Empowering small-scale farmers is the cornerstone of the resilience and transformation of food systems

ByAna Benoliel Coutinho

Empowering small-scale farmers is the cornerstone of the resilience and transformation of food systems

 

Although coping with the pressure of the pandemic is the top priority for governments nowadays, the world is closely following the political decisions being made that affect recovery plans. These plans will need to address many issues which accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of these are the hunger crisis and the increase in undernourishment. In this context, the core question is how a transformation of current food systems can help to tackle these issues. As it turns out, smallholder farmers play an important role in this regard. However, the international aid community had not yet figured out a sustainable way to assist these farmers, despite being aware of the problem.

According to Paul Newnham, director of the SDG2 Advocacy Hub, the pandemic ‘could add up to 132 million more to the undernutrition estimates.’ Furthermore, reorientation and re-prioritization of international aid budgets threatens the livelihoods of many communities and people who depend on aid. In this respect, a question arises regarding the fragility of these communities and their dependency on development aid, thus questioning the past and current courses of action.

More specifically, the logic of future aid perhaps needs to change in order to create more resilience in these communities so as they are able to withstand emerging pressures. And those who produce food are the key to enhancing resilience.

Farmers are key in functioning food systems

The lack of resilience in communities is linked to poorly functioning food systems that are complex webs of activities such as the production, processing, transport, consumption, and waste of food. This issue will receive the most attention in development priorities. There is no doubt that a well-functioning food system can provide quality food and help rural livelihoods to thrive.

The acknowledgment that ‘agriculture and food systems need to change’ has already existed for years and yet the problem is still here.

Although there are several elements in the system that need to be reconsidered, it starts with the main agents of change – the farmers and in particular small-scale farmers and peasants who produce more than 70% of the world food.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there is wide recognition that a business-as-usual approach is not an option and that things do need to change to achieve food security while allowing future generations to meet their own needs. Agroecology, practiced by small-scale farmers, has demonstrated empirically its potential to achieve sustainability targets. It is not based on agronomic and technological fixes but rather on the ecological processes that underlie food production involving in-depth knowledge of the interactions between what is produced, the soil, and the associated biodiversity.

Thus, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has been supporting smallholder farms to improve global food security while fostering rural development. However, the main question is how transformative have the changes that have produced positive results really been? As the numbers suggest, rural livelihoods and smallholder farmers are still vulnerable to pressures. While the FAO has made a commitment to agroecology, the expert briefing which examines the process closely, and in particular the opportunities and challenges for academics, civil society, and donors related work, emphasized the absence of agroecology in budgetary allocations.

It also points out that ‘FAO facilitates countries’ access to climate finance for climate-smart agriculture but not for agroecology’. Furthermore, the briefing stresses that while obstructive governments continue to support agribusiness, ‘there needs to be some support to agroecological projects’ which, however, represents the ‘game of the two windows in FAO’ and which has to change:

‘civil society needs to continue to challenge the industrial model and be clear that in the long-term agroecology cannot be regarded as only one of many alternatives, because it cannot ‘co-exist’ with agribusiness and industrial agriculture’ stresses the briefing.

Opportunities for change?

Despite several obstacles hindering the wide scale-up of agroecology, a better understanding and the financial burden linked to conventional production and the respective food system model might help to switch the focus. Research carried out by a team working on agroecology transitions confirms this, by stating that there is growing awareness among policymakers that subsiding fertilizers and pesticides is too expensive for governments. There are many voices that believe efforts should be directed at promoting a different model based on locally produced and regenerative inputs, knowledge of the ecosystem, and a landscape approach.

The progress made in this area and the respective negotiations, as well as the political course, will become clearer during the upcoming United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 which will reveal how committed governments are in supporting the real transformation of food systems driven by farmers and approaches such as agroecology.