After 10 years, it was certainly time to reinvigorate our presence on the internet. The result of many months of hard work, our new website makes sharing information about sustainable family farming much easier.
With new features and sections, readers can easily find all magazines published during the past 25 years, together with news, events, reviews, and regular information from all our partners.
The latest issue of Farming Matters is out, and the printed version is already reaching most of our subscribers.
Many different people and organisations can be labeled as "stakeholders" when talking about small-scale family farming. But what do they learn from each other? And how do they learn to work together to create more sustainable agriculture? What drives them to collabore? These are some of the questions that we addressed in this issue: Partnerships for learning.
In the article "We'll continue with our observations", Yunita Winarto and her colleagues show how participants of a Climate Field School in Indonesia measured and observed the rains in detail. This provided them with new information which helped the farmers adapt their agricultural strategies and eventually be able to benefit and draw specific lessons.
In an interview with Percy Schmeiser you can read about his lawsuit against Monsanto, legal difficulties that he and his wife got into, and the reasons why they decided to continue fighting.
The real learning adepts will enjoy Steve Sherwood's thematic overview, where he discusses some interesting theoretical perspectives on learning, knowledge and social change.
In "Locally rooted" we bring new ideas and initiatives from the field, while for "Globally connected" we asked a few of our partners to share their opinion about the World Bank's report on "land grabs".
In the "Two views" section, Flemming Nielsen from the FACT Foundation and Mariann Bassey from Friends of the Earth Nigeria presented their view on bio-fuels and if and how family farmers can benefit from it. Read and join the debate here!
All of this and much more in the latest Farming Matters - Partnerships for learning. We are also asking readers who have not replied to our survey to do so. Please take a few minutes and give us your opinion!
by Mireille Vermeulen
Food prices are on the rise again and the global market for commodities like wheat responds very nervously to every negative price tweet from Russia. One of the reasons that the wheat market is so unstable is the fact that the countries around the Black Sea -Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan- now produce 30 percent of the wheat supply traded internationally, instead of the 4 percent share it contributed before.
The export ban on wheat in Russia and prospects of poor harvests in the rest of the world (i.e., in Canada and Germany due to too much rain, and in Argentina and Australia because of drought), directly influences prices on the market.
Already in September of this year, Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist at the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, warned against rising food prices within the coming crucial months in an article in the New York Times. An increase in the price of wheat has a spill-over effect onto other grains, such as maize and soyabean. The prices of in the so-called breakfast commodities, coffee, tea, cocoa and sugar, have also risen in the past year and a half. After inflation and deflation, the new concept of ''agflation'' has become popular among economists.
Last week The Economist recently presented a more relativist view of the situation in their daily chart contribution. According to them, food is still cheaper in real terms than it was 30 years ago - so what are we complaining about? This is simply playing with numbers, however. Fifty years ago there were a billion people undernourished and today this figure remains the same. This can be presented as progress, as one billion represented a third of the population at that time while now it is only one-sixth. Imagine, however, being one of that billion...
The first warnings of rising bread prices caused social unrest in Mozambique in September at which time ten people died. The problem is perhaps that this billion hungry people have to share food with so many more people. Besides this,the way people consume these days and the kind of products they want, places a demand on even more food, more transport and more processing.
According to a review in the New York Times of the book by Julian Cribb, ''The coming famine'', this pattern of overconsumption is characteristic for people in North America and Europe - and is becoming more so in India and China. The world has what Cribb calls ''two elephants in its kitchen'': a projected 33 percent growth in population in the next 20 years, and an increased consumption of meat among the growing global middle class. This means that food production must grow by at least 50 percent.
However, there is a third elephant knocking on the kitchen door: climate change, increased temperatures, overexploitation of the sea and natural resources, overuse of chemical fertiliser, reliance on fossil fuels, protectionism and subsidies, increase in production for biofuels and rising waste are among the factors that hamper an increase in food production. These issues might be the problem.
Not a problem without possible solutions, though. Small-scale farmers produce most of the food we eat, and says Cribb: it is the small-scale farmers who should be supported by fair prices and compensation for their stewardship services to the Earth; finances should not to to the biggest agricultural corporations - but to research for new green technologies; and agricultural products should not be wasted.
I fully agree with these propositions. Policy-makers should focus on small-scale sustainable agriculture. Small-scale farmers already produce almost 80% of food on regional markets in Africa and Asia. Family farming is more productive and is better for the Earth and its people. Seventy percent out of the mentioned one billion hungry people are poor farmers in rural areas. They need fair prices for their agricultural products. Cheap food is no longer a global right. Fair food is.
A few days ago the Netherlands hosted the “2010 Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change”, which took place in The Hague.
This conference was meant to bring together governments, international organizations, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, local community producers and the scientific community, so that they all “develop a roadmap with concrete actions linking agriculture-related investments, policies and measures, to the transition to lower carbon-emitting climate resilient growth”.
What were the results of this large-scale meeting? Here’s what ileia’s director and the Chair of the Board had to say about it:
Volume 26.2 of FARMING MATTERS included an article which described risk-profiling as a an approach that can help "make farmers bankable". This is expected to help the category of farmers who are too small to attract loans or be of interest to commercial banks, and too large to benefit from microfinance institutes. The organisation behind this approach, ForeFinance, aims to improve farmers’ access to finance by stimulating better business and managerial practices resulting in a better creditworthiness of their farming businesses. Their “Credit Scoring Model” is currently being developed in order to assess the creditworthiness of farmers.
They have recently designed a survey to question multiple stakeholders in the agricultural sector about their experience and ideas to improve the creditworthiness of small and medium-scale farmers. In order to develop reliable results, they are trying to reach as many agricultural experts as possible around the world.
Requested: EXPERT OPINIONS - Enabling access to finance for Producer Organizations -
ForeFinance launched a survey that will capture the visions and opinions of experts from all over the world. In order to optimally cater the information needs of the producers to get access to main stream finance, we are requesting your input. The survey, which will take about 15 minutes of your time, identifies the critical success factors of producer organizations and businesses on a number of levels such as production, marketing, risk management, financial management, etc. With the results of the survey we aim to create a common agenda for Producer organizations, Banks and NGO’s.
Start with the survey here: http://www.surveymethods.com/EndUser.aspx?C5E18D97C5819291C3
Read more:
By Mireille Vermeulen
Last week I went to a lecture on "World citizenship, necessity or wishful thinking?" by Jan Pronk, former Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation and UN special rapporteur for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). According to Mr. Pronk, we all live in a global village, which turns us all into world citizens. Formally, the notion of "citizen" only refers to a person living legally in a nation state. When you think about it, it is actually participation in a society that should determine whether a person is being "citizen-like" or not. For citizens have responsibilities - but also rights. What does this mean for small-scale family farmers in Costa Rica, Uganda or the Philippines? Are they world citizens too? It's funny, but citizenship sounds so urban…
Globalisation started for the Dutch with the exploitation of people and resources in Indonesia, Mr. Pronk subtly recalled. This situation has given Holland a hugely advantageous position in just about everything, a status quo that is safeguarded through advantages in the world market, subsidies and research. Europe and America have initiated and refined the globalisation process, and brought prosperity to their own countries as much as possible. But they never asked the colonised countries, they simply colonised.
In modern society, distance and time are no longer issues. We all operate in one globalised market - family farmers in Costa Rica, Uganda and the Philippines as well. Europe and America designed the current international order and still profit from it. Naturally, big farmers in Germany or Colorado cannot be blamed personally for their privileged situation - but they do bear co-responsibility. All people in the West do.
The implication is simple: Western countries bear responsibility for ordering society in a fair way. Most of them do so in their own countries. For example, all European countries have some mechanism for levelling out incomes and redistributing wealth by way of taxes. But now that we live in a global village with a global market, the contours of ordering our societies are getting clearer too. What is very clear is that good governance is necessary. And there is no need for global legislation, for we already share our Universal Human Rights, even in Costa Rica, Uganda and the Philippines.
So Mr Pronk is calling for a full recognition of world citizenship, starting with the citizens themselves. All of us have a right to live - so if the West is endangering biodiversity or coastal areas because the West is emitting too much CO2 and sea levels are rising, the West should be stopped. We all have a right to food - so when Japan massively grabs land in Kenya, negatively impacting Kenya's food security, Kenyans should be able to make a fist and claim their rights.
This is exactly what special UN rapporteur on the right to food Olivier de Schutter has always argued. In the blog Feeding the world 4, I referred to the discussion paper "Some principles for responsible agricultural investment" which was published in January by the World Bank, FAO, IFAD and UNCTAD. Although the blog named de Schutter as one of the paper's authors, he was not involved. Actually, he is quite critical about the voluntary guidelines. De Schutter insists that all states have existing - and binding - human rights obligations, which they should comply with when managing land deals. Read more about de Schutter's arguments in "Responsibly destroying the world's peasantry", published in June this year. World citizens reclaiming their rights - this is the only thing that can really change the situation for farmers.
by Mundie Salm
The fourth module on Livestock systems of ileia's Learning AgriCultures series is now available for downloading. As with the rest of the series, this module is targeted at educators who seek learning resources to be used with their students. However, it can be of interest to anyone wanting to engage in discussions about the sustainability of different kinds of livestock systems.
The primary focus of Module 4 is the place and value of small-scale mixed and pastoralist systems in relation to many global debates around livestock management. A main thread throughout is the need for a sustainable approach to meeting the growing demand for livestock products around the world.
The current global trend of livestock production and policy support focuses on maximising the production of food and fibre, and favours high-output large-scale livestock systems. Yet, there are many indications that an increase in (intensive) animal production is unsustainable.
This module takes a systems approach to livestock production, looking at environmental, socio-cultural and economic aspects and debates. Articles, videos, photos, exercises and games are used to illustrate small-scale livestock keeping around the world to help bring the many issues alive.
Read more about:
By Mireille Vermeulen
The world seems to be jumping from one crisis to the other: food, energy, finance… And yet how are they being solved? Is it not remarkable that member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have spent so many billions to prevent the collapse of the financial system and only a few to foster food security and nutrition in the world? Did we not agree to have a universal right to food? Or has this ideal been reformulated into the right to bank?
In 2009, the number of undernourished people around the world surpassed the one billion mark. Well, the OECD countries did think about how to feed their own populations, massively shifting their agricultural investments abroad. But what about the populations of the countries receiving these investments? Do they not also have a part in the universal right to food?
On World Food Day (16 October), the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch presented the 2010 Watch: Land-grabbing and Nutrition – global challenges for global governance in twenty countries. This annual review of state actions and failures provides good insights into what is really going in the field of food and agriculture in Asia, Africa and Latin America.The 2010 Watch focuses on the impact of European land-grabbing practices on the food security situation of developing countries. The country reports of Burkina Faso, Colombia, Kenya, Guatemala, Indonesia, Zambia, Cambodia, Mozambique and Spain show an alarming situation.
Even the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, is worried. He states that the world is moving too slowly, yet also too quickly. In his eyes, the international community is too slow in finding a co-ordinated way to guide the increasing commercial pressures and speculation on land. But at the same time, it has moved too quickly in deciding that responsible foreign investment is the way forward, where in fact it is only a small part of a much broader strategy.
In the 2010 Watch, de Schutter talks about the relationship of poverty alleviation at the micro level while seeking the broader development strategy at the macro level. He makes clear that there is a range of actors and interventions, each carrying the responsibility to ensure the right to food for everyone. For De Schutter, seven themes should be central to agricultural investment strategies:
The reality, it seems however, does not match with these ideals. And yet the heated discussions on land-grabbing show that we no longer have time to lose. We do not have much time to discuss guidelines and codes of conduct to develop and guide responsible agricultural investments. Investments have to be responsible tomorrow! If not, many more small-scale farmers being driven off their land, greater inequality in rural areas and more forest destruction will be the reality the day after tomorrow.
(This is the last blog post in our series Feeding the world, on food security and small-scale farming)
by Mireille Vermeulen
Small-scale family farming is about food: producing food to nourish the family and to feed the world. UN reporter on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, said in an interview with CTA last Monday, that access to land is crucial for food security (or food sovereignty, which might be a more proper word if you know what de Schutter stands for).
But these days, land has become a strategic, geopolitical and commercial issue, due to many foreign investors who have become more and more interested in land for food and fuel in the last decade. Investment in land could be positive, for family farmers as well, but increased commercialisation gives reason to fear that large-scale investments in land will deprive the farming population of their land.
Small-scale farmers, pastoralists and fishermen and women have little power and are not consulted in the negotiations leading to these kinds of deals.
In 2009, more than 45 million hectares of land have been traded in large-scale land deals. For Friends of the Earth, this is reason to ring all the alarm bells; their report, Africa: up for grabs, states that one-third of the purchased land in Africa (some 5 million hectares) is intended for the production of fuel crops. These are competing with food crops for farm land and the international agribusinesses are competing with family farmers for land. The European mandate for increasing biofuels is an important driver to this trend in Africa.
Friends of the Earth makes an urgent call to stop this driver (notably by focusing on the EU target to produce 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020) and to suspend further land deals for biofuels immediately. The publication points at the protests raised in Tanzania, Madagascar and Ghana, where companies have been accused of fraud and giving misleading information. The rest of the publication presents some ideas on alternative directions and ways to support small-scale farmers.
On the other hand, the World Bank and other big institutions state that if we want the best support for farmers, it may be that large-scale investment in land can actually bring them more security and welfare. Sure, it is much easier and more appealing to be against all big land deals, but there may be more results if we think strategically.
De Schutter is pragmatic about this issue, coming out with a discussion paper last January, called Some principles for responsible agricultural investment that respects rights, livelihoods and resources. This paper states that land deals should only be made if they are good for food security, if their programmes are economically viable and socially and environmentally sustainable, and if negotiations include all stakeholders. Lastly, land rights must be respected and land must not be transferred via local elites towards foreign investors in cases where the land rights situation is not clear.
But the question is therefore: can large institutions really be trusted to take these precautions? Anuradha Mittal from the Oakland Institute thinks not. This international think tank published a paper The great land grab in 2009 about how the rush for the world´s farmland is threatening the food security of the poor.
This year, the institute analysed the role of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group in large-scale land deals, in the publication (Mis)investment in Agriculture. IFC promotes profitable deals by creating special agencies for it and rewriting national laws. In the latest issue of Farming Matters, Anuradha Mittal disapproves of the practice of foreign land acquisition in our interview, Cheap deal for rich countries. States Mittal: "This is not investment; it’s exploitation, depleting the resources of the third world."
On 7 September 2010, the World Bank finally published its long awaited report on global farmland grab: Rising global interest in farmland. Many organisations and institutions that had anticipated the report and were a bit disappointed. The study reveals very little new information and does not respond to serious criticism on the role of the IFC. GRAIN has established a land grab website, publishing all relevant and up-to-date reports and events on this important issue.
Keep yourself posted!
By Mireille Vermeulen and Edith van Walsum
Talking about food is always nice - it gives you a good appetite and sometimes you can already feel the food in your mouth from the words. Well, it works especially well when you discuss tasty food products and delicious recipes. Discussing the problems of small farmers somewhere in Rwanda or Costa Rica is a lot less tasty, although it is as much about food as your plans for evening dinner. What is it with words and connotations? Why is choosing the right words so important? Sometimes the choice of a slightly different word can really turn the world upside down and give room to new perspectives…
Hans Herren, chair of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) came up with simple yet interesting question the other day. Why do we keep on talking about "feeding" the world, he asked the participants of the IFOAM conference in Germany. People do not feed other people, they feed animals and they nourish themselves.
This gives us some food for thought: Let us re-think the terms and phrases that we so easily use and that shape our thinking in one way or another. What is it that makes the difference between feeding the world and nourishing the planet? Is it just words, or is there more to it? We would like to hear your views!
LEISA's Farm is about small-scale farmers and sustainable ways of family farming around the world.
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