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by Kevin Cleaver, IFAD Associate Vice-President Programmes

Gordon Conway is coming to Rome to launch his book entitled ONE BILLION HUNGRY;  CAN WE FEED THE WORLD?  (Cornell University, 2012).  It’s a good book, and an important book, well worth the read.  For those of you who are too busy doing other things, I will summarize what I believe are the most important points, and some issues.  After all, 430 pages is a lot of reading.

First Conway argues that the part of the food security debate which has been most ignored is nutrition.  Hunger has traditionally been measured by FAO as caloric intake.  But this is only part of the hunger story;  the quality and content of those calories is critical.  Food security equals access to food, its availability, the way it is utilized and its composition.  This is a more complex definition.  Simple concepts no longer suffice.

Similarly the success of the green revolution is partly questioned.  The evidence, which Conway reviews in great detail, is pretty compelling that the green revolution reduced poverty, at least in those places where it occurred.  It also stabilized rural employment earnings, reduced food prices, and moderated seasonal fluctuations in food availability.  For those of you who forgot what the green revolution was, it was not really very green.  It consisted of the introduction of high yield varieties of some crops, combined with investment in irrigation, fertilizer, a slightly better policy environment for agriculture, and literacy campaigns for farmers.  Good stuff; definitely resulting in production increases.  But, the evidence is also compelling that the impact on the poor was less than expected, rural inequality increased, environmental degradation accelerated, and there are diminishing returns (i.e. the productivity gains now are less than in the past).  These findings incidentally were the basis for my statement in the panel at the Governing Council that the benefits from project introduction of green revolution technology are diminishing, and we need to find (and are in fact finding) new ways to have high impact on small farmer incomes and wellbeing.  Conway goes on to develop the idea, which was originally his, of what he calls a doubly green revolution.  The idea is to pursue productivity gains in agriculture, as the original green revolution did, while conserving natural resources, focusing more on hunger reduction (remember the expanded definition of food security;  it is relevant here), focusing on equality of distribution of benefits, and with techniques and technologies resistant to shocks (climatic, environmental, economic, etc.).  And it needs to be sustainable.  This is a very tall order.  What does Conway suggest as a way of delivering such an ambitious set of objectives?

He has an answer;  you must decide if it is convincing.  First on the large farm small farm debate;  he argues that both are needed.  Small farmers tend to be more efficient per hectare (important as land constraints become more severe, especially for crops which do not require large on-farm investments).  But for crops which work in harmony with capital intensive processing investment (palm oil, rubber, sugar, cut flowers), large farms are generally more appropriate.  And of course the two can work together.  What does this have to do with a doubly green revolution?  I think that this was just the warm up to the meat of it which is that the new agriculture needs to be one which promotes ecological sustainability and social sustainability (sounds like IFAD mantra does it not?).  This means that in thinking about agriculture systems (or projects), the trade-offs between productivity (large farm or small), stability, resilience, and equitability (new word) must be considered.  The green revolution focussed on productivity, but sacrificed sustainability and equality.

What does ecological sustainability look like?  What does it mean?  Conway has specific examples which are interesting;  I will list them in order to save space.  I use buzz words here, but there is a lot of meat behind each:  intercropping, rotations, combine trees and grasslands with cropping, green manuring, conservation tillage, biological control, IPM…   Grainger-Jones;  you will love this stuff.  He argues that new technologies, (ICT, nanotechnology, biotechnology) need embracing (so he is not just an organic green;  he’s a bit of an iconoclast).  He wants a lot more innovation however, including in the public sector, the private sector, and in education.

He does not stop there.  We have learned that institutions and policy matters.  He does a good job at looking at the pros and cons of some of the policy orientations that accompany technology.  Coops for example can be good at enabling small farmers to reach economies of scale, but often leave the poorest farmers out.  Contract farming is great for connecting processors to farmers and ensuring better prices for farmers contracted.  But most farmers are excluded;  contracts go to the best farmers.  Fair trade provides farmers with premium prices, but benefits tiny numbers of farmers.  Food safety is great for consumers, but standards often cause small farmers to be dropped.  Conway states that organic produce is a great niche but organic crop yields are still 30% less than conventional farming yields, important in situations of land scarcity.  Crop insurance is tough to make work because damage is difficult to connect to an event;  risk is not easily quantifiable.  This is why crop insurance schemes, such as that of the USA, are so heavily subsidized by governments.

His chapter on livestock is intriguing.  Livestock are central to mixed farming systems which characterize most small holder farms.  The use of crop waste to feed animals, and animal waste to feed plants, livestock as the engines of early farm mechanization, makes sense.  Livestock provide draft power, generate employment (it is a lot of work to keep livestock), source of wealth, cultural significance, and source of food.  Let’s get one!  But, there are increasing environmental problems, greenhouse gas emissions from livestock are huge, and zoonotic diseases (remember avian flu?), are increasing, not decreasing problems.  No easy fix on this one.  Read the book for answers;  my sense is the livestock raising sends us into the world of the second best.  There is rapidly increasing demand for meat (faster than for crops), and the positives listed above remain, but there are very negative environmental consequences.  How to manage these negatives is the challenge.

I have done a shoddy job of summarizing a long and complicated book in a few words;  let’s jump to the conclusions.  There is a chapter of conclusions, that in a nutshell (really), goes like this:

• Donors should meet their aid commitments (they rarely do)
• The Doha round must be successful (freer agricultural trade and fewer subsidies) – fat chance
• Governments need to have policies which create an enabling environment for private investment in agriculture and agro business (most do not)
• Institutions need to be supportive (food safety, environmental regulation, etc);  most are not
• Producers associations should be supported
• Micro credit works
• Push for sustainable agriculture technologies (such as those listed above)
• Expand the technological horizon (including bio technology, nano technology, ICT)
• Small scale irrigation rather than large government run schemes
• Adaption to climate change (some good stuff on climate change-  come to his seminar this week at IFAD sponsored by Grainger jones on this)
• Scale up
• Private public partnerships

When I read the concluding chapter, I found myself wondering what’s new.  It reads pretty much like our own strategic framework.  Maybe this is why I liked the book so much.  It provides a very well referenced argument for the type of agriculture that I believe that IFAD is promoting.  For this reason, I am an enthusiast.  Despite the common sense nature of the recommendations, few governments actually practice any of it, and most of our societies are not very supportive in deeds.  Conway is an ally.  We don’t have as many allies as you might think;  each is precious.  Come to his lecture.

           Por otra parte, el caso del Ecuador es emblemático: aquí se mezcla el drama del progreso a costo de destruir la selva amazónica con el clamor de las poblaciones indígenas. Por ejemplo, el representante de la etnia Shuar, Pedro Tzerembo, nos manifestó la experiencia y el sentir de los Pueblos Indígenas, que ven amenazado el medio ambiente que ellos han cuidado y conservado por generaciones, e insta a la comunidad internacional y a los organismos especializados  a emprender un rumbo que pueda combinar el desarrollo sostenible con la preservación de los recursos naturales y de la propia cultura e identidad.  

 

Written by Monica Romano

©IFAD/Flavio Ianniello

It is really the truth that “l’unione fa la forza” (meaning that if we are united, we are stronger), as a traditional saying in the Italian language states. This is what came to my mind during these days by attending the various panels and sessions that took place in conjunction with the Governing Council, all focusing on highlighting the power of partnerships in combating poverty and promoting rural development.

In particular, I “blocked” part of my afternoon at IFAD on Wednesday 13 February to follow carefully a high-level panel in which representatives from the private sector and research, under the facilitation of David Nabarro, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Food Security and Nutrition and coordinator of the UN High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis hosted by IFAD, and with the participation of Kevin Cleaver, IFAD Associate Vice-President, Programmes. IFAD Governors intervened actively in the discussion, with comments and questions, but also success stories and challenges in building mutually-beneficial partnerships.

It is not so easy to establish successful partnerships. It takes time, requires money, and necessitates building trust among all parties - noted James Mwangi, CEO and Managing Director of Equity Bank in Kenya. Equity Bank offers inclusive, customer-focused financial services that aim to socially and economically empower people who are generally considered “unbankable”. The Bank was founded as Equity Building Society in 1984 and was originally a provider of mortgage financing for the majority of low-income customers. Over time, it was transformed into a microfinance institution and then into a commercial bank, with more than 8 million customers, thus becoming the largest bank in terms of customer base in Africa and having nearly half of bank accounts in Kenya. Mr. Mwangi indicated that partnerships can only succeed when responsibilities, investments, risks, and benefits are shared and when they are established through bottom-up processes. In a global context of limiting economic resources, investing in innovation, entrepreneurial skill development and capacity building – all key to sustainable development - cannot be afforded but through partnerships between different actors. This does not mean that everybody does everything. Each party has a specific role to play building on its comparative advantage: government in policy formulation and as an enabler of the institutional environment; donors in leveraging on their resources. There is need for “transformative” partnerships, echoed IFAD Governor from Nigeria, which could bring about change that individual organizations cannot achieve on their own.

The importance of “specialization” between partners in innovative partnerships for value chain development was highlighted by Estelle Biénable, an Agricultural Economist at the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development – CIRAD. Key factors to successful partnerships are the social capital – that is trained and organized farmers -, business orientation and development motivation, the specialization between different partners within the value chain (production, processing and marketing), and adequate attention to the institutional and organizational dimensions (including traditional institutions and the enabling environment).

The possible tension and the need to reach an equilibrium and foster dialogue between the public sector and the cooperatives were some of the key points raised by Odacir Klein, President of the Brazilian Biodiesel Union – UBRABIO, an association of producers and researchers of biofuels, which was founded in Brasilia in 2007. The issue of the relationship between government and cooperatives raised the interest of the Governors from Angola and Cote d’Ivoire. Mr. Klein noted that cooperatives have collective obligations towards their members, while the state should develop public policies to guarantee infrastructure development and provide stimulus for the cooperatives to represent their members and exercise collective responsibilities. The Governor from South Sudan pointed out that sometimes donors trust and support more the NGOs than the governments, even when these have not the required capacity or expertise to assist small farmers. The governments should have a clear policy to manage their relationship with NGOs.

I have to confess that I was mostly looking forward to hearing from Ingmar Streese, Director of Global Programmes and Partnerships at MARS, a private company doing cocoa production. I had been involved in the Mid-term review mission of the IFAD-supported Rural Empowerment and Agricultural Development (READ) project, which established a PPP linking smallholder farmers with MARS for cocoa production in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia (a story about READ’s experience with this PPP can be found here). Mr. Streese explained that there are estimated 5 million smallholder farmers producing cocoa globally, but they need to become entrepreneurs. Partnering between farmers and MARS has been proving successful in Indonesia. The ingredients for successful partnerships include trust, choice of the right partners, and building on the comparative advantage of each actor. Challenges are also there: working with big organizations is not always speedy and it takes time to find reliable partners. As the Governor from Rwanda stressed, for all actors to work together, there is need for the right institutional framework in place.


After remembering that last year the United Nations launched the International Year of Cooperatives, and summarizing the main points discussed and conclusions drawn - forming partnerships requires finance and time, science has a role to play, certifying the partnerships is needed to make sure that the principles are adhered to, donors organizations need to update their working methods and expertise – the floor was passed on to Mr. Cleaver to bring in IFAD’s perspective.

I liked particularly the first remark made by our Associate Vice-President: farmers cannot be considered any more as recipients. They are partners. Second strong point: IFAD, like many other organizations, has limited finance to have impact and scale. Partnerships are therefore a must. This has direct implications for IFAD’s business model and processes, which are not always suitable to work out optimally certain partnerships, especially with the private sector. In this regards, IFAD Member States can support us. And to say the truth, another key actor in the equation- the public sector – has often problems with the agility, flexibility and speed that private sector requires – Mr. Clever highlighted. Third consideration: there are also bad partnerships, as in some cases it is seen when the so called “land grabbing” occurs. Purchasing land is not bad per se. The question is whether the partnership requiring use of land is equal and the benefits accrue to private sector and governments only, leaving out the farmers. Public policy has a role to play. Donors like IFAD also have a role to play in empowering rural communities so that they can defend their interests and rights as well as in strengthening the capacity of governments to analyze and understand the implications, opportunities and threats of certain situations.

I left the room enriched by the debate. Despite challenges, it is promising that all expressed the desire and understand the need for working more closely together for rural poverty reduction. With farmers as partners, by supporting their organizations, building trust among all parties and leveraging on everybody’s comparative advantage. I guess these would really be transformative partnerships.

Just a little bit of background on how this award came to be. In one of their regular meetings last September, the RBA Heads, José Graziano da Silva  (#FAO), Kanayo Nwanze (#IFAD) and Ertharin Cousin (#WFP) agreed to establish the Award of Excellence: Working Together in the Field to promote field-level collaboration.

Building on this success, the team is now jointly implementing the Programme for Accelerating Progress towards MDG1c (eradicating hunger) in Mozambique. The programme is being financed with a EUR 67 million grant from the European Union complemented by a contribution of EUR 10 million from the government of Mozambique. The programme operates in the two strategic development corridors of Beira and Nacala, covering one third of the country’s rural districts.

The team designed the programme to tackle the complex issue of food security by contributing what each agency does best. And this is how they put the pieces of the puzzle together: the main areas of intervention are clustered around pro-poor value chains and include access to inputs (mostly FAO and IFAD), good agricultural practices (mostly FAO and IFAD), fishery and aquaculture development (IFAD), rural finance (IFAD), access to markets (all 3 RBAs), reduced post-harvest losses (all 3 RBAs), infrastructure (IFAD), nutrition (all 3 RBAs) and staple food fortification (WFP).

The Mozambique Minister of Minister of Planning and Development H.E. Aiuba Cuereneia also joined us this morning at IFAD HQ in commending the team for their exemplary commitment in improving agricultural development, pro-poor value chains and agricultural markets so that farmers can become more effective and face competition.

Julio de Castro, speaking on behalf of the team inspired us all with his enthusiasm and stories. And is so doing he also revealed to us, in one simple word, the secret to the team’s success: Trust. The team has been able to communicate effectively, they count on each other and working together for them is the “natural” way of doing business.