The President of IFAD, Lennart Båge, travelled to Paraguay on 23 May to take part in the Seventh Specialized Meeting for Small-scale Agriculture (REAF) hosted by the South Common Market, better known as MERCOSUR.

An IFAD official delegation that included Isabel Lavadenz, the Director of the Latin America and the Caribbean Division, and Paolo Silveri, the country programme manager for the Southern Cone, took the opportunity to visit rural communities and government officials in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. They wanted to see the living conditions in rural areas for themselves and strengthen cooperation with development stakeholders.

“By speaking with governments, farmers’ associations and my colleagues in the UN system, I have reaffirmed my conviction that supporting poor rural people is not only a moral imperative,” said President Båge. “It also makes very good sense because we will need both commercial agriculture and efficient small-scale farmers to feed a growing world population and to meet a growing demand for energy, including bioenergy, that we will face in the near future.”

According to recent studies presented at the REAF meeting, small-scale agrobusiness in Brazil accounted for about 10 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2003. In Uruguay and Paraguay, small-scale farmers were responsible for 26 and 23 per cent of the total agricultural GDP, respectively. And in Argentina, they provided 53 per cent of the permanent working force for agriculture (2002).

“By looking at these figures, the MERCOSUR member countries have understood that small-scale farmers cannot be excluded from economic and social development processes,” said President Båge. “On the contrary, there is a need for specific policies that facilitate their essential contribution. Small farmers are not the problem, they are part of the solution.”

“IFAD has been supporting this policymaking process since the creation of REAF and our partners are very grateful for this. During my many meetings with governments and civil society all of them told me: IFAD is different. And I am sure this was positive remark.”

Small farmers in northwest Argentina say their problems are lack of access to land, markets and credit

“Our piece of land is so small that we can not use it as collateral to ask for credit,” says Walter Bianchini, smallholder producer in Tucumán, in northwest Argentina. “Without credit, we can not buy seeds, fertilizers and the machinery we need to plant and harvest. And when we manage to grow some vegetables and keep a few pigs, there are no markets near here where we can sell them.”

“Poor people face many economic barriers and it is almost impossible for them to overcome them alone,” says Ricardo Roodschild, Technical Coordinator for the Programa de Desarrollo del Noroeste Argentino (PRODERNOA) in Tucumán, one of the IFAD-funded programmes in Argentina. 

“People need to pool efforts and resources, and get organized in producers’ cooperatives to be able to get out of the vicious circle of poverty and exclusion,” he says.

PRODERNOA started activities in 2003. It works in five Argentinean provinces in the northwest to improve the socio-economic conditions of some 6,000 poor rural households by enabling them to gain better access to credit and technical assistance.

“Before the PRODERNOA arrived, I was not able to work my land because I could not afford to buy agricultural tools,” says Abel Argañaraz, who owns the house where the cooperative members store their tools. “A truck costs around 14,000 pesos – about US$4,600 – and no one has that much money around here.”

“The loan we received from PRODERNOA has enabled us to buy a truck for the cooperative. We don’t need to spend money any more hiring the truck from someone else. Instead, we are hiring it out ourselves and with the revenues we have almost repaid the loan.”

Economic exclusion is a major constraint for development in rural areas. But exclusion from basic services and policymaking contributes further to marginalization and worsening of living conditions.

Carmen Jimenez is one of the seven women members of the Cooperative Soraire in the community of Bellavista, Tucumán. She keeps pigs and grows corn on a small piece of land inherited from her relatives, who used to work at the nearby sugar cane factory. It used to be a prosperous sugar cane area, but the recent sugar price crisis in the international market has left many of the factories abandoned. Former workers stayed on in the small parcels of land once donated by the farm. But access to services such as healthcare and transport is very limited, and access to land is not secure at all.

“Every year the rains destroy our gardens and our pigs,” says Carmen. “The water channels around the sugar cane factory are ruined and the rains cause tremendous floods in our houses and gardens. We have complained many times but nothing changes because these lands still belong to the abandoned factory.”

Thanks to the PRODERNOA loan, Carmen has been able to build a platform to keep her pigs safe from the floods. She has also bought a freezer and a machine to make sausages, which she sells to her neighbours.

Small farmers produce most of the food consumed at MERCOSUR

“The 2003 Cancún Conference for the World Trade Organization negotiations was catalytic for pooling efforts and advocating for special treatment for family agriculture in the region,” says Lavadenz.

That year, both civil society and governments of the MERCOSUR area held several preparatory meetings for the WTO round. The meetings helped make visible the two agricultural systems that coexist in the MERCOSUR countries: one based on commercial agriculture for exportation, and the second the provider of most of food consumed in the region.

“In spite of the different visions and strategies of the various stakeholders, one common message came out of these forums,” says Lavadenz. “There was an urgent need to pool efforts and advocate for a differentiated treatment for family agriculture in the region.”

Straight after Cancún, the Brazilian government submitted a proposal to the Common Market Group of MERCOSUR recommending that a Specialized Meeting on Family Agriculture (REAF, in Spanish) be created. This would work to strengthen public policies supporting family farming and promoting trade of family-based production at the regional level. REAF was formally constituted on March 2004 and it has already held seven meetings, the last one in Asunción, Paraguay.

“IFAD has been supporting REAF since its creation,” says Paolo Silveri. “Specialized meetings are consultancy groups for the MERCOSUR governing bodies but they do not receive any funding. National governments cover the costs of the biannual meetings but it is essential to have other sources of funding to ensure the participation of civil society representatives.”

IFAD has provided two grants to support this process (FIDAMERCOSUR and FIDAREAF) for a total commitment of US$1.9 million.

The next REAF meeting will take place in Uruguay from 22 to 26 October 2007. The agenda includes: policies for rural women workers and rural youth, policies to increase access to land and agrarian reform, bioenergy, agricultural insurance to compensate for the effects of climate change, funding for family agriculture and the potential of medicinal plants for income generation.

IFAD supports Uruguay’s leadership in piloting the One UN initiative

In Uruguay, President Båge and his team met the Vice President, Rodolfo Nin Novoa and the Ministers of Finances, Danilo Astori, and of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries, José Alberto Mújica. IFAD is currently supporting the government’s main tool for fighting rural poverty, the Uruguay Rural project, which supports small farmers and their organizations in their efforts to be more competitive in local and national markets.

The IFAD delegation also visited the “UN House” in Montevideo, and met with representatives from the 12 organizations resident in the country.  The President congratulated the UN Resident Coordinator ad interim Heimo Mikkola, for piloting the UN Reform in the Latin American region and offered IFAD’s support in this challenging task. Specifically, President Båge mentioned IFAD’s experience in the region in orienting public investment towards rural poverty reduction and mobilizing resources to meet the Millennium Development Goals.