Issue number 6 - December 2010

Building pro-poor policies for Latin America and the rest of the world

By Josefina Stubbs

   
   

While Brazil invests 1 percent of GDP in agricultural research each year, many smallholders still rely on the old horse and plough.

If we are ever going to win this battle against rural poverty, we need policy dialogue that actively empowers the poor rural people of this world to take the reigns of their own destiny. It is key to fostering a healthy society and an essential ingredient for the advance of humanity.

As we saw during this November’s MERCOSUR Regional Specialized Meeting on Family Farming (REAF) in Brasilia – where Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay agreed to follow Brazil’s national policy of buying 30 percent of the food used in public institutions like hospitals and schools from smallholder farmers – proactive policy dialogue can work. And by supporting institutions like the REAF, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is now playing an active role in facilitating the propagation of these types of pro-poor policies across the Southern Cone. Better yet, with six agreements on South-South Cooperation signed during this REAF, we are now seeing that the conversations on rural poverty and agricultural development that take place in South America can easily be exported across the ocean to countries in Africa and Asia.

The South-South agreements signed during the REAF will support the public purchase of smallholder produce, and will facilitate the transfer of agricultural know-how and technology to Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, with an initial credit line of some US$240 million from Brazil to help these African nations purchase the tools and equipment they need to support their smallholder agriculture.

So what does IFAD need to do? Now is our time to shine. Many governments throughout Latin America are demonstrating a genuine desire to actively engage in pro-poor, pro-farmer policy dialogues. But we need to foster this dialogue, package it for exportation across the South, and make sure that we align these new policy shifts with our rural development projects.

After all, it’s in everybody’s best interest to actively engage family farmers in this process. As I learned during this meeting of the REAF, there are around 4.9 million farms in the MERCOSUR, covering some 120 million hectares. Of these, 83 per cent are family-operated, which provide as much as 70 per cent of the food for the region. Only by supporting these family farms will we be able to feed ourselves 20 years from now.

What is the REAF?

   
   

Putting policy dialogue into practice in the 14th meeting of the REAF.

The methodology of the REAF is quite simple. Working across the MERCOSUR, the organization puts government officials together with smallholder farmers and farmer’s organizations to discuss pro-poor policies that can be replicated across the globe. The Specialized Meeting has been supported through an IFAD grant for the past seven years.

The REAF fosters the capacity of social organizations regarding environmental policy, risk management, gender, youth, value chains and technological innovations, allowing these organizations to actively engage in the dialogue on a grand stage.

Some of the themes developed in the REAF constitute important advances in the effectiveness of governments in rural areas – creating options for young people and rural women, farmer’s insurance, farming reform and more. The creation of National Registries for Family Farming, for example, made it possible to identify and count the millions of families that work in family farming, allowing for the focalization of policies and public investments beneficial to family farmers.

Policy debates on food security, limiting urban migration, protection of family farming interests and the future of smallholders in Middle Income Countries have also been discussed in events held by the REAF.

Other news from Brazil

Alongside the meeting of the REAF, there was a high-level conference on Public Policies for Family Farming, Rural Development and Food Security between Middle Income Countries, hosted by IFAD and the Brazilian Ministry of Agrarian Development. Representatives from Brazil, China, India and South Africa took part in this conference, also presenting a series of studies on family farming and food security that provided some useful insights into the way forward for South-South Cooperation, pro-poor policy shifts and rural development in Middle Income Countries.

From the studies, it seems we have our work cut out for us. And an initial analysis of the findings points to opportunities (and challenges) in fostering South-South Cooperation, especially in regards to:

The studies will be published early next year, allowing us to continue the dialogue on farming in Middle Income Countries. But from my perspective, one thing is clear. Only by scaling up our operations in large emerging economies like Brazil will we be able to truly help the rural people living there step out of poverty. In the end, bigger countries and bigger economies require bigger ideas and broader rural development programs.

Future funding for Brazil

This year, the Brazilian government’s Sustainable Rural Development Project for Agrarian Reform Settlements in the Semi-Arid North-East of Brazil, better known as Dom Helder Camara, will close after improving the lives and livelihoods of thousands of poor rural people.

Brazil’s North-East will continue to benefit from the IFAD-supported Rural Communities Development Project (known locally as Gente de Valor). This large-scale poverty reduction project has been operational since December 2006, with a total cost of US$60 million – $30 million of which is coming from IFAD. It is now operating in 34 municipalities in the region, and hopes to better the lives of over 10,000 households. 

The IFAD Executive Board has also approved two new sustainable rural development projects for Brazil.

We expect that the new projects prepared jointly between IFAD and the governments of the states of Piauí and Paraíba will be authorized by the Brazilian Government in the next few months, and that we’ll be able to launch them early next year.

This will mean an additional US$88 million in funding for rural poverty reduction in Brazil, with some US$45 million coming from IFAD.

We also have a project under design for Sergipe as well as a knowledge-management grant that will ensure the learnings from successful projects like Dom Helder Camara and Gente de Valor can be shared across Brazil and with the rest of the world.

   

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IFAD launches Rural Poverty Report 2011

Across Latin America and the Caribbean the numbers behind rural poverty provide an unexpected glimpse into the reality that faces poor rural people everyday. The International Fund for Agricultural Development’s Rural Poverty Report 2011, released this December, offers up an in-depth analysis of the facts, faces and trends behind these numbers.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the numbers are not surprising. Almost a quarter of the rural population in the region live on less than US$2 per day. Only 10 to 20 percent of agricultural households earn more than three-quarters of their income from on-farm resources, while anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of rural people work as wage labourers. And conservation agriculture is gaining importance across the region, where more than 50 million hectares are now under no-tillage systems in Argentina and Brazil, and in parts of Paraguay 70 per cent of the land is under no tillage.

Beyond the numbers, the face of rural poverty in Latin America can be seen in the stories of resilient rural enterprisers like Eliany Portacarrero Novoa. In the Rural Poverty Report’s ‘In Their Words’ sections, this young dynamo provides the insight and farsightedness of someone twice her age (and with a doctorate in agronomy).

   
   

Eliany Portocarrero Novoa in her Peruvian home.

‘Eliany Portocarrero Novoa, age 15, comes from a peasant farming family in the Amazonas region of eastern Peru and is a weekly boarder at a state secondary school for gifted students.

Eliany wants to see “economic and educational levels” raised in her community. She is concerned about the low standard of most primary schools, where children are just taught basic numeracy and literacy, and the lack of secondary schools. “Without studies,” she comments, “a person can do nothing…by studying you will get a good job and make money to support your family.” Her class at school has recently set up a mobile library for the local community.

Eliany says her parents are “doing the same activities that their parents and ancestors did for years” and believes they would “improve their life quality” if they ever gave up farming. Although she says she would like a professional career such as accountancy, where you sit “in front of a computer…and don’t suffer burning sun or pouring rain,” she is keen that the newly established panela (unrefined cane sugar) processing industry in her community should grow, with the support of the Association of Panela Producers.

Eliany belongs to a youth association, which among other things is involved in environmental regeneration. She speaks passionately about the need for environmental protection and sustainable farming.

“We are not using the forests in an adequate and proper way. We cut trees and burn down woods every day, we are plundering nature…climatic changes are occurring for which we are to blame, with our activities…the seasons don’t follow one another properly, so the crops get spoiled… Firstly, we should receive some guidance through talks, so that people would become aware of the damage…then we should set goals and put them into effect. For instance, we could sow plants and reforest…[and use] natural fertilizers [to] improve the land.”’ – Rural Poverty Report 2011

   
   

‘A high dependence on agriculture signifies a high sensitivity to changes in the environment, such as drought and floods. This map highlights countries with high shares of agriculture, and also countries with high incidence of poverty, another factor in assessing the vulnerability of rural populations.’ (Emmanuelle Bournay, UNEP/GRID-Arendal)

Rural poverty in LAC today

No matter what the numbers indicate, in an area with marked inequalities, many poor rural people in Latin America and the Caribbean still live on less than US$2 per day, and have poor access to financial services, markets, training and other opportunities. There is a strong concentration of extreme poverty among landless farmers, indigenous peoples, women and children.

Before the global economic crisis hit it seemed that the region had finally begun to find a winning combination of market, social and civil-society development policies that could conquer the tradition of social exclusion and injustice, with many countries showing positive trends both in poverty reduction and in a better distribution of income. Rural poverty rates were down and extreme poverty had also decreased.

But while the increase in poverty rates as a result of the economic crisis has yet to be broadly documented, some economists say rural poverty rates could again spike, which would mean adding millions of people to the ranks of the rural poor.

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Putting youth first

   
   

Yeisully Tapias Arcila (on the left) is a young entrepreneur from La Dorada, Colombia. She took part in the Colombia event, saying that these types of constructive spaces ‘build a better world.’

For ages, poets and priests, philosophers and revolutionaries have set their sights on defining the needs, wants, passions and prerogatives of youth. Rubén Darío, the Nicaraguan poet and father of literary modernism in Latin America called youth a “divine treasure.” The great Cuban philosopher poet José Martí went even further, saying that "youth is the age of growth and of development, of activity and vividness, of imagination and momentum." No matter how you define youth – or look at the needs of today’s young rural poor – it has become clear that it is essential for rural development organizations, such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), to proactively engage in dialogue on the matters of youth.

In November IFAD’s Latin America and the Caribbean Division kicked off the dialogue on rural youth with its First Meeting on Youth Entrepreneurship and Rural Micro-enterprising in Cartagena, Colombia. The five-day knowledge sharing and policy dialogue event was organized by IFAD, the Oportunidades Rurales programme of the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture and the IFAD-supported Regional Program to Support Rural Afro-Latino Populations (ACUA).

Along with more than 20 senior IFAD staff and project staff from the three development partners, over 30 young entrepreneurs coming from Argentina, Bosnia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, Nicaragua, Madagascar, Peru, Senegal and Syria participated in the workshop.

The discussion in Colombia centered on engaging young people to inform development strategies, fostering intergenerational dialogue, and finding mechanisms to improve access to credit, markets, value chains and rural financial services.

And while many IFAD projects in Latin America and the Caribbean are actively engaging youth, Roberto Haudry, Country Programme Manager for Colombia underscored that “IFAD – and its projects – lack, and should acquire the capacity to hear the young people, learn more from them and trust them much more. IFAD and its partners should commit themselves to multiplying their exchanges with rural young people, and facilitating exchanges between themselves, in order to learn more about each other’s successful business models, difficulties, solutions and innovations.”

Haudry highlighted some key messages and lessons learned from the Colombia event:

Current funding directed at youth

   
   

High unemployment and limited opportunities make for mixed opportunities in the Colombian countryside.

While the path forward is steep, IFAD does already actively engage in a number of youth-forward development projects and activities in Latin America and the Caribbean.

For instance, the IFAD-supported Caribbean Regional Unit for Technical Assistance (CARUTA) is launching a contest that encourages young entrepreneurs to create their own micro-enterprise. 

The contest is open to rural groups and associations based in any of the 10 countries covered by CARUTA (Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, the OECS, and Trinidad and Tobago), and is likely to run twice a year.

According to the contest’s website, “Great emphasis will be given to the support of rural youth and women initiatives… The theme of the first competition will be micro-enterprise development, income generating activity and innovation.”

Young people from throughout the Caribbean are being encouraged to submit their proposals for consideration.

In the Rural Youth Enterprises category “a particular emphasis will be given to the agricultural sector and to projects that seek to ensure further youth participation in the mainstreaming of agricultural and business micro-enterprise development,” according to event organizers. “Innovations should promote the sector’s profitability and self-employment prospects by encouraging youth to invest and undertake rural and agricultural enterprises in a sustainable manner.”

In Ecuador ACUA is teaching young people to produce and sell organic cacao and chocolate. “This is bringing in more money and creating jobs that will help young people build a better future,” Haudry said.

And in Brazil, the long-running Dom Helder Camara project, which closes this year, extended more than 250 two-year scholarships that allowed young people to study advanced farming techniques at a regional agro-technical college.

The FIDA Occidente program in Guatemala is also funding agricultural education at an area high school. The market initiatives and increased incomes that have been documented in the project area have also made it possible for more young people to stay in school by lowering seasonal migration.

“With the increased productivity that modern irrigation systems and improved market access can bring, the people in these communities are no longer going hungry and the children are able to go to school,” said the Director of IFAD’s Latin America and the Caribbean Division, Josefina Stubbs, on her recent visit to Guatemala.

Looking forward

The closing of the Cartagena conference ended with an announcement that a special event similar to the Cartagena Youth workshop will be held in Africa in 2011, as part of a global consultation process with rural young people.

IFAD’s Governing Council in 2011 will also focus on youth issues.

Taysir Al-Ghanem contributed to this report.

   
   

Using data from 2000, this map gives a good overview of youth underemployment worldwide. The information, made available from the UN Common Database and ILO estimates as mapped by Globalis, refers to people between the ages of 15 or 16 and 24 (depending on national definition) as youth. 

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Outlooks

Water is life - In Brazil’s semi-arid North-East innovation is key to poverty reduction

By Gregory Benchwick and Iván Cossío

   
   

Innovative garden design optimizes water use in this semi-arid region.

It was Rosa de Jesus’ smile – an ever-ascending crescent of hope and gratitude – that sealed the deal. Yes, the work of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Brazil’s poor and disenfranchised North-East state of Bahia was having a positive impact.

After all, Rosa didn’t have direct access to drinking water until we co-financed a project that built a rooftop water collection system on her well-kept cinder-block bungalow. And in an area that receives between 500 and 800mm of rain a year, water is life. No wonder Rosa was smiling.

But, one thing remained unclear. Would this impact last, or would Rosa de Jesus’ smile fade when our funding trailed off?

It’s a question of sustainability – aren’t all development issues? – and one we hoped to explore on our recent mission to the dried-and-dusty Sertão region of Brazil, where we spent two days visiting communities that are receiving assistance from an IFAD co-financed project known as Gente de Valor.

   
   

Cisterns like this have allowed area farmers to store water and reduce new risks created by changing climate patterns.

Along with representatives from our project teams we were joined by a high-level delegation from IFAD that included Yukiko Omura, IFAD Vice President; Josefina Stubbs, Director of our Latin America and the Caribbean Division; and Ides de Willebois, Director of the Eastern and Southern Africa Division.

In English, we call the project the Rural Communities Development Project, but Gente de Valor (People of Value) just seems a bit more true to the project’s mission of “empowering poor people and their organizations to develop the local economy and improve income-generating capabilities in order to transform subsistence farms into profitable rural businesses.”

The project has been up and running since December 2006, with a total cost of US$60 million – $30 million of which is coming from IFAD. It is now operating in 34 municipalities in the region, and hopes to better the lives of over 10,000 households. 

Building a better life

There’s no doubt that the Gente de Valor project is helping create a better quality of life for the inhabitants of the region. After all, in a community that largely depends on migration during the dry season for its livelihood – they also raise goats and farm crops like cassava and manioc – good old H20 is as valuable as liquid gold. 

The rooftop collection systems are providing a clean source of drinking water. Before the systems were built, the women of the community needed to trek several kilometers – two or three times a day – to get water.

For agricultural irrigation, Gente de Valor is training community members to build cisterns. To date, the government has built some 27,000 cisterns in the region, through projects like Gente de Valor, with the goal of supplying water to 1 million rural families for irrigation and livestock consumption.

The construction of these cisterns is especially interesting to us. Not only do they provide a place to stockpile water for the dry season, but building them has also created some new jobs in the region, with local men being trained as masons to build the large two-by-three meter basins.

The water is being used to irrigate small “vegetable gardens” near the homes, where the women are growing water-intensive foods like onions, carrots and lettuce. They eventually hope to generate enough produce to sell some of their goods to markets and local schools – under Brazilian law 30 per cent of the food served in schools needs to come from local producers.

But farming vegetables in this cactus-studded scrubland is easier said than done. And in order to optimize the water efficiency for their vegetable gardens, the women are using a rather ingenious subterranean drip system.

First, they lay down a barrier to reduce seepage from the shallow 30cm bed. Then they run a drip pipe along the length of the bed, and cover the pipe with clay roof tiles (to reduce clogging) and dry brush. This is topped with soil. The end product is a narrow bed that stays wet longer, and hopefully will produce rich crops in a region that is known for its poor soils and that has seen erratic rain patterns in recent years thanks to climate change.

Building a better life for the people of the Brazilian countryside – at the same time reducing urban migration – may be key to reducing poverty nationwide. Ask any Brazilian whether life is better in the countryside or in the favelas (shantytowns) of major cities like Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paolo and nine out of 10 will tell you that life is better in the countryside.

Show me the money

So life for the people of Brazil’s North-East is a bit better thanks to the hard work of the communities and the project staffers at Gente de Valor. That’s a tremendous accomplishment. It makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside.

But not all of development is about warm fuzzies. And we were still having a hard time seeing where the new revenue streams – the market-driven businesses and products that would allow these proud families to pull themselves out of poverty – were going to come from. After all, a small garden is hardly enough to create lasting income gains.

Luckily, there are a few glimmers of hope. The region originally planned to farm castor beans for Brazil’s burgeoning biofuel industry. But the oil proved too viscous for fuel – in the end, it is better suited for lubricating jet engines and as an additive for makeup – and some small farmers went bankrupt as a result.

So they are looking for new alternatives. One such alternative is the umbu (or Brazilian plum). Umbu grows wild in the region, and locals are trying to monetize it by creating jams and candy for export to boutique markets around the world.

They are also experimenting with cashews and honey, and are creating biodegradable bags and savory snacks from cassava and manioc. Will these bags replace the wasteful plastic varieties we see in our grocery stores? Will umbu compote be the next hot thing in the gourmet eateries of Paris and New York? Will castor beans finally live up to their potential?

Only time will tell. But with strong community organizations in place throughout the North-East – and a progressive policy that seems to value the people of Brazil’s countryside – it seems certain that at the very least, Rosa de Jesus will keep on smiling.

   
   

This Globalis map takes a look at predicted rainfall patterns in 2050. The map follows a ‘business as usual scenario, which means high population growth… and slow introduction of new technologies.’ The colour in North-East Brazil is especially telling.

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