Growth and Poverty Mailing List Archive

[<address removed>]

I have observed that the overwhelming focus of contributions to date have  
focussed on crop-based agriculture, possibly reflecting the dominance of this 
in 
 the developing world.   However, the focus risks ignoring pastoralists  who 
are frequently amongst the most marginalised.   My own  experience, in this 
regard, is Mongolian (and Central Asia)-based where the  realities confronting 
this group of producers are characterised both by  substantial risks (largely 
climate-based) and highly uneven market  access.   The traditional response has 
been emergency livestock  feeding programmes and restocking following 
dzud-inspired livestock  deaths but, in the aftermath of the implosion of the 
formerly  centrally-planned economy, both have proved ineffective.   As a  
result, 
the IDA-supported 12 year Sustainable Livelihoods Programme  envisages 
improvements to pasture use, bringing pasture back into use through  
refurbishment of 
wells, economic trials of private-sector fodder production,  and, most 
importantly, faciltating and environment in which marginal  pastoralists can 
exit 
herding in favour of alternative economic activities,  inter alia through the 
institutionalisation of micro-credit access.   
The development of an exit strategy specifically targeting marginal  
producers would seem to me to have lessons which could be usefully applied more 
 
widely across the agriculture sector.   For example, marginal rice  producers 
in 
Sri Lanka have little prospect of emerging from poverty while  continuing their 
current farming activity since they neither produce a  sufficient surplus nor, 
despite various interventions, have they  demonstrated any interest in 
alternative, higher value (e.g. chillies,  vegetables etc.) crops.   Similar 
observations might be made iro  marginal banana producers in the OECS' banana 
growing 
islands.   While  banana production has fallen, those leaving are mainly the 
middle-sized  producers;  larger producers can still make a profit while 
marginal  producers find themselves trapped, dependant on regular, if falling 
cash  
payments, since they are unwilling or unable to risk alternative means of 
income  generation.
Seamus Cleary