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The struggles of a smallholder farmer

collins.odhiambo — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 09:33:48 +0000

Despite growing the majority of food in Kenya, women farmers receive little support from our Government. This World Food Day, ActionAid travelled to different parts of the country to raise awareness of this injustice and encourage Government to take action.

In mid October, ActionAid Kenya organized a caravan that traversed Western, Rift valley and Nyanza provinces, creating a massive awareness on how the Government is financing women smallholder farmers and what it is supposed to do in order to meet their aspirations.

The caravan, bringing together small-scale women farmers and youths received a phenomenal reception and in every stopover. You would not escape noticing colour and splendour as people from all walks of life came out in large numbers to receive the caravan.

To the liking of many, the caravan blended with features of folk music, folk dance and interactive street theatre. This helped attract large numbers of audiences and supporters..

On the first day of the caravan, Jessica Mwanzia who is not only ActionAid’s Project manager, but also the organizer of the caravan, explained why ActionAid organized the caravan

The essence of this caravan is to create a massive awareness on what the Government is doing and what it is supposed to do to meet the priorities of the smallholder farmers.

She added that people cannot run away from the fact that 70 per cent of the farmers in Kenya fall in the smallholder bracket and therefore the Government must recognize the efforts of the women smallholder farmers in feeding the nation and prioritize their agricultural needs.

In the arid areas of West Pokot in Rift valley province, women grow vegetables such as kales, spinach and tomatoes, which are sold locally.

32-year-old Margaret Lorupe, a vegetable farmer from West Pokot, said that her small farm is helping her family survive, despite not getting any help from the Government.

Lorupe said that she and her fellow women often have to undergo the physical and psychological stress of trekking for two hours every morning to fetch water in River Suam, before they come back to water their crops using a can.

This is the daily life of hardworking women like Margaret in this area of West Pokot County. They are prone to cattle rustling when they search for water for their farms and their animals. Despite facing this daunting challenge, they strive to feed their families and communities.

The mother of four leaves me with a clear message:

“We have the means to eliminate hunger and malnutrition, our challenge here is Water!"

To 29-year-old Wilkister Wakoli, a farmer from Webuye in Western province, ownership of land is something that she has to worry about since her husband’s elder brother had sold her a two acre parcel of land quietly after the death of her husband, claiming that the land was still in their grandfather’s name.

“My worry is how the widows will be food secure if we are excluded from our husbands’ land where it has been inherited from the father in laws,” she says angrily.

Wilkister is appealing to the Government to fast track implementation of land laws to guarantee women land ownership through co-ownership and joint ownership.

According to the farmers, inaccessibility to credit facilities, poor road network, lack of equipment and irrigation facilities, and lack of storage facilities are some of the major challenges facing women farmers.

They also said that failure to adequately recognise women farmers was retarding food production and poverty reduction in the country since women are the key actors in Kenyan farming, constituting over half of the agricultural labour force and producing 70 per cent of food.

Despite that, they said there was no budget allocation specifically targeting women farmers.

Access to land and food is not a debate, but a right.

Shanaaz Nel from ActionAid International could not agree more:

“Access to land and food is not a debate, but a right. Women as duty bearers have come together to hold Governments to account and demand investment for agriculture. When women are responsible for a most of the load then Governments must share the land justly."

Communities at risk of losing their land speak

tom.allen — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:06:19 +0000

The cost and availability of food is in the news worldwide. What we wanted to do for World Food Day this year was bring new voices to the debate from communities at risk of losing their land. Many rural people we work with rely on land for food and their livelihoods.

As I mentioned last Tuesday, most of these rural communities have limited or no access to the Internet. However many do have mobiles / cell phones, making SMS / text messages a convenient way for them to communicate. So the plan was to convert these messages into posts on social media to reach a broad audience.

We spoke to our teams in countries most affected by land issues, and got enthusiastic responses from staff and communities in The Gambia, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria and Rwanda. Our resourceful IT staff in 3 of the countries were able to setup a tool (Frontline SMS) to pull together all the national messages, and other staff and partner organisations spoke to communities about the opportunity.

Their messages were then posted to Twitter to see if anyone would be interested in the experiences of rural people in a distant part of the world.

The response was phenomenal! People in the rural communities we’d spoken to leapt on the idea and we received messages from nearly 500 people, across 5 countries in just a few days. To get every voice heard, we started publishing tweets every 20 minutes, which were widely shared and retweeted, like this one from Kenya:

Most of my people lack title deeds and modern farm tools. Everyone is landless in my community which makes us feel insecure #WFD2012 #WFDAK
— ActionAid Voices (@ActionAidVoices) October 10, 2012

We also received countless messages of support. If you’re reading this and sent one, please accept our most sincere thanks! We will ensure your message get to the communities.

As with all ‘best laid plans’, it changed quite a bit on the day. Our Nigeria team suddenly started receiving messages from communities they worked with, so we were able to retweet them:

We are losing our farmland to so called development...Small holder women farmers speak out forced evictions in Nigeria
— ActionAid Nigeria (@ActionAidNG) October 16, 2012

Even more exciting was the next unplanned development as Sulah from our Rwanda team managed to get an internet connection from the rural community he was visiting. So we connected for a live link via Skype.

Suddenly these tools were enabling real time conversations between villagers in rural Rwanda and the rest of the world.

@actionaidvoices land grabs obv have a huge impact not just on food production but on your spirits - how does it feel when it happens?
— Molly T (@Molpol) October 16, 2012

The questions came in from people on Twitter, and the villagers in Rwanda responded via @ActionAidVoices.

.@molpol "...I almost lost it, was psychologically affected like I lost part of my body, I couldn't imagine a future" #WFD2012 #WFDAR
— ActionAid Voices (@ActionAidVoices) October 16, 2012

Don't think this was just an elaborate way for people with different backgrounds and nationalities to share their experiences however. With all of the messages collected, we'll lobby governments to improve, reform and implement better land laws.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the project, and what would make it more interesting for you. Leave us a comment below.

Modern technology to support traditional ways of life

lotty.reynolds — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 12:08:41 +0000

Around Rural Women’s Day and World Food Day communities in Kenya, Gambia and Nepal are sending in SMS messages on land issues that are affecting them, to help create a compelling case for action both nationally and internationally.

This weekend I’ve probably sent around 30 texts, all of which were around my social and personal life. This afternoon I shall be doing some more significant texting – I shall be retweeting texts direct from Africa and Asia, as members of rural communities SMS how they are affected by land issues.

For every text I send a friend, I’m retweeting a message. Please join in and retweet these messages to ensure they reach as wide an audience as possible: They can be found here: @ActionAidVoices

We have been cultivating crops on land from the time of our ancestors even though this land still do not belong to us legally. Even the protest of us has not been mean anything to government.

Half the world’s food is produced by smallholder farmers and 8 out of 10 of these farmers are women. This staggering statistic illustrates how important it is to support and protect these farmers – particularly women - and the critical role they play.

An issue that is posing a huge risk for rural communities is the increasing demand for land by investors and governments. In Africa alone, land deals from the last 10 years account for an area the size of South Africa. Land-grabbing can mean losing a year-round source of food and livelihoods for smallholders.

Rural women are particularly vulnerable. With a lack of legally recognised land rights (less than 20% of the world’s land is owned by women) they often lose out when land tenures are changed. Women are also particularly vulnerable to the loss of land considered ‘common’ or ‘marginal’, such as grasslands and forests - not only a source of food but firewood, water and other supplies vital to communities’ livelihoods.

Lack of ownership and control over land, reduces women’s participation in decision making and also creates low income for women.

It is critical that governments protect rural communities and smallholder farmers, especially women, from land grabbing. But how can we ensure that when issues around land rights and land grabbing are scrutinised by governments, they truly represent the needs of affected communities?

With the people we are working with more likely to have access to a mobile phone than the internet, we thought that SMS messaging might be a good way for the actual voices of rural communities to reach wider audiences and governments.

To non-citizen #land owners: Let our government make new laws coz this land belongs to the people!

It would also be great to lend your voice in solidarity! We can find your tweet much more quickly if you use the #WFDAA hashtag.

If the land rural communities depend on to survive isn’t protected then millions could go hungry.

Land grabbing our way to hunger

leora.casey — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 10:21:49 +0000

“We own the land and use it for different activities. At anytime the government can make the decision to transfer my land to another user”.

This is a quote from a community in Kisarwe, Tanzania, which ActionAid has been working with to stop a land grab for biofuels.

I’ve spent the last couple of months working on a new report which looks at land grabbing and land rights across 24 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The deeper I get into this issue, the angrier it makes me.

How can governments and investors grab land being used by communities in some of the poorest parts of the world?

This is the unfortunate reality that many people around the world are faced with as pressure increases on our planet’s resources. Land grabbing – the taking of land without consent, violating many human rights – is unacceptable at any scale.

As the world’s population continues to soar, pressure on resources will only increase. That’s why it’s vital that we strengthen people’s rights to land so that they are not shoved aside by governments and companies keen to make a quick buck.

The closer I look at this issue, the more aware I’ve become of the difficulties these communities live with in the face of land grabs.

The risk to their homes and ability to feed themselves and their families, and the communities’ fear of speaking out, are typical of these deals. Communities are made to suffer massive rights abuses, all this from the governments and local authorities that are supposed to protect them.

The power of land grabbers, both domestic and international, and the lack of enforceable legislation, are among a whole host of factors that cause these rights violations.

This leaves communities and women especially vulnerable to land grabbing, as they often have fewer rights to own and farm land than men – disempowered, impoverished, hungry and landless, and at the mercy of the often hollow promises from investors.

The Lay of the Land report considers the impact of land grabs on communities and women, as well as the challenges countries face linked to land grabs. It contains a wide range of sobering accounts from countries like Kenya, Pakistan and Bangladesh. We’ve looked at 24 countries in total, examining their progress in dealing with these land governance challenges.

Working on this report has really put things into perspective for me.

Yes, countries need new land laws to protect people’s rights to own land, but these are useless unless actually implemented.

It’s also clear that women must be given equal rights to earn and farm land – after all, in many countries, its women who produce most of the food.

But above all, countries should not be selling out their people, putting control of large amounts of land and water in the hands of a chosen few.

Unless countries take action to tackle these dodgy deals, the gap between rich and poor will only widen.

The times they are a-changing

Anders.Dahlbeck — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:18:43 +0000

In 2008, ActionAid started campaigning to remove biofuels targets that are having a detrimental effect on poor and marginalised communities around the world. We did so in response to calls from communities and partners we work with in the global south, for whom the impact of biofuels production was becoming untenable. Countless cases of land grabs by multinationals to produce industrial biofuels for export to rich countries were the main issue.

At the time, the impact of biofuels on hunger and poverty elsewhere in the world was received as quite a marginal issue. At our first meetings with European decision-makers back in 2008, we were often met with blank stares, incomprehension, or conspiracy theories. Why were we so keen to kill a booming sector in Europe at a time when Europe desperately needed to create new jobs and tackle climate change?

Even when presented with the evidence of the impacts of biofuels, many doubted that transport fuel targets within the Renewable Energy Directive would ever change. But the fact that using food for fuel in a world where almost 1 billion people go hungry is not a good idea, has taken hold. The concept of pouring billions in subsidies from European taxpayers into unsustainable first generation biofuels is now being seriously questioned.

In recent years citizens across Europe have gotten on board with a campaign. Is it right that energy security in Europe should compromise food and land security in some of the poorest countries of the world? Should others bear the cost of our fuel consumption? This idea was portrayed in the ActionAid spoof video Drive Aid. So far, 44,000 Europeans have signed up to an ActionAid petition calling for an end to government support for industrial biofuels. And that number is rising.

A couple of weeks ago, a joint statement from Energy Commissioner Oettinger and Climate Action Commissioner Hedegaard acknowledged the direct relationship between using food for fuel and global hunger. Next week they will officially publish a proposal that will see a 5% cap on biofuels which are based on food. This set of events would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

The European Commission will get a chance to explain this change of heart at a panel organised by the pan-European NGO confederation Concord at the European Development Days in Brussels next week entitled ‘Promoting Biofuels, Creating Scarcity?’.

The real impacts of European biofuels policies have become irrefutable. A lot has changes in three years – the times are indeed a-changing.

Africa’s endless food security talking shop

henry.malumo — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:33:08 +0000

As this year’s World Food Day approaches, the African continent is faced with a familiar story. Africa’s food situation has not improved and today, even more people are threatened with starvation.

Food security has long been part of the African Union’s agenda and the organisation’s leadership has made many promises to the people of Africa. Under the Chairmanship of Bingu wa Mutharika, the late President of Malawi, the organisation adopted ‘Africa Food and Nutrition Day’ – this was due to the fact that World Food Day was a global event and Africa needed a dedicated day to discuss the issues of food security and sovereignty.

Africa has become known for making many commitments when it comes to fighting hunger but it has become equally good at breaking them.

Too many cooks?

The Maputo declaration made in 2003, where countries committed to allocate 10% of national budgets to agriculture, is among the positive developments. In 2003 we also had the launch of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), an ambitious programme that sought to harmonise the resources and the policies at country level to ensure food security.

Ten years down the road, Africa is still struggling with food security and few governments have met the 10% target.

Africa has continued to be the focus of many international agriculture policies and initiatives. These range from the G8 New Alliance initiative announced by President Obama at the 2012 G8 summit, to the Grow Africa initiative and many others – all presented as a win–win formula for Africa.

Countries have many policies but we’re seeing little or no action. This is because they often contradict each other and each new initiative demands the attention of all our agricultural experts.

World Food Day 2012 coincides with an important conference held at the African Union Headquarters on Governing and Harnessing Africa’s natural resources for Africa’s development. This conference has as its goal ‘to establish an African-driven development agenda’ but how will it differ from previous conferences?

Africa is a continent with lots of land, good but fluctuating rainfall, and yet despite its abundant natural resources – many Africans are going hungry.

The question that begs an answer is, despite the vast lands, the numerous policies and conferences, why is Africa still begging for food?

Every country in Africa plays host to an office of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and many other similar institutions whose main role is to advise and support governments in producing more food – but food insecurity is still a sad reality in many parts of the continent.

What’s the solution?

It is a known fact that smallholder farmers feed the majority of people in Africa but most governments in Africa are still demanding more scientific evidence before they will increase support to smallholder farmers.

The CAADP programme was meant to support smallholder farmers to produce more food and apply sustainable ways of farming but, to this day, these great programmes have remained as ideas.

Most governments have opted to enter into new alliances that are led by the private sector who’s main goal is to produce food for export and profit. These alliances have come in different forms, championed by foreign and endorsed by African governments.

Companies are producing food for export and cultivating crops that are needed elsewhere – and because of this, urgent action is needed. Using Africa’s natural resources for Africa’s development will not happen if we keep giving land to people who grow food for export. You can’t feed others before feeding yourselves.

Africa is lacking leadership on food governance and this will not lead to food security but rather ongoing food insecurity. Unfortunately, most of today’s leaders have become champions of initiatives that export food, rather than making sure that Africa’s hungry millions have enough to eat.

Our SMS land campaign for World Food Day 2012

tom.allen — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:18:11 +0000

I have a healthy interest in global justice, and a probably unhealthy interest in all things digital, which means the ongoing exponential rise of SMS and mobile internet across the globe is making me very excited at the moment.

For World Food Day 2012, #WFD2012 on Twitter, we will be experimenting with SMS campaigning, and I would like to share our plans (and hopes) for the day with you.

World Food Day will probably not be in your calendar if you live in a country where access to food isn’t a heavily politicised issue. For many countries though food and land rights are key political issues and often a question of basic sustainability.

When speaking to people in communities impacted by these issues, they will explain that land and food are inextricably linked. It makes sense when you think about it. If you’re a farmer or just have a small plot that sustains your family, that piece of land provides the food you eat, and if you’re lucky, a little extra that you can barter for other essential products.

I’m lucky enough to work with the people in these communities and other ActionAid researchers and policy bods who work to find the root causes of these problems.

People tell us what land means to them, and I'd like to share that with you for World Food Day.

Once the project gets underway, you'll be able to see what our communities are saying on Twitter as it'll be tagged #WFDAA. If you'd like to show your support, please retweet the messages that move you, and help us get the voices from these communities heard!

If you're interested in how the messages get there, please read on.

Now to get a little geekier...

Given the people in poor communities we’re working with are much more likely to have access to a mobile phone than directly to an internet connection, the best way I could think of to get their voices to you, was to use SMS and social media.We’ve a done a variety of projects similar to this before, and even won an award for it recently, but connecting SMS messages to social media is new for us, and as far as I know for the sector.

So the plan is as follows:

A member of one of the communities we work with in Kenya, The Gambia or Nepal sends an SMS message giving us their story of how they are affected by lack of access to land.
One of our ActionAid team then copies their message across from Frontline SMS, to Twitter and it goes out via our campaigns account, @ActionAidVoices.

Simple really!

World Food Day is October 16th and as I write this, we're just starting to see the first messages from communities in Nepal. They will be live on Twitter shortly!

All the tweets will be coming from ActionAid Voices so please follow the action there and please please please retweet!

This is all a bit experimental and we’re totally reliant on you to help us get these messages from people who don’t have access to mass communications tools like social media, to a broad audience.

The messages that are sent will be pulled together to create a compelling case for national governments to take action to help people in the communities we’re working with.

If you want to lend your voice in solidarity to theirs on Twitter, please do, and if you can use the #WFDAA tag we’ll find it a lot more easily! Thank you!

EU starting to see sense on biofuels

Anders.Dahlbeck — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:50:49 +0000

Over the last few years we’ve been showing how the European Union’s biofuels targets have led to land grabs and food insecurity in developing countries.

Europe’s thirst for fuel has had a huge impact on poor and marginalised communities around the world as they have lost their land to make way for biofuels plantations, and food prices rocket.

But news emerging from a meeting of European Commissioners in Cyprus this week has revealed that the EU is starting to see sense on biofuels.

A leaked legislative proposal to regulate Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), shows that the EU is proposing to limit the amount of biofuels made from food crops that can be used in European transport fuel to 5% of the total amount.

This is big news as it’s the first time that the EU has explicitly acknowledged that using food as fuel can cause problems.

We’re glad that the EU has finally recognised what we have been pointing out for years – that diverting agricultural resources from producing food to produce fuel will inevitably lead to food insecurity and food price volatility.

But we’re concerned that including 5% of biofuels in European transport fuel is still too high.

We’ve already seen land grabs for biofuels in countries such as Kenya and Tanzania which have involved European companies, and we’ve taken these cases to European decision-makers.

But it’s not just a European problem. We’ve also highlighted problems with bio-ethanol production in the US driving up global corn prices and how even the champion of biofuels producers – Brazil – is violating people’s rights in their quest to profit from increased global biofuels demand.

Together with other development and environmental NGOs we have called on the EU to reconsider its biofuels policies and we’re pleased to see that European decision-makers are starting to get the message from poor communities about how EU biofuels mandates are making their lives more difficult.

While the new ILUC proposal is a step in the right direction, the land grabs and food security problems are likely to continue until the EU faces the facts and scraps its biofuels targets. The EU needs to find other ways of reducing its carbon footprint and not make its fuel from food.

Young activists making history in The Gambia

Sarah.Huxley — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 16:09:49 +0000

It’s my eighth week working for ActionAid and I’m in The Gambia, listening to Muhammed, our Activista Co-ordinator for the country. Whilst I sit listening to him speak, I’m reminded why I’m doing the work I do.

Muhammed starts by telling me about the history of his youth network in The Gambia: "we started out as the African Youth Coalition in The Gambia, and now we are supported by our partners at Activista."

We often forget that young people have their own histories – and this is an important point in acknowledging the identity and contributions that empowered young people can make.

In the case of Activista in The Gambia, theirs is quite impressive.

As Muhammed explains to me, he and his fellow youth activists have managed to persuade the government to increase the money that it is putting into agriculture – a huge success in a country that is reeling from the effects of the Sahel drought.

Despite facing many challenges – it is, after all, development work! Muhammed and his fellow activists have built a long list of impressive achievements, working together with local farmers.

“We brought farmers together and they explained to us the problems that they were facing,” he explains.

They wanted to see a change in government policy to support farmers, which required an increase in the national agriculture budget.

“We worked with them to pull together all the issues that they were facing and together we drew up a list of their demands which we presented at a Technical Advisory Committee, and we took the issue even further through radio programmes and presented a documentary featuring farmers’ demands at the National Assembly.”

Up until the Activistas took action, The Gambia had not been meeting its commitments under the 2003 Maputo agreement to increase its spending on agriculture.

But Muhammed and his fellow Activistas changed this – in 2011 6.5% of the budget went to agriculture, now the government has agreed to make it 11%.

This is a huge achievement by Muhammed and other young activists in The Gambia, but they know their work is not done.

Together, they have made history, but for them, the present is equally important. They’ll be keeping a close eye on the government to make sure they meet their promises and they’ll also be working on land rights this year.

I look forward to supporting their work, making sure that the spaces exist for Muhammed and other ActionAid youth partners to continue making history together.

African Union elects new Chair - will she make a difference?

henry.malumo — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:41:21 +0000

At the recent African Union summit, leaders elected Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as their first female Chairperson.

But with key issues such as the Sahel food crisis and the conflict between Sudan and South Sudan facing the continent, will Dr. Dlamini-Zuma provide the strong leadership that the organisation needs?

The answer to this is a diplomatic yes. But this answer comes with caution.

Change takes time and given the diversity of the African Union, it may take longer than many people would hope – but what is most important is that the change is beginning.

Dr. Dlamini-Zuma’s appointment came just days before the birthday of former South African President and global icon, Nelson Mandela.

Mandela is admired the world over for his dedication and patriotism to the creation of the rainbow nation. He embraced those who imprisoned him, dined with them and called them friends.

Dr. Dlamini-Zuma would do well to follow this great example. She needs to embrace those who did not vote for her and bridge the divides.

It is time to build a new Africa and this must start with a firm commitment to accountable and transparent leadership at the AU.

President Mandela once said: “I dream of the realisation of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent”. And this is a dream which we still have.

The change of leadership is a win for Africa. It is a demonstration of leadership and political will by the African governments.

It’s a win for the women and citizens of Africa. We often say “when you educate a woman, you educate a family”, and we call on the new Chair to embrace this spirit.

There is a strong sense of unity among the citizens of Africa that the time for the Africa we want could be now. So it’s important to remind the new Chair and her team that the success of the AU is dependent on African governments and the citizens of the continent, who will support new ways of engaging other global players in Africa’s best interest.

Back in 2005 at the Southern African Development Community summit, President Festus Mogae of Botswana criticised the institution, saying it was “the weakest in getting things done”.

By all accounts, the SADC has adopted ambitious declarations on issues ranging from the environment to human rights, democracy and good governance. Yet few countries honour these commitments.

When will adherence to such commitments become so important that non-compliance results in some form of sanction – and becomes something to be avoided?

This is true for the SADC region but even more relevant to the African Union as a whole. And it’s time for the leaders of Africa to embrace this call for change.

I congratulate Dr. Dlamini-Zuma. But she must be under no illusions – she has a hard job ahead.