How Small Farmers Can Secure Their Food

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How Small Farmers Can Secure Their Food

By Dr. Susanne Neubert, Centre for Rural Development (SLE)

of 15 October 2012

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How Small Farmers Can Secure Their Food

Bonn, Berlin, 15 October 2012. One billion people in the world are hungry on ‘World Food Day’ 2012.

Despite all its assurances, the international community is failing to alleviate global hunger. How can that be? Successfully fighting hunger requires not only the suitable framework conditions, but also understanding the economy of hunger of hungry people. Only once the factors that deter- mine this economy have changed and those af- fected have real alternatives to act, will they be able to eliminate their hunger.

Who is going hungry and why?

Fifty percent of the world’s hungry people are small-scale farmers in Africa and Asia. That is, the largest group among those plagued by hunger are food producers. Although global food prices have been fairly high for a number of years, the result- ing price incentive has not yet induced small farmers to produce significantly more food.

Why do small-scale farmers not use their own land to ensure their own food supply? Despite high food prices, in many developing countries farming has not become correspondingly more profitable, and small-scale farmers are forced to act in ways that perpetuate their hunger.

A combination of reasons such as export restric- tions, insufficient price information and poor infrastructure result in the global price increases only partially reaching rural farmers. At the same time, the costs for farm inputs such as fertiliser have doubled or tripled, especially in countries that rely on fertiliser imports. Because it is the profit margin, rather than the product price, that is decisive for farmers, most have not had any economic incentive to increase production.

Closer scrutiny of the economy of hunger reveals that families of small-scale farmers do not go hungry year-round, but rather between harvests – after the yield of the last harvest has been con- sumed and before the next harvest can be reaped.

While in the past, families were able to gather wild berries and leaves, etc., on fallow land to partly

compensate for the ‘hungry season’, this oppor- tunity has shrunk dramatically due to population growth and investors’ land appropriations.

In the last decades, the hungry season has insidi- ously been lengthened. This can be particularly well explained for maize farmers in Africa, where national agricultural policies have subsidized only hybrid maize cultivation, which has led to a one- sided agricultural practice that is centred on maize. This crop concentration has led to higher production risks, unbalanced diet and degraded soils. Because degraded soils easily become in- fested with weeds, these lands require even more hoeing and also more fertiliser. And since many farmers cannot afford to buy the hybrid seeds each year from the seed company they often self- propagate or – as they call it – ‘recycle’, the seeds on their own and thus produce yields that are much inferior to the varieties’ potential. Farmers who till their lands only with hand hoes cannot bear either to labour more or to pay for seeds or more fertiliser. If they also suffer climatic fluctuations or sickness, they often have to leave their fields before the harvest and go to work as day labourers. Thirty percent of the fields in southern Africa have thus been abandoned before the harvest – despite rampant hunger!

These problems are compounded by the low storage life of most varieties of hybrid maize and small farmers’ chronic lack of cash. After the harvest, farmers urgently need cash for school fees and to pay debts, so they sell most of their crops imme- diately after the harvest – when the prices are lowest. Three to four months before the next harvest, farmer families have exhausted their own reserves and must purchase maize at the markets at the prevailing – highest – prices. Although the farmers understand how their behaviour works to their disadvantage, they cannot act differently.

How can small farmers stop the cycle of hunger?

Well-organised community storage facilities with

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suitable varieties of maize could help compensate for price fluctuations. Added to that, crop diversi- fication would shorten the intervals between harvests, improve nutrition, level peak labour and buffer counter-cyclical market patterns. Ecological intensification of agriculture and ‘conservation agriculture’ practices could also bring higher yields at lower costs. Instead of using imported fertiliser, the soil could be organically fertilised and more legumes could be integrated into crop rotations, or smaller amounts of fertiliser could be used, as foreseen by conservation agriculture. Such tech- niques are known to generate much higher yields in the tropics than the current conventional farming practices.

Why do the farmers not make use of these solutions?

Small farmers are so poor that obvious induce- ments are needed at many levels in order for them to be able to take advantage of these opportunities. Suggestions include: (1) Making subsidies flexible, i.e. by using an ‘e-voucher’ system to allow farmers to access specific subsidies on their mobile phones. Such a corruption-proof system would authorise farmers to purchase inputs for food subsistence or cash crops of their choice. (2) Facilitating access to loans with affordable interest rates to pay for mechanisation. (3) Providing ex-

tension services to teach about better agricultural methods. (4) Supporting the foundation of farmers’ organisations to help solve problems related to loans, savings and marketing.

With regard to national governments, it is their political will that is most needed in order to fully implement these known and well-tested approaches. External assistance can help to bridge the temporary costs of agricultural conversion, start ‘farmer field schools’ or assume ‘umbrella’

functions to lower interest rates and reduce the repayment risks for credit institutions.

These approaches could help small farmers not just to improve their own diet, but also to increase their contribution to their country’s food security.

Because of the current high global food prices, this effort could succeed – assuming that these prices also reach the farmers. In order to level out fluctuations, it may be also necessary to open smooth funds, as well as to improve infrastructure and price information. The growing global demand for foodstuffs means that new investments can cre- ate new opportunities – not only for the individual farmer but also for all developing countries.

Dr. Susanne Neubert, Director of the Centre for Rural Development (Seminar für Ländliche Entwick- lung – SLE)

Dr. Susanne Neubert Centre for Rural Development (SLE)

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