Considering
that donors spend some US$ 150 billion per year in development aid, and that
much of this is oriented to poverty alleviation and food security it is perhaps
surprising to know how few thorough international reviews that have been made
to assess what works and what doesn’t
work. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now reviewed existing
evaluations in the field and make a summary in the study A systematic
review of the impact of interventions in agricultural production, value chains,
market regulation. One
conclusion is that most evaluations and impact assessments are not solid enough
to allow for any far-reaching conclusions. Of 365 evaluations screened only 38
fulfilled the quality criteria the reviewers had developed.
The review
assessed four pathways to food security: increasing production; development of
value chains; market reform and land security. Interventions based on access to
credit; development of non-farm sector; social safety nets; stabilized prices,
hygiene and sanitation were thus not part of the review.
Overall conclusions
Interventions improving land tenure security scored
mostly positive, especially when combined with other interventions.
Interventions increasing agricultural production
scored generally positive, except for sustainability.
Value chain development scored well on increasing
trade, but the most vulnerable people did not benefit.
Market regulation reform interventions score lowest,
due to the combination with reduced support to the agricultural sector in
several African countries.
Success was most likely where different
interventions were combined in a favourable national climate.
As I have
been working a lot with value chain development I took a particular interest in
that: Intervention in value chain comes out as one of the better strategies for
improving food security. The report highlights that there is a big potential in
the development of domestic value chains. For example, in Kenya
approximately 500,000 smallholders produce vegetables and fruits for the
domestic markets while only 11,500 smallholders were engaged in the export
market. The export market involves many more large plantations with employees.
They employ in total also around half a million people, who are food secure
through their income. The evaluation also studied value chains built around
GlobalGAP, Organic and Fairtrade.
Number of farmers producing certified products
for export markets
Standard
|
Worldwide
|
Developing
countries
|
Africa
|
GlobalGAP
(2007)
|
97,000
|
|
2,871
|
Organic
(2009)
|
1,808,000
|
1,526,000
|
511,000
|
Fairtrade
|
|
977,000
|
589,000
|
source: IOB study 363, 2012
Clearly
donors are disappointed with the very limited impact of all the efforts spent
to train smallholders in GlobalGAP systems. There have been many donor financed
projects for linking smallholder farmers in developing countries to organic
markets in developing countries. For example the Export Promotion of Organic
Products from Africa. In that programme, more
than 120 thousand smallholders in Uganda
and Tanzania were linked to
organic markets in Europe, USA
and Japan.
The estimated earnings reached some US$ 30 million per year. The review assess the impact of organic value
chains as successful, but can’t conclude if the efforts have reached the most
vulnerable or not. Successfactors have been linking of farmers to commercial
exporters (as opposed tp supporting farmer to export themselves), group
certification and efforts to improve quality. Also for Fairtrade it was unclear
if the most food insecure people were reached and perhaps surprising the report
states that, Fairtrade seems to have reinforced men’s role in household an
cooperative decision making around cash crops; in one case women’s income had
even declined. For the total household income, in four of six cases in Latin
America, there had been no increase of household income with Fair trade: ”The
low income for Fairtrade farmers is due to the competition between the
Fairtrade crop and other farm and non-farm activities, the additional costs for
inputs and (hired) labour, and the limited Fairtrade market - only part of the
produce is sold as Fairtrade.”
On the
opposing side to organic stands a strong drive to increase use of chemical
fertilizers, and sometimes GMOs and pesticides. The reports says that the
subsidised fertilizer schemes in Zambia
and Malawi
have been successful. However, another recent special review of such schemes, Agricultural input
subsidies in Sub-Saharan Africa from DANIDA comes to a much less positive
conclusion after studying such schemes in Malawi, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania:
• Significant increases in agricultural
productivity and food production is possible, and the potential for improving
agricultural productivity by subsidising agricultural inputs exists. However
the estimates are somewhat uncertain. Costs are very high, and given
uncertainties it is unclear whether the programmes provide value for money.
• There is very little convincing evidence to
suggest that outcomes are likely to persist after termination of the
programmes. However, the subsidy programmes are designed to address the distortions
created by market imperfections rather than the market imperfections
themselves. When (if) the programmes are phased out, input use is likely to
decline again.
It also concludes
that none of the programmes managed to reach the poorest households
On the, rather controversial, effects of
market deregulation, the Dutch review shows how market de-regulation in China
and Vietnam, in combination with land reform, has contributed tremendously to
growth and reduction of poverty. ”The
impact of domestic trade reform alone was not evaluated, but together with the
other pathways in Vietnam’s agricultural development, it contributed to the
production increase, from a deficit of 27% in 1980 to a surplus of 40% in 1999.
And for China:
In China,
during the so-called household responsibility system reform between 1978 and
1984, national grain production increased from 305 to 407 million tonnes.
Increases in efficiency increased labour productivity and reduced production
costs and food prices. [... ] As a result, per capita grain consumption
increased from 195 to 250 kg per year, and household income increased by 15%
per year between 1978 and 1984. The efficiency gains in agriculture made labour
available for the rural industry sector that absorbed about one third of the
rural labour force by 1996. Poverty declined from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001.
On the other hand the report also points to
that during the period of big de-regulation
In most African countries, the increase in food import was larger than
the increase in agricultural export. The ratio of food import to agricultural
export has worsened for all African countries plus Guatemala
and Peru, remained the same
for Guyana, and had improved
for China, India and Chile (1970-2002). In the period
1995-2002, the situation was worst for Senegal which imported food worth more
than three times their total agricultural
export. Farmer income from export crops increased in all countries. In
contrast, farmer income from liberalised food crops decreased in all countries,
except in Chile.
Farmer income from food crops that were still protected increased in Cameroon, Nigeria,
Morocco, China, India,
Chile, Guyana and Peru.
That land reform the
report highlights that land titling and solutions based on individual, private
ownership may not be the best. As a matter of fact they are likely to benefit
more those that are already better off, and exclude women and disadvantaged
groups.
As the report points
out, there is no silver bullet that by itself can guarantee food security. It
stands clear to me that food security – poverty and equality are intrinsically
linked, and that the reason for food insecurity is found in an unjust society
and unequal access to resources, and therefore, that the path to food security is to correct
those injustices.
