Food Security Under Threat

A NEW science paper that was published on Thursday has warned plans to fund programmes to boost small-scale agriculture in developing countries with billions of dollars are unlikely to succeed.

This is due to increasing populations, changing environments and “intellectual commitment” to ubiquitous small-scale and mixed farmers who raise both crops and animals.

The scientists were from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

The World Bank urged wealthy countries, which pledged US$20 billion to developing countries at the G8 summit in Italy last year, to look beyond “business as usual” investments.

“In most regions of the world, farming systems are under intense pressure, but the problems are not the same everywhere.

“In the past, farmers have developed the ability to adapt to small changes in terms of weather patterns and access to fertile land and water.

But the rapid rates of change seen in many developing countries today outstrip the capacity of many to adapt,” said Mario Herrero, ILRI Senior scientist and the paper's lead author.

Smallholder farmers, particularly in Africa and Asia, have been overlooked by donors and policymakers because they typically cultivate small plots of land, where they grow modest amounts of staple crops such as rice and maize while also tending a few cows, goats or chickens.

However, these farmers are feeding most of the world's one billion poor people and they are key to efforts to intensify production in the developing world, according to the paper.

The paper revealed that small-scale farms combine crop and livestock production and supply much of the staples of developing countries, which includes 41 percent of maize, 86 percent of rice and 74 percent of millet and most of the meat and dairy products consumed in these regions as well.

These so-called “mixed systems” can be models of efficient farming, with livestock providing the draft power to till the land.

Moreover, eggs, milk and meat from livestock routinely serve as important sources of regular household income and a source of high-quality protein as well as a buffer against failed harvests.

Herrero and his colleagues believe this mixed or integrated approach to farming offers many opportunities to increase food production in the developing world where agricultural systems would face several problems in the next few years.

But the authors also cautioned that realizing the potential of the crop-livestock approach would require reorienting agricultural policies to support smallholder farmers who face an array of challenges.

These challenges include climate change, which will alter growing conditions among other factors and an explosion in demand for livestock products, particularly in Asia and competition for finite natural resources, including water, arable land and fossil fuels.

 Perhaps most alarming is the fact that in many regions, various pressures were creating a situation in which most lands in the high-potential regions are “tapped out” or close to their capacity for production.

By Samuel Boadi