Internationally renowned economist Hernando de Soto discussed findings from his book, The Mystery of Capitalism: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, at the Bank recently.
Scroll down to see de Soto's interview.
Africa's economic report 2002.
http://www.uneca.org/era2002/
American Public Health Assoc.
http://www.apha.org/
East Africa Case Study: SOMALIA
HEALTH INDICATORS IN SOMALIA
Famine during Somalia's 1992 civil war.
(Source: Yahoo! Picture Gallery, Corbis.com)
• Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) : 1600 (per 100,000 live births) (1990) (UNICEF, 2000b)
• Lifetime risk of maternal death (WHO/WB, 1997) : 1 in 7 women
(Definition: The risk of an individual woman dying from pregnancy or childbirth during her lifetime. Calculations based on maternal mortality and fertility rate in a country. A lifetime risk of 1 in 3000 represents a low risk of dying from pregnancy and childbirth, while 1 in 100 is a high risk.)
• Skilled attendant at delivery
2% (WHO/WB, 1997)
(Definition: Percentage of deliveries attended by a skilled person [doctor, midwife, nurse].)
• Perinatal deaths
120 (per 1,000 live births) (WHO/WB, 1997)
(Definition: Stillbirths and deaths in the first week of life.)
• Infant Mortality Rate (IMR)125 (per 1,000 live births) (UNICEF, 1999)
• Under 5 Mortality Rate (U5MR)211 (per 1,000 live births) (UNICEF, 1999)
• Immunization coverage: (UNICEF, 1999)
(% fully immunized at 1 year of age)
BCG (against tuberculosis) 57
DPT3 (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, 3rd dose) 24
OPV3 (polio, 3rd dose) 24
Measles 47
TT2 (tetanus toxoid to mothers during pregnancy, 2nd dose) 41
• Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (CIA, 2000 est.)
7.25 children born/ woman (1999 est.)
• Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) (modern methods, all women) 1% (UNICEF, 1999)
• HIV prevalence (adult) (UNICEF, 2000b)
0.8%
East Africa Case Study:
SOMALIA
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http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/somalia/index.html
Somalia
January 2002
At a glance
Summary
Somalia is classified as one of the least developed and lowest-income, food deficit countries. Over ten years of civil unrest and natural disasters (including flood and drought) have caused crop failures and continue to threaten Somalia's ability to feed itself. Much of Somalia's material resources have been destroyed, thereby eroding the coping mechanisms of its people. An already severe humanitarian crisis in Southern Somalia is worsening due to consecutive failed rains and a collapsing economy. As many as 480,000 people in southern Somalia are now suffering food shortages. The situation is further exacerbated by insecurity in the region, which has reduced aid agency access. The Somalia education system has been seriously affected by civil war over the last ten years. A complete generation has an uncertain future with regards to education in Somalia today.
Save the Children focuses its emergency relief work in the Belet Weyne District of the Southern region of Hiraan and in the Togdheer region of Somaliland. Save the Children is currently involved in work on agricultural support, food security analysis, rural water and sanitation and emergency education projects. In Somaliland, Save the Children is engaged in exploratory activities in food security assessment and child protection work.
Key issues affecting children
- An estimated 780,000 people (12% of total population) in Somalia currently require food assistance
- Serious food shortages are affecting families in central and southern areas - in some places up to 8% of children are severely malnourished
Children are at risk of increased malnutrition due to difficulties in accessing populations
Save the Children response
- Working with the UN and other agencies to develop systems that warn of food shortages and advise on where food aid should be targeted
- Improving access to rural water resources and sanitation
- Supporting communities to improve farming techniques
- Supporting provision of affordable and appropriate primary education · Research into the non-formal education sector
- Undertaking situation analysis of children to inform child protection work
Current situation
Political tension
The livelihood of the people of Southern Somalia is threatened by ongoing inter-clan conflict, which makes humanitarian access difficult. Most recently political unrest in Puntland, northeastern Somalia has interrupted the flow of trade between Bossaso port and Belet Weyne District. The interruption has affected the livelihood of families who are dependent on small-scale business. Conversely, the security situation in Somaliland remains stable at the time of writing, although there is some concern over the forthcoming local and presidential elections.
Economic decline
In December 2001 the United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Somalia declared that Somalia is on the verge of an economic collapse unparalleled in modern history. Following the ban imposed by Gulf States last year on the export of Somali livestock and the more recent closure by the American authorities of the Somali-owned Al-Barakaat Banking and Telecommunications systems after charges of aiding and abetting terrorism, the always fragile economy now lies in tatters. Al-Barakaat was the channel for remittances of between USD200-500 million a year into Somalia. Its closure has reportedly resulted in 75% loss of all cash assets held by individuals (largely members of the business community) in Somalia. Hence food insecurity is likely to increase very significantly. Southern Somalia is again worst affected as alternative small remittances are still being received in northern Somalia and Mogadishu.
At the same time prices of staple goods have been rising drastically with a one kg bag of rice, which in September 2001 could be bought for 2,500 Somali shillings, costing 8,000 shillings just three months later at the beginning of December. All food prices were reported to have risen by 50% at the end of 2001.
The closure of Al-Bharakaat has not only had a devastating impact on the money transfer pipeline on which so many Somalis depend, but the closure of its telecommunications wing has been severely hampering businesses' ability to operate as other smaller telecom companies are unable to shoulder the burden of increased traffic. Moreover Al-Bharakaat was Somalia's largest employer.
Food Security
World Food Programme (WFP) assessments in 2001 have confirmed that the food security situation in Somalia has again become critical following the almost total failure of the main "gu" rains and patchy secondary rains, primarily in southern and central regions of Somalia. An estimated 780,000 people in Somalia currently require food assistance, that's 12% of the total population. Global malnutrition rates ranging from 17-37% have been assessed in many southern regions with severe malnutrition rates of 3-8%.
Production of the staple food sorghum is estimated to be 70% less this year than last. Household food stocks are low, cereal prices have substantially increased and some population movements have been observed. The FSAU in Somalia reported a 50-60% mortality rate among livestock in December 2001.
Food Assistance
The UN agencies launched the 2002 Consolidated Appeal (CAP) for Somalia on 27th November 2001. Within the CAP, WFP appealed for 20,000 tons of food of which approximately 15,000 tons are needed to meet the needs of people in its areas of responsibility for the period to mid 2002. This figure could increase greatly after completion of assessment of impact of the closure of Al-Barakaat by WFP and the Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU). Outside of WFP's areas of responsibility, other agencies are also requesting large amounts of food aid for distribution. For example CARE has requested at least 20,000 tons of food aid.
Education
Currently, education opportunities for Somali children are very poor. Many do attend Koranic schools. Although these schools do provide a good standard of religious education they don't provide education with a broad base of subjects. The general lawlessness and frequent violent clan disputes have resulted in many children being traumatised. Civil and clan disputes have also led to children being internally displaced, starved or malnourished and adversely affected by serious endemic diseases. Clan violence and people fleeing the country as a result are both factors that have contributed to the reduction in the number of qualified teachers in Somalia. Moreover, children from poor economic groups, including those in Belet Weyne District and Togdheer region and children from minority clans are deprived of access to education for reasons of affordability and security.
Background
History of civil conflict
Somalia is one the poorest and most deprived countries in the world, the result of years of civil war together with on-going economic and political insecurity. It has the world's 8th highest child mortality rate, an average annual income of just $110 and a life expectancy of 41 years. Comprised of a former British protectorate and an Italian colony, Somalia was created in 1960 when the two territories merged. Since then, its development has been hindered by territorial claims on Somali-inhabited areas of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.
Somalia has been without a central government since 1991 when President Siad Barre was overthrown. Instead, warlords supported by heavily armed militias have ruled the areas under their control. The resulting inter-militia fighting and inability to deal with famine and disease have led to the death of almost one million people.
Civil war broke out in May 1988. In 1991 Siad Barre was overthrown by opposing clans who subsequently failed to agree on his successor and plunged the country into lawlessness and clan warfare. (Fighting occurs between clans - all Somalis belong to the same ethnic group and speak the same language). Somalia was faced with disintegration as the former British protectorate of Somaliland declared unilateral independence.
By August 2000 a solution seemed in sight after clan elders and other senior figures appointed Abdulkassim Salat Hassan President at a conference in Djibouti. A new government was announced in October 2000. However, resistance from various parties within Somalia is yet to be overcome. Although the country is no longer at war, violent clashes between feuding clans are frequent, particularly in central and southern parts of Somalia.
The insecure environment has created widespread displacement. Some 300,000 Somalis have been displaced within the country and tens of thousands more are living as refugees in neighbouring countries.
Food Security
Agriculture and livestock have always been the mainstay of the Somali economy, accounting for 90 per cent of economic activity. However, conflict has meant that less land is cultivated and that in many areas vital seed and tool stocks have been destroyed. The last two Gu rainy seasons harvests (July/August 2000 and 2001) were more than 60 per cent lower than the pre-war average. Hand tools, pesticides and fertilisers, and pumps and wells for irrigation are in short supply, expensive or not available.
Difficulties in Relief Distribution
The insecure environment in Somalia makes it a notoriously difficult place for aid workers to operate. In 1999, five humanitarian workers were killed and others have been detained, injured, kidnapped or held to ransom. This insecurity jeopardises the continued distribution of relief supplies such as food, seeds and tools, and is likely to make any major relief operation very difficult.
Save the Children response
Food security
Save the Children continues to provide EU funded technical assistance to Somalia in the form of an Household Economy Assessment expert who has been seconded to the Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU). Through regular monitoring and assessment activities, the FSAU provides in-depth analysis of the food insecurity and vulnerability situation as well as coping mechanisms of the Somali people given this current difficult situation. It strives to provide timely, reliable and relevant early warning and food security information for improved decision making at all levels on short-term emergency interventions and in support of medium term planning and programming by UN agencies, donors, NGOs and Somalians themselves.
Save the Children and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) are planning to extend their co-operation by decentralising the FSAU in Somaliland. The objectives of this are to develop local institutional capacity, increase the utilisation of information generated by the FSAU and enhance its regional dimension.
Agricultural Support
Save the Children has provided agricultural support to rural communities through the construction and rehabilitation of irrigation canals, training of village extension workers and irrigation committees and provision of primary school supplementary training materials on agricultural life skills and the Gu (main harvest) crop establishment.
Access to Basic Services
In Belet Weyne Save the Children has been involved in the rehabilitation and construction of wells, troughs, rainwater catchments and under ground water tanks. Work has also included hygiene promotion activities in villages and development of training materials for teachers in primary schools.
Primary Education
The Save the Children education programme has responded to the loss of education for the most vulnerable children in Togdheer region of Somaliland and Belet Weyne District in Hiraan region of Somalia by working with local communities at seventeen locations in the former and six in the latter to provide affordable, equitable and appropriate primary education. The programme has been designed to begin to address the needs of young people and communities within this context. Save the Children is also addressing the issues of exclusion for the children of pastoralist communities in both Togdheer region and Belet Weyne District.
Child Protection
Save the Children Alliance is working towards understanding the situation of children in Somaliland to inform their activities in the areas of child protection and inclusion.
Co-ordination
Save the Children has taken a lead role in co-ordinating emergency response and planning among 'regional authorities' and aid agencies. Save the Children is currently an active member of the NGO Consortium and the Somali Aid Co-ordination Body (SACB) Steering Committee in Nairobi. Save the Children will be the lead International NGO in Hiraan region, Somalia and Togdheer region in Somaliland for co-ordination purposes.
History of the programme
Save the Children has been working in Somalia since 1958. A relief programme was established in the country in February 1991, in response to the escalating civil war. Emergency work included running supplementary feeding programmes and mother-and-child health care for malnourished children in Mogadishu, Belet Weyne, Jelalaaxi and Bardhera and the provision of food aid, shelter materials, latrines and wells in camps for displaced people. A longer-term sustainable programme began soon afterwards which included agricultural rehabilitation in Bardhera in Gedo Region and Belet Weyne in Hiraan Region.
Today, long-term programme work focuses on food security, health, child protection, education and water and sanitation. Save the Children retains the capacity to respond to new emergencies as they arise. For example, in November 1997, Save the Children provided shelter materials, seeds and tools to meet the needs of thousands of families affected by flooding in and around Belet Weyne.
Save the Children has developed an emergency preparedness plan to respond to any emergency crisis that affects the life of children in the areas of its operation in Somalia.
Consulting with farmers. Source: From the Rural Heart of Latin America, Ebbe Schiøler
August 5, 2002
From Clients to Partners
By the 1980s new agricultural technology, based on scientific research, had taken hold across much of Latin America. Improved varieties and better crop husbandry brought about substantial production gains, particularly in two major staples, rice and wheat. But at many locations, notably in the more isolated and difficult environments, farmers proved reluctant to adopt new varieties of staple crops or even rejected them outright.
Some scientists argued that low adoption of new technology was the result of a mismatch between the products available and the varied preferences and circumstances of rural people living in marginal areas. This problem, in turn, stemmed from limited consultation between scientists and farmers. To bridge the gap between these two key actors in agriculture, a novel set of research methods, collectively known as participatory plant breeding (PPB), was created.
The central ingredient of PPB is its systematic inclusion of farmers' knowledge, skills, and preferences in the development of new varieties. Instead of having only occasional contact, farmers and researchers work side by side to develop a more acceptable product. Like conventional breeding, PPB relies on the well-known scientific disciplines. But with the aid of social scientists, it involves farmers in key activities, such as setting breeding priorities, selecting from among variable populations, and evaluating varieties while they are still at the experimental stage.
Scores of examples from all over Latin America show how national and international organizations have used PPB to shape new varieties of staple crops more closely to farmers’ preferences. Adding to the plant breeders' worries, scientists working in the vulnerable and difficult areas of Latin America became increasingly concerned during the 1980s about environmental damage resulting from agriculture. Among the chief consequences are excessive pesticide use, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and soil degradation, including serious erosion of topsoil.
During recent decades many new technologies have been developed to address these problems. Soil scientists, to take one example, have worked extensively with measures such as the use of grass strips, cover crops, live fences, and a host of innovative tree-crop combinations.
Nonetheless, in the marginal environments where such practices seem most necessary, adoption has been low. One key problem is that most new soil conservation methods were designed by researchers on experiment stations, or sometimes in farmers' fields, but with only token farmer participation.
To remedy this situation, scientists focusing on environmental degradation in agriculture took a closer look at the new approach some plant breeders had chosen. They began developing participatory methods to incorporate farmers' perspectives into their research on natural resource management.
Throughout this book you will find examples of how this novel approach to agricultural research and development has spread. Many researchers and farmers alike now regard it as the "natural" way to operate, with both traditional knowledge and formal science making a contribution.
But it is important to keep in mind that each partner needs the other. While age-old practices still offer much to the search for sustainable agriculture, they are obviously no longer enough in many places. Population pressure and the need for progress in life demand more than traditional methods can provide. So renewal must also come from outside rural communities, with researchers making key contributions.
Research results without application, on the other hand, make for a bad business that satisfies no one. This is why researchers have found it most simulating to get out of their laboratories, discuss their findings with users, and return with new ideas about how to move ahead.
This participatory trend in agricultural research is entirely consistent with current directions in development assistance, where the catchwords these days are "ownership" and "partnership." Agricultural research organizations in developing countries have probably moved earlier, faster, and more concretely than most other institutions on the development scene.
The information for the above text was compiled by Nathan Russell of CIAT, a Future Harvest Center of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and edited with the author of From the Rural Heart of Latin America.
© 1999-2002 Future Harvest All Rights Reserved.
http://www.futureharvest.org/
As World Fish Stocks Decline, Researchers Turn to an Untapped Resource—Women
Equity Issues Top Agenda as Scientists Question Fishing Industry Practices
From backyard ponds in Bangladesh to the deep-water fisheries off Africa's Atlantic coast, women's role as "fisher folk" is fast changing one of the most tradition-bound segments of the world's food supply chain. Changes in fishing practices and in the relatively new field of aquaculture, researchers say, bring with them new challenges and opportunities, but few signposts to provide guidance.
"The international community is paying more and more attention to women and their role in maintaining the health of the world's fisheries," says Meryl Williams, director of the World Fish Center, a Future Harvest Center based in Penang, Malaysia. "But our knowledge is sketchy, and our ability to reach out is limited. "Until quite recently," she adds, "the macho image of the fisherman colored much of our thinking, but that image is changing fast." Williams estimates that at least 50 million developing country women are employed in the fishing industry, usually in low paying but important jobs such as net making, processing, and marketing. Already mired in poverty, their circumstances are sure to deteriorate as they come face to face with the challenges of globalization, declining fish supplies, and competition from modern fishing fleets, she says.
Williams notes that most women involved in fishing lack access to tools and credit, a voice in decision-making, or the opportunity to receive training. "To succeed in a world where privatization is on the rise and subsidies for fishing are disappearing, women will need a lot of extra help," she says. "Until now, however, the very groups that you would expect to provide support have literally missed the boat."
Low Pay, Little Security, High Rates of AIDS
Stella Williams, an economist from Nigeria's Obafemi Awolowo University notes that gender programs rarely reach out to women working in fisheries and that fisheries programs have been slow to take steps to improve their lot. "In developing countries," she says, "the work of women fishers is mainly found in the informal economy, where they continue to receive low pay and little in the way of job security. Most women lag far behind men in terms of earnings and in the services that would improve profitability."
"When fishing activities are expanded or mechanized, they are frequently taken over by men," adds Lyn Lambeth, a fisheries officer of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in New Caledonia. "When women find work in the production sector, for example in tuna processing plants in the Pacific, it's usually in low-paid production line work," she says.
Ironically, one of the few areas where women do not seem to lag behind their male counterparts is in their rate of HIV infection and AIDS. Epidemiological studies show that fishermen are among the groups most prone to be HIV positive and that they are passing on the virus to their partners. The phenomenon is believed to be associated with long absences, visits to commercial sex workers, and drug use. In Tanzania, workers in the fishing industry are five times as likely to die from AIDS as are farm workers.
The Good News
Although women working in the fishing industry lag far behind their male counterparts in almost all categories, there is some good news says Ida Siason, vice chancellor of the University of the Philippines. Asian women, she says, have made headway as fish farmers. Moreover, expert networks have been established to assist women in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and in the Philippines.
New technology also helps. In Bangladesh, the only country in the world where men have a greater life expectancy than women, the introduction of farming in backyard ponds is helping thousands of women take greater control of their lives. Fish farming is helping women not only feed their families, but also provides much needed income, and even aesthetic pleasure from growing attractive fish such as Silver Barb and Tilapia.
But progress has been uneven. Community-based management of the country's small, seasonal, inland bodies of water indicates that attempts to empower women through women-only management schemes have largely collapsed because women managers were not respected. Committees involving both men and women have apparently been more successful.
"Working together will be key to overcoming many types of problems," says Williams of the World Fish Center. "New research in the fisheries sector is needed to develop appropriate actions, programs, and policies that address gender. A focus on women alone will not be sufficient."
She cautions, however, that women's roles in fishing–as in society as a whole–are changing. As these roles change, it is important to ensure that women not only become more equal partners with men, but that they also expand their work beyond the subsistence level. "To achieve that objective," she adds, "it is essential that more women be brought into decision-making to assure the survival and improved well-being of the world's fishing industry."
"The world's fish stocks are in decline," says Meryl Williams, "and science can provide the technology to help deal with this problem. But even with the best technology, it's going to be increasingly difficult to resolve these problems unless women are given a fair opportunity to compete."
###
The issues discussed in the preceding story were drawn from the meeting Women in Fisheries: Towards a Global Overview, which was held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan on November 29, 2001. For more information contact S.Child@cgiar.org or visit
http://www.iclarm.org.
ICLARM — The World Fish Center (
http://www.iclarm.org) is an international research organization devoted to improving the productivity, management, and conservation of aquatic resources for the benefit of users and consumers in developing countries. The Center conducts cooperative research with institutions in developing countries and supports activities in information and training. The World Fish Center is one of the 16 Future Harvest Centers.
Future Harvest (www.futureharvest.org) is a global nonprofit organization that builds awareness of food and environmental research for a world with less poverty, a healthier human family, well-nourished children, and a better environment. Future Harvest commissions research, promotes partnerships, and sponsors projects that bring the results of research to rural communities, farmers, and their families in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Future Harvest supports the 16 food and environmental research centers that are primarily funded through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (
http://www.cgiar.org).
Fishers knit a better net.Source: Rubiyanto W. Haliman
Women in aquaculture.Source: Marlene Bedford, Baobab Productions
Harvesting fish in Bangladesh.Source: Marlene Bedford, Baobab Productions
Women with fish harvest.Source: Marlene Bedford, Baobab Productions
© 1999-2002 Future Harvest All Rights Reserved.
UPDATED: 5 August 2002
http://www.rope.org.uk/directaid.html
Widows in Sudan.
Direct Aid - giving to those most in need
Working in small national committees, ROPEHOLDERS in almost 100 countries identify the needs of the very poor and powerless.
They look for those facing life threatening adversities such as refugees, the elderly, sick, handicapped, unemployed and orphans. These folk are provided with gifts in kind - food, blankets, modest school fees for orphans etc. The response meets the individual need.
Often the alternative is death through starvation, neglect or cold.
Widows are amongst the worlds poorest people often barred by law or custom from working or re-marrying. ROPE has a special representative looking after the plight of widows. If you would like to sponsor one the please let us know.
Revolving Loan Schemes
A widow who has been aided to start a market trading stall in Kingali market Rwanda was once very poor
A street trader in India has been helped to start his small business with the aid of a loan from a ROPE revolving loan fund.
In LaPaz, Bolivia, this man was helped
to start a knife sharpening business which allows him to provide for himself and his family.
Revolving Loan Funds
ROPE helps people to gain independence and self respect by providing them with the means to earn their own living through the establishment a small business.
For those who are healthy but unemployed we help them to start small businesses by providing small interest free loans. As the business becomes viable the loan is gradually repaid and the local ROPEHOLDER group use it to start another small business. Many small projects have been launched in this way. See the examples below. These may seem modest by western standards but they are a critical source of income to their proprietors as well as a source of great joy.
Our professional business team in the UK fully review the business plans to assess the schemes viability and work with local ROPEHOLDER groups to provide the assistance as required. The sums of money involved are often very small indeed and the repayment records are very good.
Examples of a few of the businesses started with the aid of revolving loans:
1. start rice growing
2. paddy cultivation
3. purchase a cow
4. leather belt manufacture
5. pomade making
6. wire basket making
7. grass mat production
8. handloom purchase
9. start a computer class
10. water pump purchase
11. start ice-cream business
12. mobile knife sharpening business
13. repair 3 wheeled delivery vehicle
14. start a dry fish business
15. start several fish farming projects
15. construction project
16. start many tailoring businesses
17. to start a fibre glass business
18. well digging project
19. to repair a bicycle needed in a business
20. to repair a motorcycle needed in business
21. waistcoat making
22. bead and beaded item making
23. handbag production
24. to obtain Montessori equipment
25. start many poultry projects
26. start many market trading businesses
27. open refreshment stalls
28. start soap making business
29. start a bakery
30. start a nut-butter project
31. purchase carpentry tools
32. many sewing projects
33. a welding shop
34. start a rickshaw business
35. open a bicycle shop
36. open a bookshop
37. purchase land for farming
38. Coffin making
39. Goats
40. dealing in coffee
41. palm trees
42. furniture making
43. kerosene distribution
44. to start a hair dressing business
45. employing workers at an iron foundry
46. hamster breeding
47. precious jewelry making
http://www.ifpri.org/
IFPRI Home
2001-2002 IFPRI Annual Report Essays
AIDS and Food Security
Poor people in developing countries struggle continually to fight hunger, malnutrition, ill health, and deepening poverty. The alarming spread of HIV/AIDS has made their struggle even more difficult. Hit by this syndrome, the poor lose their ability to work, to feed themselves and their families, to ward off disease, to maintain their assets, to transmit essential farming knowledge to their children, and to remain connected to their communities. Eventually they lose their lives. Families, communities, and whole nations in Africa are being devastated by HIV/AIDS at such a rapid rate that some expect almost a third of their populations to die prematurely. This demographic nightmare will substantially reduce economic growth in Africa. It will also affect the economies of Asia as the pandemic gains a foothold there. The multiple effects of HIV/AIDS at all levels of society make it imperative that the development community adapt all policies and programs to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and mitigate its effects. The following essays explore the reciprocal relationship between food security and HIV/AIDS and what it means for policy.
AIDS: The New Challenge to Food Security
Peter Piot and Per Pinstrup-Andersen
Food Security as a Response to AIDS
Stuart Gillespie and Lawrence Haddad
2001-2002 IFPRI Annual Report Essay
AIDS: The New Challenge to Food Security
Peter Piot and Per Pinstrup-Andersen
Peter Piot is executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and assistant secretary-general of the United Nations. Per Pinstrup-Andersen is director general of IFPRI.
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When you ask people living with AIDS in rural communities in the developing world what their highest priority is, very often their answer is food. Not care, not drugs for medical treatment, not relief from stigma, but food.
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It is easy to forget in the complicated world of global AIDS politics that for many people around the world, AIDS is one additional burden on top of many others. AIDS does not occur in a vacuum. People's basic concerns remain the same as they have always been: a secure, decent livelihood for themselves and their families.
In Africa, where the pandemic is currently the most serious, AIDS emerged against a backdrop of extreme poverty, hunger, conflict, and inadequate infrastructure. The impact of AIDS has been to make pre-existing problems and their consequences far worse, and to create daunting new problems. By killing people in the prime of their lives, when they would normally be raising their children and practicing their professions, AIDS erodes the social capital that makes communities function. AIDS has decimated the very generation of young adults poised to take Africa's future into their own hands.
THE PROBLEM IS MASSIVE
AIDS is one of the greatest threats to global development and stability and a long-term humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions. The death and misery it has caused in the past 20 years dwarfs all of the natural disasters that have occurred in that time combined.
Since the epidemic started, more than 60 million people worldwide have been infected with the virus, equivalent to the population of France or Britain, or nearly double the population of California. Twenty million have died.
HIV/AIDS is by a large margin the leading cause of death in Sub-Saharan Africa and the fourthbiggest global killer. AIDS has caused average life expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa to drop from 62 to 47 years. In 2001 alone, an estimated 5 million people became infected with HIV, and half of them were between the ages of 15 and 24. An estimated 800,000 children under 15, mainly infants, were infected with HIV in 2001, and 580,000 children died of AIDS.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world where the epidemic has hit hardest and where its impact increasingly threatens the stability of whole societies. Average prevalence in Sub- Saharan Africa is 8.8 percent in the adult population (15 to 49 years old). There are seven countries, all in the southern cone of Africa, where more than one in five adults is HIVpositive, and another nine countries where infection rates exceed 10 percent.
While the scale and impact of AIDS in Sub- Saharan Africa is the worst in the world, HIV is rapidly expanding in other regions. In Asia, China, and India, overall prevalence is relatively small, but because of their huge populations, each country has large numbers of HIV-positive people. For example, the Indian states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, each with over 50 million people, have HIV rates above 3 percent for pregnant women, over four times the national average.
In Southeast Asia, Thailand and Cambodia have brought major epidemics under control, but there are emerging epidemics in Myanmar and elsewhere. In the Caribbean and Central America, a number of countries are over the 2 percent prevalence level. In Eastern Europe, the epidemic has been explosive, with a staggering 1,300 percent increase in infections between 1996 and 2000, mainly among young people, and fuelled by injection drug use.
This list of the most affected countries is depressingly familiar to those who have worked on food security and nutrition for many years. It is no coincidence that the maps of HIV prevalence and malnutrition overlap. The HIV epidemic is increasingly driven by the very factors that cause malnutrition: poverty, conflict, and inequality. Malnutrition exhausts the immune system, making people more susceptible to tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious and parasitic diseases, even in the absence of AIDS.
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While the scale and impact of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst in the world, HIV is rapidly expanding in other regions.
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AIDS IS DIFFERENT
AIDS is not just another health or development problem. By its nature and effects, AIDS is unique.
AIDS kills the most productive--and reproductively active--members of society, thus increasing the number of dependent household members, reducing household productivity and caring capacity, and interrupting the transfer of local knowledge and skills from one generation to the next. The effect on the household may be permanent.
HIV is socially invisible, though the ravages of AIDS are everywhere apparent. The private nature of sex and complex cultural attitudes toward it lead to silence, denial, stigma, and discrimination at many levels. Moreover, 90 percent of those living with HIV have no access to HIV testing. This makes effective prevention and mitigation efforts difficult.
HIV has a very long incubation period between infection and major illness, during which the virus can be transmitted. Combined with invisibility, this increases the chances of HIV transmission.
HIV/AIDS affects both rural and urban populations. The death of one or more income earners in rural households often forces survivors to migrate to seek work in cities. The death of an urban worker may force survivors to send children back to rural areas to be raised in extended families. Migrant workers who become infected in cities go back home to their villages to die.
HIV/AIDS infects people of all income levels throughout the developing and developed world. Everywhere, the poor face the most severe impact. AIDS prolongs and deepens poverty, making it harder to escape.
HIV/AIDS affects both sexes but is not genderneutral. Women, especially younger ones, are biologically more susceptible to contracting HIV than men in a given sexual encounter. The low social status of women in the developing world magnifies their vulnerability. Where women are marginalized and powerless, they are unable to negotiate sexual relations with men or control their reproductive lives. In many cultures, women are forced into early marriage, obliged to marry a dead husband's brother even if he is HIV-positive, and unable to refuse sexual relations with husbands who frequent prostitutes. Women in war zones are at great risk of sexual assault, including gang rape. Dire poverty and the inability to feed their children drive many women into prostitution, making exposure to HIV increasingly probable. o As the pandemic intensifies, local capacity to respond decreases. Teachers, medical practitioners, and other essential professionals are dying in large numbers, leaving huge gaps in the social services most needed at this time. Organizations and businesses located in areas with high HIV/AIDS prevalence suffer high absenteeism, high staff turnover, loss of institutional memory, and reduced innovation.
As individuals in government and nongovernmental organizations die, the capacity gap- between what is needed and what can be delivered-is becoming an abyss.
These are some of the unique features of the HIV epidemic. But just how does HIV/AIDS relate to food and nutrition security? And what type of remedial policy and programmatic responses does such a relationship suggest?
Vicious synergies are at work from the individual to the macroeconomic and societal levels. After an individual becomes infected with HIV, the progression of the disease and the person's worsening nutritional status reinforce each other in a downward spiral that ends in death. At the household level, HIV/AIDS and food security are also linked by negative synergies. An HIV-affected household's risk of food insecurity and malnutrition increases because sick family members can't work, well family members must spend time caring for the sick person instead of working, income declines, healthcare expenses increase, and less time is available for competent adults to care for young children. Food insecurity, in turn, may lead to the adoption of livelihood strategies that increase the risk of contracting HIV as well as rendering the household more and more vulnerable as the disease progresses. Important community-level impacts go beyond the aggregated household impacts.
But consider for a moment what is happening at the macro level. AIDS has a direct impact on rates of economic growth in the most affected developing countries. There is a direct relationship between the extent of HIV prevalence and the severity of negative GDP. When the rate of HIV in a population reaches 5 percent, per capita GDP can be expected to decline by 0.4 percent a year. And when HIV reaches 15 percent, a country can expect an annual drop in GDP of more than 1 percent.
The cumulative impact of HIV on the total size of economies is even greater. By the beginning of the next decade, South Africa, which represents 40 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's economic output, is facing a real gross domestic product 17 percent lower than it would have been without AIDS.
In settings where subsistence agriculture predominates, measured economic productivity only scratches the surface of the total impact of HIV on livelihoods. For example, AIDS reduces longterm capacity for agricultural production, since livestock is often sold to pay funeral expenses and orphaned children lack the skills to cultivate crops or tend livestock.
AIDS kills people, not just economic activity. We should reflect on what it means for a society when 10, 20, or 30 percent of the population is HIV-infected. With today's rates of infection, a 15-year-old boy in Botswana has more than an 80-percent lifetime risk of dying from AIDS. Nurses and teachers are dying faster than they can be replaced. Last year, around 1 million African schoolchildren lost their teachers to AIDS. In Malawi, 6 to 8 percent of the teaching workforce dies each year. AIDS has orphaned nearly 14 million children. In Sierra Leone, the war left 12,000 children without families; AIDS has already orphaned five times that number.
WHAT WE CAN DO
We are not powerless in the face of AIDS. The tide is turning. Over the past few years, there has been a revolution in the world's thinking about HIV. The epidemic has been understood not only as a health issue, which it will always remain, but also as a major threat to development and to human security. HIV/AIDS is being mainstreamed across sectors in increasingly unified national responses.
But just how can sectors such as agriculture help? How should government policies be altered to meet the needs of the poor within the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic? What should a minister of agriculture do? Should s/he accelerate and intensify the implementation of agricultural development and poverty reduction policies and programs, or should they be redesigned first? If so, how?
Filtering the problem of food insecurity through an HIV/AIDS lens is a way to re-view the relationship between hunger and HIV/AIDS and can help people in the agricultural sector choose livelihood strategies that minimize risk and/or mitigate impacts. Indeed, the very notion that the agricultural sector can ameliorate the consequences of the pandemic in the medium to long term is new to many. The fresh angle of vision further highlights the need to avoid compartmentalizing responses into prevention, care, support, and mitigation. Food and nutrition are clearly critical in the care and support of people with HIV/AIDS. But the ways in which livelihoods could be adopted and adapted to ensure that families avoid the virus have only recently been appreciated.
The HIV/AIDS lens will be fine-tuned over time based on improving knowledge, and will be different in different contexts, ruling out one-sizefits- all blueprint planning. In addition to re-viewing food security programs through the HIV/AIDS lens, we can and should be re-viewing AIDS programs from the perspective of availability, utilization, and access to food.
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We can and should be reviewing AIDS programs from the perspective of availability, utilization, and access to food.
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THE BIG CHALLENGES
Despite what we know about how to combat the epidemic, we are still a long way from achieving success. The major challenges for timely research and action on HIV/AIDS and food security are highlighted below.
Include HIV-impact statements in all development plans. Major investments for development are being planned as if HIV were occurring on another planet. We need to improve our understanding of the impact of rural development on the spread of HIV. Just as environmental impact assessment has become an integral part of development programs and major projects, HIV impact assessments should also become the norm. HIV has not yet been fully integrated into poverty reduction strategies, multilateral development bank programs, or in regional and global development strategies. Fortunately this is changing.
Will agricultural development plans break up family structures and add to HIV risk? What plans are there for addressing HIV risk if new transport routes are created? What is the HIVrelated impact of cash cropping on food security? These are important questions to be addressed from the very outset of development planning processes, and need to be an integral part of the World Bank's Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, as well as health planning.
Break the link between food insecurity and HIV vulnerability. Along with responding to the immediate impacts of AIDS, we must continue to pay attention to program sustainability and to overcoming long-term vulnerability. What crops are nutritious enough to substitute for commonly raised labor-intensive crops? For example, cassava requires very little labor but contains very little protein. What are the long-term nutritional effects of switching to cassava for populations that require more protein? How do we keep children in school when there is so much pressure for them to replace the labor of sick or dying parents? The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), one of eight cosponsoring UN agencies that comprise the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), is extending the role of schools as community resource centers. The World Food Programme (WFP) is using food aid to provide an incentive for children to stay in school. Along with the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR), IFPRI is working with local partners in several Sub-Saharan African countries as part of a newly launched multicountry initiative that aims to strengthen local capacity while undertaking action-oriented research on priorities generated at national stakeholder workshops.
Include nutrition as a core component of HIV care. Too often, care and treatment of people with HIV/AIDS is reduced to the issue of antiretroviral drug prices. This reductive debate misses the complexity of the broad care issues facing people living with HIV. It also fails to recognize the synergies possible by advancing the care agenda simultaneously on multiple fronts. The UNAIDS Secretariat and cosponsors have delineated a care agenda that includes providing psycho-social care, reducing the stigma against people living with HIV, and ensuring access to essential AIDS medicines, including antiretrovirals and treatment for opportunistic infections. The increased affordability of anti-retroviral drugs should be used as an opportunity to demand that medications be provided with clean water supplies and with food. We are not dealing with step-by-step solutions, but solutions where progress in one area will support progress in others.
Give HIV-infected women real options to protect their infants. We know that breastfeeding by HIVinfected mothers carries a significant risk of transmission, up to 20 percent in the absence of drug therapy. We also know that exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective practices in public health and social development. Currently, HIVinfected mothers are advised to avoid all breastfeeding when replacement feeding is acceptable, feasible, affordable, sustainable, and safe. But we are a long way from either exclusive breastfeeding or universal access to safe replacement feeding, and even further away from offering voluntary and confidential HIV testing and counseling as a routine component of antenatal care. A great deal of work is required before mothers will be able to make an informed choice about breastfeeding. Such work is already underway by UNAIDS and its cosponsors, especially UNICEF, and by governments in the most affected countries, with boosted support from philanthropic foundations.
Eliminate the stigma of HIV/AIDS. Stigma causes great social suffering, but it is also a nutrition issue. People with HIV have been thrown out of their homes or their villages and left hungry. One of the barriers to reaching those impoverished by AIDS with effective food replacement programs is the stigma-driven reluctance to identify those in most need. In order to overcome this problem, food programs are targeting AIDS-affected villages and areas rather than individual families. We also know that a woman may breastfeed in public to avoid stigma, but use formula in private to avoid transmission, unwittingly exposing her infant to the worst combination of feeding strategies.
Face the gender dimensions of AIDS. Addressing relationships between men and women is at the core of successful behavioral change to prevent the spread of HIV, including gender inequalities that make the impact of HIV fall harder on women, such as inheritance laws that prevent women from holding land or livestock upon the death of their husbands. We know that women are the caregivers for children who have lost their parents. They also provide more than half the care for those sick with AIDS. Women do more than half the food gathering and production work. Now, they make up more than half of those living with HIV in Africa. Who takes care of the caretakers? When the women die, who will care for family members then?
Take action on a scale commensurate with the epidemic. The time for pilot or demonstration projects is over. Piecemeal approaches waste money and accomplish little. We must mainstream every aspect of our work. Success comes from long-term commitment. We make a real difference when we ensure that local actors have the information they need to respond to the epidemic, and when systems and necessary resources are in place. By delivering responses that are rooted in communities, we build to the scale of response required.
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Success comes from long-term commitment. By delivering responses that are rooted in communities, we build to the scale of response required.
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AIDS, like malnutrition, is complex. The solutions to complex problems lie in adhering to the facts, and in building new partnerships, better coordination, and sustainable change. The partnership between those whose primary concern is food and nutrition security and those whose focus is HIV is in its very early stage and growing rapidly. We can be confident that the partnership will continue to grow, based on the knowledge that food and nutrition policies are integral to winning the race against AIDS.
IFPRI’s HIV/AIDS Initiative
Since 2000, IFPRI has been working with ISNAR and local partners on HIV/AIDS, Food and Nutrition Security: Supporting Innovation, an initiative to understand country-specific relationships between HIV/AIDS and food security and how such knowledge can make policies and programs responsive to the HIV/AIDS environment in each country.
Work under this initiative has begun in Malawi and Uganda and will start soon in Tanzania and Zambia. The project strengthens networks of concerned national agricultural and public health organizations, stresses national ownership and increased national capacity, and creates partnerships between members of two fields that, before the HIV/AIDS pandemic, may not have worked together. Now that they share a common cause, they are designing processes at the local and national levels to link their services for the benefit of people living with HIV/AIDS and their families. Stakeholders prepare and present background papers at workshops where participants seek consensus on governance and identify priorities for action and for research. Interdisciplinary country teams, with support from skilled persons within and outside their region, then carry out the research upon which action can be based.
To fully understand the impact of HIV/AIDS in severely affected countries, IFPRI is examining both macro and microeconomic effects. Due to the accumulated impact of a wide range of microeconomic effects, the pandemic will likely have a strong and sustained impact on the major channels related to overall economic growth. The most direct connection to growth is through a reduced population and labor force due to AIDS deaths. However, other indirect effects may be more important. For example:
Deaths of teachers and widespread orphaning are likely to reduce educational attainment, resulting in reduced rates of human capital accumulation.
HIV/AIDS patients often overwhelm the healthcare system, resulting in poorer average health even for nonafflicted populations. Combined with the generalized disruption associated with AIDS deaths, these health affects are likely to reduce productivity growth rates.
As life expectancy declines, average savings rates are also expected to decline. This decline in savings, combined with greater caution on the part of foreign investors, can be expected to reduce investment.
Ongoing work under the auspices of a Trade and Macroeconomics Division initiative finds that since the pandemic can be expected to endure for a considerable period, even relatively small annual impacts combine to create large macroeconomic impacts over time. However, these impacts are not as well understood as they should be, particularly their poverty implications. Researchers in the Trade and Macroeconomics Division, with collaborators at Purdue University and elsewhere, are currently studying the links between HIV/AIDS, human capital accumulation, economic growth, and poverty reduction in Mozambique and Tanzania.
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/B-SPAN/
Internationally renowned economist Hernando de Soto discussed findings from his book, The Mystery of Capitalism: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, at the Bank recently. He noted capital markets thrive in societies where sufficient trust exists between entrepreneurs. Trust can be established through legal systems and documents which provide opportunities to uniformly identify people, wealth, and ownership. Land titling and property law are also integral to developing a foundation for capital markets.
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/B-SPAN/sub_desoto.htm.
http://wbwebcast3.worldbank.org:8080/ramgen/bspan/prem/desoto_ext.rm
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else: A discussion with Hernando de Soto (July 17, 2002)
David de Ferranti, Vice President of the Bank's Latin America and Caribbean region, provided some introductory remarks. De Ferranti said internationally renowned economist Hernando de Soto not only writes, but carries out his ideas by testing his theories on the ground. He called de Soto more than just a thinker, but a doer as well.
Peter Hakim, President of the Inter-American Dialogue, a cosponsor of the event, said de Soto's strength was that he made his ideas accessible, attractive and appealing. He called de Soto's ideas profound, yet explained to the public in simple and elegant terms.
De Soto started by noting there is no shortage of entrepreneurs in the world. The question was why have entrepreneurs flourished in the West but not elsewhere, where only one out of six billion have benefited. He suggested the underlying reason is that people in the West trust each other. He noted economists Adam Smith and Karl Marx suggested greater division of labor led to specialization which led to increased productivity. Division of labor led to more interdependence among people. In surveys on the issue of trust, people in Western countries had a high level of trust of people in their countries. However, levels of trust were quite low in developing countries. The basis of trust, de Soto said, are the standard forms and legal documents which provided opportunities to uniformly identify people, wealth, and ownership. De Soto quoted Adam Smith who wrote the value of wealth must be fixed before it is realized. De Soto believes Smith referred to fixed wealth as something which was metaphysical rather than physical. De Soto quoted Bertrand Russell who said there is knowledge by acquaintance. In addition, de Soto suggested there is knowledge by description, such as a passport, a driver's licence or another legal document. Philosophers often say truth lies outside the object themselves, outside description.
Economists also operate in a such a world. It is a world about description, where documents tell the economists things about other things. Documents allow one to do things otherwise not possible. For example, there are buildings in both Mexico and the US where people work and live. De Soto said, however, he has counted 100 more things that the US buildings do that the Mexico buildings don't. US buildings are being mortgaged, act as collateral, are places where things are delivered, etc. These sorts of uses are often not available to people in the developing world. De Soto and colleagues for the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) don't ask the most common development question, which is how many people in the world live for under $2 per day. Rather they ask how much of the world is covered by law, and how many people can represent their assets or themselves, or participate in a market economy.
Capital that can be used for things such as obtaining credit or guaranteeing an investment were called live capital by Adam Smith. Much of de Soto's work revolves around understanding and identifying what he calls dead capital, which is capital outside the law. He used his experiences in Egypt as an example of the extent to which dead capital exists in an economy. Different legal jurisdictions allow people to own assets that are outside the law of other jurisdictions. In Egypt, building on agricultural lands is illegal, yet de Soto estimated 4.7 million homes are built on such land. Public housing has been extended illegally. He estimates 92% of all buildings are outside the law, and 90% Egyptian businesses and people operated and live outside the legal system. 78% of Mexicans fall into the same category, he added. He acknowledge their activities represent enterprise, but not a real market economy operating within the rule of law. De Soto estimates Egypt's poor own $245 billion in dead capital, which is 55 times of all Foreign Direct Investment in Egypt since Napoleon's time or 50 times more than all the bilateral aid include World Bank loans. The wealth, in fact, lies with the poor. Similar statistics can be found in Mexico.
Capital, de Soto said, is the value things have when they can enter the market and be measured. He used the example of the privatization of the Peruvian telephone system. Market agents could not adequately measure the value of the phone service, but when titling for the phone company was adequately done to measure up to Western standards, the value of the company grew 37 times. This was simply done by improving the representation of the form. He noted that many things related to value are invisible things. History showed that documentation of ownership in Western culture was created to protect ownership. In fact, it also launched something not originally envisioned: the start of capital markets. De Soto suggested much of the developing world has yet to learn this. The developing world needs to better understand that law, in addition to providing order, allows people to transport value and trust one another in expanded markets with interdependent specialists in fruitful cooperation.
Creating titling systems of property law is another critical area to fostering capital markets. De Soto used the example of the transition from feudal Japan to a modern society. Laws developed following the Second World War in post-war Japan destroyed the feudal system and created wealth opportunities to the public. The new property laws, giving the public new opportunities to participate, created the foundation upon which Japan became one of the world's leading economic powers. In Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, de Soto and ILD colleagues are now working on property law issues. He said he has found much of the population living in shacks, but the shacks are in fact titled. Not by the government, but privately. This is done because the Haitian poor understand the importance of having some sort of representation of value as the government tries to create a workable market economy. They are trying to create the basis of a market economy revolution. The social part of the revolution is already underway, de Soto said, but the legal reforms have yet to catch up. De Soto calls his book, Mystery of Capitalism, and the ILD's work about creating shortcuts on these processes for developing countries. He said it took 300 years for it to happen in the West, but the Japanese short cut the learning curve, so it can be done elsewhere. He acknowledges as well, much of the information on understanding these social and legal interactions was derived by lessons learned and knowledge disseminated by the Bank itself.
The floor was then opened to questions from the audience.
Related links:
Hernando de Soto:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/
shared/minitextlo/int_hernandodesoto.html
Institute for Liberty and Democracy
http://www.ild.org.pe/
© 2001 The World Bank Group.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSP001.htm
Towards sustainable food security
Women and sustainable food security
Prepared by the Women in Development Service (SDWW)
FAO Women and Population Division
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WOMEN PRODUCE between 60 and 80 per cent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world's food production, yet their key role as food producers and providers, and their critical contribution to household food security, is only recently becoming recognised.
FAO studies confirm that while women are the mainstay of small-scale agriculture, the farm labour force and day-to-day family subsistence, they have more difficulties than men in gaining access to resources such as land, credit and productivity-enhancing inputs and services.
Food security, in fact, has been defined by FAO not only in terms of access to, and availability of food, but also in terms of resource distribution to produce food and the purchasing power to buy food where it is not produced. Given women's crucial role in food production and provision, any set of strategies for sustainable food security must address their limited access to productive resources.
Women's limited access to resources and their insufficient purchasing power are products of a series of inter-related social, economic and cultural factors that force them into a subordinate role, to the detriment of their own development and that of society as a whole.
International initiatives and efforts, developed especially since the 1975 World Conference on Women in Mexico, have contributed to a greater recognition of women's key participation in rural and other domains of development. However, much remains to be done.
The gender division of labour
The biggest constraint to the effective recognition of women's actual roles and responsibilities in agriculture is the scarcity of gender-disaggregated data available to technicians, planners and policy-makers.
The first step towards women's empowerment and full participation in food security strategies is the collection and analysis of gender disaggregated data, in order to understand role differences in food and cash crop production as well as men's and women's differential managerial and financial control over production, storage and marketing of agricultural products.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, studies have shown that women play a crucial role in many aspects of crop production. While men are often responsible for land clearing, burning and ploughing, women specialise in weeding, transplanting, post-harvest work and, in some areas, land preparation. Both take part in seeding and harvesting.
Moreover, Sub-Saharan and Near Eastern women play a major role in household animal-production enterprises. They tend to have the primary responsibility for the husbandry of small animals and ruminants, and also take care of large animal systems - herding, providing water and feed, cleaning stalls and milking. In all types of animal production systems, women have a predominant role in processing, particularly of milk products, and are commonly responsible for marketing.
In many countries, women are also responsible for fishing in shallow waters and in coastal lagoons, producing secondary crops, gathering food and firewood, processing, storing and preparing family food, and fetching water for the family.
In many African countries women provide:
33% of the workforce
70% of the agricultural workers
60-80% of the labour to produce food for household consumption and sale
100% of the processing for basic food stuffs
90% of household water and fuelwood
80% of food storage and transport from farm to village
90% of the hoeing and weeding work
60% of the harvesting and marketing activities
Female-headed households
The number of female-headed households is increasing significantly in rural areas in many developing countries as rural men migrate due to the lack of employment and other income-generating opportunities. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 31% of rural households are headed by women, while in Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia women head 17& and 14%, respectively. While there are different types of female-headed households, in almost all countries female-headed households are concentrated among the poorer strata of society and often have lower income than male-headed households.
The problems of female-headed households in rural areas vary according to their degree of access to productive resources. FAO has identified, for example, the potential consequences of the absence of male labour both in terms of declining yields and outputs or shifts in production toward less nutritious crops requiring less labour and in terms of increased reliance on child labour which, in turn, has further implications for the family and for the human capital of the country. In these cases, women's access to labour-saving technology is of particular importance.
Access to resources
Despite their role as the backbone of food production and provision for family consumption in developing countries, women have limited access to critical resources and services. While in most developing countries, both men and women farmers do not have access to adequate resources, women's access is even more limited due to cultural, traditional and sociological factors. Accurate information about men's and women's relative access to, and control over, resources is critical in the development of food security strategies.
Access to land
Not even 2% of land is owned by women, while the proportion of women heads of household continues to grow. Land reform programmes, together with the break-up of communal land holdings, have led to the transfer of exclusive land rights to males as heads of households. This ignores both the existence of female-headed households and the rights of married women to a joint share.
Access to credit
For countries where information is available, only 10% of credit allowances is extended to women, mainly because national legislation and customary law do not allow them to share land property rights along with their husbands, or because women heads of household are excluded from land entitlement schemes and, consequently, cannot provide the collateral required by lending institutions.
Access to agricultural inputs
Women's access to technological inputs such as improved seeds, fertilisers and pesticides is limited. They are frequently not reached by extension services and are rarely members of co-operatives, which often distribute government subsidised inputs to small farmers. In addition, they lack the cash income needed to purchase inputs even when they are subsidised.
Access to education, training and extension services
Two thirds of the 1,000 million illiterates in the world are women and girls. Available figures show that only 5% of extension services have been addressed to rural women, while no more than 15% of the world's extension agents are women. In addition, most extension services are focused on cash crops rather than food and subsistence crops, which are the primary concern of women farmers and the key to food security.
Access to decision-making
Given the traditionally limited role of women in decision-making processes at the household, village and national levels in most cultures, their needs, interests and constraints are often not reflected in policy-making processes and laws which are important for poverty reduction, food security and environmental sustainability. The causes of women's exclusion from decision-making processes are closely linked to their additional reproductive roles and their household workload, which account for an important share of their time.
Access to research and appropriate technology
Women have little access to the benefits of research and innovation, especially in the domain of food crops, which - in spite of ensuring food security at the household and community level - have a low priority in crop improvement research. In addition, women farmers' roles and needs are often ignored when devising technology which may cause labour displacement or increased workload. In western Java, during the 1970's, traditional hand pounding was replaced by mechanical hullers in rice milling. It was estimated that, on average, some 3,700 labourers were displaced by each mechanical huller, implying that in 1971 alone, some 7.7 million part-time workers, mostly women, lost that source of income.
Women's need for income
Research in Africa, Asia and Latin America has found that improvements in household food security and nutrition are associated with women's access to income and their role in household decisions on expenditure. This is because women tend to spend a significantly higher proportion of their income than men on food for the family. In Central American countries, for example, when grain grown by men is in short supply, income earned by women from the sale of eggs, cheese, fresh and processed fruit, vegetables and small stock contribute significantly to household provisions.
Women's wage income from farm and non-farm employment, and from other income opportunities, is of particular importance for landless and near-landless rural households. Women's purchasing power may not only be used to buy food and other basic assets for themselves and their families, but also to pay for inputs used in food production. Since food crops are consumed, the inputs for these have to be provided from income earned in other agricultural enterprises or non-farm income generating activities.
Thus, to improve food production for the household, greater priority has to be given to increasing women's participation in market production as well as other income-generating ventures.
Sustainable food security: requirements for a new era
The understanding of food security has evolved over the years through increasingly integrated attention to the social, gender, environmental, technical and economic dimensions of the problem. The challenge for the future will be to pursue a concrete attainment of equity in access to resources by women to produce food, and purchasing power to buy food where it is not produced.
Specific policy measures are required to address the constraints facing women farmers and special consideration given to the needs of female heads of households. FAO has recommended that such measures aim to:
- ensure that women have equal opportunities with men to own land;
- facilitate women's access to agricultural services and tailoring such services to their needs;
- encourage the production of food crops through the use of incentives;
- promote the adoption of appropriate inputs and technology to free up women's time for income-producing activities;
- improve the nutritional status of women and children;
- provide better employment and income earning opportunities;
- promote women's organisations; and
- review and re-orient government policies to ensure that the problems that constrain the role of women in food security are addressed.
Links
Towards sustainable food security
Fourteen papers reviewing key issues and experiences
FAO's small group approach.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSP006.htm
"In participatory development projects around the world, small farmer groups are intensifying production of food and cash crops, developing small animal husbandry, doing agro-processing and building small scale irrigation systems. They cooperate in bulk purchase of inputs and consumer goods, and group transport and marketing of produce."
People's participation in Zambia.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSP007.htm
"Training has had a positive impact on farming practices. 'The most important thing we have learned is about agriculture,' said the secretary of a group in Kaoma District, recalling the days when farmers waited until maize plants had grown before adding fertilizer to the soil. 'Once we had to live on cassava towards the end of each season. Now we grow enough maize to see us through.'"
Food security and the state.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSI001.htm
"There are no universally-valid prescriptions determining the precise form and content of state action. But, in the final instance, it is the state that must define the spatial, temporal and sectoral vectors of its intervention by first identifying goals then assessing the most effective strategies for attaining them."
Recent FAO experiences in land reform.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSI003.htm
"Land reforms should remove obstacles that discourage or inhibit farmer investment on their land. A comprehensive set of rules and a legal framework, as well as clarification of individual rights, land regularization and land titling, are all seen as important mechanisms to ensure security and favour producers' investment in the agricultural sector."
Women and land tenure.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSP002.htm
"Security of tenure often gives control over decisions such as what crop to grow, what techniques to use, what to consume and what to sell. Given women's tendency to grow food rather than cash crops and to spend income on food, their security of tenure is a key link in the chain from household food production to national food security."
Land markets in Latin America.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSI004.htm
"Many countries have left agrarian reform concepts behind, and are promoting land markets as a key strategy for increasing efficiency in the agricultural sector. In doing so, they are changing social land tenure schemes to private ones. This trend has raised questions about the effect of the changes on landless people and small farmers, and whether the approach can work in Latin America."
Women and water resources.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSP003.htm
"Incorporation of gender issues in irrigation programmes is very limited despite studies showing how schemes may fail due to mistaken assumptions about intra-household division of labour and organization of production. In northern Cameroon, one third of a scheme's development area remained uncultivated due to intra-household labour conflicts."
A new agenda for agricultural research.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSK001.htm
"Research must provide technologies to maintain the momentum of previous advances and to raise production further. But it must do so while conserving the resources on which agriculture depends and protecting the environment from impacts associated with agricultural intensification. Development of low-cost technologies is essential to increase incomes and employment of rural poor."
Research and extension: a gender perspective.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSP004.htm
"Neglecting women as agricultural producers and resource managers has weakened sustainable agricultural production. Thus, one key to food security is putting food crops cultivated and consumed by women and their families high on the research agenda. New approaches aimed at involving women in food crops research are emerging in national and international institutions."
Women and the Green Revolution.
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSP005.htm
"How the Green Revolution affected rural people depended on whether they were wage earners, cultivators or consumers, came from landed or landless, rich or poor, male or female headed households. However, two general trends are apparent: the wealthy have benefited more than the less well-off and men have benefited more than women."
The role of agricultural education in food security
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSK002.htm
"Globally, investment in both formal education and non-formal agricultural education is declining. FAO figures show that investment in agricultural training, extension and research declined from 9% of total donor agricultural assistance in 1984 to 2% in 1989. If education is to make a significant contribution to sustainable development, it has to be perceived as a long-term investment."
Food security within environmental limits
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSE001.htm
"Present definitions of economic viability primarily consider productivity and profitability. They do not take into account sustainability. Neither are the costs of harmful effects on the environment included in national accounts used to measure net economic gains and losses. The loss of environmental goods and services is particularly detrimental to poorer countries, whose economies are more dependent on natural resources and are thus more vulnerable to their loss."
Energy and food security in Africa
http://www.fao.org/sd/FSdirect/FBdirect/FSE002.htm
"Africa must move from the present levels of subsistence energy usage, based on human labour and fuelwood, to a situation where household, services and farming activities use a range of sustainable and diversified energy sources. Obvious benefits are greater resilience in the production system, higher productivity, improved efficiency and higher farmer income. Environmental degradation driven by poverty would be minimized."