To meet the needs of the growing global population, agricultural production must double by 2050. This challenge is made even more daunting by the combined effect of climate change and increasing competition for land, water and energy sources. There is a new global consensus that a more systemic approach to sustainable agricultural intensification is required that better preserves or restores the natural resource base and increases the resilience of farming systems to climatic variation and change. Systems embracing a number of sustainable intensification practices, often building on traditional techniques, are being promoted and increasingly adopted by farmers. However, environmental sustainability is often compromised in order to address the urgent need to reduce hunger and rural poverty, and to respond to increasingly demanding, competitive and homogeneous markets.

Based on the exchange of farmers’ experiences from different parts of the world, this Working Group of the Farmers’ Forum 2012 will seek to:

• Take stock of any potentially inappropriate field practices and/or policy decisions in relation to sustainable agriculture and possible remedial areas of intervention
• Identify areas where partnership between IFAD and farmers’ organizations could improve project design and implementation and the support to national and regional policy dialogue to promote Sustainable Agriculture while reducing rural poverty
• Identify three or four practical recommendations from issues raised during the discussions presented to the IFAD Governing Council

It is suggested that focused discussion take place around the following issues (sequence of issues may change):

Issue 1: Policy
Facing the urgency to reduce hunger and poverty at the national level, policy makers – and to some extent smallholder farmers – may compromise sustainable good agricultural practices that help conserve natural resources, biological diversity and ecosystem services, and that make the best use of local indigenous knowledge and farmers’ experience. Policies and practices are promoted that offer immediate effect in terms of productivity increases and respond to an increasingly demanding, competitive and homogeneous market. However, they neglect some of the potential negative effects, especially in the longer term, and the associated increase in risk and reduced resilience of smallholder farmers.

Discussion issues: while a compromise may be necessary, what preventive or remedial actions could be undertaken to reduce the level of this trade-off? What would be needed to support policy dialogue with decision-makers, at the political, research or even donor organization levels? Are there successful policy dialogue stories that could be replicated? What tools or procedures could support FO and IFAD in their policy dialogue to enhance sustainable agricultural practices?

Issue 2: Advisory services
Advisory services to smallholder farmers are very weak in most developing countries. Communication between researchers, extension agents and farmers is often disconnected, resulting in the development of technologies that are often locally inappropriate or not adapted to the local farmer’s conditions. In addition, farmers do not always have access to these technologies, resulting in low adoption rates. Some participatory approaches, such as the Farmer Field Schools, have been very effective in improving the effectiveness of combining local indigenous knowledge with adaptive research and technologies, supporting the farmers’ technical and managerial skills and knowledge, improving their productivity and enhancing their social assets while being sensitive to gender and culture. Farmer Field Schools create the space for the interaction of farmers, researchers and extension agents in the field and help farmers build self-esteem by enabling them to becoming experts and scientists in their own field.

Discussion issues: are there any similarly successful approaches? Could we promote some of these good examples in more IFAD projects? To what level could such participatory approaches be scaled up?

Issue 3: Development projects
Many rural development projects, including IFAD projects, cover the value chains and aim to link smallholder farmers to markets. This is often done by facilitating contractual arrangements with buyers, whereby advisory services and input providers are often managed by the contracting party. In other cases, farmers are organized in groups (various types and levels), which allows them to better access markets. However, while project successes are measured in terms of increased productivity at the farm level, profit or access by farmers to markets, little information is obtained on the actual farming practices undertaken and their environmental sustainability.

Discussion issues: how much do we know about these farmers’ practices being promoted to respond to market needs? Do they compromise some of the good practices resulting in environmental and economic sustainability and farmers’ resilience? Are there good/bad examples from the field? What can farmers’ organizations and IFAD do to improve the situation?