Supporting small farmers to play a greater role in food production natural resource stewardship is one of the quickest ways to lift over one billion people out of poverty and sustain ably nourish a growing world population, observed a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
The report "Smallholders, food security and the environment", commissioned by the UNEP - World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), was released as part of the celebrations of World Environment Day. World Environment Day's theme is closely linked to food security, focusing on reducing the estimated one third of all food produced, an astonishing 1.3 billion tones and worth around US $1 trillion, that is wasted or lost each year.
The report said most of the 1.4 billion people living under US $1.25 a day live in rural areas and depend largely on agriculture for their livelihoods, while an estimated 2.5 billion people are involved in full-or part-time smallholder agriculture. These smallholders manage approximately 500 million small farms and provide over 80 percent of the food consumed in large parts of the developing world, particularly Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, thus contributing to food security and poverty reduction.
According to it, a previous study showed that a one percent increase in agricultural per capita reduced the poverty gap five times more than a one percent increase in GDP in other sectors, especially amongst the poorest people. Another study demonstrated that for every 10 percent increase in farm yields, there was a seven percent reduction in poverty in Africa, and a reduction of over five percent in Asia. However, increasing fragmentation of land, reduced investment support and the marginalization of small farms in economic and development policy have hampered the development of this vital contribution and left many smallholders vulnerable.
The reports observed that given the right enabling conditions and targeted support, these farmers can transform the rural landscape and unleash a new and sustainable agricultural revolution. It said the agricultural 'green revolution' that swept large parts of the developing world during the 1960s and 1970s dramatically increased agricultural productivity and reduced poverty, with smallholder farmers seeing many benefits.
"However, these achievements also helped undermine the very resource base that made the revolution possible. While smallholder agriculture depends on the services provided by well-functioning ecosystems, agricultural practices can, and have had, impacts on these ecosystems, as poverty drives smallholders to modify habitats and thus harm biodiversity, overuse water and nutrients and pollute water and soil.
The report believed that current practices are undermining the ecological foundation of the global food system through overuse and the effects of agricultural pollution, thereby enhancing degradation, reducing ecosystem capacity to generate sustainable yields and threatening to negatively impact food security and poverty reduction.
The report also said that removing policy barriers to sustainable agricultural growth requires market-based mechanisms that provide smallholders with incentives to invest in sustainability; such as removing subsidies on unsustainable fertilisers, subsidising practices that encourage soil and water conservation, and expanding fair or green certification schemes that allow smallholders to compete in new niche markets locally and internationally. "In order to provide smallholders with the information they need, investing in approaches, such as farmer field schools and the use of rural radios and other mobile telecommunication methods, is essential," it suggested.
Comments
Comments are closed.