Stop ignoring small scale farmers
By: Syed Mohammad Ali
Although
urbanisation is on the rise, around 75 per cent of the
world’s poorest people still live in rural areas, and are
involved in agricultural activities.
Which comprise the major
source of their livelihoods.
The need to pay more
attention to small-scale farmers is thus evident.
However, in the era of
globalisation, contending with problems facing small-scale
farmers across the so-called developing world requires
cognisance of production relations at not only the national,
but also at the international level.
The reliance on larger
farmers to help boost agricultural production in developing
countries, combined with the emphasis on liberalisation of
agricultural processes through powerful entities like.
The WTO, the IMF and the
World Bank have been undermining locally-based,
agro-ecological approaches towards farming since decades.
Consider, for instance, how the introduction of ‘Green
Revolution’ technologies back in the 1960s tried addressing
the problem of lacklustre agricultural growth by investing
in high-yielding varieties of food grain and focusing on
larger farmers, who had the money to buy the necessary
agricultural inputs.
Smaller landowners could not
keep pace with the high-cost requirements of intensive
farming, and many of them began to lease their land out to
capitalist producers with the economic resources to do so.
Due to mechanisation of
agriculture, such as the increasing use of tractors, smaller
farmers, especially sharecroppers, began to be evicted from
the farming sector.
The dynamics of agribusiness and corporate farming being
emphasised across developing countries nowadays are no
different, since they are exacerbating agricultural land
scarcity for smaller farmers,
And their capital-intensive
approach to agricultural production provides meagre
employment opportunities to the rural workforce, except for
rural women who are compelled to work for meagre daily
wages, as their menfolk migrate to cities in search for
other work.
Shifting the predominant
agricultural production model towards more ecological
approaches would also imply abandoning conventional,
monoculture-based and high-external-input-dependent
industrial production.
Such a shift would be
challenged by powerful vested interests within both
developing and developed countries.
But the looming threat of
climate change, including water scarcity and recurrent bouts
of food insecurity, necessitate transformative changes in
the global agricultural system.
The Trade and Environment Review Report published over a
year ago by the UN’s Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD),
including contributions from more than 60 experts around the
world, convincingly argued for such a shift.
Some of the relevant practices identified by UNCTAD experts
to encourage more sustainable agricultural process included
more emphasis on organic farming, better integration between
crop and livestock production,
And increased incorporation
of agro-forestry and wild vegetation within agricultural
policies and forest and grassland management.
There is also need for
optimisation of organic and inorganic fertiliser use, and a
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of livestock
production, in turn requiring changes in dietary patterns
towards climate-friendly food consumption.
Adoption of sustainable and regenerative agricultural
production systems, suited to diverse rural settings, will
also considerably help improve the existing productive
capacity of small-scale farmers.
Unfortunately, there is
little evidence of such changes taking place.
It is necessary for national policymakers, as well as the
international trade and development agencies, to begin
taking agro-ecological approaches towards farming more
seriously.
Sporadic NGO efforts to
encourage more sustainable agricultural practices will not
be able to achieve the scale needed to make any real
difference.
February, 2015
Source: The
Express Tribune