Small Holders-Big Stakes: A battle is being fought for the future of agriculture in the Global South

The World food crisis of 2007/2008 has thrown agriculture in the global South back into the spotlight after many years of neglect. Inter-governmental bodies, philanthropic donor institutions, agri-business corporations and governments from China and to Saudi Arabia have all been increasingly investing in agriculture and/or land in the South in recent years. However, the form much of this investment and intervention is taking and its effect on people, land tenure and the environment is only beginning to emerge.

Agriculture in the South still predominantly takes the form of small holder plots. These small holders number about two and a half billion and feed roughly half the world’s population. Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa still both have the highest numbers of people employed in agriculture between 45% and 60% and the highest rates of food insecurity and extreme poverty in the world, mostly in rural areas. Focusing on rural small holder’s livelihoods can synergistically achieve both poverty alleviation and food security through increases in the wage earning capacity of small farmers and crop yields. However a disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge in the flurry of new initiatives and programmes from governmental and non-governmental bodies. In a recent letter to the African Union, fifteen African civil societies and farmers’ organisations voiced their concern with the form development policy and investment in the regions agricultural sector is currently taking. They feel that slow but steady progress made on the continent in building dialogue and partnership between government and farmers is being swept away in an avalanche of undemocratically designed policies spearheaded by the G-8 countries, public and private donors and their corporate agribusiness cronies.

Intervention and interference in the South’s agricultural sector from the North is nothing new. The green revolution of the 1970s imposed a model of high input industrial agriculture on South Asia that vastly increased yields of some crops, however, it also decimated soils, water tables and livelihoods. Over 280,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995 due to debt and unproducitve degraded land, while almost a quarter of India’s population remain living in hunger. Intervention in the South’s agriculture from the North expanded to Latin America and Africa with the structural adjustment policies(SAP) of the World Bank (WB) in the 1980s and 90s. These policies prevented countries in the south from protecting their agricultural sectors and markets and forced them to dismantle their grain reserves. They were were followed by the devastation caused by the free trade agreements of the World Trade Organisation and the North and Central American Free Trade Agreements in the mid-90s. Much of this policy was enacted by international treaty, above the reach of national law, parliaments and people, formulated by technocrats in the International Monetary Fund and WB in Washington D.C. Consequently, the South, which as late as the 1970s produced on average a billion dollars a year surplus in food every year, now imports 11 billion dollars’ worth of food a year. However the two and a half billion small holders who remain on the land still feed half the world’s population. A battle for their land and their livelihoods is slowly building, the reason it’s intensifying now is due to several factors.

To get a clear picture we need to look back to the world food crisis of 2008. At the height of that crisis, while over a billion people were going hungry, some corporations were making an awful lot of money. Corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill were raking in vast revenues due to skyrocketing grain prices on world markets. Now although vast increases in profits was payday for these corporations, it also led to a problem, what to do with all that money? When the shareholders were paid, the bonuses handed out and the cigars lit, they found themselves with this niggling little problem, vast quantities of money and no more room in the mattress. A corporation of the size of these agri-business corporations can’t just sit on their profits or it can lead to all kinds of problems from massive tax bills to losses to inflation, not to mention the fact that assets are relatively unproductive when they’re just sitting in the bank. However, 2008 was a difficult year for investors. The financial crisis was just getting into full swing and it was increasingly unclear what would constitute a good investment. In times like this the best investments are what are called “inelastic commodities” and food is considered fairly inelastic in that people will always need to eat. However markets in the North are already so concentrated in the hands of these corporations a change of game plan was needed - agriculture in the Global South was it. Agribusinesses weren’t alone in this investment in the South’s agriculture and food supply; the increases in food prices since the beginning of the financial crisis have been, in part, due to a general increase in investment in basic food commodities, as food is still seen as a pretty safe bet right now in comparison to say, oh, property for example.…

So the grandiose calls for increased investment in the South’s agriculture to achieve food security are actually, largely, something very different and it has little to do with the welfare of the world’s hungry or small holders. Much of this investment is, in fact, these corporations solving their own problem of a crisis of capital accumulation through investment in previously untapped markets. What the world’s corporate food system sees in two and a half billion small scale agriculturalists is an easy target. They envisage a not too distant future of a vastly different agriculture in the Global South, one that much more closely resembles that of the US or Europe. A lot less people working on vast highly water and input intensive mechanised farms. A few farm owners working with transnational corporate input providers and processors and everyone concerned making a tidy profit. Except that is for the two and a half billion small holders… Unfortunately they don’t have a place in this rosy vision of a food secure future.

Paul Collier’s article in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2008 illustrates quite well most, if not all, that is wrong with the current trends in agriculture in the South. Collier put forth three priorities for overcoming the world food crisis; firstly, replacing peasant and smallholder farming with large-scale commercial farms; secondly, promoting genetically modified crops; and thirdly, reducing subsidies to biofuels in the United States. Although he got it right on the latter, his other ‘prescriptions’ are, in my humble opinion, heinous in the extreme. His views on the role of small holders in the future of food production, or lack thereof, is one largely echoed in the World Banks’ 2008 report on agriculture. I would counter this dystopian vision of the future of agriculture in the Global South on three levels:
 

 Firstly, I think it is safe to say that this type of policy in no way reflects the opinions, wants or needs  of those concerned, small holders and rural poor themselves. There is no place for their livelihoods, culture or consent in these types of prescriptions from the world’s unelected technocratic development institutions, only a ‘we know best’ paternalistic arrogance. The attitude is seemingly one of ‘they’ll thank us when they’re happily living a middle class existence in a modernised city working in a productive industry.’ However, I would like to hear Mr.Collier explain exactly how the world’s current economic system, with its increasing financial crisis and rising gross inequality, is going to accommodate two and a half billion rural poor farmers. I don’t see any industrial revolution in the coming decades that is capable of employing the world’s current masses of urban unemployed, let alone another two and a half billion rural migrants. 

Secondly, the role industrial agriculture is playing in environmental degradation, on all fronts, can no longer be ignored. The facts are stark, agriculture currently accounts for over 70% of the world’s fresh water usage and contributes 20% of greenhouse gas emission. It has degraded and desertified vast swathes of arable land, destroyed 70% of the world’s agro-crop diversity and is responsible for the majority of clear cutting of the world’s old forest. Industrial agriculture’s effects on our planet’s resource base, biodiversity and climate are incontrovertible and undeniably bleak. 

Lastly, as has been noted time and again, sufficient production is not the issue in regards to global hunger; the problem lies in access, poverty and dysfunctional governments and markets. The world currently produces more than 2,100 calories per person on the planet. Tackling global hunger in a capitalist system is complex and multi-faceted. A boom in production facilitated by the increasing industrialisation of agriculture is not the answer. Under our already increasingly industrialised food system the world has seen production rise 10-12% per year, yet, we’ve also seen a similar increase in the numbers of people in the world going hungry. The industrialisation of the food system isn’t solving global hunger, it’s creating more of it.

I am not arguing this is only due to the self-interest and greed of agri-business and the governments of the rich World; it’s also due to an out-dated ideological belief system. Many governments and policy makers see the development of agriculture in a linear fashion. For them, modernising agriculture can only mean making it more like industry, with more inputs and more mechanisation on the farm, they see this as the only way to increase food production and to allow food systems to feed a growing population and for supply to match growing demand. However, increasingly, studies are pointing to different ways to increase production, different ways of modernising it and enabling it to feed a growing population, from agro-ecological farming systems and more diverse and resistant crop varietals to cooperative organisational structures and more just land rights.

These alternatives to the industrial model are slowly starting to be recognised as the only real sustainable means of increasing food production in a resource depleted world. The ‘international Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development’ initiated by the World Bank themselves, among many other stakeholders was released in 2008, the same year as the contradictory World Development Report on Agriculture. It involved the research of hundreds of agronomists and scientists and concluded industrial agriculture is not the answer to the world’s food problems. It pointed to agro-ecological methods and just land rights for small famers as key components to a sustainable food system for the future. 

Unfortunately this is not the direction current developments in agriculture in the South are taking, as land grabs escalate, seed supplies are increasingly monopolised and the reach of corporate agri-business continues to expand. The report was not a lone voice in the often seemingly paralytic world of inter-governmental bodies and Bretton woods institutions. Olivier De Schutter, in his role as special rapporteur on the right to food, has done much to promote agro-ecological agriculture and the role and rights of small holders. The idea of ‘sustainable intensification’, or an increase in production through sustainable, geographically unique agricultural systems with minimal chemical inputs, is seemingly the new en vogue concept in the world of food policy wonks.

But the real solutions to food insecurity and out dated agricultural systems are coming from the small holders and rural poor themselves. The many organisations and communities fighting for a fair, sustainable and just food system are rising in number. From Via Campesina (http://viacampesina.org/en/) and the Pan African Farmers Platform (http://www.roppa.info/spip.php?article116) to the Indonesian Peasant Farmers League ‘BKS’(http://en.kisansangh.org/default.aspx) and the Brazillian Movement of Landless Workers (http://www.mstbrazil.org), the list goes on, farmers are joining together, building links across cultures and borders and standing up to the madness of a corporate food regime that is threatening not only their livelihoods and way of life but the future of the planet’s resource-base, biodiversity and ultimately our survival as a species. The power is in their hands, and ours, to retake and remake the world’s food system and to rediscover our inherent human dignity and compassion for the Earth, each other and ourselves in the process.

Aidsource

Here’s a neat little resource to get some useful insights into the working world of aid and development. Aidsource is a social network set up by and for development workers, specifically by the bloggers who bring us Blood and Milk, The Shotgun Shack, and the former blogger at Tales from the Hood.  

There are a bunch of groups – below are some of those I have enjoyed perusing.

Perhaps the most useful page for students is the Students and Educators page. From here you can read views on development studies written by students as well as by educators, and access review pages of various graduate programmes (mostly in the US for now but the network is still young). The Discussions is very good – currently there’s a discussion about best practices in internships. Some of you that have done internships might want to share your views here.

The Jobs group – you have to be a member to view this one, so that people will feel a bit freer to name and shame bad employers. It’s really easy to join the network though (and you can personalise your page). There’s also a section in the Jobs group to post opportunities, including internships.

Media & Global Development – I started my own discussion here about combining development work and journalism and I got some useful tips and links.

There’s a Making Aid Marketing Better group – groups like these are really interesting for students, as we get to see what issues are current for workers in the field and how stuff we’re learning about in the classroom is actually real. Here’s a funny/sad post about Kony 2012.

There is a group called Collective Wisdom where people post questions about anything and everything in the development world, or look for hook-ups in countries they’re going to work in. Here is an interesting post called a Day in the Life – what do development workers actually do all day? Here’s another one questioning if writing critically online might affect your employability. 

Climate Change adaption and migration in Bangladesh

Wonderful articles on climate change adaption and migration in Bangladesh from the New Internationalist here,

http://www.newint.org/features/2012/04/01/climate-adaptation-bangladesh/

http://www.newint.org/features/2012/04/25/bangladesh-climate-exodus-dhaka/

Well, well worth a read, especially for anyone interested in the area of adaption.  The central question posed is can adaption ever really be enough in a country as vulnerable as Bangladesh? Sadly I really doubt it can be by itself and I say that as someone studying development with the intention of someday working in the area of agricultural extension work in the context of climate change adaption.

The most immediate issue in the fight against climate change is the need for emission reductions on the part of the world’s top polluters, which can only really be achieved through a fundamental restructuring of our economies and societies away from the insanity that is the growth illusion in which we live. Secondly, recognising climate refugees as IDPs and refugees, respecting their rights as such and facilitating their mass migration where and when it happens is essential for any kind of humane response to the mayhem that climate change will cause in densely populated, low lying countries such as Bangladesh. Adaption alone is not enough but it is none the less an essential element in dealing with the repercussions of climate change, the ingenuity and strength of the Bangladeshi people is an inspiration and a lesson in coping to us all, North and South of the Equator.

C. C.

Rights vs. Needs

                                                              Rights vs. Needs

As a student of development sometimes the ’industry’, viewed through the lens of academic journals, endless lists of statistic and shiny NGO websites can seem to be an almost  self-perpetuating entity. Much of its work seeming to focus on providing for basic and immediate human needs but failing to engage on a broader level with the economic and social power structures that perpetuate the cycles of disempowerment and marginalization that permeate many poor communities both North and South of the equator.

Can fragmented funding for small scale agricultural in the Global South have any real effect while the same countries markets are flooded with hugely subsidized produce from the Global North? Can a few hundred million spent on climate change adaption measures make any real difference while emissions continue to spiral out of control in the industrialized World? Is the economic model of unfettered capitalism, and the increasingly gross levels of inequality and environmental damage associated with it, one that can bring any kind of lasting development to the worlds less economically developed nations?

There have undoubtedly been huge gains made in improving people’s access to health care, education and employment in much of the world over the last decades; however, whether this level of gains will continue as we continue to move into a resource depleted, climatically altered future is uncertain at best. If we truly seek a fairer and more just future should we be looking beyond aid funding for the essential but often short term gaols of the provision of basic needs, to achieving a more equitable distribution of power and resources at all levels from the household to the global?

The increasing integration of the perspectives and language of human rights into the development community and its many papers and policy documents is an important step in formally acknowledging some of these broader issues. The distinction between needs based and rights based programming in development work may seem somewhat abstract from afar but in actuality it can have a huge bearing on how aid money, or funding within an organisation, is distributed and on how policy is designed and implemented. I would argue on a broader level a rights based analysis can also challenge some of our fundamental notions about aid and development itself.

The more I study the issues around aid and development work the more I feel there is a need for a paradigm shift away from the notion of giving  ‘aid’, rooted in the notion of charity, to a view of development as an obligation to assist in fulfilling the realisation of peoples human rights.

The distinction, as given by the UNFPA, is that where a need not fulfilled leads to dissatisfaction, a right that is not respected leads to a violation, and its redress or reparation can be legally and legitimately claimed. A human rights-based approach to development differs from the basic needs approach in that it recognizes the existence of rights. It stresses the role of duty bearers, domestic and international governments, corporations and fellow global citizens to respect, protect and guarantee these rights.

Where a needs based approach can often frame the ends as justifying the means, a rights based approach considers the means fundamental to the ends, not just hitting targets on a log frame but actively involving, consulting and seeking to empower communities concerned. This distinction in how humanitarian and development projects are conceived can have a huge bearing on how they are formulated and carried out.

A rights based analysis of development interventions can ask some fundamental questions about their aims and purpose. Is the role of the development sector to provide for the bare essentials in people’s lives while at the macro level, governmental, corporate and institutional structures continue unabated in ignoring and exploiting those same communities targeted.

It often seems in development work there is a focus on the micro: from the seemingly exponentially expanding number of small scale NGOs to the focus on particular areas of people’s lives and livelihoods like education, employment or health initiatives, often without any real questioning of the broader position of developments ‘beneficiaries’ in the power structures that perpetuate the cycle of poverty in which they are trapped. Needs based programmes can be implemented in order to provide for basic and essential services but not necessarily impact on what one hopes is the ultimate goal of ending those cycles of poverty and disempowerment to enable communities to stand on their own two feet.

Another important question a rights based analysis of development programmes can pose is how funds are allocated and who should be targeted in a given intervention. Concentrating on the most marginalized people, socially, economically and geographically, is an essential part of a rights-based approach. Organisations often try to reach the greatest number of people they can with the resources they have, this can lead to those who are more difficult to reach being overlooked. Sadly those hardest to reach are often also those suffering some of the most acute poverty. A rights-based approach seeks to identify those who are most marginalized and ensure that their rights are not ignored. These issues will become increasingly important in a not too distant future of severely depleted resources, an increasingly unstable economic system, changed climate and wide-scale environmental degradation. How to achieve more in terms of people reached and targets met, with less funds is, and will continue to be, a serious issue for humanitarian and development organisations.

In trying to come to terms with my own place as a student of development and as a human being hoping to at the very least do no harm in a future career in the sector I feel these issues around how development is conceived of and implemented are fundamental to how I view my role and the role of the ‘industry’. For development to work it needs to first and foremost give voice to those it seeks’ to help. The always insightful Paulo Freire put it pretty succinctly,

‘The generosity of the oppressors is nourished by an unjust order, which must be maintained in order to justify that generosity. Our converts, on the other hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order; but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about the people, but they do not trust them; and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favour without that trust.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

C. C.

Development Jobs 101

The Beginning:


The Bare Bones of Prepping for an International Career:
Alanna Shaikh has a great blog, and she writes an international development careers newsletter that costs $2 a month and is well worth it. This post has five basic things you can do now for your career, available here.

International Development Jobs, An Introduction:
This article explains the various sectors and job roles in the international development sphere – a good introduction. Scroll to the end for a list of articles from professionals on how to get a job. Available here.

How to become an AidWorker:
Another introduction, with some useful insights. Good blog to explore, available here.


The Middle:


Aid Work: What Recruiters Really Look for:
Full blog post here.


“Many candidates interested in working in international development and emergency aid are convinced that finding a job in this sector is just a matter of knowing the right people inside organisations and getting recommendations from them. This is absolutely not the case. Many others think that if they get the right kind of education - a master's degree in a relevant subject, for instance - they they automatically qualify for a job as aid worker. This is not true either.
It's difficult to board a moving train, but once you're on, you can move easily from one car to another. That's what it's like in relief and development. The key can be summarised in one word: experience.”

Education, Experience and Personality:

The third in a five-part series, available here.

“There are a lot of people wanting to be aid workers. Far and away the most popular roles are those that are based out of western countries but with a healthy dose of travel...
In brief, aid agencies are looking for a mix of appropriate skills, relevant experience, and the right personality. It’s a bit of a nebulous mix and there’s no magic formula. However, if you’re lacking one of these three, you’re really going to struggle to get employed by an NGO.


And The End...


How to find a job:
How to network, and how to apply for jobs, available here. Extensive list of sites with job listings at the end.

Experiences from the Field

Sian Cowman talks to Dug Cubie about his work in refugee camps in Nepal; tsunami relief with the Red Cross; and challenges in the field.

It will be no surprise to students of international development that luck is a major factor in getting that all-important first position. When I interviewed Dug Cubie, currently a PhD candidate at University College Cork, he told me that after his law degree in the 90s he was lucky enough to walk straight into an internship with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in London. A key part of his job was to document the conditions detained asylum seekers were being held in: “I got to go with my boss to visit places like Wormwood Scrubs and Rochester Prison, [it was] fascinating but scary stuff to go into these old Victorian prisons, all red brick and door clanging shut behind you sort of thing...” It is no longer so easy to get these positions: “Now the application procedure is through the Headquarters in Geneva....and to be honest I imagine that there’re very few undergrads now who’d get an internship [at UNHCR] before having done a Masters.”

After completing another 6-month internship in the EU, and his Masters in international law, Dug’s first job in a developing country was in Nepal with the UNHCR. Kathmandu was as lively as expected but the village where he was posted had only 200 inhabitants despite being a government administrative centre. The work itself was in seven long-running refugee camps, inhabited by over 100,000 Bhutanese refugees, and at the time the camps were embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal. The situation sounds difficult: “The key issue was how it had been dealt with, the refugees had been dealing with the allegations internally rather than going to the Nepalese authorities and UNHCR hadn’t been informed by the refugees they were doing this. UNHCR at all levels had probably taken their eye off the ball... but then staffing levels, and so the level of monitoring going on, had been cut, as the camps had been there 10 years.” Certainly it was an eye-opening first job.

After more fieldwork with UNHCR, and later project management with the International Organization for Migration, Dug landed a job with the Red Cross in Dublin as a desk officer for the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. It was 5 years after the Indian Ocean tsunami: “It was a question of how do we wind projects down, hand over to the local Red Cross, accept that you’ve moved beyond the emergency phase into the development phase.”  While Dug was there, they undertook the scheduled shut down of Irish Red Cross offices in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, a difficult but necessary task.

The story about the Nepalese refugee camps and the criticisms I’ve heard of the Pacific tsunami relief prompted me to ask about the challenges facing the humanitarian sector. Dug’s answer is relevant in some of the situations we see in the news today: “One of the biggest things [is] the consistency of response, especially at a political level, [for example] if you compare Libya and Syria...” Money, of course, is a deciding factor in the level of response – the tsunami received huge amounts of funding, but other disasters can become “forgotten crises”. Humanitarian response must also ensure consistency in minimum standards of protection and human rights. For example, in the case of sexual abuse, standards must be in place for prevention of abuse in the first place, rather than just responding to the problem.

  

One positive change Dug sees in the humanitarian sector today is the increasing recognition that ‘we’ don’t always know best. For example, the Indonesian Red Cross sent workers out to Haiti, who of course were very experienced in earthquake relief: “The local capacities are increasing and that’s the way it should be. We need to defer to their knowledge and experience [by] working in partnership with them.” Encouragingly, there is a move away from the hierarchical mind-set of ‘we know best’ and toward collaboration with organisations in developing countries.

I asked Dug what students can do to prepare for the challenges of the development working world: “It is important to know yourself; know your limitations, strengths and weaknesses. I was in Nepal at the time Iraq was kicking off, and I knew I did not want to work in the middle of a war zone. Some people are able to work well in those situations; others work at a higher level of capacity in more secure situations.”

Understanding why we do what we do is important too: “What do we mean when we say someone has a right to health or a right to food... at a basic level, why are we doing this? Additionally, understanding how you do it - project management, the tools you need to ensure that at a practical level the work you’re doing fits in with the funding you’ve got. ” Really, the degree is just the beginning - building up the skill-set is what matters. There is no replacement for field experience - as well as the all-important luck, of course!