Jump to... Introduction Nutrition focus Gender-sensitive analysis Inter-agency programme What next? Conclusions Appendix

Successful projects require the provision of complementary policies, institutions and infrastructure. In order to achieve a larger HFS and nutrition impact in its projects, IFAD recognizes the importance of integrating its micro-level interventions into the socio-economic, institutional, and policy environment at the regional, sectoral and national level. Of particular concern in this context are:

• integration of projects into well-defined sectoral and macro-economic development programmes and priorities of national and local governments

• adoption of a regional food system perspective to stabilize local food supplies – with special emphasis on promotion of local and regional trade

• development and synchronization of food crisis early warning systems, famine mitigation strategies and emergency contingency plans to respond better to rapid deteriorations of food security in high-risk environments

• strengthening of national and regional capacities for technical project backstopping, such as enhanced food security/nutrition security assessment and monitoring capabilities

• improved common property resource management and individual resource access through institutional and legal changes, to safeguard women’s access, in particular; and

• targeted agricultural research and extension in favour of HFS and nutrition-relevant technologies and the most vulnerable groups

Sectoral and macro-economic public pPolicy and programme development

Sectoral and macro-economic policies have intended and unintended food-security and nutrition effects that need to be understood fully. Policies for improving HFS go beyond direct food and agriculture-related policies at the household, community and sectoral levels. They include economy-wide policies with implications for food prices, income and employment of the poor (such as trade and exchange rate policies, fiscal and sectoral price policies and policies regarding public sector investments, expenditures and enterprises). IFAD is therefore increasingly directing its attention towards supporting programme activities, with governments and beneficiaries playing a greater role in defining objectives and modalities. The corollary of this form of engagement is much greater involvement in and support for policy development. In many countries, IFAD projects form part of wider agricultural sector development or public investment programmes to ensure consistent policy formulation, develop unified services and ensure complementary funding for major infrastructure (e.g., Malawi, Nigeria, Zambia).

Regional food systems perspective to stabilize food supplies

Many poor households, particularly in marginal areas, are often net purchasers of grain, and enhanced intra-local trading activities are likely to reduce the cost of food for these households. Production activities may have to be strengthened amongsmallholders in adjacent regions where the agro-ecological conditions are more favourable, and intra-regional trade promoted, in order to stabilize food supplies in marginal areas. The Southern Highlands Extension and Rural Financial Services Project in Tanzania illustrates the importance of having a regional food systems perspective in order to achieve a positive impact on HFS.

The project aims to improve marketing infrastructure and transport and to upgrade suppliers'’capacity to facilitate grain movement from surplus to deficit areas. Another example of the importance of a regional food systems perspective is the Smallholder Dry Areas Resource Management Project in Zimbabwe. This project encourages local trade, and local and household storage, based on the importance of intra-locality grain trade to the food security of families living in semi-arid areas with recurrent local droughts. With this project, loans will be used for leasing or building more local storage facilities, installing local mills and enhancing transport capacity and measures to ensure appropriate processing for small grains.

Responding to changing food security conditions: early warning systems and food shortage contingency plans

Early warning systems and contingency plans to facilitate government responses to food shortages should be incorporated into project design in cases where food security may be vulnerable to drought or other unforeseen stress factors. Such plans are already being included in several IFAD projects. In Zambia, IFAD has been supporting the development of a set of national and regional policies and mechanisms to deal better with recurrent crop failures and food shortages, in collaboration with the government and other donors. [Box II] Food and nutrition monitoring and the capacity at the national, provincial, and district levels to react to food crises are at the core of an integrated approach to achieve household and nutrition security in Zambia. The system will have the capacity to collect and analyse food-security-relevant data, at the household and regional levels, concerning the degree of food insecurity in general and of vulnerable groups in particular. Similar efforts are under way in Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Support for In-country capacity-building and people empowerment

Adequate local technical expertise is essential for guiding project personnel and beneficiaries in identifying household food and nutrition-security-related opportunities and constraints, and to translate these into specific activities within IFAD projects. The Fund may take different approaches in building up and strengthening the capacity of technical resource groups, to be based in public-sector or civil-society institutions, or in both. In Zambia, IFAD provides pioneering support for a national and regional HFS, Nutrition and Health Monitoring System (FHANIS). The need for bottom-up and more democratic strategies will also mean more investments in institutions that promote development based on the empowerment of poor people and their communities. Civil-society institutions and NGOs will have to play an important role in this process.

Improved access to individual and common property resources

Household food insecurity often results from an inequitable distribution of and access to productive resources, such as land, water, credit and information. Women may have the prime responsibility for food production but limited user rights to land; this limits their ability to gain access to credit and information. In many cases, their access is shrinking in the face of state takeovers and the shift from common property to private entitlement, or from food to cash crops. Yet, the livelihoods of poor rural families often depend on women’s access to communal land, nearby forests and waterways for supplies of food, fuel wood, water for domestic consumption and agricultural production, medicines and materials for craft production and house-building. The exploitation of common property resources is particularly important for helping resource-poor farmers meet their HFS needs. Access must be ensured through appropriate institutional and legal frameworks, and through effective local enforcement of such rights. Particular efforts must be made to safeguard women’s traditional rights to land access and ownership.¹⁷

Making Research Priorities More Relevant to HFS and Nutrition

Properly designed agricultural research can have a high pay-off for improved HFS and nutrition. For a long time IFAD has supported basic agricultural research through technical assistance grants for international research centres and the adaptation and distribution of new technologies through National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS). As land becomes scarce around the world, food production growth will depend increasingly on higher output per unit of land, produced in an environmentally sustainable manner. In order to have the maximum impact on food security and nutrition, particularly at the household level, research will have to be directed increasingly towards low-potential areas and smallholder producers, targeting the different needs of men and women. Agricultural research and technology extension should be guided by the following principles:¹⁸

• Food crops that have received relatively less attention in the past – roots (such as cassava), tubers, millet and sorghum – should become more important in agricultural research.

• Research should be directed toward diversification in agricultural production, including fruit, vegetables, livestock and fisheries.

• Ongoing research should be related more strongly to the specific needs and constraints of smallholders, of farmers in less-favoured agro-ecological zones and, most particularly, of female producers.

• Yield-increasing technologies have to be developed in an environmentally sustainable manner, emphasizing multicropping and maintenance of soil quality. Economic viability in the short and long term must be ensured.

• Technologies that save labour for women in agricultural production, processing and household maintenance, without sacrificing women’s ability to earn independent incomes, have to be promoted.

• Biotechnologies for the breeding of new disease-resistant seeds adapted for arid and semi-arid environments may offer a huge potential, which should be exploited.

• More appropriate post-harvest crop-preservation technologies should be used to reduce spoilage and rodent infestation.

• Research should be conducted in an interactive and participatory manner, to provide communities and specific groups of male and female farmers with a forum for their priorities and concerns.

The importance of integrating investments in basic research on staple foods, dissemination of improved seeds and pest control technologies for HFS and nutrition is demonstrated in some of IFAD’s projects in Africa. An example of an investment that paid off is IFAD’s support to the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria under a technical assistance grant for biological control activities against cassava pests and disease. In 1983-84, the cassava mealy bug threatened widespread devastation in Zambia, but it was brought under control through the release of bio-control agents under IFAD’s North-Western Province Area Development Project.

The research benefits from investments in traditional food crops – and also scope for improvement – can be illustrated in the case of cassava production in Nigeria. An IFAD project in that country, which emphasized the multiplication of higher-yielding varieties, clearly promoted better national food security by significantly expanding cassava production. However, from an HFS and nutrition perspective, more attention should probably have been paid – and should be paid now – to farming systems research, input market conditions (fertilizer availability and access) and the poorest producers. Nutrition could have benefitted from better linkages to oil-palms and legumes and better awareness of potential cyanide problems in cassava processing. [Box VIII, Appendix]

Seed multiplication of improved varieties of traditional staples – cassava, sweet potato, beans and chickpea, which would be higher yielding and more pest resistant – and biological pest control measures are also at the centre of an IFAD project to reduce food insecurity and alleviate poverty in the Mara Region Farmers’ Initiative Project in Northern Tanzania.

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17/ As pointed out at the IFAD Conference on Hunger and Poverty, held in Brussels in 1995, special attention should be given to the revival of agrarian land reform on the international agenda.

18/ See Kennedy & Bouis, op. cit.