Let’s jump out of the dichotomies box

This was the lead question of a provocative seminar, the second in a series, taking place in several European cities and initiated by HIVOS and IIED. Rights-based development is seen by some as a key component in the struggle against globalisation ruled by the market. But increasingly, development policymakers are also embracing business as a tool for alleviating poverty. How do these two perspectives relate to each-other? I attended this seminar, which took place in Stockholm on 3rd March.

We heard five speakers presenting a variety of perspectives that together provided solid food for thought: Olivier de Schutter (UN Special rapporteur on the Right to Food) and Diana Mitlin, (IDPM/IIED) set the scene by putting the major issues and dilemmas on the table. P.V. Satheesh (Deccan Development Society, India), André Gonçalves (Centro Ecológico, Brazil) and Ngolia Kimanzu (Swedish Cooperative Centre) shared their experiences on the ground and linked these to the perspectives presented.

How to reconcile resilient agro-ecological farming with production for supply chains?

Olivier de Schutter depicted the larger historical context: there has been an outright neglect of the small scale agriculture sector over the past 30 years. As a consequence many governments in developing countries are now facing huge challenges to feed their populations. They see no option but to dump cheap (imported) food which works as a counter incentive for local farmers. Rural outmigration has been going on for many years, it has degraded the social fabric in rural areas and contributed to growing urban poverty. Today there are one billion hungry people, and cynically, more than half of them are food producers. It is important to see the connection between urban and rural poverty as many of the urban poor have migrated away from rural areas over the past decades.

In this context the concept of food sovereignty emerged, not from the brains of policymakers but out of practical experience of small farmers. Notably Via Campesina has actively worked on this concept. Small farmers, men and women, fight for their right to be more self sufficient, their right of choice: which crops to grow and for what markets. Food Sovereignty has a clear gender dimension: women farmers – responsible for 70% of food production – want equitable access to resources and agricultural decision making.

Today’s reality is a dualised world of farming. On the one hand large scale farmers want access to well functioning markets. On the other hand, for hundreds of millions of semi-subsistence farmers the participation in such markets poses serious barriers and risks. Olivier de Schutter underlined the need to focus on the creation of strong local food markets. And there is the need for reversed nutrition education: urban dwellers should learn to revalue local foods, and thus make the right choices as consumers of nutritious local foods. Urban poor require better protection and purchasing power. Lastly, there is a need to build resilient supply chains and ensure regulation of contract farming so that small farmers do not fall into indebtedness due to over dependence on cash crops. But resilience should not only be against market shocks but also against attacks of nature.

This brings us to the question: How can we reconcile farming based on agro-ecological resilience principles with production for global supply chains which have not internalised these mechanisms? .. which in turn leads us to another (false?) dichotomy: That of agro-ecology based versus market-based development. Worth further exploring in a future provocative seminar!

It’s all a bit more complicated

Diana Mitlin, co-editor of the publication Rights-based Approaches to Development, Exploring the Potentials and Pitfalls, explained that the rights based approach emerged as a reaction against the mainstream development discourse where markets and economic thinking are dominant. This line of thinking has brought issues like accountability, governance and equitable relationships on to the development agenda. But even though such notions are extremely relevant, the approach has its own pitfalls. The powerful can highjack it, like they can do with any other approach. Entitlements, central in the rights based approach, are not always what the poor need most urgently. Sometimes rights become an aim in themselves. But the poor cannot eat rights. So how can markets be regulated in order to create a slightly less un-equal playing field for the poor? Diana Mitlin: “It’s all a little bit more complicated”.

We need more than markets

if all of us continue producing food in the way we do today, we will soon face our limits

P.V. Satheesh, development practitioner from India who worked with rural communities for over 25 years, illustrated the dichotomy between large and small farmers with concrete experiences from South India. His starting point was that all farmers are entrepreneurs but their relations to markets differ. A crucial qualitative difference is the value base: small scale farming is inspired by peasant values. For Satheesh peasant values have a positive connotation; they are deeply rooted and relevant, but unfortunately poorly understood by policymakers and often ridiculed as being backward. Respect for the earth is central in these principles. But markets give no value to such principles. Even organic markets are not ecologically sound as they support mono-cropping. In India over the past twenty years large numbers of small farmers ventured into the production of cash crops for global markets; it has been a disaster. In the past ten years more than 250.000 farmers committed suicide; the vast majority were small farmers who got into trouble due to debt traps, resulting from over dependency on cash crops and chemical inputs.

Large farmers struggle for good markets, while small farmers expressed that they need more than markets. A Citizen’s Jury took place in Bangalore were farmers concluded that the challenges they face are beyond markets, beyond food sovereignty and therefore beyond the rights discourse. The larger issue for them is the survival of the environment: “If all of us continue producing food in the way we do today, we will soon face our limits”. They further argued that food products should be kept away from price indices; speculation with food prices is dangerous and inhuman. http://www.ddsindia.com/www/pdf/brochure_english.pdf

Virtuous cycles

André Gonçalves from Brazil showed how enabling government policies and effective government – civil society interaction has created the basis for elegant solutions in Brazil. The national school feeding programme buys food from small farmers on a massive scale. In this way the Government has played an important role in strengthening strong local value chains, and in the valorisation of local food habits. It is not helpful to think in dichotomies: rights or markets. Markets are a social reality. The Brazilian experience has taught us that with the right policies, small farmers can benefit from markets. However, we should not let the larger reality out of our sight. Investments in large scale agribusinesses are many times higher than in small scale family farming. But a virtuous cycle has been created. And we must continue asking the question: What kind of development do we need for civilization?

Organisation is a process

Ngolia Kimanzu (Swedish Cooperative Centre) made a strong case for small farmers’ organisation as a condition for their effective participation in markets. How do small farmers get organised and penetrate the market? Donors have to rethink mechanisms of supporting small farmers. How can they ensure that organisations of small farmers - as well as big ones - benefit from their support? There is huge potential in local markets. These are very important for small farmers and need to be further developed.

Another problematic issue going against small farmers’ organisation is that in the present donor culture has too much of a focus on results. If we only look at results and not at the processes of farmer organisation we run the risk of throwing the child away with the bathwater. Lastly, Kimanzu raised the issue of emerging conflict of interest between small and large farmers, in situations where there is an increasing participation of small farmers in organisations that are dominated by larger farmers. This is happening for instance in South Africa and Zambia. How to deal with such conflicts?

From dichotomies to diversity

More than ‘just’ being a provocative debate, the day ended with a call for concerted action. These were some of the issues raised:

• Small farmers can change the world. But how to ensure that the huge untapped potential of agro ecological practices gets actualised?
• Diversification in economies is key to a balanced and inclusive development process. Brazil is a successful example.
• We need a roadmap, a major strategy to work towards the wide implementation of agro ecological farming approaches. We need to move fast to more resilient systems; soon we will reach a tipping point. We must question our own wasteful lifestyles.
• The Global Committee on Food Security, and the Global Strategic Framework have a major role to play.
• The UN should produce a IPCC type of report on agriculture and food.
• There is an urgent need to bring a balanced perspective on small farmers to the Rio+20 debate.
• The disbelief of policymakers must be challenged head on.

This brings me to the conclusion that, beyond markets and rights, there has to be the political will to understand the complex challenges and tremendous potential of small farmers. Let us think beyond simplified dichotomies - markets versus rights, small farmers versus big farmers (“who will feed the world?”), local versus global markets, rural versus urban poor, etc…. We then may be able to visualise a world where diversity - in farming sizes, styles, food systems, markets, etc…- is respected and valued. It’s time to chart out the road map.

Text: Edith van Walsum