Preface.
The Executive Committee of the Tropical Agricultural Association (UK), acting on behalf of the membership of the Association, is pleased to offer a response to the DFID Consultation Document on Agriculture. There was general dismay within the Association at the way this consultation was only afforded a little over one week to respond. This short time conflicts with the Cabinet guidelines which recommend a minimum period for consultation of three months. The Association wishes to state that the short time frame does not facilitate confidence in open and fair consultation and made it impossible to obtain and approve the views of its membership at large. The TAA is grateful that DFID did allow some extra time for this response to be written.
The Executive Committee, in line with Government policy
on openness, is pleased for this response to be made publicly available.
The response will be published in a future edition of its Newsletter,
thus enabling the membership to be fully aware of the action taken on it’s
behalf by the Executive Committee, and giving them an opportunity
to bring forward any further comments in the future. TAA members
are invited to make further comments which can be sent to the chairman
of TAA (email address on general information page) who will forward them
to DIFD.
TAA Executive Committee
1.Preamble
“It
is unlikely that( other than agriculture)there
are many development interventions capable of reducing the numbers in poverty
so effectively”This quotation
is taken from an erudite paper “ Agricultural Productivity Growth and Poverty
Alleviation” byXavier Irz et al.
published inODI’s Development Policy
Review.It is a statement which
is fully endorsed by the membership of the TAA.
The
TAA welcomes the issueof
a consultation document on Agriculture by DFID, particularly at a time
when the priority given to agriculture by DFID is perceived by the members
of TAA to be at an all-time low. This low priority is clearly manifested
by a reduction in the number of DFID’s full time agricultural advisers,
by DFID’s reduction or cessation of support to its scientific units (particularly
The Natural Resources Institute), and a reduction in the support given
to agriculture relatedinstitutions in the
UK and overseas. However the document appears to target “poverty reduction”
(currently the key to DFID policy) and attempts to adjust the balance of
the SRL approach by emphasising “agriculture”.The
social aspects are perhaps over-emphasised (e.g. social capital, human
capital and political capital). The document does however seek to strengthen
the natural resources capital (farming) which is good and necessary, and
we hope will reintroduce farming into the DFID livelihoods vocabulary.The
TAA membership also has considerable concern over the trends in DFID’s
approach to development aid in agriculture away from the development and
transfer of the technologies needed to raise production towards support
for the equally, but not more, important social, economic and environmental
aspects.Concern at the direction
in which the British support for agricultural development has been going
is currently the main issue raised and debated in the margins of TAA seminars
and meetings, reflecting the concern of our members.
Although
the TAA welcomes the consultation document, the Association is disturbed
with some of the emphases given, omissions from its content and the fact
that the rhetoric contained therein is not matched by any indication of
actions to follow- particularly practical actions which will result in
raised productivity and improved marketing and trade.The
document also gives no indication of the level of resources which DFID
will give to agricultural development in the future, or how those resources
are to be deployed now that the agricultural institutional base in the
UK has been weakened to the point that it has almost disappearedThe
following comments reflect the views of the TAA.In
offering these comments, DFID is reminded that the TAA is an association
of professionals concerned with agriculture and rural development,whose
combined expertise and experience in the field is unrivalled anywhere in
the World.
1.1Overview
TAA
welcomes the general tenor of the document, but is not impressed by its
verbose style and considers that it contains a lot of statements of intended
policy but no real indications ofthe
need for, or the intended form offuture
action.
The
document , rightly in our view, gives due emphasis to the importance of
trade reform.The strengthening of
existing, and the creation of new markets, together with the development
of market chains linking producers to consumers is the key to raising productivity
and the movement away from low output subsistence to high output commercial
farming.Policies which encourage
subsistence farming are unlikely in the long term to succeed in eliminating
hunger, reducing poverty or feeding the world.Subsistence
farming cannot fund outside interventions such as advisory services without
external subsidies.Nor can peasant
farmers buy inputs such as fertilisers unless they become more commercial
and produce a surplus of crops for sale.Most
subsistence farming under-utilises the land, and the farmers main concern
is to look after the interests of their families. We do however recognise
that subsistence farmers are often migrant wage earners and only part time
farmers, and that it is often the women who do most of the farm work.We
believe that women farmers should be assisted to better develop their farms
and more income generating activities, and encouraged to undertake socially
beneficial work for their communities.Agriculture
in the future is likely to provide employment for fewer people than at
present as more and more people move from the rural to the urban areas.
Peasant farming is not seen as a desirable form of employment by many young
people and subsistence agriculture should not be seen as a long-term system
for the future. Therefore the aim of aid should be to encourage more commercial
farming and increaseddevelopment
of associated rural industries (see para 2.6). In this regard, the recent
demise of CDC’s agriculture investments, which were an efficient stimulatory
of rural development, is particularly regrettable.
The
TAA continues to be concerned about the effects of the pressures of human
population on the land, which result in small, and often inefficient farms
and the movement of farminginto
fragile environments. Developing efficient land use agricultural systems
cannot be contemplated in isolation from work on reducing the rate of population
increaseand the control of aids.
Most
cases of poor agricultural development are associated with bad government
policies, and efficient agriculture is made impossible by civil unrest
and war. The TAA agrees that the encouragement of good governance is needed
to create an enabling environment conducive to ensuring that people are
fed and rural incomes are raised. The harmful effects of long term food
aid from developed countries on local food production and agricultural
prosperity should also be recognised. ( see para 2.1)
Our
major criticism of the document is its failure to identify specific ways
which will strengthen civil society, reform extension methods, favour development
in remote areas and small villages and towns and foster public/private
sector partnerships. It also fails to recognise the continuing importance
of technology development and transfer needed to intervene in sustainably
raising production in the face of a deteriorating agricultural environment.The
paper also fails to recognise the high level of UK expertise in development
agriculture, in agricultural science and biology, in molecular biology
and biotechnology and in other areas of physical and social sciences, and
to identify ways in which it can be utilised
2.Specific
Points.
2.1 Trade.Trade
barriers and subsidies, in spite of the efforts of the WTO, continue to
be the biggest disincentive to farmers in the third world.The
paper should set out the UK’s policies in these areas much more clearly
and should indicate opposition to policies (particularly in the EU and
the USA, but also in Britain) which enable cheap food to be imported into
the third world and thus to discourage local production and self-reliance.
The document should set out firm positive policies in relation to the fair
trade import of agricultural produce and products from developing countries.Emphasis
should be given to the support of small and medium-scale agro-industrial
enterprises in rural areas which both create employment generating off-farm
income and add value in the production of agricultural products for the
local, regional and international markets. Support should also be given
to adding value by more processing at the farm level itself.
2.2 Land
UseThe
quality of agricultural land in many parts of the developing world, particularly
in sub-Saharan Africa,(SSA)continues
to decline as the natural resources are mined by agricultural systems which
fail to replenish nutrients exported by the harvests, or to conserve the
soils. Much more attention needs to be paid to the physical, chemical and
the biological problems of soil, particularly in the rain-fed systems of
SSA.The UK’s expertise in these
areas is unmatched elsewhere, although it is now being eroded as support
from BBSRC and DFID to the knowledge bases and resources built up in institutions
such as Rothamsted and the Land Resources Development Centre has declined.A
reversal in this trend should form part of DFID’s agricultural policy.The
document fails to recognise that increased inputs are needed to support
increased production. The policy should therefore include support to the
local manufacture and supply of agricultural inputs such as fertiliser,
crop protection chemicals and agents, agricultural machinery and irrigation
equipment. At the same time policies should include the use of integrated
pest management and agronomic practices that can reduce the need for pesticides,
and maintain fertility with less use of inorganic fertilisers thereby reducing
production costs.
2.3 The
Cropping PatternTraditional
cropping patterns, with emphasis on the staple crops of cereals and a small
range of root crops, vegetables and legumes is little changed over the
years.These agricultural systems,
together with animal production and commodity crops dominate developing
country agriculture.The predicted
doubling of demand for animal protein by 2020 will lead to a considerable
increase in the demand for cereals. If the predicted increase takes place
most of this animal protein is likely to come from poultry. Turning cereals
into poultry meat or eggs using these as the main food source increases
the amount of food needed to feed a person by up to four times.This
calls for more inputs and more added value, and is a change which people
living in rural areas need to exploit and should be assisted in so doing.Income
earning and small scale commercialisation however will depend more on fruit,
vegetables, flowers, commodity crops, new and under-utilised species -
and their products.The document
should therefore give priority to agro-enterprises and commodity chains
which exploit these opportunities.Attention
should increasingly be given to farming systems at the levels of household
gardens, horticultural enterprises, agro-forestry and multi-tier systems
using multi-purpose species coupled with the development of small and medium
scale processing and marketing enterprises.The
importance of large, plantation-scale enterprises producing commodities
in the rural areas, offering out-grower schemes for small farmers and employment
opportunities for the landless and subsistence farmers wishing to escape
the poverty trap, should also be recognised in the document.
2.4 Agricultural
Productivity and returns to labourThe
document should not only recognise the importance of returns per unit area
of land, but also theimportance
of returns to labour, because scarce time makes returns to their labour
usually more important for poor farm households than returns to their landThis
is a difficult issue, as production efficiency is generally increased by
labour-saving mechanisation., and thus the cost of produce reduced, making
food more available to the poor and agricultural products more competitive
in the marketplace.We believe the
document should set out DFID’s policies in this regard .Will
support be given to public/private sector commodity enterprises, to small
and medium-scale entrepreneurial systems, including storing, processing,
packaging and marketing and to innovative cropping systems?Or
will support continue to help traditional subsistence and small farming
systems?
2.5 Research
and Technology The document
gives examples of how research has given good returns to research investment.The
TAA wishes to stress the continued importance of agricultural research
but recognises that it should be demand-led, highly participatory (particularly
with resource-poor farmers) and should be accompanied by dissemination,
delivery to the intended beneficiaries and uptake by them. Nevertheless,
where modern science can provide new technologies an element of “top-down”
scientific leadership should not be discounted. The
importance of collaboration with the NARS is acknowledged in the documentHowever,
in spite of the efforts of ISNAR the NARS institutions are in many cases
still weak.The benefits of south-south
co-operation through the mechanism of the regional and sub-regional fora
of the multi-stakeholder GFAR should be recognised in the document. These
benefits include the sharing of scarce resources, the pooling of outputs
and information, and the opportunities for stronger support from the IARIs, academic
institutions, the private sector andthe
ARIs in the north and from working with the NGO sector. The TAA feels that
the document’s failure to mention the important role of the UK’s own forum
for ARD, and the importance of the European forum (EFARD) should be rectified. Recent
advances in molecular biology and biotechnology offer new, unrivalled,
opportunities to help developing country farmers cope with the many biotic
and abiotic constraints with which they are faced, and to improve yields
and quality of many of their crops and products.The
document should therefore establish a policy in regard to issues such as
the place of GM crops in developing country agriculture and intellectual
property rights.The UK has a great
comparative advantage in molecular biology, and DFID should recognise this
by commissioning research in UK institutes aimed specifically at the problems
of poor farmers in developing countries .The
UK contribution to the CGIAR system is recognised, but the CGIAR has rightly
concentrated on the world’s major food crops where significant gains have
been made.The TAA considers that
the UK should continue to support the CGIAR, but that a balance be achieved
between its support for this multi-lateral agricultural research system
and support for a strong bi-lateral research programme which uses the UK
science and institutional base.
2.6 Priority
for Agricultural DevelopmentThe
document states that “ the priority for agriculture development is to create
a policy and institutional environment that creates an opportunity for
poor people to derive a better livelihood from agriculture”The
TAA agrees that this is an important priority, but in itself will do little
more than create the opportunity.The
TAA believes that an equally important, indeed probably a more important
priority, is to establish policies which will enable the poor farmers to
grasp the new opportunities that may be offered.Priority
should in our view be given to the development of markets, increasing the
availability of knowledge, the provision of appropriate (not intermediate)
technology , information and the strengthening of local institutions and
partnerships.This requires mechanisms
to improve farm management and business advice, strengthen farmer and community
organisations, develop partnerships between farmer, scientist and business
entrepreneur with a strong local leadership and the provision of inputs
whether they be; better communications in rural areas (both physical and
electronic), improved seed and planting materials, fertilisers, crop protection
technologies, irrigation systems, erosion control methodsor
mechanical aids.Policies should
encourage diversity of labour use in the countryside to ensure that rural
areas benefit from the ‘added value’ that can be given to food. Partially
prepared foods can be worth 3-6 times the amount of the basic foods from
which they were manufactured. Therefore more inputs should be put into
encouraging rural industries such as milling, dairying and all forms of
crop and livestock processing that can add value at the village level.
2.7 Work
on the groundThe TAA strongly
endorses the importance of working at the sharp end in the field.Development
hypotheses resulting from ideas, research results and earlier experience
can only be tested in the real world. There is therefore a continuing need
for small, area, catchmentor community
based projects which test the appropriate technologies, mechanisms and
methodologies.Such projects we
believe must be fully participatory and involve farmers and their organisations.There
is a role in these projects for all of the stakeholders, including the
NGOs and the private sector.The
TAA believes that currently there is far too much theoretical discourse
and dialogue, and far too much paper being produced to expound ideas and
set policies and objectives.What
is lacking, are on-the-ground projects that really assist in the effective
implementation of these theories.
2.8 Agricultural
Education.The
importance of education for farmers, extension workers, scientists and
officials in government and non-government organisations is in our view
an issue not adequately covered by the document.The
TAA considers that (perhaps in association with the DFID Education department),
the Rural Livelihoods Department should engage in a renewed training programme,
similar to the effective one hitherto managed by the British Council.There
should be an increase in awards for training developing country people
in the UK, and perhaps more importantly, a new programme supporting training
institutions in the rural areas of developing countries through linkages
with British educational establishments.
3. Concluding
Remarks
Whilst
welcoming the DFID Consultation Document on Agriculture, the TAA wishes
to draw the attention of DFID to the points made in this response.Furthermore,
the TAA, with its unrivalled wealth of experience and expertise in development
agriculture offers its assistance to DFID in thedevelopment
of a practical and feasible work plan, attainable within the financial
and manpower resources available, which hopefully will assist developing
countries improve the efficiency and sustainability of their agricultural
production, restore the quality of soil and the agricultural environment,
reduce hunger through improved food security, and improve the livelihoods
of the rural poor through increased incomes and better nutrition.The
TAA considers that if DFID’s aid funds are under pressure, some prioritisation
by reallocating funds into agriculture from less effective activities will
be necessary; particularly as it is clearly recognised that agriculture
has a key role to play in poverty alleviation in rural areas.
July
16th 2002