Climate Conversations - Green value chains transform vulnerable farmers into entrepreneurs

By Naoufel Telahigue and Rami Abu Salman

Organic cocoa farmers in Sao Tome and Principe have benefited from
an IFAD scheme linking them with overseas buyers. PHOTO/IFAD

Next month, we will all gather again in Rio de Janeiro to work out what went wrong 20 years ago and consider solutions that we have dismissed.

Children who were 12 years old during the first Rio summit, in 1992, might now be quickly approaching the end of their life expectancy in some countries. But what if smallholder farmers had been at the centre of the debate 20 years ago?

At the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – the United Nations’ agency focused on rural development – we believe there can be no green economy without “green” agriculture.

Agriculture is a key economic and development sector in all countries across the globe, recognised by world leaders for boosting gross domestic product (GDP). If done sustainably, agriculture can provide a significant opportunity for the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty to improve their lives, and cater to the food security needs of the world’s more than 925 million malnourished people.

In addition, climate-smart and simple technologies can help poor smallholder farmers to build their resilience and mitigate risks associated with climate change.

IFAD and its partners have been working to ensure that innovation and investment in agriculture -  and more importantly in the world’s 500 million small farms - lead to long-term sustainability.

Organic fair-trade Cocoa
In Sao Tome and Principe, for example, IFAD has helped turn around the dying smallholder cocoa sector after the collapse of world market prices in the late 1990s.

By setting up public-private partnerships with overseas buyers of organic fair-trade cocoa of high quality, the project helped small farmers establish export cooperatives and achieve stable and significantly improved incomes.

Smallholder families participating in the programme have seen their yearly income increase, on average, from a level 25 percent below the poverty line to 8 percent above it. One particularly successful producer used the profit from organic cocoa production to set up a small roadside shop that his wife runs, generating even greater profit.

This initiative was coupled with organising small farmer groups and training them in organic and conservation agriculture, solar drying, integrated pest management and other environmentally sustainable practices.

Growth potential
Smallholder farmers have untapped growth potential. The message IFAD will take to the upcoming conference in Rio is that we must explore this potential by transforming smallholder farmers into empowered business women and men.

This transformation requires adopting new approaches that are competitive, sustainable, sufficiently diversified and within the carrying capacity of natural ecosystems. By helping smallholders in integrating and developing “green value chains”, we offer them an opportunity to sustainably harvest not only food, but also economic, social and environmental benefits.

For instance, a new initiative in Sierra Leone is aiming to develop markets for high-quality organic, fair-trade cocoa. The project will rehabilitate a cocoa plantation abandoned during the war.

Prices for good-quality certified cocoa are less susceptible to market fluctuations, and this encourages further investment and assures sustainability. In addition to the extra income provided by intercropped plants, cocoa agroforestry systems will support greater biodiversity and avoid land degradation and erosion caused by slash-and-burn farming.

Smallholder farmers have immense potential to contribute to a green economy and to sustainable growth in general. To do that successfully, they need enabling environments and support such as improved access to land, water and markets, financial services, adequate technologies and technical assistance.

In this respect, promoting the role of women and youth as farm entrepreneurs is particularly crucial. We have the means, we have the knowledge, and now we need the collective will. If we don’t act now, we risk going back in another 20 years to acknowledge the failure of choices.

Originally posted on AlertNet blog

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Naoufel Telahigue and Rami Abu Salman are Regional Environment and Climate Specialists at the IFAD. IFAD is co-organising Agriculture and Rural Development Day on June 18 ahead of the Rio+20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

How to save Bangladesh?

An interview with Thomas Rath, IFAD Country Programme Manager for Bangladesh
Originally posted on New York Times Green blog

A woman prepares a fishing net for mending in Hamidpur, Bangladesh.
©IFAD/Alexandra Boulat

In just over a month, policy makers from around the world will meet in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The meeting has been called Rio+20, reflecting the two decades that have passed since a landmark conference on the environment and development was held in Rio in 1992. This time the main themes are energy, sustainable cities, food security, water shortages, the health of oceans, disaster readiness and assuring people a livelihood.

Bangladesh is a prime example of a vulnerable developing nation that faces formidable challenges in all these areas, and it will be directly affected by the decisions that are made — or not made — at the conference. Firm commitments have often been elusive on the international level.

We asked Thomas Rath, the country program manager for the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development project in Bangladesh, about the development obstacles the country faces, some of which are linked toclimate change and environmental degradation. Following are excerpts, edited for brevity and clarity.

Q.

How would you describe Bangladesh’s agricultural picture?

A.

Bangladesh, bordering India, Myanmar and the Bay of Bengal, is in the subtropical zone, very wet and flat and dominated by agriculture. Three large rivers from the Himalayas flow through the country, all ending in the bay on the southern coast. It’s a beautiful, fertile tropical delta.

The New York Times

About 150 million people live here, and the population density is one of the highest in the world after places like Singapore and Hong Kong. That’s 1,200 people per square kilometer (about four-tenths of a square mile). By comparison, in Mongolia there are only three or four people per square kilometer.

This density means that many farmers have very small land plots on which they struggle to feed their families. About 35 percent of the population lives under the poverty line of $1 a day, and about 40 percent, or 60 million people, are completely dependent on agriculture. Many people are landless or have less than an acre or half an acre to live on. It makes you wonder what they are surviving on.

Rice is the principal crop and, for those with very little land, the only crop they grow. Forty percent of children are malnourished, either because they don’t get enough calories or because they can’t develop healthily only eating rice.

Q.

How is climate change affecting the land, people and economy?

A.

Bangladesh sits at the end of the cone of the Bay of Bengal. The country is infamous for natural disasters. Every year there are typhoons. The coastal zones routinely get washed away, and the farmland is destroyed: people lose animals, crops, everything they have. They are very exposed: most of the land is flat and just above sea level, every storm sweeps across the country without any obstacles, and tidal surges pound the coast.

Fishermen begin their work at dawn in Dhopadanga Boar, Bangladesh.
©IFAD/Alexandra Boulat

If you go further north, there is an area in the northeast that is essentially a large depression in the land. When the monsoon season starts, the water comes down from the mountains and floods the whole area. It fills up with water and takes months to drain. Vast areas are underwater half the time, so farmers can’t go into their fields or grow anything then; they have to rely on something else for most of the year.

These things have always happened in Bangladesh, but with climate change it is expected that these flash floods will occur more frequently, and rainfall will be more intense and erratic. Farmers are already trying to adapt to these changes by sowing their rice earlier and using varieties that mature more quickly so they can get the harvest in before the rains come and they are left with nothing to eat or sell.

In the coastal areas, storms are expected to come earlier and be more frequent and severe. In the last two decades, 500,000 people have been killed in storms, and we should expect that this will increase.

And then of course, the sea level will rise, and the ocean will come in over what dikes have been built. It is very likely that about 30 percent of land in Bangladesh will frequently be underwater and the soil will be saturated with salt and useless. Many, many people will lose their farmland, crops and livestock and homes and become climate change refugees. Where do these people go then, when there is already not enough land in the country?

Q.

What are your thoughts on Rio as the conference approaches? Are you hopeful? Cynical?

A.

I am not cynical — there are too many cynics already, and how does that help?

But I do think it’s important that people act instead of just talking.
It’s really sad that there are still politicians and governments out there who don’t believe that climate change is fact. It’s very sad. I don’t know what their motivations are, but they should come to Bangladesh and meet the people who won’t have homes or land or any way of supporting their families.

“Many, many people will lose their farmland, crops and livestock and homes and become climate change refugees. Where do these people go then?”

— Thomas Rath

If we don’t do anything, then the problem will come to us: these won’t be problems in our backyard, we will have climate refugees in our front yard, knocking on our door.

These people have a right to live, just as we who by chance were lucky enough to be born in comfortable North America and Europe have the right to live.

Rio was and is a fantastic thing, but we have no time to waste.

The planet cannot afford for us to continue the mistakes we made during industrialization: rooting our economy in fossil energy and polluting the atmosphere as much as possible. We need to help one another.

Q.

What are the biggest challenges for Bangladesh?

A.

It’s not enough for us to help people become better farmers; we need to help transition the economy to something that does not depend on the availability of land. I know farmers who grow rice before the monsoon season and then, when the rains come, they stock their flooded fields with fish fingerlings and crabs and sell these in Dhaka. It is a strange sort of crop rotation, but it works in some areas.

Agriculture will still be a very important sector in Bangladesh — it has to be, given so much food insecurity. But food insecurity can only be tackled by sufficient food production, and expanding agriculture — livestock, rice cultivation — contributes to climate change, which in turn leads to greater food insecurity through flooding, etc.

We need to find ways to help countries all over Asia to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while at the same time producing enough food to feed their people.

Reaching food security means reaching out to smallholders

By Kanayo F. Nwanze, IFAD President

Agriculture is at the centre of a nexus of pressing issues - poverty, hunger, climate change, environmental degradation, conflict - and the smallholder farmer is at the centre of agricultural development. As we work towards a consensus on a new agricultural agenda, we must not lose sight of this fact. Coming in swift
succession, the meetings of the G8, G20 and the Rio +20 conference offer a unique opportunity to capitalise on the growing recognition that agricultural development is the key to a sustainable future. Small farmers not only need to be a focus of any new agreements; they need to have a role in framing them.


Agriculture is essential both to food security and to poverty reduction. Consider that growth generated by agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. And with at least 70
percent of the world’s poorest people living in the rural areas of developing countries, whether we succeed or fail in our efforts to feed the world and rid it of poverty will largely depend on reaching the people who work the world’s 500 million small farms, many of whom are women.

No new agricultural agenda can ignore the importance of empowering women. In developing countries, 43% of the farmers are women, yet their performance is hampered by deeply unequal access to services and resources - such as credit, extension and improved seeds and fertiliser. And more importantly, they often do not have title rights to the land they farm. It has been estimated that if women had the same access to resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30%. Closing this gender gap would lift 150 million people out of hunger.

To transform our lives we need modern equipment, water, electricity, telephone… and why not internet?

A new vision
It has long been apparent that there needs to be a second Green Revolution for the 21st century, with a more modulated approach. Today’s world is very different from the one in which the original Green Revolution was launched. Confronting climate change, an environment that is in many places seriously
degraded, and a population that is expected to top 9 billion people by 2050, what we need now is not ‘more of the same’. In moving ahead, we have to make sure we are not looking backward.

An approach relying heavily on inputs and energy will not succeed in the long run. We need to think differently if we are to achieve both environmental sustainability and sustainability over time. We need a
sustainable agricultural intensification agenda that can deliver not only greater productivity but also greater sustainability, resilience to shocks, decent incomes and jobs - particularly for rural youth - and greater nutritional value.

Smallholder agriculture is central to the success of this agenda on all fronts. In addition to increasing agricultural investment, we need to improve such investment. That means bringing together public and private investors in pursuit of the same goals, and making sure that the centrality of smallholders as the main
providers of on-farm private investment is recognised and supported first and foremost.


We will also need to ensure that interventions reach deep into rural areas. The benefits of research, such as improved seeds and drought-tolerant varieties, as well as market information and technologies, will need to be available on the most modest farm in the most remote location.

Farmers are not just recipients of assistance; they are our most important partners, whose involvement and
perspective is critical. During a recent visit to Cameroon, one young farmer, Susanne Nke, told me that “The rural women of our villages must really reach full autonomy. The arduous nature of their work must be reduced. We want to move from the hoe to the tractor.

If we want to engage the youth of today in agricultural development - which is critical to food security tomorrow - we need to listen to them. We should take note of how Susanne cogently articulates the links between equality and social justice, technological innovation, free exchange of information, and
social transformation. And clearly, agricultural development means building strong communities as well as livelihoods.

Connecting smallholder farmers to markets
Private sector partnerships are now widely seen as crucial to agricultural growth and the reduction of rural poverty. We should remember that smallholder farmers are already part of the private sector. Every farm,
no matter how small, is a business. And smallholder farmers are themselves the biggest investors in agriculture in developing countries.

However, these farmers face a number of hurdles in improving their efficiency, productivity and livelihoods. Many of these centre around access - access to markets, to technology, to credit, to the benefits of
innovation and research, to land, to water, and to information. Gender inequalities make access all the more challenging for women farmers, though they make up a large percentage of smallholder farmers and
are typically the most direct providers of food security at the household level.

When rural small farmers are connected to markets, they can sell more and better quality food at higher prices, eat a more diversified diet, and improve household food security and nutrition. With increased income they can pay for essential medicines, send their children to school and improve their lives. Belonging to an organised farmers’ group allows smallholder farmers to bulk produce, reduce costs through economies
of scale and, perhaps most importantly, to strengthen their bargaining power in the value chain, often dominated by powerful private-sector actors. Gender equality is important here as well, in the composition of farmers’ organisations and women farmers’ own ability to organise effectively.

Recognising small farmers and their organizations as primary stakeholders in development means more than paying lip service to them in global meetings. Truly acting upon this recognition requires genuine collaboration and inclusive processes, which cannot be an afterthought but need to start from the very design of programmes and continue through to evaluation.

In Guatemala, an IFAD supported project has helped a producers’ association in El Quiché buy irrigation equipment, build a new storage facility and work with the private sector to bring their produce to new markets. By engaging with private sector partners, they have seen a three-fold increase in productivity, and today these farmers sell to some of the biggest retailers in the world, including retailers in the United States.

There is no single solution that will allow small farmers to respond to the various challenges they face. But our experience has shown that targeted interventions that address the particular spectrum of issues faced by rural communities and that give smallholders a stake in the process are the most practical and cost-effective way to further agricultural development and improve the lives of rural people. The power of smallholders in ensuring food security and eradicating poverty is a reality that world leaders in Camp David, Mexico City and Rio cannot afford to ignore.

Originally published by Intrinsic Communications

Just released for Rio+20: Video documentary on food challenges in Bangladesh, Chad and Ethiopia

Written by James Heer

In the context of the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June 2012, the Rome-based UN agencies released a new Hungry Planet episode, featuring solutions that work to increase food production and feed the expected 9.3 billion people by 2050.

The special Rio+20 episode of Hungry Planet takes us from Bangladesh, where rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms threaten millions of farmers living along the country's southern coast, to Chad, where unpredictable weather patterns fuel hunger and malnutrition, and finally Ethiopia, where distribution of high yield root and tuber varieties help farmers increase production in times of drought.



Hungry Planet is a web-based television series about global food issues and agricultural development. Each episode takes viewers to remote locations around the world and tells the stories of real people - farmers struggling to increase food yields while adapting to climate change, families on the run fleeing conflict and famine, scientists and aid workers on the frontlines searching for solutions that will ensure there’s enough food to feed a hungry planet now and in the future. Stories are produced by the United Nation’s three food agencies – the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

The next episode will be released in early June 2012. Stay tuned.

Find out more about how IFAD is involved in Rio+20.

For more Hungry Planet episodes, check IFAD’s Video Archive.

IFAD supports reframing of rural poverty for #rioplus20

Written by Clarissa Baldin

©IFAD/Susan Beccio

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has provided the Reframing Rio initiative with US$100 thousand to help ensure that rural poverty and the challenges faced by poor women and men living on 500 million smallholder farms are front and centre leading up to Rio+20.

Reframing Rio is a multi-media project designed by tve, Inter Press Service (IPS) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) to enhance global awareness and mobilize efforts towards the urgent need of a sustainable world leading up to and beyond Rio+20. In addition to IFAD’s contribution the project is also supported by the EU and 9 other organizations.

The project aims to help focus public and political debate on how a green economy can contribute to poverty reduction and sustainable development. The project will make use of written media, documentaries and short films covering a range of issues related to sustainable development to engage audiences in the discussion.

By sponsoring the Reframing Rio project, IFAD is able to ensure issues that affect smallholders are included in the discussion. Rio + 20 is an opportunity to change the food and agriculture system so that smallholders in developing countries can be included.

The world’s poor rural people and especially farmers of the 500 million smallholdings play a key role as providers of food and livelihoods. Smallholders supply up to 80 per cent of the food consumed in a large part of the developing world, with much of that produced by women, and yet smallholder households are often vulnerable to health and nutrition challenges. As managers of vast areas of land and natural resources, smallholders are both victims and drivers of environmental degradation, and need support to scale up sustainable practices.

The upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) promises to be a historic milestone for global sustainable development.  IFAD is working together with partners including the Rome-Based Agencies, farmers’ associations and indigenous peoples groups to ensure that smallholders will be empowered to contribute and participate to their full potential.

More on the Reframing Rio project will be posted here soon, so keep an eye on our blog.

Find out more on IFAD’s engagement in Rio+20.

$100 million of climate smart smallholder #agriculture for Vietnam #CBA6

by Jeffrey A. Brez

This afternoon at the 6th Global Community-Based Adaptation conference in Hanoi, Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and IFAD shared their experience in making IFAD’s 2012-2017 strategic planning document for Vietnam climate smart. (these documents at IFAD are known as “Results Based Country Strategic Opportunities Programmes” or COSOPs). IFAD’s portfolio in Vietnam focuses on the poorest rural communities, including ethnic minorities and women headed households, and is now worth about US$257 million, with another USD100 million of investments anticipated over the 2012-2017 period.

Mard ifad cba6 presentation - dr hung +roshan cooke - 19 apr2012

View more PowerPoint from IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

MARD was represented by Prof. Dr. Trieu Van Hung, Director General of their Department of Science, Technology and the Environment. IFAD was represented by Roshan Cooke, Regional Climate and Environment Specialist for the Asia and Pacific Region.



Dr. Trieu (click above to view his 1-minute video statement) made the point that Vietnam is expected to be among the countries hardest hit by climate change, and that the agriculture sector is one of the most vulnerable. According to the National Climate Change Strategy, from 2001-2010 “damages caused by disasters like floods, storms, flash floods, landslides, inundations, droughts and saltwater intrusion have been significant: 9500 dead and missing people; and an asset loss of about 1.5% of GDP each year.” Given that the majority of Vietnam’s poor women and men live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods – and that agriculture is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters - supporting community-based adaptation is crucial to help buffer their livelihoods.

My colleague Roshan Cooke (in the photo above) explained IFAD’s ambitious approach. The “Climate Smart COSOP,” he said, will ensure that all of the investments that IFAD supports in Vietnam are climate-smart. This will be done through, among others, the following interventions: support to the policy making process to ensure that the climate vulnerability of poor rural communities is effectively addressed through MARD’s policy frameworks; integration of climate change adaptation responses into the provincial level Socio-Economic Development Plan (SEDP) for determining budget allocations; identification of adaptation pathways for diversification of livelihoods; and scaling up of autonomous adaptation actions that rural poor people are innovating.

Several presentations were made and the following discussion was lively. Issues raised included how to address the “surplus of rural population in farming,” how to balance focus between smallholder farming and opportunities in the rural non-farm economy (and beyond), and how to fill the knowledge gap on local level impacts of climate change in rural areas.

I have learned a tremendous amount here, through a field trip to Hoa Binh province to visit a COHED project (biogas, alternative off-farm livelihoods for women and community-based eco-tourism, disaster preparedness drills) THANK YOU TO THE COHED TEAM, and great conference sessions that included an amazing Red Cross-designed game to raise awareness about disaster risk reduction and planning THANK YOU PABLO SUAREZ and JULIE ARRIGHI, and a session to practice pitching climate change stories to journalists, led by IIED – THANK YOU MIKE SHANAHAN and DRAGONS including Pakistan's AFIA SALAM of www.speakforchange.org.

CBA6 has two more days left! Follow the LIVE WEB STREAM or enjoy the blogs and vlogs and other interactive materials - and learn and share along with the rest of us.

Find out more here about how IFAD is supporting smallholders and poor rural people in Vietnam.

Want to read the IFAD COSOP for Vietnam? You won't regret the time spent. Click here and scroll down to Vietnam 2012. Available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.

Climate-smart agriculture: Not just for big farms anymore

by President Paul Kagame and Kanayo F. Nwanze

Without the support of the world's small farmers, climate talks such as those set for the Rio+20 Summit can never translate fully into climate action, This is why, as the focus shifts to building a global green economy, Governments, other policymakers and the business community from developed as well as emerging economies must recognize the inextricable linkages between climate change, the environment and food security – and, critically, bring smallholder agriculture into discussion.

Every day, smallholder farmers in developing countries confront the real world consequences of climate change and are often first to fall prey to fickle global markets or increasingly extreme weather events.

Yet smallholders cannot be ignored when it comes to climate change solutions:  the world’s half billion small farms  provide up to 80 percent of the food in  in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.

Can we really count on these farmers, many of them desperately poor, to take a leading role in addressing the twin challenges of food security and environmental sustainability?  Can they produce more food while protecting the natural environment?

We believe the answer is a resounding yes.  Real world experience shows that they can.

Critical to success is adopting environmentally sustainable techniques that preserve and enhance the soil and ground water.

Examples include terracing to prevent soil loss and degradation through erosion and flooding; minimal or zero tillage, crop rotation and the application of manure, compost or mulching, to improve soil structure and fertility; and agro forestry systems that integrate trees with crops and livestock to produce more in sustainable ways.

The recent experience in Rwanda signals hope that increased agricultural output and environmental protection really can go hand-in-hand.

In Ngororero district in the country's southwest, for  example, an IFAD-backed project has seen Rwandan farmers increase crop yields by up to 300 per cent through improved methods, including using better seeds, good planting technologies and applying fertilizer at the optimal time.

On a larger scale, farmers across Rwanda are increasing the use of manure instead of chemical fertilizers that produce greenhouse gases. In some areas of the country, smallholders are now terracing their land and using other natural techniques to improve the water-holding potential of the soil, improving soil quality and increasing their output.

And while these approaches have proliferated during the past five years, Rwanda has quadrupled its agricultural production.  Today it is now a food-secure nation – remarkable progress in just a few years.

Importantly, Rwanda’s efforts to promote climate-smart agriculture are supported by a wider policy and investment framework that seeks to ensure that every farmer, however small, has access to improved seeds, technical know-how and, crucially, a market opportunity for their farm output. This is an important lesson for every developing country.  If we are to ensure that smallholders can produce more food in sustainable ways their farming should be profitable.

Accordingly, scaling up environmentally sustainable farming among smallholders throughout the world will require a reshaping of national policies and the architecture of public and private investment so as to ensure that farmers can learn these techniques, see their value and employ them profitably.

The lesson is simple.  Identify the climate-smart farming practices and techniques that can boost agricultural production, get the relevant know-how to smallholders, support them as they make the transition, and create an enabling policy environment.

If we do this, – and national policies and international development initiatives support a transition to a climate-smart agriculture – we have no doubt that smallholders throughout the world will step up and do their part.

Paul Kagame is President of the Republic of Rwanda. Kanayo F. Nwanze is President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an international financial institution (IFI) and a specialized agency of the United Nations


Originally appeared in Project Syndicate

#IFADGC High-level panel: From words to actions: Creating a sustainable future for smallholder farmers

Participative Government strategies as well as the technical & financial support of International Organisations, Civil Society and the Private Sector can help smallholder farmers to increase their productivity in a sustainable way.

Naga Munchetty has hosted this high level panel composed of
- H. E. Akinwumi Ayo Adesina, Minister of Agriculture & Rural Development and Vice-President (Policy and Partnerships) for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA),
- H. E. Mehmet Mehdi Eker, Minister of Food, Agriculture & Livestock, Turkey;
- H. E. Nemesia Achacollo Tola, Minister of Rural & Territorial Development Agriculture of Bolivia, and
- Carlos Seré, Chief Development Strategist, IFAD.

The panellists have pointed out that the responsibility and accountability of governments to ensure the enabling environment by providing the necessary infrastructure such as research, physical access to markets and technical support services including capacity building to smallholder farmers in rural areas is essential. Farmers and their farmers’ organisations are the main focus and shall be directly involved in the definition of agricultural policies.

Long-term sustainable development of agriculture can only be obtained by an efficient cooperation of Governments, international organisations, civil society and the private sector. International organisations such as FAO and IFAD have the technical know-how on agriculture related issues, whereas the private sector can contribute to providing services (index-based weather insurances...) and high-quality inputs (fertilisers, high-quality seeds...). The civil society can also help to support local communities in strengthening their capacities to participate in policy dialogue.

Sustainable agriculture needs to internalise climate change. In light of Rio plus 20 farmers need to be aware of the climate change so that they can adapt to this new reality to ensure food security for their families as well as non-farm consumers in the long run.

In order to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (MDG 1), Governments have to decide and commit to fight food insecurity so that international organisations can assist in providing technical support and research, the civil society can help strengthen rural communities and the private sector is able to invest and provide high-quality inputs.

#IFAD President shares his expectations of #ifadgc

We're 72 hours away from #ifadgc. There is a lot of buzz and excitement in the building. Over the weekend 30 young people came together to discuss the opportunities and challenges of agriculture and what it takes to make agriculture a profitable business.

Tomorrow, the Fourth global meeting of the Farmers' Forum will kick off. And on Wednesday our building will host world leaders, prominent guests, global movers and shakers.

As part of our "back story" and interview series, we had the opportunity to have a conversation with IFAD President and ask him what are his expectations for this session of #ifadgc.

In this interview, the President shared his excitement about having a first class international meeting  focusing on the hot topic of climate change  with renown panelists and prominent guests. He also mentioned he is looking forward to this event being an open one thanks to social media and webcasting.

You can imagine the smile on my face, when the President mentioned that #ifadgc is almost like what we experienced last September with the Share Fair! (The spirit of #sfrome is alive and kicking!)

The President, one of our best social media advocates, is looking forward to an interesting exchange of ideas and interaction on social media. Have a look at how, yesterday during the youth in agriculture session, he engaged in a conversation with WFP's Executive Director, Josette Sheeran.

This is your chance to interact with the renown panelists and guests. Send us your questions for Bill Gates and the other panellists. Join us in making #ifadgc a memorable event!

Help us show the world and the skeptics the power and potential of social media! We count on YOU and look forward to having an engaging and compelling conversation.

#IFADGC: High-level panel: From words to actions: Creating a sustainable future for smallholder farmers

On 23 February 2012, at 11a.m., Naga Munchetty, journalist & TV presenter, will host a high-level panel composed of policymakers who will discuss what partnerships, investments and policies are needed to ensure rural smallholder farmers can produce more food in an environmentally sustainable way.

Panellists are H.E. Akinwunmi Ayo Adesina, Nigerian minister of agriculture, H.E. Marie-Josée Jacobs, Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, Luxembourg, Carlos Seré is the Chief Development Strategist at IFAD.

You can follow the session on webcast (http://webcasting.ifad.org/gc2012).

Farmers Are Ready to Do Their Part on Climate Change

By Kanayo F. Nwanze, IFAD President
Originally posted on Huffington Post

The half billion smallholder farms spread across the world's developing countries are at the intersection of humanity's two greatest challenges: reversing climate change and feeding a rapidly growing global population.

Most of the people who operate these farms are desperately poor. But it would be foolish to contemplate environmental and food security solutions without them. Together, smallholder farmers manage vast areas of our planet, including 80 percent of the farmland in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

The task before them is immense. To ensure global food security they must reduce their crop losses and post-harvest waste, and substantially increase their annual output over the next several decades. They have to do it on virtually the same amount of arable land that they have today. And, in many areas, they must overcome increasingly volatile agricultural markets, the growing insecurity of access to land, and the degradation of natural resources on which they depend.

At the same time, while farmers themselves are among the most vulnerable to the risks that climate change brings, they too must find ways to work in more environmentally sustainable ways. Agriculture itself, including large-and small-scale operations, accounts for 14 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted each year, and when you factor in land-use change and forestry, where agriculture is the primary driver, the figure jumps to a whopping 30 percent.

The experience of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) shows that no matter how small their operations or how poor they are, small farmers in developing countries can actually grow more while at the same time adopting sustainable, environment-friendly methods that help them adapt to the problems that climate change often creates for them. But we must support developing countries to improve policies and incentives to enable small farmers to adopt climate-smart practices and approaches.

Creating an enabling environment for them to manage their risks, access markets, and get the technical know-how they need to succeed in their businesses are all essential to driving them toward a climate-smart, more productive agriculture. We must all recognize that, above all else, farming is a business, even for the poorest farmers on the planet. Today's focus needs to show small farmers not only how to increase their yields through sustainable approaches, but also how to make money and improve their lives when they implement such approaches.

In addition to this, we must rethink agriculture in the face of today's climate change and food security challenges. The enormous, life-giving success of the "Green Revolution" -- which a generation ago focused on the proliferation of high yielding, pest- and-disease-resistant varieties of staple crops like rice and wheat -- needs to give way to new, environmentally sustainable approaches that preserve and enhance the soil and ground water and use natural processes working with, rather than against, ecosystems to fertilize crops and to ward off pest damage.

At IFAD we've seen these techniques work in many places. In parts of Africa, new agroforestry methods such as planting acacia trees in maize fields have helped farmers double their yields, as well as improving soil conditions for longer term productivity. In South Gansu province of China, I saw with my own eyes how local farmers are fighting drought and improving soil quality through a variety of basic techniques such as rainwater harvesting. And in Burkina Faso, smallholder farmers are deploying simple water harvesting techniques such as planting pits and permeable rock dams, along with crop-livestock integration to increase their productivity and restore degraded land.

These may sound like very simple practices, and they are. But these examples, and many others like them, show the enormous potential of the world's small farmers to improve their life by adopting climate-smart techniques. We need to scale up these approaches so they become common practice by reshaping the architecture of public and private development finance so that small farmers can learn these techniques, see their value, and make a profit.

As we look ahead to the Rio+20 climate talks, let us keep in mind that agriculture, food security and climate change are all bound tightly together. Clearly, the challenge of growing more food can be met only if sustainability is the foundation of approaches to food security and poverty reduction in every country and every community.

Celebrating 27 extraordinary colleagues at #IFAD: What a great way to finish the year

This afternoon we came together for the 2011 staff award ceremony.

IFAD staff awards is very special. What makes it different from other awards and recognitions is the fact that its an award for staff by staff.

Every year we have the opportunity to nominate and reward our colleagues and peer for their leadership, for being agents of change, for spearheading and contributing to an outstanding project and/or activity.

And this year, we had the opportunity to honour 27 extraordinary colleagues!

Our lovely colleague Shyam Khadka got the award in the leadership category. The award paid tribute to Shyam’s eloquent and consistent leadership, to his role as the “programme management department anchor” for all major corporate evaluations including direct supervision and country presence. Shyam was recognized for his strong negotiating skills, ability to constructively engagement with others, his tact, his relentless focus on achieve the best possible results. Shyam is not only a leader, but a mentor and a role model for many of us. This year's award for leadership could not have gone to anyone better than Shyam!


In a true team spirit and to celebrate cross-departmental and cross-divisional work - the embodiment of breaking down silos - two teams got the awards in the outstanding project/initiative category.

Shamela Brown, Victoria Chiartano, Paola de Leva and Amedeo Paglione were awarded for having conceived, planned, developed and implemented the Member States Interactive Platform. The award recognized the hard work that went into turning this initiative into reality. They were acknowledged for their vision, commitment, for coming together from different parts of the house, to provide IFAD with a better way to effectively communicate with our donors.

The other team is one known to the readers of IFAD Social Reporting blog - the team who worked behind the scenes to make the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair possible. This team that was instrumental in opening IFAD's doors to 700 participants from 60 countries in September 2011. Thanks to the exemplary teamwork of Alessio Accardi, Christian Assogba, Fabio Caruso, Jean Philippe Decraene, Christian De Santis, Roberto De Tora, Severino Manuel, Roberto Montalto, Dave Nolan, Birgit Plockinger, Roberto Rea, Beate Stalsett, Elisabetta Vaccari and Florence Yu,  IFAD was able to orchestrate an “out-of-the-box” and successful event. They are indeed a dream team, a true testament of "IFAD at its best" and  sterling example of team work within and between divisions, one that cuts through divisional and departmental silos, and gives true definition to the word team.

We finished by celebrating three extraordinary colleagues and our GoGreenGroup as agents of change.

Rahel Getachew was rewarded for consistently showing relentless commitment to excellence and for always going the extra mile. Rahel was recognized for enhancing IFAD’s image, both internally and externally, she was recognized as being the embodiment of the true professional, tirelessly gracious and tenaciously supportive even when under the most intense of pressure.  The award paid tribute to her many wonderful attributes which are appreciated by all levels of staff and stakeholders, and reinforces the recognition of all the hard work done by Rahel,  that is not always visible but that is the foundation of the organization's internal strength.


Hubert Boirard  was recognized for his outstanding performance in managing the challenging country portfolio of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Everyone recognized his efforts in transforming Sierra Leone portfolio into  high performing and disbursing one. He was commended for implementing an innovative project management unit as an integral part of the Ministry of Agriculture in Liberia.  Thanks to Hubert's work,  the World Bank and African Development Bank decided this year to  assign their programmes to be managed by this project management unit. The award recognized Hubert’s abilities and skills of innovator and change agent  delivering tangible results that turned around the performance of the country  portfolios in Sierra Leone and Liberia.


Dina Nabeel, who unfortunately was not present, was recognized for her initiatives to drive and support the changes that facilitated and allowed IFAD to successfully take over the responsibility of supervising  its projects. Her work was instrumental in building staff capacity at headquarters and in the field to handle fiduciary aspects associated with supervision and implementation support. This award recognized Dina’s ability as a change agent that supports and motivate peers to deliver important changes in the way we work which has led to tangible improvements  of project results on the ground.

We paid tribute to the IFAD Go Green Group, composed of  Moses Abukari, Hazel Bedford, Miriam Blanco, Steven Jonckheere and Sabine Pallas for their outstanding contribution in promoting a green and environmental friendly attitude at corporate level. The Go Green Group was established as small group of volunteers in August 2008, following the Secretary-General’s request to launch a UN initiative to reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint of the United Nations Headquarters. The group has had its share of challenges, as initially it was met with some scepticism. However, their  passion and tenacity has inspired many colleagues to the point where IFAD is now working together with other UN agencies in the Sustainable UN network to become climate neutral by putting in place systems to reduce IFAD’s environmental impact (Greening the Blue Initiative).


We all look forward to 2012 edition of IFAD staff award, which will definitely pay tribute to many more colleagues. And before I sign-off, congratulations to Ron Hartman for receiving the Presidential award. We all thank Ron for his great work in re-engaging with Australia. And happy holidays to all our readers. May 2012 be a peaceful and prosperous year for you all.

Agriculture In! (721 and counting...)

by Jeff Brez in Durban

Should agriculture be on the climate change agenda? What impact would this have? The ball is in the court of COP 17 attendees to assess the game changing impact of negotiations at COP 17 in Durban.

If you are at the COP – come to booth 18 to show your skill at getting ‘Agriculture In!’ 721 COP attendees have already played.

IFAD teamed up with the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) to design the game and raise awareness on agriculture’s role in climate change at COP 17 in Durban.

‘Agriculture In’ is a ball game with 3 targets designed to address the significance of agriculture and how it can contribute to poverty reduction, food security, building resilience, and improving environmental outcomes including reducing GHG emissions.

The Targets:

• Green Climate Fund
• SBSTA Work Programme
• Mitigation Finance for Farmers

These are all opportunities for negotiators to ensure that the worlds 1 billion poor rural people, most of whom rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, benefit from climate finance.

“Poor smallholder farmers, typically women are on the front line of climate change impacts yet they don’t benefit enough from climate finance,” says Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Director of IFAD’s Environment and Climate Division, “climate finance can help scale up investments in sustainable agriculture and research that will help them adapt to changing weather conditions and contribute to global food security.”

“Agriculture is the foundation of most African economies and the most climate-sensitive sector so it is imperative that it forms part of the agenda at this year’s COP17,” said Ishmael Sunga, CEO of SACAU. “This game not only highlights that but also the specific areas of intervention such as the need for the establishment of Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) Work Program on Agriculture that covers both adaptation and mitigation and addresses the needs of African farmers.”

Journalists and all those attending the COP (especially negotiators!) are invited to test their ball skills while getting a better understanding of agriculture and its importance at stand 18 of the ICC/DEC.

Prizes allocated for winners name the many benefits for farmers and wider communities if agriculture is included: Improved Food Security, Lasting Poverty Reduction, Enhanced Biodiversity, Reduced GHG Emissions, More trees, More Resilient Livelihoods.

Making Climate-Smart “The New Normal in Agriculture"

by Jeff Brez in Durban

Anticipation is building that sectoral text under the LCA may lead to the approval by the Parties of a work programme under SBSTA for agriculture here in Durban. The demand on the ground from farmers communities and governments for climate-smart agriculture as a means to tackle poverty reduction, food security, climate resilience, improved environmental outcomes and reduced emissions is already strong and continues to grow. Many feel that a SBSTA Work Programme would help agriculture take early action to determine the long-term investments needed to transform agriculture to meet future challenges.

Tina Joemat-Pettersson, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of South Africa, opened the Agriculture and Rural Development Day, this past Saturday, and told journalists, “Agriculture must adapt to a changing climate and at the same time contribute to reducing emissions. We have a huge dichotomy between smallholder and large-scale farming, but… smallholder farming is now also being seen as an opportunity for food security as well as economic growth… not just as a social development programme.”

Governments and development institutions, including IFAD, the World Bank, FAO, and others together with other partners have made great strides in promoting climate-smart approaches that meet the needs of farmers and poor rural people. There is also a call for climate finance to benefit smallholders and the rural poor – where poverty is concentrated – through both adaptation and mitigation financing. It is hoped that the Green Climate Fund, in this sense, will prioritize financing for approaches that reward “multiple benefit outcomes” (aka “co-benefits” in negotiation language): poverty reduction, food security, climate resilience and emissions reductions through climate-smart agriculture.

Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD, The U.N.’s rural poverty agency, delivered a keynote address at ARDD urging negotiators to recognize that “Government officials once believed that they had to choose between feeding their people and protecting nature. Now they realize that they can and must do both.” He continued, “negotiators need to recognize the critical importance of enabling smallholder farmers to become more resilient to climate change and to grow more food in environmentally sustainable, climate-smart ways,” he added.

The world’s 500 million smallholder farms will have to significantly increase their production and will have to do it in the face of more frequent extreme weather events and shifting weather conditions brought by climate change. The development community must continue its efforts to come together with governments to make climate smart practices the new normal in agriculture

“Out in their fields, farmers are already adapting to the changing climate and realizing that they must respect and preserve the environment if they are to feed their families and produce a surplus for markets,” Nwanze said. “And policymakers at the country level are citing the impact of extreme weather on their crop production and asking for climate change to be addressed in rural development projects.”

Simple maths draws the connection between climate change poverty reduction and agriculture into stark relief. 1.4 billion people live today in extreme poverty, under US$1.25 per day. One billion of them live in rural areas, and the majority of those depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. IFAD’s experience with climate smart agriculture in 40 countries, through 22 loans and 15 country-specific and regional grants is just one testament to this.

Climate-Smart Smallholder Products: a new product label ?

by Jeff Brez, from COP 17 in Durban

At Agriculture and Rural Development Day (ARDD) at COP 17 in Durban, IFAD teamed up with Cafédirect and Fairtrade Africa to offer a learning event on “Getting Climate-Smart Smallholder Products to Market.” The case study was based on an IFAD public private partnership in São Tomé and Principe with the Government, communities, Cafédirect and other private sector companies. Read about the project, the objectives of the event, the moderator and speakers here.

The two main questions posed by moderator extraordinaire Matthew Wyatt of DFID, were simple. Can smallholders offer climate-smart products? Will consumers pay for them? He led a lively and focused discussion - thanks Matthew!

Cafédirect’s Wolfgang Weinmann said, “Access for smallholder farmers to added-value markets like climate-smart and ethical products clearly is the way forward. Plus, of course delivering high quality and absolute traceability. Our partnership with IFAD has been fantastic and allowed us to ensure, in a relatively short time span of 2 years, a great product for the UK market that delivers tangible economic, social and environmental impact for the São Tomé and Principe smallholder cocoa farmers.”

There was consensus that there is potential for smallholders to benefit from a “climate-smart” label , because:

1. Smallholders are natural providers of climate-smart products
2. Niche market opportunities such as organics and Fairtrade are bringing premiums to smallholders in São Tomé and Principe, where cocoa exports have increased ten-fold since 2004 through public-private partnerships
3. While climate smart smallholder agriculture is an undefined concept for consumers, they may be willing to pay more for a “climate smart” product if they better understand the full benefits to farmers , the environment and to them as well

Scaling up of a “climate smart concept ” would depend on:

1. Providing smallholders with knowledge sharing, technical support, and access to finance and markets
2. Developing metrics to demonstrate to consumers the benefits that accrue to farmers and to environment
3. Development and positioning of a “climate smart” label under either an existing product label or on its own

Nokutula Mhene of Fairtrade Africa was cautiously optimistic, “The role of consumers in influencing agricultural practices and policies is often overlooked. The growth of Fairtrade over the past decades is largely attributed to consumer support. Climate smart goods should have a place in the market but need to be integrated into already existing labelling initiatives.”

Carlos Seré, of IFAD said, “In addition to generating new technologies, increasing productivity and looking for ways to save labour to support climate-smart smallholder agriculture, climate-smart practices can be enabled by replacing inputs with knowledge – understanding the biology better and tweaking it. This implies a very robust research agenda and an equally ambitious knowledge sharing component. Shifting from existing systems to climate-smart systems – for example shifting to shade grown systems - can take years to achieve. Smallholders need support during the transition periods. And of course, we can never forget about the incentives for the producers: they have to be there.”

Learn more about how IFAD supported activities are benefiting smallholders and poor rural people in São Tomé and Principe.

Climate-Smart Agriculture: Embrace Complexity!

by Jeff Brez, from COP 17 in Durban

At the IFAD-FAO-WFP Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) side event here in Durban, Foua Toloa, the Head of the Government of Tokelau, a small island country in the South Pacific, made an impassioned plea for climate justice for his country. To achieve climate smart agriculture he called for the revival and integration of traditional practices in addition to financing for research, and adaptation and mitigation actions. “We don’t want to end up a coral shelf under the surface of the sea,” he said. Tokelau has taken the drastic measure of banning the import of pesticides and fertilizer for their coconut production, he told us, because cyclones brought run off and poorly stored chemicals into their lagoons, causing green algae blooms that damaged their crucial fisheries-based livelihoods. For them, a single-benefit approach for agriculture did not work. They need an integrated solution.

Tekalign Mamo, Minister of State, Advisor to Ministry of Agriculture, for Ethiopia, shared that while there is an understanding that agro-ecological approaches are key to building climate resilience, and farmers see the advantages, there are nonetheless challenges for farmers. The farmers face enormous challenges to leaving organic material on the soil to feed and protect it because they use the organic material for fuel, fodder and other uses.

The Government is supporting the use of a range of organic materials including grasses and livestock-noxious weeds to feed the soil and provide organic matter for composting. But farmers, communities and households all have specific needs and lifestyles, so they need to be the ones to define what is climate smart agriculture in their context. They, too, need integrated solutions.

For a long time now, there has been universal acknowledgement that uncertainty of climate impacts must not slow our response and action. What we heard at the side event, from speakers and attendees alike, is that complexity must also not slow our response and action. To unlock the correct responses in complex circumstances, the solution is knowledge sharing, institutional support, and gender-focused extension services that interact with empowered farmers organizations.

Elwyn Grainger-Jones, IFAD’s Director of Environment and Climate, said CSA is more knowledge intensive than the 30-year old green revolution approach. Now there is a wide range of possible approaches that are knowledge intensive and require more social mobilization. We need more of this without imposing generic solutions, and must look across landscapes for solutions that work for farmers rather than only look at specific sector projects.

A REDD+ programme in Ethiopia, Minister Mamo offered, is financing an approach that links food security, food production and poverty reduction through a 2005 national strategy. The combination of: rehabilitation of 9 million hectares of land to increase productivity; and a productive safety net programme that addresses food insecure areas for 7 million + people through food or cash transfer to families has put more kids in school, and led to better health. This, Minister Mamo stressed, is a testament to the need for cross-sectoral approaches based in national level planning.

Peter Holmgren, Director of FAO’s Climate, Energy and Tenure Division pointed out that, “It is only the farmer that can define what is smart in the end.” He also mentioned how REDD+ should be part of a package built into landscape approaches to agriculture. Only then can we get leverage and finance for agriculture.

Carlo Scaramella, Director of Climate change and Disaster Risk Reduction at WFP, reminded attendees that CSA needs to deliver multiple benefits to vulnerable communities - in terms of food and nutrition security, community and women's empowerment, livelihoods resilience and environmental rehabilitation. It must be driven by a people-centred approach. At the same time, government leadership is key for scaling up from the community to the national level.

Dennis Garrity of ICRAF (World Agroforestry Center) had the last word, reminding us all that there are huge opportunities for scaling up climate-smart agriculture through knowledge intensive but low cash investments. Here is what he said, more or less: “We need radically different scaling up methodologies for different solutions: cash intensive irrigation solutions where financial and technical inputs are key. But there are also solutions in agro-ecological approaches that are nearly cash-zero in terms of outside needs, so scaling up can be done with community mobilization and farmer to farmer knowledge sharing to get tremendous results. In Niger 5 million hectares have been transformed through agro-ecological approaches, in Mali 500 thousand hectares… gov’t investment almost zero but still great outcomes for farmers and communities.”The event took place on Friday, 2 December, organized by the United Nations Rome-Based Agencies, IFAD, FAO and WFP, and was ably moderated by Dyborn Chibonga, CEO of the National Association of Smallholder Farmers in Malawi.