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Dear Daniel and colleagues,
Thank you very much for your request to contribute to the DFID
consultation on agriculture, growth and poverty. I unfortunately do not have
time to go into further detail here, but as an immediate reaction we provide
below a number of key issues that emerge from our work relevant to wider work
on the role of agriculture in growth and poverty reduction.
1. Common thinking on agricultural growth and poverty often lack
refined typology to adress poverty contraints. These contraints are different
according to the type of economic actor and type of farm. In the
context of West Africa, for example, more than 70% of the population live in
rural areas (though this percentage varies in each country). Some 90% of this
rural population can be considered as poor and the poorest are still
concentrated in rural areas. For this population, economic activities are
dominated by family farming. However the concepts of "poor" and "rich",
"family farm" can easily be confusing.
In order to begin addressing this the SWAC Secretariat supported
scoping studies undertaken in collaboration with regional specialists and
institutions such as IIED and INERA to develop a refined typology of
family farms. This can serve as a good basis for discussing issues related to
agricultural growth and poverty dynamics for different sections of the rural
population in developing countries. This work identified three types of family
farm:
Type 1: Farms oriented towards the market, organised around a major
cash crop, such as cotton, cocoa, coffee, fruit and vegetables. Often highly
specialised, these are exposed to significant risks from fluctuations on global
market prices.
Type 2: Farms in which cereals and cash crops are largely balanced in
terms of relative importance. Such farms are useually characterised by a high
degree of diversification, using multiple farm and off-farm activities
as astrategy used to protect themselves from climatic and market risks.
Type 3: Farms oriented towards staple food grain production to satisfy
household consumption needs; these farms are also integrated with the
market to some degree as they have to sell some part of the harvest - even food
grains - to raise cash to purchase other basic needs and services. These
usually constitute the poorer households with limited access to inputs and
markets, little agricultural equipment and few - usually small ruminant -
livestock. In many places, these households are finding it particularly
difficult to make ends meet and are undergoing a process of decapitalisation
threatening their existence.
Too often, these three categories are considered as one overall group
of family farm producers, and policies and approaches are not adapted to their
differing circumstances. If the refined typology family farms referred
to above, and along with it the diversity of poor producers, is not taken
into account, balanced poverty-reducing growth is unlikely to happen. There is
therefore a necessity to deepen the understanding of poverty under its
diversified forms in order to set up different developement strategies
accordingly.
This approach does not ignore the role agribusiness can play in the
growth dynamics, but it complements a concern to foster the positive role of
agribusiness in a coherent way alongside emphasis on addressing the development
concerns of the different categories of family farm.
2. A series of more general complimentary lessons and points emerged
from our work on agricultural transformation:
- identifying medium and long term development trends is key as a basis
fordeveloping sound action on agricultural development - despite its obvious
importance, going beyond poverty to look at wider development investments
required to promote the role of agriculture in growth
- basing action on an understanding of diversified livelihood
strategies, links between production, upstream and downstream factors and
rural-urban linkages
- deepening understanding of field level agricultural transformation processes
on which to build sound and relevant policies and action in partnership with
multiple levels of actors (international and regional organisations,
governments, civil society, agribusiness and local economic actors and
producers)
- taking a regional perspective and the specificities of regional
economies into account
- given the permeability of national boundaries and policy emphasis on
regional integration, examining how to foster economic growth potential
and existing linkages in cross-border zones
- enhancing access to agricultural innovation (technology etc. and also
institutional innovation) among more marginalised groups, particularly
the young, women and migrants, in order to help unleash the potential of the
agriculture sector
- identifying real opportunities for agricultural development through a
deeper understanding of field realities, closer interaction with
development actors, empirically grounded identification of challenges and
opportunities emerging with the rapid change process accompanying development
(in West Africa in particular). For example: In what zones is an agricultural
revolution occurring and why? How will rapid urbanisation affect the role and
contribution of agriculture? How will population growth (estimated population
in West Africa now of 290 million set to increase to 600 million by 2050!)
affect the capacity of agriculture to contribute to wider development
dynamics and growth? Who are the winners and losers in the change
process?.....
- developing regional approaches to deal with land and natural resource
competition and conflict
- and finally, addressing negative impacts of international (and
domestic)
trade and agricultural policies on developing country agriculture.
Linked to this is the whole question of policy incoherence. Here the case of
cotton isa key - see documents on the web-pages cited above.
For participants to get further detail and information on these points,
please consult our webpages, presentations and papers. For example, our work on
the economic and social importance of cotton in West Africa
(http:/www.oecd.org/sah - click on cotton icon) and our work on the
transformation of West African agriculture may be useful:
http://www.sahel-club.org/en/agri/index.htm
I attach here a summary of the current orientations, mandate etc of the
SWAC Secretariat. We would be pleased to provide more detail or further
documents on the issues raised above if useful. We would also be happy to add
those interested to our contact list for outputs of our work on West African
agriculture. Finally, we will shortly have a full Work Programme for our
agriculture unit available - I can send this to anyone who would like a copy.
Kind regards,
Karim Hussein
-----
Karim Hussein
Head - Agricultural Transformation and Sustainable Development Unit
Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC), OECD 94, rue Chardon Lagache 75016
Paris
France
Direct Tel: 01 45 24 96 31
Fax: 01 45 24 90 31
<address removed>
Assisted by :
Leonidas Hitimana
SWAC Consultant, Access to Agricultural Innovation in West Africa
<address removed>
Léonidas Hitimana
portable: 06 63 16 87 11
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