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Dear All, I find Alex's theme outline very helpful, raising questions which underlie discussion across the different themes of this conference, and the discussion around this theme has reflected that breadth. I hope everyone is registered for this theme! I suggest that we need some further questions about Simon's important concerns about the agriculture narrative. Where pro-poor growth has been achieved, the fundamental role agriculture has played in poverty reduction has most often involved initial growth in staple food productivity, and the improved nutrition, real incomes, economic activity, and institutions built on that have then provided the platform for the subsequent growth in agricultural and non-agricultural diversification that have driven more rapid and widespread poverty reduction. Simon's concerns about changes in the supply chain and economies of scale relate more to the subsequent agricultural diversification rather than initial growth in staple production. Similarly, there are often greater sustainability and environmental concerns from not achieving growth in staple production in poor rural areas than from achieving it with more input intensive technologies. With regard to the initial growth in staple productivity we are then left with Simon's remaining concerns about prices, subsidies, planners and interests, to which we need to add further concerns: that today's poor rural areas face greater difficulties than historical green revolution areas as a result of less favoured agro-ecological conditions and potential, often lower population densities (and hence higher unit costs for infrastructure development and service delivery), HIV/AIDS, problems of small states. There are therefore greater technical, institutional and political challenges to the agriculture first model of pro-poor growth. Whether it is worth pursuing this model in today's poor rural areas, at greater cost, depends upon (a) the costs and benefits associated with alternative models, (b) the costs and benefits of investment in agriculture, and (c) the costs and benefits of doing nothing - costs including the human costs and the humanitarian response costs. Michael points out that almost all historical examples of mass poverty reduction have started with rises in productivity in small family farms. How do Simon and Caroline's scenarios square with this? If agriculture's contribution to GDP is to fall to less than 10 per cent, where will the very rapid growth needed in the rest of the economy come from? How long will it take, and what happens in the meantime? Will it be built on exports? If it comes from growth in domestic demand where will this growth in domestic demand come from? Simon needs to put forward a convincing alternative economic growth model that does not start from broad-based agricultural growth. However, agriculture has not historically been a magic bullet (even under favourable conditions widespread poverty reduction has taken decades) but until a credible alternative growth model is available, agriculture is arguably the best bet, and it needs very serious investments if it is to succeed. If we are serious about poverty reduction, therefore, some of Simon's arguments need to be turned around: the prices, subsidies, planners, and interests problems need to be tackled head on: we have to accept the need to make very large scale investments, and we (governments, donors, etc) must work out what to invest in and how, to avoid wastage, failure and perverse results. Can we identify some critical necessary conditions for getting initial pro-poor agricultural growth going (in staple productivity)? That would provide a focus for what development policy and practice should aim at. I suggest the following broad conditions are needed: 1. technical opportunities for productivity improvement - this needs scale neutral technology suited to local agro-ecology and attainable 2. coordinated & accountable institutions for delivery of complementary technical and marketing services and for expressing and channelling farmers' demands 3. infrastructure to support these (roads, irrigation) 4. reasonable sectoral and macro economic conditions (input & output prices, inflation, interest rates, exchange rates) stability and governance to promote/ protect investment 5. basic services delivering health, education and secure access to food There is not much new about this list - but many if not most of these conditions are absent from today's poor rural areas, despite decades of investment. Perhaps a discussion could focus on questions like: are these the necessary conditions? are there minimum levels of achievement? are there trade-offs between them? How can they be achieved? What lessons can be learnt from successes and failures? What are the sequencing principles? Process as well as content will be critical here - James Calvert's very useful points, to which I would add the need for transparent and long term commitments (though this can be difficult when governments are blatantly not committed to poverty reduction). The 'no one size fits all' message from Paul is also very relevant This contribution is already far too long, my apologies, and thanks for getting this far if you have stuck with it! Andrew Andrew Dorward, Director, Centre for Development and Poverty Reduction, Wye Campus, Imperial College London. www.wye.ic.ac.uk/AEBM/AgEcon/ADU
Please visit dfid-agriculture-consultation.nri.org.