By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, May 22 2013 (IPS)

When Gabriela Blanco tells other Cubans that she works in an organic vegetable cooperative and is getting ready to study agronomy at the university, she gets surprised looks.

She is not sure where her vocation came from, but she does know that this is what she wants to do.

In Cuba, which is seeking to boost agricultural yields, there is a scarcity of young people working in the sector.

Blanco, a petite 20-year-old, dropped her math studies after two years to try her hand at the Vivero Alamar, a successful agricultural cooperative in Havana that operates as a Basic Unit of Cooperative Production.

“I began working here in September 2012; in three months they made me a member of the cooperative. I realised that I really like it and I want to stay here. The agricultural sector has lots of possibilities and many fields of investigation; it’s a very interesting and lovely experience,” she told IPS.

Mercedes Cepero, 18, has had a similar experience, although she came to this cooperative to fulfil her professional training requirement as an agronomy technician. “I’ve passed the student stage, and now I have to get trained and learn as a worker. I used to think that agronomy was just working with a hoe in the sun, but I was wrong,” she told IPS.

Cepero is also preparing for university entrance exams, which will be held this month, because she wants to be an agricultural engineer. Unlike Blanco, she was told about this career when she was in secondary school. “That was when I became interested,” she said.

Blanco thinks that the lack of interest in agricultural careers among young people is due in part to today’s society. “A lot of people see agriculture as something that is not studied, that doesn’t involve science, because it’s just planting and harvesting. Other people view work in the countryside as a lot of hard work that brings few benefits,” she said.

Twenty young people, between the ages of 17 and 30, work at the Vivero Alamar.

However, most young people leave agriculture when they find jobs that are more in line with their aspirations for better incomes and less hard work.

Cepero has little patience with the general attitude toward agricultural work: young people “are a little bit lazy, and they want everything to just fall into their lap,” she said.

According to figures provided by the national urban and suburban agriculture programme, about 70,000 young people in this country of 11.3 million are working in agriculture.

The Vivero Alamar urban farming cooperative is located in the housing project of Alamar about 15 km from downtown Havana. The housing development is home to about 100,000 people.

Research by the Centre for the Study of Youth has found that young Cubans prefer to seek jobs in the emerging economy, such as foreign companies, and reject jobs related to sanitation services, construction and agriculture.

“People view agriculture today as if it were punishment. Whoever misbehaves will go work in the fields. The children of farmers do not want to continue their parents’ work; they want to move to Havana and become doctors,” said Isis Salcines, who describes herself as a worker-of-all-trades at the coop, and who is about to graduate as an agronomist.

Shortly after beginning her university studies, Salcines decided to create a kind of vocational club at an elementary school close to the coop, dubbed “Agro-ecological Kids”. But first she conducted a couple of surveys. One asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and another asked them to complete the sentence: “When I grow up, I want to be.…” with farmer as one of the choices.

Not one of the children chose farmer. Salcines, who is the daughter of the coop’s founder and president, Miguel Ángel Salcines, set herself the goal of holding weekly sessions to teach the children about how the coop is run using agro-ecological methods, and why it is important to eat healthier.

By the time the first course was over, the “Kids” would eat every bite of vegetables they were served in tasty salads, and they knew how to work on the farm, understood the importance of producing food, and had learned about the comprehensive management of pests and diseases.

In a new survey she conducted at the end of the first workshop, 15 of the boys and girls – nearly three-quarters – marked agronomy as a possible career. “This experience was a real incentive. It made me see how it was possible for them to choose this line of work once they are grown-up,” Salcines said.

For Norma Romero, a plant protection engineer, the formula must include education from an early age and assurances for young people that they will feel recognised, motivated and encouraged to continue working in agriculture, despite any difficulties.

Good wages, a flexible schedule to allow them to study, free breakfast and lunch, work clothing and shoes, and other benefits are motivating factors, “because in agriculture there is mud, lots of sun, dust, and really hard conditions. For us it is vital for people to come and stay, especially young people,” Romero said.

As part of the recent reforms of the Cuban economy, the Education Ministry expanded in 2011 the number of agronomy specialties offered at the vocational school level and ordered a reinforcement of vocational guidance toward agriculture in the early years of primary education, in line with the characteristics and needs of each province.

Agriculture accounts for 20 percent of total employment but less than five percent of GDP because it has the lowest productivity of any sector. Last year, the country imported 1.6 billion dollars’ worth of food.

Brenda Salazar has her sights set on two things: a good organic cacao harvest for the cooperative she belongs to in northern Nicaragua, and for the governments of Central America to heed the ideas of peasant farmers who have organised to fight climate change.

“We are feeling the effects of climate change, and it’s important for our proposals to be heard,” Salazar, a Nicaraguan small farmer, told IPS. She took part in a conference on “building a regional strategy for adaptation to the climate by the small-scale agroforestry sector”, held in San Salvador Nov. 28-30.

Delegations from farming and forestry cooperatives and associations from Central America and the Dominican Republic came together in the conference, where they discussed a regional agenda for dealing with the impacts of climate change, and for learning how to sustainably manage natural resources.

The idea is for the recommendations set forth by the cooperatives to influence policy-making at a regional and national level.

The participants called for the formulation of a regional law that would clearly outline the mechanisms to be implemented by the states for climate change adaptation and mitigation. They said the law should offer economic incentives and tax exemptions for activities focused on curbing the impacts of climate change.

The aim is also soft lines of credit for environmentally-friendly agricultural and forest management practices, incentives for technology transfer in environmental questions, and strengthening the technical know-how of people in rural communities.

In addition, the delegates called for the regional law to include the implementation of early warning systems to help rural communities prepare for extreme natural events, using telephone networks.

Furthermore, they recommended the creation of a climate observatory linked to other regional climate studies centres and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The participants in the meeting urged their respective governments to revive the regional strategic programme for the management of forestry ecosystems (PERFOR), involving social organisations from Central America and the Dominican Republic in its implementation.

“We want this agenda to be heard, and to get real support for local communities from the respective governments,” Fausto Hernández, the president of the Central American indigenous and peasant community agroforestry association, ACICAFOC, told IPS.

The meeting, which ACICAFOC helped organise, was also sponsored by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).

It was the culmination of national meetings held in nearly every country of the region, as a result of the concern of members of rural cooperative about the effects of climate change in the world and in Central America in particular.

Laszlo Pancel, the chief adviser in GIZ for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+), said that in countries like El Salvador, vulnerability is high due to the high density of the population (295 people per square kilometre), and to the fact that extreme weather events are becoming more and more frequent.

A study by Germanwatch, an environmental organisation that monitors the impact of climate change, reported on Nov. 27 that in 2011, El Salvador was one of the countries that suffered the most severe impacts from natural disasters in the world, after Thailand, Cambodia and Pakistan.

Pancel denied that the conference was aimed at validating REDD+, a United Nations collaborative programme designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, which has drawn harsh criticism in the region and around the world.

Under the REDD+ scheme, financial rewards are given to countries for keeping their forests intact. The rewards, which mainly go to poor countries, come in the form of carbon credits or financial payments by carbon emitters in industrialised nations.

But critics of the programme say REDD+ is not a solution, because it creates incentives for rich countries to maintain their energy consumption levels and avoid complying with their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“The REDD question is highly politicised, and it would send out a bad signal to use this conference to get them to think it is useful,” Pancel told IPS.

Daisy Castillo, a Dominican farmer with the Federation of Dry Forest Producers, told IPS that governments in the region frequently allowed themselves to be influenced by international financial institutions, but almost never by community organisations working in favour of the environment.

“If the governments don’t listen to us, we shouldn’t just sit back with our arms crossed; the struggle is to get our proposals heard and taken into account,” Castillo said.

Her association has agricultural projects in communities located on the edge of the dry forest, an arid area that covers 25 percent of Dominican territory, in the southeast of the country. Honey, wood, and dairy products are produced there in a sustainable manner, and water tanks and aqueducts have been built.

“We are going beyond our kitchens and other traditional tasks to contribute to the struggle against climate change,” said Salazar, a member of the El Nuevo Sol Cooperative, in the district of Yaoya in Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast region. The cooperative grows organic cacao and is involved in the reforestation of timber species like mahogany and cedar.

Farmers in the developing world can increase their yields by forming cooperatives. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
YAOUNDE/ROME, Oct 23 2012 (IPS)

“One in eight people goes to sleep hungry every day,” according to the ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012’, a document released annually by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The report goes on to state that 870 million people worldwide are starving, a decrease of 130 million since 1992 but still a far cry from the Millennium Development Goal of halving the world’s hungry people by 2015.

As the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) wrapped up its 39^th session in Rome on Saturday with the promise to begin a two-year consultation process to “develop principles for responsible investment in agriculture that respect rights, livelihoods and resources”, hopes were high that local and international efforts could really begin to tackle chronic hunger.

Meanwhile, amid fears of rising prices on the grain market, the FAO dedicated this year’s World Food Day, celebrated on Oct. 16, to ‘Agricultural cooperatives: key to feeding the world’.

Millions of small-scale producers, particularly in the developing world, are responding to the triple crises of climate change, food price fluctuations and market instability by organising themselves into cooperatives to join forces and collectively tackle national and international policy constraints.

The FAO sees cooperatives as a major way to lift small-scale farmers out of poverty and hunger, and help them to access markets to sell their products, buy inputs at better prices and obtain financial services.

“Agricultural cooperatives can help smallholders overcome these constraints,” FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said in a statement. “Cooperatives play a crucial role in generating employment, reducing poverty, improving food security, and contributing to the gross domestic product (GDP) in many countries.”

The FAO chief urged governments to do their part and “create conditions that allow producer organisations and cooperatives to thrive.”

A young boy waters his father’s thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

Cameroonian farmers band together

Collins Mangong used to farm a one-hectare piece of land in his native Konnye sub-district in Cameroon’s southwest region. His harvest, most of which came from roots and tubers, was often lost in the post-harvest phase.

“I did not have the financial means to improve my farm and (preserve) my harvest,” he told IPS.

But in 2008, Mangong, along with some 132 farmers in the locality, came together to form the Ikiliwindi Farmers Roots and Tubers Cooperative Society. Each farmer contributed about 50 dollars as shares, which created a baseline that the farmers used to access bank loans.

“Our cooperative now farms on 25 hectares of land,” Mangong added, harvesting and processing the by-products of cassava such as gari flour. The farmers’ yields per hectare have increased dramatically.

“Having brought our resources together, we are now able to (procure) inputs like fertilisers, and our yield has risen.

“At first, I used to get about 1,400 dollars per year by selling cassava from one hectare of land but after we formed the cooperative and I improved my farm I now get two million CFA (about 3,900 dollars) for the same piece of land,” Mangong told IPS.

As production and productivity rises, many in the group are finding new ways of making the harvest more sustainable.

Selamo Dorothy, a member of the Yaounde-based cooperative and head of the Common Initiative Group for Food Security  has found a novel way of transforming cassava. Her group uses gari to make what she calls ‘Gari-Light’ – a fruit-enriched food drink.

“We also make our own local  spaghetti  from tubers like cassava, yams and plantains,” she told IPS.

“What we want to do is to give value to our own local products, because the market is flooded with imported, manufactured products, most of them genetically modified. Our products are accessible, cheaper and rich because they (are) full of nutrients.”

While launching activities to mark this year’s World Food Day, the Cameroon minister of agriculture and rural development, Essimi Menye, made a strong appeal for farmers to come together into cooperatives.

“We’ve got the work force. We’ve got fertile land. What we need to do now is to organise our farmers. By coming together in cooperatives, farmers can boost production, get better market access and stand a better chance of negotiating market prices for their produce,” he said.

Malawi turns to social protection

The FAO dedicated this year’s world hunger day to the theme of ‘Agricultural cooperatives: key to feeding the world’. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

But establishing cooperatives is not always easy.

Malawi, one of the world’s least developed countries (LDCs), is being forced to look at short-term solutions to cushion the most vulnerable from the blows of spiraling food prices fuelled by this year’s poor harvest and rising inflation.

The headline inflation rate soared to 25.5 percent in August, up from 21.7 percent in July, on account of escalating food prices, which have risen 50 percent in the last few months.

Apart from a poor harvest and run-away inflation, increasing global oil prices are also pushing food prices up in Malawi, which hurts the poorest most.

“We are looking at agriculture cooperatives as a vibrant and effective long-term answer,” Finance Minister Ken Lipenga told IPS.

“We need to reinvent our existing cooperatives, create markets for them and (grant them) loans so they can grow and become sustainable.”

But in the interim, the government is working with the World Bank to roll out social protection programmes that target the most vulnerable members of society, the majority being women head-of-households, and children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

“In the short term, the social cash transfers and food for work programmes are targeting the poorest who fail to acquire minimum daily food requirements,” Lipenga added.

“(The) government has set aside about 94 million dollars (for) rolling out a public works programme, a school feeding programme targeting 980,000 pupils in primary schools, the school bursaries programme targeting 164,800 needy students and a social transfer programme to reach over 30,000 households across the country,” Lipenga said.

International commitments

But individual country efforts will not be enough to tackle the crisis of hunger and poverty on a global level.

French President François Hollande called for a high-level meeting on global agricultural governance on the sidelines of World Food Week at FAO headquarters last week to discuss issues of transparency in international agricultural markets; the coordination of international actions; responses to the global demand for food and the fight against ripples effects of food price volatility.

French Minister Stéphane Le Foll said France “will continue to support any political initiatives and concrete plans in this direction.”

Graziano da Silva said important advances have already been made in terms of governance, referring to the recent reform of the CFS; the establishment by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of the high level task force on global food security; and the creation by the G20 of the agricultural market information system (AMIS) to ensure international coordination, information and market transparency.

According to Graziano da Silva, AMIS “allowed us to react quickly to the price rise we saw in July 2012, preventing panic, avoiding unilateral actions and further spikes in those initial tense days.”

Meanwhile, civil society organisations are requesting that the G20 lay out a road map to urgently address the drivers of price volatility rather than simply responding when crises hit.

Recent data from the World Bank revealed price increases of 10 percent on international food markets. Thus, investing in food stocks is but a partial solution that must be coupled with such measures as a revision of the European Union and United States’ biofuel policies, which allow massive tracts of land to be shifted from food to fuel production.

“The importance of smallholder farmers appeared repeatedly in the ministerial meeting. Smallholders, and particularly women, should be supported for sustainable food production,” Aftab Alam Khan of ActionAid International told IPS.

“The recurrent food price rise demands serious and practical actions to address both national and global food prices,” he said.

*Sabina Zaccaro contributed to this report from Rome, Mabvuto Banda from Linogwe, and Ngala Killian Chimtom from Yaoundé.

By Sabina Zaccaro
ROME, Oct 19 2012 (IPS)

It is a tried and tested truth that when women come together in groups they can address their issues more powerfully than they can as individuals.

Saquina Mucavele, executive director of MuGeDe – Mulher, Genero e Desenvolvimento (Women, Gender and Development), a non-profit based in Mozambique. Credit: Sabina Zaccaro/IPS

Cooperatives provide a sense of accountability and commitment, as well as healthy competition that brings tangible results, according to Saquina Mucavele, executive director of MuGeDe – Mulher, Genero e Desenvolvimento (Women, Gender and Development), a Mozambique-based non-profit organisation with a focus on sustainability, rural development and gender.

In Rome to participate in a seminar sponsored by the World Farmers Organisation on Oct. 19 about how agricultural cooperatives can assist rural women, Mucavele believes that “there is a need for stronger local networks that address women farmers’ and peasants’ specific demands, with a special focus on rural women smallholder farmers.”

Speaking to IPS correspondent Sabina Zaccaro on the sidelines of World Food Week, whose theme this year is ‘Agricultural cooperatives – key to feeding the world‘, hosted by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Mucavele said, “These networks are unfocused and weak. There is (an urgent) need for capacity-building in rural institutions to promote women’s participation in development.”

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: How do agricultural cooperatives support female agricultural workers?

A: Networks and cooperatives are the right strategy for farmers’ development (provided) they have support and good leadership. Working cooperatively is not only about being involved in common work, it also enables members to share their problems and find collective solutions.

There is even the possibility of creating a common market, and other facilities such as hospitals, education centres and banks, for members. By gathering in a cooperative, rural women can strengthen their voice to advocate for rights.

Q: What role should men play in this process?

A: There is an urgent need to change the attitude and mindset within rural communities, where male dominance prevails in all sectors of development. In agriculture, for example, more resources are allocated to the production of cash crops, an area dominated by men, while women are confined to subsistence farming (with fewer) resources and limited access to markets for their perishable goods.

Men should work together with women, recognising that the issue of gender (inequality) affects both men and women, though women feel it more acutely. Men should be fully involved in the goals of reaching sustainable development and reducing gender inequality.

Q: According to recent studies, if women are given the tools to increase food production and productivity they can reduce the number of undernourished people in the world by 12 to 17 percent. How can women overcome barriers to resources and land in order to provide more food?

A: In order to improve productivity and farming methods, rural women need technical advice, information and training.

A good development strategy would recognise the (crucial) role of educating and training rural women to improve production and productivity; promote women-friendly farming technologies that could reduce (the work day) and give women more time for political participation within the community and for other income-generating activities; and institutionalise their involvement and participation in the conception, formulation and planning of policies.

They cannot continue to be seen only as ‘beneficiaries’ but a group in possession of (valuable) knowledge that can advance rural development and also contribute to the national economy.

Finally, it is vital to support and assist women in the registration of and access to land titles and facilitate the issue of credit, especially for smallholder women farmers. This should (ideally) be done through a fund to support women farmers and the creation of women’s banks in rural areas where members can access credit under favourable terms.

Q: Despite the fact that women make up over 75 percent of agricultural workers and livestock-keepers in developing countries and constitute the majority of food producers, processors and marketers in Africa, their role in determining policies in the agricultural sector still remains a minor one. Why?

A: (Deep-rooted) cultural perceptions could be one reason. Women’s opinions are not valued and their rights (are seldom) acknowledged. Age-old barriers like the patriarchal system need to be addressed by engaging not only the government but also traditional (village or district) leaders.

Another reason is the lack of access and control over land and all productive resources, as well as the fact that the highest rates of illiteracy are among women, particularly rural women.

The government should back its agricultural policies with the relevant legal frameworks in support of the development of smallholder women. They should support women’s involvement in the formulation, implementation and review of the budgeting process to ensure that resource allocations are gender responsive.

Q: With 35 percent of its households chronically food insecure and 46 percent of all children below fives years malnourished, Mozambique is one of the world’s poorest countries. Do you see Mozambique’s current presidency of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) as an opportunity to advance new actions on food security and hunger?

A: Heading the CPLP is a big challenge for Mozambique as it involves (leveraging) existing cultural, political and economic ties in an effort to combat poverty and hunger through the promotion of agriculture, expansion of markets and sharing of information within the community.

Our biggest concerns revolve around the implementation of the Regional CPLP Strategy for Food and Nutrition Security and the creation of the Food Security and Nutrition Council (CONSAN), frameworks (designed) to achieve the goal of a world without hunger.

There is also the challenge of implementing other regional gender protocols and conventions that have already been signed but not fully implemented, like the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

The CPLP Rural Women’s Forum will advocate for the creation of specific legislation for rural women and their leading role in agriculture.

(END)

Excerpt: