Growth and Poverty Mailing List Archive

["Alex Duncan" <<address removed>>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Reed, Keith [mailto:<address removed> 
Sent: 15 April 2004 08:27
To: Alex Duncan
Subject: RE: Welcome to the Agriculture Forum debate on growth and
poverty
 
.....some initial thoughts on the issues.
 
As with any industry (agriculture being seen as an industry here), the
reduction or elimination of poverty requires a set of agreed
preconditions from which any interventions might spring in order for
them to be effective.
 
For agriculture, it would be useful for the discussion to define the
broad preconditions, and these should be established for both national
levels (policies, etc.) as well as district/community levels
(infrastructure, etc.). However urgent the needs in improving
agriculture may be at a particular time, those needs can only be met
sustainably over the long term if the preconditions are in place.
Interventions which take place before the establishment of preconditions
locally will only have short term or unbalanced impacts.
 
The establishment of preconditions for poverty reduction in agriculture
will then determine the directions for intervention in the sector.
 
As a sector within a national economy, it is important also to define
the present and anticipated contribution of agriculture to general
economic growth. If agriculture is a declining industry as a result of
the reduction of demand for its products (i.e. Bangladesh, with Jute),
we should refer to overall economic structures, and agriculture's
prominence in those structures in the future. Establishment of economic
models which can provide 'what-if' scenarios on a national basis could
disentangle much decision-making in the sector from the 'pull' of
tradition and political assumptions.
 
The emphasis should be on what agriculture has to offer in reducing
poverty, rather than how we can change agriculture to meet the objective
of poverty reduction.
 
Keith Reed
CPA South,
Iraq