Marcela Villareal, Director of the Office for Communication, Partnerships and Advocacy, FAO. Credit: ©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

By Claudia Ciobanu
ROME, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

Under the leadership of Brazilian Director General (DG) José Graziano da Silva, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has been engaged in a process of deep reform meant to make the organisation leaner and more effective in the fight against hunger. 

“One transformational element in the vision of the new DG is to seek  synergies among the various aspects of our work, so that we can be more focused and efficient in eliminating hunger,” explains FAO’s Marcela Villarreal, director of the Office for Communication, Partnerships and Advocacy. “I have been working for this organisation for 16 years and I can say that we are best when we take a multi-sector and multi-disciplinary approach: it is this kind of approach that will allow us to find innovative ways to solve age-old problems.” Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: What are the core elements of the programme of work proposed by Graziano da Silva for FAO?

A: We are proposing five strategic objectives, the first of which is the elimination of hunger – we are no longer speaking just about reducing it. It is important to note here that, if years ago we thought that by increasing food production we could eradicate hunger, today we know that it is not only about production levels but also about access to food.

The second objective refers to increasing food production in a sustainable manner and the third calls for the eradication of rural poverty.

A strategic thinking process laid down the foundations of the current programme of work.  The MDG targets and indicators are very much focused on urban areas, despite rural poverty being one of the main challenges today.

In FAO’s work on rural poverty, we will focus on three rural populations at risk of poverty: the smallholders, whom we will help become more productive; those who sell their labour in rural areas, for the benefit of whom we will help countries generate decent employment increasing incomes and  access food; and, finally, for those who get left out altogether we need to advise countries on the creation of social safety nets, but in a way that is not just giving out of money but that eventually supports production and /or employment."If we in the U.N. systems can make [big corporations] be more mindful of their impact on the environment, labour, on issues around gender, then we have come a long way." -- Marcela Villarreal

Finally, last two strategic objectives refer to offering farmers better and more equitable access to markets and, respectively, building people’s resilience, thus lowering vulnerability to threats and crises.

It is our member states that will have to meet these objectives. Our role will be to contribute in a strategic and measurable way to their meeting of these objectives.

Q: How much leverage does FAO actually have on member states that might not be fully behind this vision of sustainable food systems proposed by the organisation?

A: We are very optimistic that we can implement this vision. We already see big progress happening: on Sunday, 38 countries were awarded for halving hunger levels, so the fact that we already got halfway gives us a good indication that we can work to achieve the real target, which is zero hunger.

At this conference, it is clear that governments across the board support the vision and the programme of work of the DG. Of course, a good measure of political will is to see budget allocated to these issues.

Q: Over the past years, FAO has expressed an increased willingness to engage with civil society. Have they been involved in the drafting of the five strategic objectives?

A: We cannot achieve any of these objectives without partnerships with civil society, the private sector, farmer’s organisations, cooperatives, research institutes and others.

The involvement of civil society is crucial in national policy dialogue processes, where their voices need to be heard and we are helping to facilitate their participation.

When it comes to the international level, civil society has been fully  involved in the World Committee on Food Security [the Committee is the part of the FAO structure focused on food security policies].

If we speak about partnerships, it is important to say that the private sector is also very important to us, from the smaller producers to the bigger ones, as they are the biggest investors in agriculture in the world, bigger than governments, international development aid, or foreign investors. Private actors can bring to the table a lot of knowledge and innovation.

Q: When it comes to the private companies, are you selective in choosing the ones you deal with, to make sure you avoid those whose business models hurt small farmers or the poor for example?

A: Yes! We have very clear mechanisms for assessing risk and dealing with it. When it comes to companies, we first run a due diligence process to see whether they have had problems with labour, human rights issues, environmental protection or other issues. Then we have a subcommittee on partnerships that analyses all the possible risks, and finally we have a committee on partnerships headed by the DG in person. So we take this issue very seriously.

We cannot ignore big corporations, they are big players in the world, but if we in the U.N. systems can make them be more mindful of their impact on the environment, labour, on issues around gender, then we have come a long way.

Q: When it comes to governments and national policies then, how can we expect FAO to react when a government allows for problematic practices to take place on its territory (e.g., land grabbing) or when it engages in problematic practices itself?

A: We are an intergovernmental organisation belonging to the U.N. system, so we work with governments who are our members. Our role is to ensure that they have the best knowledge and the best technical assistance so that they can meet the objectives set out above.

We promote good governance, which involves transparency, participation and accountability. Here, let me quote the words of Amartya Sen, who said that “by generating a public discussion, we have a part of the solution”.

Excerpt:

Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Akinwumi Adesina holding the FAO award recognising outstanding progress in fighting hunger and attaining MDG One. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu
ROME, Jun 16 2013 (IPS)

Thirty-eight countries were recognised for the first time on Sunday by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation for cutting in half the prevalence of people suffering from undernourishment, one of three targets under the first Millennium Development Goal.

Of those countries, 18 also achieved the tougher World Food Summit Goal of halving the absolute numbers of hungry people: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Djibouti, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, Peru, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Vietnam.

“You are the proof that when societies decide to put an end to hunger, when there is political will from governments, we can transform that will into action,” FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva told leaders of the awarded countries during the Rome ceremony. “Thank you for showing us that it is possible.”

Twenty other countries were recognised for cutting by half the prevalence of hunger (but not yet absolute numbers): Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Honduras, Indonesia, Jordan, Malawi, Maldives, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Togo and Uruguay.

At the Rome World Food Summit in 1996, countries around the world committed to working towards food security for all. In 2000, the U.N. adopted the eight Millennium Development Goals, meant to guide global efforts towards offering all people a decent life.

MDG One, “eradicating extreme poverty and hunger”, is broken down into three targets: reducing by 50 percent the proportion of hungry people, achieving decent employment for all, and halving the number of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day by 2015.

Received with broad acclaim by the FAO assembly during the award ceremony, the new Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, outlined in brief his country’s path to reducing hunger prevalence from 13.8 percent to 2.4 percent over the last decade, emphasising the core role played by former president Hugo Chavez in this battle.

“We are asking the FAO to assist us in creating a system to safeguard a permanent, stable food supply, which would permit us to confront the covert speculative attacks that Venezuela is currently enduring,” he told IPS TV.

Caribbean small island state Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is another of the countries acknowledged for meeting both goals. Since the early 1990s, it has reduced hunger rates from 20 percent to 4.9 percent, according to Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, who spoke to IPS on the sidelines of the Jun. 15-22 FAO biannual conference in Rome.

Gonsalves explained that climate change and pressures from international markets on domestic banana production posed significant challenges to his country in the attempt to defeat hunger. And yet the 120,000-person state seems to have found a working mix of solutions.

“We have a history of root vegetables and fruit crops and an accumulated two centuries worth of knowledge resident in the folk which should be mobilised and is being mobilised,” Gonsalves said.

“Secondly, important is the organisation of farmers to engage in cooperative work with the state. Finally, we are implementing targeted solutions such as feeding programmes for school children and the elderly and in general developing a strong safety net.

“We are addressing the production side but also the consumer side through targeted interventions,” the prime minister said.

Georgia, another country recognised in Rome, reduced the prevalence of malnourishment from 60 percent to 25 percent over the past decade, according to FAO figures.

“This was possible because of a number of different measures that we took to generally improve the economy and combat corruption and mismanagement, which allowed us to have double-digit growth for the past years,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told IPS in Rome.

“Growth was combined with implementing poverty reduction programmes helping families to reach subsistence levels.”

Current estimates put the number of people suffering from hunger today at 870 million.

According to the U.N.’s The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 report, significant progress has been made on combating hunger since 1990, yet in some areas around the world this was either slowed down or even reversed by the global economic crisis.

The U.N. says that meeting the MDG goal of halving hunger prevalence by 2015 is within reach but only if measures are taken to make up for the negative impact of the crisis.

A farmer tends to vegetables in a greenhouse in Antigua, where a climate-smart agricultural initiative seeks to improve farm productivity. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ST. JOHN'S, Antigua, Jan 13 2013 (IPS)

A new initiative is catching on in the Caribbean that aims to increase and sustain agricultural productivity by incorporating information about weather and climate into the farming process, all under the umbrella of climate-smart agriculture.

Promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), climate-smart agriculture seeks to sustainably increase productivity, resilience (also known as adaptation) and reduce or remove greenhouse gases (mitigation) while enhancing the achievement of national food security and development goals.

The Barbados-based Caribbean Agrometeorological Initiative (CAMI) has been encouraging this initiative and hopes to forecast the weather as accurately as possible so that the information can factored into decisions about agricultural production.

“We are looking at how the agrometerological services can work closely with the agricultural services in the whole area of food production,” Owolabi Elabanjo, an agriculture extension officer based in Antigua, told IPS.

“We know weather has a great impact on food production – temperature, humidity, rainfall, the amount of daylight and the amount of sunshine all have effects on various crops that we grow,” Elabanjo explained.

Ten national meteorological services – Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, St. Lucia, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica and Belize – make up CAMI, which is funded by the European Union’s African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Science and Technology Programme.

CAMI was designed to assist the farming community in the Caribbean by providing information about rainy season predictors and about the development of pest and disease forecasting systems to help improve decision-making on farms.

Its mandate also includes the creation of a user-friendly weather and climate information newsletter as well as forums for the farming community and agricultural extension agencies to help improve understanding of the applications of weather and climate information. The group is also supposed to obtain feedback from the farming community about products offered by meteorological services.

Value of agriculture

Indra Haraksingh, solar energy expert and University of the West Indies (UWI) lecturer, has been at the forefront of a push towards climate-smart agriculture and sustainable agriculture in the Caribbean through the use of renewable energy.

She told IPS that agriculture is the only sector that offers the triple advantage of enhanced productivity, food security and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

But in order to reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gases, she said, Caribbean countries must redesign their entire agricultural system. She pointed out that climate change would have an impact on agriculture through forests, livestock, food and food security.

“Why are we interested in climate-smart agriculture? The world faces one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. It is predicted by 2050 the population will increase…by such an amount that it will be detrimental to our planet,” Haraksingh said.

“Under a changing climate and the context of growing competition for land and natural resources, feeding nine billion people is going to be a huge problem,” Haraksingh explained. “To achieve food security, agricultural production must increase by 70 percent…by 2050 if we are to feed these people; and we also have to bear in mind that we have to conserve the natural ecosystem.”

Elabanjo, who owns his own farm at Pares Village in the centre of the island, said that in 2012, farmers faced heavy rainfall that caused severe flooding and destroyed many crops on farms throughout the country.

But now, working with the agrometerological services has improved farmers’ chances for agricultural success. “Whatever food we are growing,” he said, “we now put it close to the current climate that they can be adapted to.”

“For example, this period we are in now is very good for tomato production,” Elabanjo explained. “When you grow tomatoes around this season, you get a bumper harvest.”

Signs of success

Antigua and Barbuda’s collaboration with CAMI has fruitful so far, with the government reporting a five percent increase in food production in 2012 compared with the previous year.

Finance Minister Harold Lovell said the sector continues to grow despite challenges presented by the weather and other factors. “The Ministry of Agriculture is committed to meeting goal number one of the Millennium Development Goals, which deals with eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,” he stated.

“This is a target that can be achieved by enhancing food security and increasing economic growth. The agriculture sector can contribute significantly to the attainment of these two outcomes.”

In terms of boosting domestic production, he said that the government, through the Ministry of Agriculture, has continued to work with crop and livestock farmers and fisher folk to increase their output for local consumption and export.

“More than 50 acres of sweet potatoes were planted in 2012 and over 900,000 pounds of yams will be harvested between December 2012 and February 2013,” Lovell said.

In Jamaica, meanwhile, the country has created a concept document for the Climate Change Adaptation Fund to achieve the goal of climate-smart agriculture by improving water and land management strategies in select communities, according to Roger Clarke, the country’s agriculture minister.

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, Jan 2 2013 (IPS)

Nearly 50 percent of Bangladesh’s primary school students drop out before they complete fifth grade, as crushing poverty drives them into the informal employment sector.

Only a small fraction of the country’s workforce (0.4 percent) has received vocational, technical, or skills-development training, which results in lifelong dependence on extremely low wages.

A Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) report revealed that 5.8 million children aged 10 to 14 years are employed in the informal sector, comprising 11.3 percent of the total labour force. These children are unable to attend school or pursue technical training.

In an effort to rectify the problem, which is severely hindering the country’s efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the European Union has poured 2.5 million euros into local programmes designed to harness the skills and potential of impoverished youth.

The Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme quickly became one of the key tools for guaranteeing long-term and higher-paid employment for young people in the country.

With support from Save the Children, the Underprivileged Children’s Educational Programmes (UCEP) has used the TVET curriculum since the early 1970s to provide basic training to working street children over 15 years of age.

At least 45,000 students aged between 15 and 18 are now waiting to graduate from the programme and secure decent jobs in the industrial sector, guaranteed a starting salary of 5,000 taka (or 62 dollars) per month.

Over 140,000 graduates of the programme have already found permanent jobs.