us not fail, too."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93337

MALNUTRITION: Food Prices to Stay High Amid Underinvestment, Climate Change, IFAD Says

Sungwoo Park - Jul 24, 2011

Global food prices will remain high as underinvestment in agriculture over decades has left supplies unable to meet demand, according to a United Nations agency.

“We are just depleting our stocks and now we have this high population growth,” Kanayo F Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, said in an interview. “Prices won’t come down overnight. They are going to stay high for some time to come.”
Global food costs tracked by the United Nations increased in June for the 10th time in the past 12 months, staying near a record on higher rice, sugar and dairy prices, while meat reached an all-time high. Aid to agriculture dropped to 4.3 percent of total assistance in 2008 from 18 percent in 1979, according to IFAD data.
“Food price crisis, food price hikes or food price volatility is not just a simple consequence of shortage of food because of weather conditions and climate change,” Nwanze said in an interview on July 22 in Seoul. “A primary cause is we’ve disinvested in agriculture over decades.”
Nwanze has urged the global community for more investments in rural development to help meet growing food demand led by emerging economies including China, India and Brazil. The 165- member nation agency works to combat rural poverty and hunger by providing low-interest loans and grants to developing countries.
Rice, the staple food for about half of the global population, has surged 65 percent in the past year on the Chicago Board of Trade. Corn, used in food and livestock-feed, has jumped 78 percent.

World Population
The United Nations has said that by 2050, food production must increase by 70 percent to feed an estimated world population of 9 billion people, up from almost 7 billion this year.
“The middle class is growing, their demand for better food is growing and they want more meat, which takes more grains,” Nwanze said. “Who is going to feed us in 2020?”
World grain stocks will probably slide for a second year in the 12 months through June 2012, dropping to a four-year low, as corn consumption outpaces production and dry weather hurts wheat prospects, the International Grains Council forecast in April.
“Climate change will compound the whole issue of food security,” Nwanze said. “The world is yet to understand implications of the impact of climate change,” he said. “We are not investing enough money.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Sungwoo Park in Seoul at spark47@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Richard Dobson at rdobson4@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-25/food-prices-to-stay-high-amid-underinvestment-climate-change-ifad-says.html

POVERTY: For battling poverty and hunger, rural agriculture is way forward

By EMAN EL-SHENAWI : AL ARABIYA : 29 June 2011

Investing in agriculture is seen as a necessary ingredient in the struggle to combat poverty. (File photo)

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has proposed that investing in rural infrastructure and agriculture are necessary ingredients in the struggle to combat poverty in developing countries.
“Thirty years ago, the IFAD pointed out that combating poverty and hunger should be on the global agenda," Islamic Development Bank Vice President Birama Sidibe said in a statement released by the IFAD during its annual meeting, which this year was held in Saudi Arabia.
"Rural infrastructure is important in poverty reduction. The Islamic Development Bank is interested in how technology can make a difference in alleviating poverty and hunger.”
Ministers of finance, economy and planning from 56 Islamic Development Bank member states attended the meeting. The bank, a Saudi-based development financing institution, is partnered with the IFAD.
The Islamic Development Bank member states include Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Qatar, Iran and Turkey.
The IFAD’s 2011 Rural Poverty Report stated that that small farms could help lift millions out of poverty if they are supported by the international community.
About 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas in developing countries, but only 4 percent of official development assistance goes to agriculture.
“Increasing productivity alone is not enough to solve the issue of food security. We must invest in in all areas of sustainable agriculture,” said Lassine Bouare, Mali’s finance minister.
In 2009, both the IFAD and the Islamic Development Bank signed a co-financing agreement worth $1.5 billion for 26 priority poverty-reduction programs in many of the bank’s member states.
In April, the IFAD invested $5.3 billion of its own resources in 372 projects designed to enable poor rural families to escape poverty and achieve food security.

(Eman El-Shenawi, a writer at Al Arabiya English, can be reached at: eman.elshenawi@mbc.net.)

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/06/29/155372.html

MALNUTRITION: Reimagining Food Systems in the Midst of a Hunger Crisis

Kanya D'Almeida : Jun 3, 2011 (IPS) -

Today one billion people are living in hunger, not because of scarcity of production or a shortage of food on shelves in the global marketplace, but because they "lack the most basic purchasing power needed to acquire it", Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said Thursday.
Currently, 35-40 percent of harvests are lost due to inadequate transportation and storage facilities, while a further 35-40 percent goes to wealthy Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.
According to experts like De Schutter, the inability of 10 percent of the world's population to feed itself is also a reflection of unsustainable patterns of consumption and deeply flawed models of industrialised agricultural production which, if allowed to continue, will divert 50 percent of global cereal harvests towards feeding cattle by the year 2050.
"From the food crisis in 1974, to the crisis in 2007-2008, and even now during the food crisis of 2010-2011, governments have had the same Pavlovian reaction - to increase production in order to lower prices and alleviate the burden of food price inflation on the population," De Schutter said at a panel discussion in Washington.
He added that while the reaction was understandable, it has been undeniably proven to be incomplete, short-sighted and based on an inadequate diagnosis of the complexity of the problem.
"A food system that is increasingly industrialised and commodified is not the only one available to us," he stressed. "We can and must re- imagine other food systems that take numerous social dimensions into account."

Inter-connected crises
In his recent report "Agroecology and the Right to Food", which was presented to the Human Rights Council in March this year, De Schutter outlines the global hunger catastrophe as an amalgamation of three distinct but inherently inter-related problems.
These are poverty, caused by trade policies that dump heavily- subsidised produce from developed countries on third world markets, thus rendering local farmers jobless; environmental degradation brought on by industrialised farming, which now accounts for nearly one-third of global green house gas emissions; and an epidemic of malnutrition caused by the colonising effects of mono-crops and a flood of processed food from the global north to the global south.
Only by examining these three challenges together can a strategy for ending hunger be successfully designed and implemented, he argues.
A study released Friday by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)'s programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) bolstered this argument by identifying future climate change "hotspots" in countries already crippled by severe food shortages and chronic hunger.
By consolidating detailed maps of scores of different agricultural regions across the world, the seven scientists behind the study tracked the impacts of climate change on food security and identified highly-vulnerable populations - principally in Africa and South Asia, with dark clouds hanging over China and parts of Latin America as well - that would suffer the double blows of hunger and environmental crisis.
"When you put these maps together they reveal places around the world where the arrival of stressful growing conditions could be especially disastrous," Polly Ericksen, lead author of the study and a senior scientist at the CGIAR's International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, told the press in Copenhagen Friday.
"These are areas highly exposed to climate shifts, where survival is strongly linked to the fate of regional crop and livestock yields, and where chronic food problems indicate that farmers are already struggling and they lack the capacity to adapt to new weather patterns," she said.
Swathes of South Asia, including virtually all of India's territory and vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa are home to 369 million food- insecure people, all of whom live in climate-vulnerable, agriculture- intensive areas.
Over 56 million hungry and crop-dependent people in West Africa, India and China inhabit areas which, in less than 40 years, will likely experience daily growing season temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius - virtually impossible conditions for essential crops like corn and rice.

Reimagining food systems
In 2006, a team of researchers from the University of Essex carried out a study on "agro-ecological" approaches to farming and development.
Spanning 57 developing countries and 286 different models of sustainable farming techniques in an area covering 37 million hectares - three percent of cultivated land - the study unearthed how low external-input farming that utilized surrounding ecosystems and cyclical practices resulted in a 79 percent yield increase, more than double the average yield under the normalised agricultural system.
Agro-ecology, which includes systems that produce their own fertiliser using materials and waste from the surrounding environment, is being increasingly viewed as the only viable solution to the hunger crisis. Since prices of fertiliser doubled during the 2008 food crisis, continents like Africa that import 95 percent of their chemical fertilisers could see radically different outcomes in production by adopting agro-ecological techniques.
Analysing the data from the 2006 study by region, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) found that in some parts of Africa the yield increase was a stunning 213 percent.
However, De Schutter warned, this agricultural "revolution" will not come about by chance but will require swift and determined government action.
In addition to investing in education, gender-sensitive solutions and public goods and services such as the infrastructure required to nurture farmers' unions and peasant cooperatives, De Schutter's recommendations to governments include an urgent appeal to revolutionize markets to reward best-practices rather than short-term profit.
"The market as it exists today is too focused on global supply chains and does not give enough importance to local farmers, and producers of diversified crops," De Schutter told IPS.
"Governments must move away from export-led supply models and reinvest heavily in regional, sustainable food systems."
He added that governments should set solid agendas, which development agencies and private sector actors would align with, that incorporate a cultural shift away from a broken structure and towards a visionary, resilient food future.

----------------------------------------
Reimagining Food Systems in the Midst of a Hunger Crisis
 Enter the Transnationals

At a panel entitled "Feeding the World While Caring for the Planet", representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development joined with De Schutter to discuss the U.S. government's latest Feed the Future Initiative.
While seemingly aligned with the policies and recommendations of leading ecological and environmental experts, the initiative has generated tremendous controversy since Rajiv Shah, USAID's chief administrator, announced in January that "large-scale private sector partnerships" would lead the way to a world free of hunger.
Identifying 17 global "champions", Shah named transnational giants Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Bunge, Cargill, The Coca- Cola Company, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart Stores and Yara International as leaders in the fight against food insecurity.
Heavily featured on watchdog websites such as GRAIN, CorpWatch and Food and Water Watch, these companies have notorious track records in human and environmental rights violations.
"Feed the Future... needs to think a lot harder about what it will mean for small- scale farmers when they partner with transnationals to push GMO seeds, even drought-resistant varieties," Karen Hansen-Kuhn, international programme director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told IPS. "It's... almost certain that they would lock farmers into even more dependence on imported inputs, rather than building local self- reliance through agroecologal methods."
She added, "This [initiative] is funded by the U.S. government, so they need to make sure those public funds support public interests. We hear a lot about 'value chains' and relying on markets, but hardly anything about market failures, and the fact that supply chains are often rigged against small- scale farmers."
"De Schutter is right that what's important is to re- localise food systems, so that supply chains are shorter and geared towards local communities. It's hard to see how these corporate alliances can play any role in that process," Hansen- Kuhn concluded.

Strong Government Action

De Schutter believes that even the problem of corporate interests can be overcome if governments seize the opportunity to assert their influence in prioritising sustainable systems.
"One problem that has existed since the 1980s is the weight that international trade has exercised on the development of policies," De Schutter told IPS.
"Though it concerns only 9-10 percent of the food that is produced globally, international trade has had a decisive influence on the way decisions are made, on the way infrastructure develops and on how farmers are being supported - but governments can change that."
He added that another part of the problem has been the political disenfranchisement and disempowerment of the majority of small-scale farmers.
"This is why it is key in my view that Feed the Future should include a specific focus on the organisation of farmers into cooperatives that can have a stronger bargaining position on the food chains, and that it should address the problem of concentration and abuse of buyer power in the food chains, in particular by a more assertive use of the powers that the authorities have under existing antitrust legislation," De Schutter told IPS.
"Today, too many policymakers still see hunger as a problem of supply and demand, when it is primarily a problem of a lack of access to productive resources such as land and water, of unscrupulous employers and traders, of an increasingly concentrated input providers sector, and of insufficient safety nets to support the poor."
He added, "Empowerment of farmers and the strengthening of their position in the food system is vital, and I do hope that the Feed the Future initiative will not ignore this issue simply because of those companies which contribute to funding it."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55924

POVERTY: Sustainable agriculture key to green growth, poverty reduction – UN officials

1 June 2011 – United Nations officials today called for boosting support for sustainable agriculture, including smallholder farmers, as a way to drive green growth and reduce poverty.
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the challenge of feeding more than nine billion people by 2050, along with tackling climate change and maintaining productive land and sufficient water resources require a “more intelligent pathway” for managing the world’s agricultural systems.
“Agriculture is at the centre of a transition to a resource-efficient, low-carbon Green Economy,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. “The challenge is to feed a growing global population without pushing humanity's footprint beyond planetary boundaries.”
Mr. Steiner called for galvanizing support for smallholder farmers, who are an “untapped resource” in addressing food security and today’s environmental challenges.
Investments through official development assistance (ODA) are one way of stepping up support for this important group, as is scaling-up and accelerating government policies for unleashing investment flows from the private sector, he noted.
“Well-managed, sustainable agriculture can not only overcome hunger and poverty, but can address other challenges from climate change to the loss of biodiversity,” said the UNEP chief.
“Its value and its contribution to multiple economic, environmental and societal goals needs to be recognized in the income and employment prospects for the half a million smallholdings across the globe,” he added.
The world’s rural poor and especially farmers of the 500 million smallholdings in developing countries feed one-third of the global population and account for 60 per cent of global agriculture.
Smallholder farmers also provide up to 80 per cent of the food consumed in Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Smallholders in developing countries – the majority of them women – manage to feed 2 billion people, despite working on ecologically and climatically precarious land, with difficult or no access to infrastructure and institutional services, and often lacking land tenure rights that farmers in developed countries take for granted,” said Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD.
“Right now, we are squandering the potential of rural poor people to contribute to global prosperity. Investing in sustainable smallholder agriculture is a smart way to right this wrong,” he stated.
IFAD also stressed that investments in sustainable smallholder agriculture must go hand-in-hand with policy and institutional reforms, investments in infrastructure and improvements in market access. They must also be informed by the knowledge and needs of the rural poor.
On 5 June, UNEP will celebrate World Environment Day (WED) in India with one of the fastest growing economies in the world and whose 1.2 billion people continue to put pressure on land and forests, especially in densely populated areas where people are cultivating on marginal lands and where overgrazing is contributing to desertification.
This year’s theme – ‘Forests: Nature at Your Service’ – underscores the intrinsic link between quality of life and the health of forests and forest ecosystems.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38565&Cr=agriculture&Cr1=

MALNUTRITION: Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister says SA farmers should expand into other African countries.

BEKEZELA PHAKATHI phakathib@bdfm.co.za
2011/05/04



 Photo: Financial Mail

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson.
CAPE TOWN — South African farmers should expand their business interests into other African countries, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said yesterday.
Speaking during a press briefing after a conference on rural poverty hosted by the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), Ms Joemat-Pettersson said expanding into Africa would enhance food security on the continent, not compromise it.
"We are not saying that our farmers should relocate or move their business operations from SA to other countries; they should use SA as a base and then expand their business operations into the rest of Africa," Ms Joemat-Pettersson said.
In her keynote address during the conference, Ms Joemat-Pettersson said an equitable ownership of land remained essential to safeguarding democracy in SA.
"Our government has tried to bring in this balance between land reform and food security and it’s a very tight balance — it’s like walking on a tightrope."
The minister also said it was not sustainable for the country to rely on a small group of farmers for its food requirements .
She said the continent was capable of improving food security and boosting economic growth through increasing support for smallholder farmers.
While Africa was still facing challenges in reducing poverty, "a vision of economic renaissance" led by smallholder farmers was beginning to take hold.
"There is a growing belief that Africa can produce enough not only to feed its own citizens, but to export a growing surplus to the rest of the world," Ms Joemat-Pettersson said.
She said SA was in the forefront of developing a railway system that would link the entire continent and allow farmers to take goods from road to rail across Africa.
The agricultural value chain had been identified in the New Growth Path as one of the key sectors to grow the number of jobs, she said.
Speaking at the same conference, the Ifad fund’s president, Kanayo Nwanze, said the African Union had recognised the central role of agriculture in reducing poverty when its members pledged to increase spending on agriculture to at least 10% of national budgets.
"This pledge was made in 2003 in Maputo. By last year, eight countries had met or surpassed that target; the continent as a whole has not," Mr Nwanze said.
To grow the agricultural sector, African countries also needed to maintain political stability, encourage more youths to turn to farming and, importantly, invest more in rural infrastructure, he said .
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=141630

POVERTY: Bolivia: UN rural development fund lends Bolivia $8 million for poverty alleviation

5 April 2011 – The United Nations rural development arm has lent Bolivia about $8 million to fund projects to alleviate poverty in two departments, the agency reported today following the signing of a financing agreement with the Government of the South American country.
The UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said the Government will also contribute $4.3 million to the project, with beneficiaries providing approximately $2.9 million in co-financing.
The poverty alleviation undertaking, dubbed “Plan Vida-Peep Pilot Project to Strengthen the Capacity of Communities and Families Living in Extreme Poverty,” will run for three years and will be implemented by Bolivia’s Ministry of Development Planning.
“The project is designed within the framework of the Bolivian Government’s Plan to Eradicate Extreme Poverty,” said Francisco Pichón, IFAD’s Country Programme Manager for Bolivia. “The project looks to strengthen food security for those living in extreme poverty at the same time ensuring these families are able to find opportunities to improve their income,” he added.
The scheme focuses primarily on poor rural families of Quechua and Aymara origin living in the northern Potosí and southern Cochabamba regions of Bolivia.
“The activities will be conducted in full respect of the communities’ cultural identities and social structure. The authorities, administrators and project technicians will adopt participatory approaches, thus ensuring all stakeholders are included in the decision-making process,” said Mr. Pichón.
More than 53 per cent of project funding will work to improve natural resource management and production systems, 16 per cent will go to community initiatives and 11 per cent is dedicated to strengthening productive infrastructure.
The financing will also work toward strengthening organizations, improving citizens’ rights, monitoring and evaluation, and other operational costs.
“The deterioration and fragmentation of traditional lands, coupled with lack of adequate technologies and natural resource management practices are some of the main causes of poverty among rural communities in these regions,” said Mr. Pichón.
“The joint work with the Government of Bolivia to provide the communities involved with the tools and training they need will break the cycle of extreme poverty,” he added.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38008&Cr=IFAD&Cr1=

POVERTY: Head of IFAD Kanayo F. Nwanze: UN official stresses investing in rural youth

19 February 2011



Head of IFAD Kanayo F. Nwanze addresses annual meeting

 – Investing in rural youth in developing countries is vital to eradicating poverty in those communities and ensuring global food security, the head of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) stressed on Saturday.
IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze told delegates to the Fund's annual meeting, which opened today in Rome, that supporting young women and men is critical to building vibrant rural economies, which in turn is key to overcoming larger challenges such as reducing hunger and poverty, mitigating climate change, achieving energy security and protecting the environment.
“Current events show the energy, creativity and power of young people, and also the importance of ensuring that they can see a future for themselves in the societies in which they live,” he said at the opening of the two-day meeting of IFAD's Governing Council.
Mr. Nwanze called for investing in rural youth and helping them become better and more successful farmers and business people.
“These young people are the next generation of farmers, producers and workers,” he said. “Give them the skills and confidence they need to run profitable farms or start businesses, and they will become the upstanding citizens and community leaders of tomorrow.
“Ignore them, and they will have little option but to leave their homes and families to search for work in the cities, seeking better lives but oftentimes finding only more misery,” he warned.
In most developing countries, agriculture is already the leading provider of employment for people ages 15 to 24, according to IFAD. However, agriculture rarely provides a living wage and the sector is typified by low levels of productivity, dangerous work and lack of social protection.
Rural youth is the main focus of this year's session, which features agricultural and rural development experts, young entrepreneurs from rural areas and youth leaders, and will explore some of the challenges faced by rural young people.
The meeting takes place amid growing concerns about food shortages. In her keynote address to the Governing Council, UN Messenger of Peace Princess Haya Al Hussein called for an urgent and effective global response to food shortages and world hunger, and urged donors to fulfill their commitments to food programmes.
“Somehow, in a world exploding with prosperity and possibility we have forfeited our moral authority. We are morally bankrupt,” she said. “We have lost the sense of compassion and community that makes life worthwhile. We can spend over a trillion dollars for armaments as we fight over scraps of land, ideology and religion and, yet, we let 300 million children starve...
“Many of our politicians remain out of touch, uncomprehending of life for those who live at the brink of starvation. They do not deliver funds on the scale we need for real progress. Even worse, they fail to honor the pledges they make.”
Meanwhile, the Fund has announced the establishment of an indigenous peoples' forum under its auspices aimed at advancing the participation of indigenous peoples in IFAD discussions and programmes that have an impact on them.
The agency noted that indigenous peoples, who make up one-third of the world's one billion extreme poor in rural areas, are among the most vulnerable and marginalized of any group.
“Spread over 70 countries and representing diverse cultural backgrounds, they share many common challenges such as limited access to healthcare and education, loss of control over lands, displacement and violations of basic human rights,” IFAD stated.
“IFAD's special interest in supporting them is based not only on poverty reduction, social justice and humanitarian concerns, but also the value that indigenous people in many cases contribute to sustainable agriculture, especially given the rich knowledge and understanding of ecosystem management that they have.”
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37573&Cr=rural&Cr1=

POVERTY: Fighting poverty the Expensive Way

Jan 27th 2011

ROME
 To rent: tenant with steady job preferred

WORTHY but low-profile, the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is a United Nations agency that helps the world’s rural poor, mainly through low-interest loans and grants. Its director since April 2009 is Felix Kanayo Nwanze, an experienced Nigerian agricultural entomologist. He has brought what an admiring report last year termed a “more evangelical” approach to the job, berating as “mercenaries” staff who lack personal involvement in their work and care too much about their generous UN pay and allowances. He has pushed through cuts aimed at making IFAD leaner and fitter.
Yet he is now at the centre of a row over his own benefits. When IFAD’s Governing Council opens its annual meeting on February 19th, one of the agenda items will be the grandly worded “Emoluments of the President”.
Mr Nwanze’s salary is “on a par” with that of the boss of the much bigger Food and Agriculture Organisation; plus an annual $50,000 representation allowance, and his entire housing costs. In October Italian Insider, a newspaper, reported that housing Mr Nwanze, his wife and their three children cost an annual €400,000 ($545,000). They lived in a villa on the Appian Way “set in two hectares of manicured lawns and parkland”. The monthly rent alone was €16,000. IFAD says the total for 2010 was less than budgeted, though more than €300,000. Although less palatial than, say, the British ambassador’s residence, many might find it opulent for the head of an outfit that aims to help the billion-odd who live in rural wretchedness.
IFAD at first declined to discuss the issue, saying only that the executive board had “closed the matter” and had “expressed their satisfaction with the transparent manner” in which it was handled. Pressed for more detail, it said Mr Nwanze had left his villa for somewhere costing only €10,000 a month, the same amount his predecessor paid.
It added that he had asked his staff to find him new housing as long ago as July. A spokeswoman said that Mr Nwanze had neither chosen his original villa, nor negotiated the rent. Information about its true cost had become available only “in a gradual fashion” and the president had “taken full responsibility for any errors in judgment”. The hot potato flew farther: IFAD’s board acknowledged its “shared responsibility”; but it also blamed poor guidance from a committee that deals with pay and allowances. That reconstituted body will now report on Mr Nwanze’s “overall emoluments and other conditions of employment”.
By the bland standards of the UN world, this is stormy stuff. Nobody has alleged wrongdoing. But it hardly seems the hallmark of a well-run organisation. Especially one that should have its collective mind firmly focused on leaner and meaner pastures.
http://www.economist.com/node/18008043

POVERTY: IFAD report on Rural Poverty 2011

“The Rural Poverty Report 2011 is a valuable contribution to the effort to restore this critical topic
to the global development agenda. It provides a clear assessment of the problems that poor rural people face
in their struggle for a better life, and offers practical advice on setting priorities and policies for changing
the overall economic environment in rural areas so that it supports investment, innovation and risk-taking.
I have high hopes that the Rural Poverty Report will help open the door to transformative change, enabling
multitudes to leave behind subsistence farming, run their farms as businesses and market their surpluses
– and to collectively deliver large-scale results that will put an end to hunger and poverty.”
Mr Kofi A. Annan
Chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

“In addition to being an in-depth evaluation of the status of rural poverty and its consequences for all people, this report makes important recommendations on policies and investments that will help rural women and men move out of poverty and, in the process, become part of the solution to the global food security challenges of the next several decades.”
Sir Gordon Conway
Professor of International Development; Centre for Environmental Policy; Imperial College London


This report is a product of staff of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the findings and conclusions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of its Member States or their representatives to its Executive Board. IFAD does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IFAD concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The designations “developed” and “developing” countries are intended for statistical convenience and do not necessarily express a judgement about the stage reached by a particular country or area in the development process.

ISBN 978-92-9072-200-7

POVERTY: jatropha tree: Reality check for 'miracle' biofuel crop

Miyuki Iiyama and James Onchieku
27 October 2010

The jatropha tree requires adequate fertiliser and water, as well as pruning to increase its flowering branches



Flickr/ treestf

The hardy jatropha tree as a biofuel source may not be the panacea for smallholders that some have claimed, say Miyuki Iiyama and James Onchieku.
It sounds too good to be true: a biofuel crop that grows on semi-arid lands and degraded soils, replaces fossil fuels in developing countries and brings huge injections of cash to poor smallholders.
That is what some are claiming for Jatropha curcas, the 'miracle' biofuel crop. But studies on the ground suggest a lot more research and development (R&D) is needed before farmers can come close to seeing any of the promised benefits.
So what exactly is jatropha, and what has a 'reality check' on its potential revealed?
About jatropha
Jatropha is a small tree that grows to 3–5 metres in height and a member of the Euphorbiaceae family. It is native to Central America but is now grown in many parts of the tropics and subtropics. The seeds, which contain up to 35 per cent oil, can be processed into biodiesel for transport and biofuel for lighting and cooking.
It is poisonous and cannot be used for food. In many places, it is also grown as a fence to exclude livestock, and is also used for traditional medicine. The seed cake, a by-product from biofuel production, can be used for fertiliser and animal feed, provided it is detoxified. The roots, which are able to reach water and nutrients deep in the soil, can cut soil erosion.
A report by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) found that in 2008 jatropha was planted on about 900,000 hectares globally, the bulk - 760,000 hectares - in Asia, along with 120,000 hectares in Africa and 20,000 in Latin America.
But by 2015 jatropha planting will have risen more than ten times to 12.8 million hectares worldwide, the report estimates
The hype
It has only been in the past few years that interest in jatropha as a biofuel crop has mounted, particularly because of its purported ability to thrive on marginal land and in drought conditions.
As for claims about the tree's fast-growing nature, early fruiting, pest and disease resistance due to its toxicity, and its potential to not only produce biodiesel, but also as fuel for light and heat for cooking.
The media has chimed in too, with articles about the potential for jatropha to stop deforestation and provide greatly-increased incomes as international investments promise to convert wasteland into plantations that create thousands of jobs. Typical statements have been: 'Jatropha doesn't have to compete with food crops for arable land', and 'even in the worst of soils, it grows like weeds.'
In an attempt to test the claims, Endelevu Energy, the World Agroforestry Centre and the Kenya Forestry Research Institute embarked on the Reality Check study supported by the German government, which we published last December.
The reality
The main finding of the Reality Check is that jatropha is not economically viable when grown by smallholders in Kenya, either in a monoculture or intercrop plantation model. This is due to low yields and high production costs, and a lack of guidelines for applying agronomic and silvicultural best practices.
Hundreds of farmers we interviewed for the study spoke of extremely low yields and uneconomical production costs. Many had paid as much as US$12–20 per kilogram for seeds, but received little or no advice on crop management, and were unable to access markets for the small number of seeds harvested. They chose to abandon the jatropha they had planted.
The only case where we would recommend jatropha cultivation — and where it makes economic sense — is as a natural fence, as this needs few inputs. This is the way jatropha has been grown in East Africa since it was introduced centuries ago.
As for the claim that jatropha can grow almost anywhere, our research found that while this may be the case, high yields are not guaranteed. Even in ideal conditions, the tree requires management to become productive, including pruning to increase the number of flowering branches, and adequate fertiliser and water.
In addition, more than 75 per cent of farmers we spoke to reported at least one pest or disease in the course of a year, including golden beetle, leaf spotting, mildew and fungus.
Meeting of minds
While we were analysing the situation in Kenya, the FAO and IFAD were conducting their review into the anti-poverty potential of jatropha at a global level.
Our report shares many of their conclusions, in particular that yields are marginal, at best, and many of the investments and policy decisions on developing jatropha as an oil crop have been made without sufficient scientific evidence.
"Realising the true potential of jatropha requires separating facts from the claims and half truths," the FAO/IFAD report says.It does recognise that if well exploited, jatropha could provide opportunities for good returns and rural development, but "expecting jatropha to substitute significantly for oil imports in developing countries is unrealistic".
Too soon for promises
So, while it is possible that jatropha could eventually evolve into a higher yielding oil crop that is productive on marginal lands, and markets could be established for its oil and other useful by-products, it is far too soon to make such promises.
The reality is that jatropha is still essentially a semi-wild plant and as such its seed yields, oil quality and oil content are all highly variable. Considerable research is needed into the agronomy of jatropha and crop improvement.
The FAO/IFAD report recommends short-term research focused on producing superior clonal plants, with longer-term work on developing improved varieties with reliable trait expression and a seed production system that ensures farmer have access to productive and reliable planting materials.
For now, the main potential of jatropha is as part of a strategy to reclaim degraded land, provide a source of locally processed and used oil, and as a hedgerow to control grazing. Until further R&D is conducted — by establishing jatropha trials in various agro-ecological zones, with farmers informed of best practices — significant plantations remain risky and uneconomical. Only 'business as usual' should continue.Miyuki Iiyama is a fellow at the World Agroforestry Centre; James Onchieku is principal research officer at the Kenya Forestry Research Institute.

http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/reality-check-for-miracle-biofuel-crop.html

POVERTY: IFAD Rural Poverty Report

The Rural Poverty Report 2011 provides a coherent and comprehensive look at rural poverty, its global consequences and the prospects for eradicating it.




Since the last Rural Poverty Report was published by IFAD in 2001, there has been progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals. But 1.4 billion people continue to live in extreme poverty – and more than 70 percent of them are living in rural areas of developing countries, while the latest measurements show that 925 million of them are undernourished.
Young people and children make up the single largest group among poor rural people, and the Report emphasizes the importance of creating new and better opportunities for them – in particular, with a focus on expanding educational opportunities that specifically address the skills young people will need to succeed in the rural context.
The key global challenge underlying this report is that to feed the nine billion people who will inhabit the Earth by 2050, food production will have to be raised 70 percent and agricultural output in developing countries will have to double. Addressing this challenge will require that smallholder agriculture play a much more effective role in these countries, that rural areas make the most of opportunities for non-farm employment growth, and that greater and more effective efforts are made to address the concerns of poor rural people as food buyers.
Through extensive research by a team of international, regional and national experts in the field of poverty reduction – as well as through case studies and interviews with poor rural people themselves – the report provides unique insights into rural poverty around the world and how the livelihoods of the rural poor are changing. It explores the challenges that make it so difficult for rural people to overcome poverty, and identifies opportunities and the way forward to greater prosperity. And it highlights policies and actions that governments and development practitioners can take to support the efforts of rural people to overcome poverty.
http://www.ifad.org/rpr2011/index.htm

POVERTY: Zambia: IFAD Eradicating Poverty

PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda has commended the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) for its commitment to ensuring that poverty is eradicated in Zambia by targeting the most vulnerable rural populace through various agricultural projects.
And IFAD president Kanayo Nwanze has said his organisation would pump in US$ 25 million for agricultural projects during the period 2010 to 2012.
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President Banda said at State House yesterday when he met Mr Nwanze that IFAD was one of the cooperating partners which worked with the Government to directly address issues that affected people especially in rural areas.
President Banda assured Mr Nwanze that the Government would do everything possible to ensure that IFAD established more of its activities in Zambia.
He said he was happy that the IFAD president had toured some of the projects in Southern Province which the organisation had undertaken and that the projects had been successful.
Mr Banda said Zambia was putting much emphasis on the diversification of the economy and agriculture was one sector, which was being strengthened.
As a result of unemployment, many youths had turned to agriculture for their livelihood.
He said women too, were also engaged in agricultural activities in order to look after their families and orphans.
As a result of the Government's commitment to strengthening the agricultural sector, Zambia had recorded a bumper harves of 2.8 million tones of maize the highest in the history of the country.
President Banda said Zambia also had surplus wheat, which it needed to export, but was facing stiff competition from South Africa which was selling the grain cheaper.
The other problem that the agricultural sector faced were cattle diseases in North-Western, Western and Southern provinces.
And Mr Nwanze said IFAD had been working in Zambia since 1981 and had supported 11 projects out of which eight were fully completed at a cost of US$155 million.
Mr Nwanze said once the three remaining projects are completed the investment portfolio in Zambia would go up to $285 million.
He said IFAD was designing a project with the ministry of agriculture and cooperatives, which would run for five to seven years at a cost of $66 million.
Mr Nwanze commended President Banda's Government for it's concentration on the agricultural sector as evidenced by the various gains that had been recorded.
He said conservation farming should also be encouraged to mitigate the effects of climate change.
He said he was happy to note that more than 250 households were now engaged in conservation farming in Zambia.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201007260277.html

POVERTY: Multifaceted assessment

Poverty is multifaceted and highly complex. In most situations, poverty is best reduced by helping people help themselves – on their terms. Information is needed to understand how. In order to effectively address poverty, governments, donor agencies and others must understand the principal underlying causes involved (at multiple scales) if they are to arrive at some approximation of the constraints poor people face. Such an understanding is required if one is to responsibly design and apply relevant, beneficial interventions with the goal of reducing poverty in a given region and enabling residents to pursue meaningful and rewarding lives and livelihoods. Income (or economic growth) does not provide a reliable proxy measure of poverty. Multidimensional Executive summary measurement is a more responsible and reliable alternative in most contexts. As such, MPAT strives to capture those domains that are, arguably, fundamental to human well-being and, by extension, to poverty reduction, in a 21st century rural context. This is done by using survey questions that are broad enough to be applicable in most rural contexts, but precise enough to act as quality proxy
measures for the components they represent. Regardless of the type of intervention, in order to help themselves, people’s most fundamental needs must first be met before they can effectively address more long-term goals. So too, in most rural contexts today, dimensions beyond fundamental human (physiological) needs often constrain rural people’s ability to help themselves. Agriculture, for example, although no longer as central to rural livelihoods as it once was, remains paramount for most poor rural people. Farming systems are increasingly complemented with other livelihood opportunities and inputs, which should likewise be addressed, in addition to a range of potential shocks people must cope with and recover from – not just natural shocks, but socio-economic shocks as well. All of these dimensions can be further examined through a lens of equality, both gender equality and social equality, since many people
(particularly minority groups) are excluded from the benefits that an enabling environment may offer others. MPAT provides a mechanism for examining these dimensions.
MPAT’s data are collected through surveys and then organized via indicators since this method provides a standardized means of collecting and analysing qualitative and quantitative data. However, one must be cautious when using indicators since there is a temptation to tout numbers as truths, rather than acknowledge the sometimes questionable reflections of reality that they are. More generally, it should also be noted that, with respect to detailed, context-specific poverty assessment, participatory approaches are arguably
the best option for attaining a thorough understanding of poverty characteristics in an area. To be sure, this is the preferable methodology in many situations; but if the goal is to obtain a thorough overview of key sectors and make spatial and temporal comparisons, then there is a need for standardization, which is especially difficult to achieve when using relatively open-ended participatory approaches.
http://web.ifad.org/mpat/resources/book.pdf

MALNUTRITION: Rural poor need help with agriculture

DAR ES SALAAM, May 6 (Reuters) - African governments need to help smallholders turn a profit if they are to feed their hungry and stop young people deserting the countryside, a U.N. agricultural agency said.
Peasant farmers produce 80 percent of food consumed on the continent but governments have failed provide the infrastructure they need to develop, said Kanayo Nwanze, President of the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
"The rural poor need to receive help because they are the ones that produce the food and we need to help them become profitable. For too long, we have neglected the rural sector," he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Africa.
"You have to invest in the rural economy if you want people to stay in the rural areas. The youth are so critical. Who will feed the world tomorrow? Sixty percent of Africans are below the age of 30 and they want to migrate to the urban areas and they have no jobs, the rural sector is being vacated."
In 2003, African governments agreed to increase their annual agriculture spending to 10 percent of their budgets. Only eight countries, including Tanzania, Malawi, Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso have managed to do so.
"If African countries were to reach that target, you are looking at unleashing anything from $40-$100 billion annually ... no matter what their budgets are," Nwanze said on Wednesday evening.
IFAD's overall portfolio for 2010-2012 increased 50 percent to $3 billion and Africa would receive up to 45 percent of that, Nwanze said.
Governments should also work in partnership with the private sector, including foreign investors in food production, an issue that has raised controversy in the food-deficient continent, IFAD said.
African nations had to create frameworks to avoid exploitation and instead bring jobs, investment and technology.
"I believe if we must invite people to invest in our own natural resources, whether it is land or mineral resources, it must be done in such a way that the local population benefits from it," Nwanze said.
"It does not make sense to grow crops in the country and export those crops elsewhere when the population is subsisting on foreign food aid."
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/DNEO-857HLV?OpenDocument&RSS20=02

POVERTY: Peru, International Fund for Agriculture Development

More than 83,000 rural families in Peru have escaped poverty over the last 25 years as a result of financing for small businesses provided by the United Nation’s International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), state news agency Andina reported.
The agency’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Roberto Haudry, said that figure includes 51,000 families from Peru’s Andean highlands who were living in extreme poverty, a condition in which individuals are unable to meet basic needs for water, food, sanitation, shelter and health care.
The IFAD investments have totaled $120 million over that time, which resulted in further investments of $400 million for the national government, municipalities, and local communities.
In the next five years, the agency plans to provide a further $30 million for co-financing further projects in the Peruvian highlands. Haudry said it is particularly important to invest in projects led by women and youth.
“What we want to do in coordination with the ministries of agriculture, as well as economy and finance is to transfer the resources to municipalities that have valid grass-roots initiatives so they can co-finance business projects in a community through their own mechanisms for assigning the resources at a local level,” Haudry was quoted as saying.
Development efforts in Peru have resulted in some positive results in life expectancy, literacy, education and family income over the years, however widespread inequality still persists between the urban centers on the coast and regions in the highlands and Amazon basin.
A recent report by the UN Development Program (UNDP), for example, said Peru’s inequality in development has been a result of a lack of public resources and a dispersed population. It added that government services – such as healthcare – still fail to reach all regions, particularly in the country’s central-south highlands.
http://www.peruviantimes.com/un-agency-projects-have-assisted-83000-rural-families-to-escape-poverty-in-last-25-years/015981