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I just want to repeat, in light of the current debate on urban drift and urban employment, that many people in poor countries still engage in a mix of livelihoods that include farming while living in urban areas. This is a fact now well documented. So I agree with Jim Kinsella when he says: "I advocate for starting where farmers are at, listening to them and working with them. Blueprinted economic development approaches have not been very successful in reaching poor farm households in the past and are likely to continue to fail." One of the "blueprints" is that farmers all live in rural areas where they pursue a mix of livelihood strategies with farming predominating. Actually, many poor people live in urban areas, where they pursue a mix of livelihood strategies with farming as a component that mixes with trading and informal or casual employment. Let us include them in our planning and we might come up with some very ideas plans on how to modernize agriculture a bit more rapidly. Urban and peri-urban farmers could be very good targets for improved productivity (they already out produce rural farmers by several times because of urban inputs like waste water re-use). They are close to the markets. They could carry information back to rural areas for higher impact. (The last is not yet established, but work in Namibia by Bruce Frayne suggests intra-household urban rural links are very important). A facilitating policy is certainly likely to be more productive than current policies which harass urban farmers because they are "supposed" to be pursuing urban-type livelihoods. (Or should I say urban stereotyped livelihoods). Research on urban poor livelihoods show farming as a critical component to household strategies. A debate on rural-urban movement which is only based on stereotyping will miss the point of what the poor are doing to feed themselves. I am sending this also to the science and technology stream of debate, because we are trying to develop urban agriculture research and development centres. Diana Lee-Smith Sub-Saharan Africa Coordinator Urban Harvest (formerly SIUPA) International Potato Centre (CIP) P O Box 25171 Nairobi 00603 Kenya CIP is a Future Harvest Centre supported by the CGIAR Tel: 254 20 630743 ext. 4942 Fax 254 20 631499 Mob: 254 722 677 526 E-mail <address removed> www.cipotato.org/urbanharvest ============================================================= To send a reply to this message that goes to all list members, make sure that you send your reply to <address removed> To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to "<address removed>", with the message body: unsubscribe science-and-technology <your-email-address>
Please visit dfid-agriculture-consultation.nri.org.