This report explores how States can and must achieve a reorientation of their agricultural systems towards modes of production that are highly productive, highly sustainable and that contribute to the progressive realisation of the human right to adequate food. Drawing on an extensive review of the scientific literature published in the last five years, de Schutter identifies agro-ecology as a mode of agricultural development with strong conceptual connections with the right to food. Moreover, agro-ecology delivers advantages that are complementary to better known conventional approaches such as breeding high-yielding varieties. In the report, de Schutter argues that the scaling up of these experiences is the main challenge today. Appropriate public policies can create an enabling environment for such sustainable modes of production, such as: prioritising the procurement of public goods in public spending rather than solely providing input subsidies; investing in knowledge by reinvesting in agricultural research and extension services; investing in forms of social organisation that encourage partnerships, including farmer field schools and farmers’ movements innovation networks; investing in agricultural research and extension systems; empowering women; and creating a macro-economic enabling environment, including connecting sustainable farms to fair markets.
Poverty and health
The authors of this study set out to estimate the reduction in child mortality as a result of interventions related to the environmental and nutritional Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to estimate how the magnitude and distribution of the effects of interventions vary based on the economic status of intervention recipients. They modelled the mortality effects of interventions on child nutrition and environmental risk factors, using data on economic status, child underweight, water and sanitation, and household fuels. The authors found that providing these interventions to all children younger than five years old would result in an estimated annual reduction in child deaths of 49,700 (14%) in Latin America and the Caribbean, 0.8 million (24%) in South Asia, and 1.47 million (31%) in sub-Saharan Africa. These benefits are equivalent to 30% to 48% of the current regional gaps toward the MDG target on reducing child mortality, the authors point out. Fifty percent coverage of the same environmental and nutritional interventions, as envisioned by the MDGs, would reduce child mortality by 26,900, 0.51 million, and 1.02 million in the three regions, respectively, but only if the interventions are implemented among the poor first.
At the International Conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health, held from 10 to 12 February 2011 in India, participants reached consensus that the way forward for improving agriculture, nutrition and health was to think and act multi-sectorally and inter-sectorally, and break down the silos among the three disciplines. Symptoms of the breakdown surfaced in 2007/2008, during the global food price crisis, said David Nabarro, the UN Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition, when increased prices contributed to a rise in poverty and hunger around the world. Women's health was a central feature in most of the conference debates. Various speakers pointed out that a woman's well-being shaped the future of her children, especially her daughters, the mothers of the next generation. The future prosperity of a country often also rested on the shoulders of women, as agriculture not only created economic growth, they argued, but children who ate well often went on to earn better incomes. Experts said it was time to re-establish the links between agriculture, nutrition and health, and perhaps educate each sector about the objectives of the others.
From 2007 to 2009, HarvestPlus (a global NGO aimed at reducing world hunger) and its partners disseminated orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) to 24,000 farming households in Uganda and Mozambique with the goal of reducing vitamin A deficiency. OFSP has higher vitamin A levels than white or yellow sweet potato. An evaluation of the intervention found a 68% and 61% increase in adoption of OFSP in Mozambique and Uganda respectively. The share of OFSP in the total area dedicated to sweet potato increased sharply as households substituted white or yellow sweet potato with OFSP. There was also a significant net increase in vitamin A intakes in young and older children and women in these countries. In some instances, this increased intake resulted in children reaching the recommended intakes for their age group. The author of the study discusses how to reduce costs of promoting and scale up of the intervention through greater diffusion of OFSP between farming communities.
Many outside South Africa imagine that after Mandela was freed and the ANC won free elections all was well. But for many the struggle against apartheid, poverty and inequality continues, according to this book. Early in 2007 hundreds of families living in shacks in Cape Town were moved into houses they had been waiting for since the end of apartheid. But soon they were told the move was illegal and they were evicted. They built shacks alongside the road opposite and organised themselves into the Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign. In this book they tell their own stories, in words and photographs, of the struggle for justice.
In this review of the book, ‘The bottom billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it’, by Paul Collier (Oxford University Press, 2008), Reinert identifies Collier’s core argument: four ‘traps’ lock Africa into poverty, namely the conflict trap, the natural resource trap, the trap of being landlocked with bad neighbours, and the trap of bad governance in a small country. Collier’s analysis, Reinert argues, represents a departure from traditional development economics to ‘development aid strategy’, and comes at a time when the world has long been dominated by Washington Consensus policies pushing for market liberalisation. Compared to the first decades after the Second World War, the growth record of this neo-liberal period has been dismal, he notes, especially in Africa. However, the reviewer expresses some concern that the book appears to defend the past policies of the World Bank, with the most salient misinterpretation of history being Collier’s presentation of the successes of China and India as a result of the policies of the Washington Institutions, when in fact their success was the result of actually not following the policies and rather opening their markets gradually. Collier tends to reverse the directions of the arrows of causality and even to disregard co-evolution of economic structure and institutions. As a former employee of the Washington Institutions responsible for enforcing neo-liberalism, the reviewer concludes that he attempts to cover up the past rather than present new constructive insights, and the book contains more descriptions of symptoms of poverty than of its root causes.
According to this report, the agriculture sector is underperforming in many developing countries, in part because women do not have equal access to the resources and opportunities they need to be more productive. The gender gap imposes real costs on society in terms of lost agricultural output, food security and economic growth, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) argues. Promoting gender equality is not only good for women – it is also good for agricultural development. Women make essential contributions to the rural economy of all developing country regions as farmers, labourers and entrepreneurs. Their roles are diverse and changing rapidly, so generalisations should be made carefully, the FAO warns. Yet one finding is strikingly consistent across countries and contexts: women have less access than men to agricultural assets, inputs and services and to rural employment opportunities.
The transnational influence in South Africa's economy is argued in this paper to be linked with ecological and economic problems that reflect in increasing hunger and health problems, higher food prices and polluting agro-processing. The Democratic Left Front proposes an Anti-Hunger and Food Sovereignty Campaign to challenge the current reality and politicise the food question in a people-centred way. They propose a campaign that is advanced from the grassroots through participatory processes, to mobilise mass forces against hunger and the way the current agro-processing industry shifts the value away from producers and raises costs for poor communities. They propose an alternative food economy as part of a wider socio-economic change, guided by the principles of solidarity, collective ownership, self-management, democratic control of capital, an eco-centric emphasis, direct community benefit and participatory democracy.
Using panel data from Mozambique collected in 2007 and 2008, the authors explore the impact of the food crisis on welfare of households with people living with HIV and AIDS. The analysis finds that there has been a real deterioration of welfare in terms of income, food consumption, and nutritional status in Mozambique between 2007 and 2008, among both sets of households. Households with people living with HIV have not suffered more from the crisis than others. Results on the evolution of labour-force participation suggests that initiation of treatment and better services in health facilities have counterbalanced the effect of the crisis by improving the health of patients and their labour-force participation. The authors look at the effect of the change in welfare on the frequency of visits to health facilities and on treatment outcomes. Both variables can proxy for adherence to treatment. This is a particularly crucial issue as it affects both the health of the patient and public health because sub-optimal adherence leads to the development of resistant forms of the virus. The authors find no effect of the change in welfare on the frequency of visits, but they do find that people who experienced a negative income shock also experienced a reduction or a slower progress in treatment outcomes.
The authors have two main policy messages from this study for food security and trade for low and middle income countries. First, as evidence shows that poverty and hunger materialise at household and individual levels, the special and differential treatment for developing countries in trade negotiations at the national and/or crop levels may not be sufficient to reach the households and individuals at risk. Secondly, they argue for a balance between protections that help small producers with protections for poor consumers. They propose increased investments in physical capital and human development, land tenure, water access, technology, infrastructure and general services (such as health and education), especially focusing on poor and female headed households. They call for state support to non-agricultural rural enterprises and also well-designed safety nets, including conditional cash transfers (CCT), school lunches, women and infant nutrition and food-for-work. They propose strengthening of organisations of small farmers and women and supporting their participation in policy and political processes. This is argued to demand financial, human and institutional capacity support.