Google
 

Jumat, 25 April 2008

Framing agriculture’s contribution to pro-poor growth in the new context

Agricultural sector productivity gains and market access lie at the core of a more
robust agricultural economy and of pro-poor growth. Endeavours to increase sector
productivity and expand market access must recognise from the outset, however, that the
challenges facing today’s rural households are much different from those confronted by
the Green Revolution producers who recorded rapid and sustained gains only two or three
decades ago. Many of today’s poorest producers live in less favoured or fragile regions,
whose agricultural potential is being jeopardised by degradation of the natural resource
base and constrained by inadequate attention to infrastructure needs.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where many of the poorest rural households are located, there
is no dominant food-production system. Instead, a wide variety of production systems
serve as the livelihood foundation for agricultural communities. The demography of these
and many other rural communities is also changing rapidly, as agriculture is increasingly
becoming feminised through the effects of migration and the impacts of HIV/AIDS. Many
producers lack access to key inputs and services, including credit and extension. Moreover,
many small producers now compete in markets that are much more demanding in quality
and food safety and distorted by OECD agricultural subsidies and the trade barriers of
developing countries.
In many poor countries, especially in Africa, there still is excellent growth potential for
small producers in the food staples sector (cereals, roots and tubers and traditional
livestock products). For Africa as a whole, the consumption of these foods accounts for the
lion’s share of agricultural output and is projected to double by 2015. This will add another
USD 50 billion to demand (in 1996-2000 prices). Moreover, with more commercialisation
and urbanisation, much of this added demand will translate into market transactions, not
just additional household consumption.
No other agricultural markets offer growth potential on this scale to reach huge
numbers of Africa’s rural poor. Many small producers could double or triple their incomes
if they could capture a large share of this market growth. Simulations with economy-wide
models at the International Food Policy Research Institute confirm this conjecture. For
Ethiopia (a poor and food-deficit country) the fastest way to reduce poverty by 2015 is
through productivity growth in food staples. This strategy outperforms a strategy built
around increasing the production of high-value products (Hazell, 2004). If small producers
are to capture a fair share of this growth in food staples, particularly in Africa, they will
have to become more competitive, especially against cheap food imports from abroad.
In many middle and higher income countries in Asia and Latin America, food staple
market opportunities are more constrained, with demand growth linked more to growth in
livestock feed or export opportunities than to domestic human consumption. In these
cases small producers need urgently to diversify into higher value products that face much
better demand prospects. A challenge for this “new” high-value agriculture is to make it
pro-poor. Left to market forces alone, the major beneficiaries of the new high-value
agriculture will mostly be the larger and commercially oriented producers and producers
well connected to roads and markets. The majority of small producers are likely to get left
behind. Fortunately, there is great opportunity to guide the new high-value agriculture so
that small producers and even many backward regions can participate.
Influence in society, both in official organisations and informal village associations, is
distributed along gender lines. Hence policy needs to consider women’s access to, and
interaction with, informal and formal networks, marketing organisations and
administrations – as well as training for women producers and entrepreneurs to learn
about and adapt to new economic structures and marketing.

Tidak ada komentar: