Why No Thought for Food?

FYF has recently co-sponsored a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development entitled ‘Why No Thought for Food?’

This is the first Parliamentary Report to recognise the immensely important ‘International Assessment of Agriculture, Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development' (IAASTD) findings of 2008.

Thinking about the costs

The UN/World Bank sponsored IAASTD report asserted that a business as usual approach to agriculture would not effectively tackle the problem of world hunger. It found that whilst productivity has increased over the last 50 years, the sharing of benefits has been “far from equitable...and has been achieved at a high social and environmental cost.”

Now that a significant reference to the importance of the IAASTD report has been made in ‘Why No Thought for Food?’ perhaps it will finally be used as a basis for practical and policy work on key issues relating to food, agriculture and environment.....

 .....and perhaps the powerful stories of women like Florence Kalua will finally be recognised.

 A sustainable approach to production

“When we started this project, the aim was to make the community self-sufficient in food.  I’m proud to say that this aim has been achieved.”  Florence Kalua, Malawi.

FYF staff member Catriona Fox met Florence Kalua, a lead farmer on our Rumphi programme, when she visited Malawi recently. (Read more about lead farmers) Florence’s fields were, Catriona told us,“a textbook in sustainable farming practices come to life!”

“A shed had been constructed to stop the compost from drying out and losing nutrients; the residue from the harvested maize had been left on the soil to decompose to help improve fertility and retain soil moisture; vetiver grass was planted to reduce soil erosion; tephrosia trees ran along the edge of the field to improve soil fertility and as a pest control; and 50cm² pits had been dug ready to plant traditional maize with the aim of retaining water and compost nutrients.”

Sustainable farming practices like these mean that Florence has vastly improved her crop yields and, as a lead farmer, she has passed this knowledge on to her fellow farmers. As a result her community is now self-sufficient in food.

So where to now?

 As Florence’s story shows there is a need “to recognise that it is not just in the big international research centres that work is done but it’s very often on that interface between high science and a lot of local knowledge about local conditions, practices and varieties of seeds.” (Camilla Toulmin, Director IIED, quoted in ‘Why No Thought for Food?’)

 The publication of the ‘Why No Thought for Food?’ report gives us hope that there is finally movement away from an approach to agriculture in which ‘production’ is the only real concern. There now seems to be increased understanding that, in order to reach some of the world’s poorest farmers, there is a need for an approach that builds on the farming skills they already have, and that incorporates concern for the preservation of natural resources.