David Nabarro presents Forum conclusions

“You have reflected very intensively”, said David Nabarro, UN Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition, when participants had gathered in the plenary for the concluding session. Nabarro had been unable to come to the Forum on Rural Development in the first two days, but he was able to reach Palencia in time to chair the last session.

“Let me sum up what you have suggested throughout the breakout sessions,” Nabarro said and started with an extensive list of conference results. “Most of all, you have highlighted an absolute need for continued advocacy for agriculture, because it is underpins sustainable growth and safeguards biodiversity. You have also stressed that the focus should be on smallholder farmers, the inclusion of the private sector, women, youths and the relation between agriculture and climate change. Here, government policies need to become more consistent. It cannot be agriculture OR climate, it must be agriculture AND climate.”

An affirmative nod went through the room. “With regard to donors and investors,” Nabarro ensued, “you have made it clear that investment in agriculture from both private and public sector is necessary, and that it should be actively sought.” The UN Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition then turned to the in-country challenges faced by most governments in the global South. “The most important point you have mentioned is to strengthen farmers’ organizations at the local level,” Nabarro told the delegates. “Farmers have an important role that goes beyond food production, but it is very time-consuming and farmers need to unite to reap sufficient benefits from their work.” Nabarro put a special emphasis on the need to tackle price volatility on local markets which hit consumers just as much as farmers and undermine food security.

The suggestions for government policies emanating from the Forum were mostly geared towards policy coherence and the need to listen to farmers at the local level. “Dialogue with farmers’ representations is crucial to allow for food security.” Nabarro also pointed to social protection and innovation and research as two aspects where delegates expect governments to be ambitious. “We need to see leadership from the governments, most of all from the agricultural ministers,” Nabarro pounded.

Regarding international organizations and international governance, the UN Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition said that international policies should not isolate individual problems like food security or gender, but create an integrated approach that includes all stakeholders, the farmers, the private sector, the public sector and civil society. To make policies more efficient, donor countries need to coordinate their efforts more, said Nabarro. Promoting the international research agenda in the field of agriculture and food security could also have a lot of potential. “Most importantly, however,” Nabarro told the delegates assembled in the plenary, “you have stressed here in Palencia that one crucial component of agriculture and rural development most come much more into focus: the farmer.”

Forum pictures are now online

The photos taken at the European Forum on Rural Development are now online. However, the lion share of them is still without description. To obtain high-dimension photos, please mail to ruralforum2011[AT]gmail[DOT]com and specify which photo you are interested in.

Impressions from the Conference

After three intensive days, the European Forum on Rural Development has come to a close. In this video, participants say what they liked and disliked about the Forum.

http://vimeo.com/21840565

Breakout session: Ecologically efficient agricultural systems for smallholder farmers

The main message emanating from the Breakout session on ecologically efficient agricultural systems for small holder farmers, coordinated by the Latin America Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA) was that sustainable family agriculture does not take a lot of technology to be implemented. Instead, it requires commitment by the farmer and repeated encouragement by international organizations, participants noted.

Overall, the working group elaborated a set of conclusions from which it derived a number of policy recommendations. In its conclusions, the breakout session took a bottom-up approach and concentrated on the individual farmer. Implementation of ecological guidelines should happen at the local level, from where it could later be upscaled, the chair of the group reported back to the plenary. Participants also deemed cooperation between farmers on the local level important, because it would prevent environmentally sustainable farms from becoming less competitive than non-sustainable farms.

The chair also pointed out that farmers could not be expected to implement measures of sustainability on their own, but needed encouragement and repeated support from the international community. Farmers needed to understand and endorse the long-term benefits of a sustainable farm, not only with regard to environmental, but also with regard to social and economic aspects.

The working group agreed that public bodies on the national and international level should be seen as the main drivers of change, given that the market seldom produces stimulating initiatives on its own. Policy recommendations were therefore targeted at public institutions most of all. Besides approaching farmers actively in order to promote sustainable agriculture, the breakout session recommended that countries implement programmes of agricultural research, reflection and action in order to establish a platform of scientific knowledge that can share experiences with smallholder farmers. It also recommended conceiving projects which allow traditional means of farming and related experiences to persist. To be able to finance sustainability programmes, participants stressed that donor countries set aside financial resources for the implementation of these programmes.

Breakout session: Institutions and policies needed for rural development

The breakout session on institutions and policies needed for rural development identified rural areas as the “weakest link” in the supply chain of agricultural goods. The organizational structures in particular needed to be improved, chair John Wilkinson from CPDA/DDAS/UFRRJ reported back to the plenary.

The panel started from a bottom-up approach and defined six broad fields of action: food security and rural development, the relationship between the state, civil society and the private sector, the links between national and international agendas, conditions for sustainable production, the coherence between rural development policies and macro-economic policies and the need to adapt policies to global tendencies.

Wilkinson remarked that the farmer had to be considered the key component in the struggle for food security, but that a variety of forms of employment in the non-farm sector should also be considered, for example in transportation and trade. He also warned that involving civil society should not be reduced to involving NGOs but also universities, Parliamentarians, media enterprises, SMEs and most importantly societal actors at the local level. He held that the local level was the weakest link, because of a lack of horizontal cooperation between farmers and of the institutions necessary to promote it.

Participants agreed that state-driven policies had the most fundamental impact on rural development and should therefore be absolutely coherent. Conflicting policies from different ministries, for example, could derail even the most effective programmes, said Wilkinson (to read more details, click here). Different ministries should therefore cooperate in formulating and implementing their policies, the working group recommended.

Finally, state actors should also crucially respect global tendencies as a context for policy formulation, Wilkinson reported. The breakout session specified five aspects that should be particularly taken into consideration in policy-making, namely population growth, pressure on raw materials, population movements, developments in commodity markets, and climate change.

Side event: Agriculture and Climate Change

The relationship between agriculture and climate change was at the heart of a side event organized by Germany. Many international experts hold climate change to be one of the most important constraints for agricultural production in the future.

Stephan Krall from GIZ gave participants an overview over the impact of climate change on agriculture. He said that greenhouse gas emissions have different consequences in different parts of the world, among others rising temperatures, fresh water scarcity, unpredictable rain and monsoon, droughts, a rising sea level and others. These can provoke a reduction in agricultural production of up to 50% in some regions. However, other regions may simultaneously see their agricultural output grow.

In Africa, for example, the picture is very diverse. While Western Africa and South-West Africa are expected to see their production diminish, a strip of land running through central Africa from the Sahel zone to Zimbabwe, according to the GIZ’s estimations, may see a surge in agricultural yields.

Yet, speakers and participants seemed determined not to let estimations materialize. Climate change, the general feeling was, is one of the main items to focus on in the fight for food security and rural development. “In global comparison, undernourishment is most widespread in Africa,” Stephan Krall highlighted. “Clearly, we need to work on climate change mitigation to achieve food security.”

In following, Christoph Langenkamp, coordinator of the Global Donor Platform secretariat, gave participants an overview over the steps taken in international climate negotiations. In the eyes of the development community, the Copenhagen and Cancún conferences have not fulfilled expectations. Cancún almost produced results on emissions caused by agriculture, but the paragraphs that had reached a consent were taken out of the final Cancún text in the final night, because negotiators could not reach agreement on the related topic of bunker fuels. Looking in to the future, Langenkamp put much hope into policy research results from the newly created Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change. Research results are also expected from the UN Convention on Combating Desertification and the Meridian Institute. Furthermore, an array of other UN and non-UN institutions continue working towards sectoral agreements, among them the Rio+20 earth summit and the UN Convention on Biodiversity. Maybe, participants thought, these research results could give new impetus to climate negotiations ahead of the COP17 conference in Durban in November 2011.