• With EkoRural’s support, the Canastas Comunitarias movement has established positive relationships with institutions at the regional and even national levels, which has led to the creation of more local markets. Communities and their leaders have strengthened their positions challenging the eminently technical and paternalistic proposals put forth by the institutions officially responsible for rural development in Ecuador, leading to positive change in the direction of locally-led development.
• EkoRural has played a key role in elevating the voice of community-based organizations in national debates on food sovereignty, in particular through its participation in the Agroecology Collective and the Plurinational and Intercultural Conference on Food Sovereignty (COPISA). Following two years of provincial-level consultations, COPISA recently completed the text of the Agrobiodiversity, Seeds and Agroecology Law, which is now being debated by the Ecuadorian Congress.
• Participatory assessments were undertaken in six new communities in order to gain a better understanding of existing farmer seed systems, local leadership with regard to the management of genetic resources, and crop species and varieties grown in the communities. Tools for deepening this understanding even further from a gender perspective are being developed.
• Participating communities have begun socializing mechanisms for the establishment of community seed banks. EkoRural has been successful in creating the conditions required to reach an understanding and obtain commitments from community groups and their leaders.
• Workshops and farmer-to-farmer training have been organized to reinforce community management of genetic resources and natural resources and the role seed banks can potentially play in different agroecosystems.
• To avoid climate risks and loss of genetic material, communities started by multiplying small sets of native potatoes in different parts of the Ecuadorian highlands. These genetic materials will be available throughout the year.

Children at market day in Tzimbuto, Ecuador.

In the second quarter of 2012, EkoRural will continue with these activities as well as a number of other programs supported by organizations such as the McKnight Foundation. Also, in collaboration with Groundswell, EkoRural is seeking additional resources to expand seed systems work throughout the Central and Northern highlands, to further scale the Community Food Baskets movement, and to continue to strengthen Ecuador’s groundbreaking Food Sovereignty movement.

We are also pleased to announce that Steve Sherwood, an EkoRural co-founder and Groundswell board member, will speak at TEDxWageningen on May 30th, 2012. The event is being called “The Emergence of Now”, and will feature 15 speakers for an inspirational day of designs, processes, and people. It will be focused primarily on bringing knowledge and expertise to the region where Wageningenin University is located in order to discuss how the Wageningen community can eliminate the concept of waste by creating bio-based economies and effectively tap the human and intellectual capital to build the future we all want to see. Wageningen is a hub for life science and a growing business cluster for clean technology. It is the ideal setting to facilitate innovation and action towards a carbon neutral Wageningen. Read about what Steve plans to present at TEDxWageningen.

OP7G is a community-based organization (with over 3,000 active members from 28 villages) dedicated to improving the lives of people in this extremely marginalized rural area, by improving sustainable farming practices, promoting community health, organizing local savings and credit cooperatives and creating income generating opportunities. OP7G’s idea in starting the tournament was to create a fun, unifying and healthy recreational activity to bring communities together. The tournament started in 2004 with 10 teams from 10 villages, and it has continued to grow. Last year it included 15 teams. The soccer tournament takes place over several weeks in August and September each year near Moulin, Haiti.

Illustration from Hope For Haiti © 2010 by Jesse Joshua Watson. Used by permission of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

How does a soccer tournament help to improve people’s lives?

First of all, there are few recreational activities for people living in rural Haiti, so this tournament is a welcome reprieve from an otherwise difficult life. People have fun and it helps to unify the communities. The tournament also helps raise awareness about OP7G and the practical activities they promote to improve people’s lives. The event attracts most of the youth in the area, who come to play and to watch – many put it on their calendars and even migrate back from work in the Dominican Republic to be there. The tournament gives young people the opportunity to learn about OP7G and opportunities that exist in their communities to improve their lives. Parallel to the tournament, OP7G carries out educational activities for the people who come to watch, such as how to prevent HIV and cholera and how to improve health and nutrition. The tournament also creates economic opportunities – which are few and far between in the area – as local farmers can prepare and sell food and refreshments to the people attending.

Your donation will help OP7G cover costs associated with putting on the tournament. These costs include: paying referees; buying uniforms, sneakers and soccer balls; and prizes for first, second and third place and for fair play (team with fewest penalties), best goal keeper, and top scorer.

If you live in Asheville, come by Barleys for an evening of friendship, great beer and food all in support of Haiti. If you cannot join us, you can still support the tournament by making a donation now (write “Haiti soccer tournament” in the dedication box). Your donation is 100% tax deductible. Thank you for your support!

In October 2011, El Salvador experienced another wake-up call to its growing vulnerability when tropical storm 12E inundated much of the country, causing extensive flooding and soil erosion. The storm’s sustained and intense rainfalls were worse than typically occur during the rainy season, and are attributed by many to changing ocean currents in the Pacific due to climate change. The devastation drove home that fact that El Salvador, battered by more frequent hurricanes from the Atlantic and new threats from the Pacific, has become one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, while at the same time being threatened by growing food insecurity.

Agronomist from Ministry of Agriculture talking with farmer in Bajo Lempa about improving his aquaculture.

The Government of El Salvador has responded by trying to re-mobilize agricultural and food production, initially by giving fertilizers and seeds to small-scale farmers. To its credit, at the same time the Government has recognized the need to promote a transition towards more sustainable farming practices, in order to better manage soil and water conservation and to meet the urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In this context, the Ministry of the Environment is launching a Program for the Restoration of Ecosystems and Landscapes in three pilot zones.

Based on Groundswell’s extensive experience in bottom-up organizing with family farmers to scale sustainable farming, the Salvadoran NGO PRISMA contracted Groundswell to provide advice to the Ministry of Environment on implementing this program. Groundswell International Director Steve Brescia and Latin America Regional Facilitator Jackie Chenier, based in Honduras, traveled to El Salvador from January 29- February 3, 2012 for this purpose. They visited each of the pilot zones located in the upper, middle and lower sections of the important Rio Lempa watershed that crosses the country, and met with farmers, community based organizations, local NGO and local government officials. Before departing the country Brescia and Chenier presented their initial findings and recommendations to the Group for Rural Dialogue, a policy platform for representatives of various governmental as well as national and international development agencies. Groundswell’s recommendations centered around promoting movements of local organizations and leaders in each zone, and developing plans with them to make strategic investments in farmer innovation, farmer-to-farmer learning networks, and supporting social and market incentives.

Currently Groundswell and the Ministry of Environment are discussing how to best provide continuing support for the process, which is likely to start with Groundswell facilitating a local planning process in one of the pilot zones to foment a local movement to scale sustainable farming practices.

In the Sahel, grain prices should normally drop significantly after the harvest in November. But they are continuing to rise. In Niger, millet prices were 37 per cent higher in November 2011 than a year earlier, and other key cereals are up to 40 per cent higher than the regional five-year average. These unusually high prices affect poorer households who buy most of their food on the market. Other early warning indicators include a decrease in the price of livestock (because pastoralists and peasant farmers sell animal to buy grain), and unusually early movements of pastoralists to seek water and pasture. “Some families are already down to just one meal a day of watered-down millet porridge,” said Johannes Schoors, CARE’s Country Director in Niger. “In a normal year, the hunger season doesn’t start until April or May, but this year, it has already started.” 

Africa's Sahel region is experiencing a major food crisis that could turn into a full blown famine.

A Hausa proverb says: if the drumbeat changes, the dance must also change. The looming crisis is irrefutable evidence that the drumbeat in the Sahel has changed. Food crises can no longer be treated as limited events, caused by occasional hazards like droughts or floods. The number of people suffering from chronic food insecurity, high levels of poverty and vulnerability is increasing. Acute food crises, such as occurred in 2005, and again in 2010, are short term peaks, triggered by drought, of an underlying trend of increasing chronic vulnerability.

The frequency of such natural and market-related food shocks affecting the Sahel is increasing.  Rains are shorter and less frequent; pasture land is turning into desert. Local populations have responded to these interactive stresses with coping strategies that include migration, and selling or mortgaging their land, household goods and livestock in pursuit of meeting household needs. These buffers, however, have reached the limits of their effectiveness.  The most vulnerable households have hardly started to recover their livelihoods when they are hit with another major shock. They remain highly indebted. They experience chronic hunger. They survive by relying mainly on donations, remittances from relatives and income from the sale of wood.

Food insecurity and poverty are so endemic that even in years with good harvests, the rate of acute child malnutrition is consistently higher than the emergency threshold of 15% specified by the World Health Organisation. UNICEF estimates that in years with good rainfall, more than 300,000 children die each year from malnutrition-related causes. In 2012, to make things worse, many families have lost a crucial survival option: work in neighbouring countries. Many Nigeriens have come back early from Côte d’Ivoire, Libya and Nigeria to because of instability or conflict.

While families in critical need today need emergency assistance, long-term solutions must simultaneously be found. Communities in the Sahel, both small scale farm families and pastoralists, need support to adapt to changing conditions and increase their resilience. 

Escaping the Hunger Cycle: Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel by Peter Gubbels

One method has been to improve food production using agro-ecological farming techniques. For example, in the Sahel there is a growing farmer led “re-greening movement” in which farmers foster the natural regeneration of drought resistant trees in their fields. By pruning these trees twice a year, farm families generate a “green manure” or mulch which protects the soil, and also generates wood for cooking.  This system recycles nutrients and energy found on the farm, and reduces dependence on expensive external inputs, such as artificial fertilizers.

Many international agencies are promoting techniques for “Disaster Risk Reduction” (DRR), including adaptation to climate change, in the Sahel. DRR is a broad range of humanitarian and development actions to reduce the most frequent risks affecting the population. Dry season gardens, improved water supply, village cereal banks (so families can buy food at reasonable prices), soil and water conservation techniques, fodder banks, improved roads, and dune stabilisation have all been proven to reduce risk and improve resiliency.

Other programmes that have shown their effectiveness are working with women’s savings and loans groups to develop alternative sources of food such as community vegetable gardens; or training government nurses on prevention and management of malnutrition at the community level. Providing food supplements to slightly malnourished children will help prevent them from sliding into severe malnutrition. Grain can be sold at affordable prices for the most vulnerable families and to replenish the stocks of community cereal banks, fodder provided for animals of small pastoralist families so their herds don’t die. Persuading pastoralists to reduce the number of animals (destocking) by selling them early when pasture and water resources are limited is another important risk reduction initiative.

Various social protection measures are also proving to have a significant impact in overcoming the structural roots of chronic food and nutrition crisis. The most common, direct cash transfers, coupled with livelihood support, has been shown to improve resilience if well targeted to the very poorest households. They are most effective if focused on women who bear the main brunt of poverty, when men migrate to seek temporary work in urban centres or neighbouring countries. Despite many regions suffering poor harvests, food is available on the market. By supporting families to purchase food, this strengthens the local economy.

Since 2005, donors, UN agencies, international NGOs and governments in the Sahel are learning to more effectively address both the acute and chronic dimensions of food insecurity. Generally, international organisations know what works, but it must be done on a much larger scale. But despite the lessons learned in 2005 and 2011, there is deep concern that the pace of institutional change is not yet advanced enough to prevent a major food crisis in the Sahel in 2012. One of the most serious issues is that early warning does not yet trigger effective early action. The food crisis of 2010 indicated that the capacity of governments, UN agencies and donors for an early collective response, at an adequate scale, to protect the livelihoods of millions of vulnerable households is still insufficient. The humanitarian response in 2010 was better than in 2005. It saved lives. However, it failed to prevent massive loss of assets, particularly their livestock, and the means of livelihood of the poorer households, leaving them more vulnerable than before.

There is deep concern that this old familiar cycle will repeat itself in 2012. Humanitarian action will only get into full operation after the food crisis starts to peak, when the media take pictures of emaciated infants. Aid officials privately say that international donors will react promptly only when there is sustained media interest in a potential emergency. Using diplomatic language, they criticise the media for not picking up their crisis alerts. Those in the media reply that they do not know where to draw the line between aid agencies peddling exaggerated claims about impending crises to gain added resources, and accurate warnings. The nature of journalists is to prefer to see for themselves, and that often only happens once conditions have become severe.

Without the public pressure caused by media reports, aid agencies often face a difficult challenge of persuading wealthy governments, before a crisis actually happens, that they need to act quickly and decisively. The evidence indicates that it is only one-tenth the cost to provide effective agricultural support and help communities gain food security than it is to provide food aid at a time of famine. But Western governments find it easier to respond to sudden crisis such as earthquakes, floods and tsunamis, than to slow on-set disasters such as drought. If this problem is not solved, all other investments to end the chronic food and nutrition crisis are in serious jeopardy.

To overcome chronic food insecurity, a new approach is needed that integrates humanitarian and development work and better supports recovery and resilience. Sufficient resources for this are lacking. One reason is that the chronically food insecure do not die in massive numbers. In fact, some national and regional leaders, and policy makers responsible for food security appear quite complacent. They publically express a sense of accomplishment that such large scale mortality from famine no longer occurs, but don’t have a sense of urgency about the problem of chronic hunger.

Another issue is that the current architecture of aid still does not provide sufficient, long term, flexible funding for resilience initiatives, particularly for recovery, disaster risk reduction, prevention of malnutrition, and social protection.  Many donor agencies and national level policy makers are still acting within the old relief to development paradigm and are not adjusting quickly enough to address the chronic dimensions of the current food and nutrition crisis. When the “acute” phase of a food crisis subsides, and the rains resume, it is often back to ‘business as usual’. There is often no budget-line for recovery or resilience either in humanitarian or development donor agencies. The chronically food-insecure population of the Sahel are not yet recognised as a priority. They have specific needs that are different from those periodically hit by calamities or those in developmental stages. The lack of dedicated funding mechanisms for addressing chronic food and nutrition insecurity is the most glaring flaw within the current aid architecture.

Domestic politics of Western donor agencies are another contributing factor. Medium- and long-term planning is often the first thing to be cut from an aid budget. After the food price crisis of 2008, when hunger riots erupted around the globe, the G8 promised $22 billion for agricultural development and food security. But many of those commitments have not been met.

A final reason is that within Sahelian countries, the growing mass of chronically food insecure, particularly those living in remote and marginalized areas of the country, have no political power to motivate policy makers and government institutions to address their desperate needs. In marginal rural areas, the poor are often illiterate, unorganised, and have no influence over decision-making.

Chronic hunger in the Sahel continues to be highly under-estimated. Relief interventions have become effective in saving lives but do not prevent desperate coping mechanisms and wide-scale loss of productive assets. Promoting resilience requires a different set of skills, resources, duration of intervention, and partnership arrangements compared to relief. It also requires creating sustainable economic and social conditions for the poor to absorb future shocks. The institutional capacity for this is still poorly developed.

Above all, it is essential that early warning triggers immediate early action. The unpalatable reality is that media attention, not early warning, remains one of the strongest drivers of humanitarian action. For the looming crisis of 2012, the alarm has been raised early: the governments of Niger, Mali and Chad have all declared a disaster and have appealed for international help. If action is taken now, there is still time to prevent more families from plunging into a humanitarian disaster, and to provide urgently-needed assistance to those already in crisis. Failure to act and also allocate adequate funding for recovery and resilience will lead to massive human suffering, and a growing aid-dependent population in the Sahel. The time has come for a new drumbeat in the Sahel.

*This article was first published in German in the publication welt-sichten (www.welt-sichten.org). You may read the German version here. 

Peter Gubbels is Groundswell’s Regional Facilitator for West Africa. He has written the report “Escaping the Hunger Cycle: Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel” commissioned by the Sahel Working Group, a network of British and European NGOs working in the Sahel.

Following two years of provincial-level consultations, COPISA recently completed the text of the Agrobiodiversity, Seeds and Agroecology Law, which is now in Congress for final debate. With this law in the hands of the legislature, EkoRural’s attention has shifted to the Consumption, Nutrition and Health Committee, especially its communication strategies and an outreach campaign to be held nationwide during April and October 2012. EkoRural has been instrumental in ensuring there is grassroots leadership, including farmers / producers and urban families / consumers, and it has kept the focus of the outreach on existing successes and “positive deviance” as sources of inspiration for change.

COPISA’s outreach efforts are decentralized, meaning that movements in each province are organizing their own independent activities. EkoRural is taking the lead in organizing the northern provinces of Imbabura, Carchi, and Esmeraldas, in collaboration with other NGOs, municipalities, provincial councils, universities, and many local groups. Pictured above is a partial view of the new logo and slogan developed by the Committee for the upcoming campaign. View the complete logo here.

EkoRural’s support for COPISA and its national outreach will continue during EkoRural’s second three-year Strategic Plan (2012-15), which among other things, seeks to more strategically leverage the grounded experience from its current work in the Central and Northern Highlands to shape public policy and institutional transition towards people centered development, as expressed in the thematic action platforms of agroecology and food sovereignty. COPISA is a perfect partner for this work.

Paris Saintilma is the head of an extremely marginalized family living in Vious, a small rural village located in northeastern Haiti. Last October I met Paris when my organization Partenariat pour le Développement Local (PDL) was undertaking a training workshop on participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation (PME) tools and methods for a new peasant organization we are supporting.

Social maps are one of the key PME tools we use, because they provide PDL and the local organizations we support with a quick view of the geographic space we intervene in, the distribution of members across the area, their gender and age, and the location of the various activities we are facilitating. These maps also include an analysis of the level of wellbeing of the families living within the area. This is essential for program planning because it allows PDL and our partners to identify and prioritize the poorest and most vulnerable families, and to determine how families’ lives are improving over time.

The wellbeing analysis assigns each family a ranking of between 1 and 4 based on its socio-economic profile and its response to PDL support activities: 

• Category 1 – The best off in the community. Do not always participate, and when they do, they often seek to channel and control interventions in a way that ensures they receive the most benefit.
• Category 2 – “Middle class” relative to their neighbors. Very receptive to interventions they perceive as beneficial, and will actively position themselves to benefit.
• Category 3 – Resource poor but making it. These families typically demonstrate the most interest in PDL interventions because they see the training as a means to improve their situation.
• Category 4 – The poorest and most marginalized. They are often looked down on by the rest of their community. These families will avoid participating in community events and PDL training because they believe they have no right to and they fear social rejection.

Paris with his wife and grandchildren at their home in Vious, Haiti.

Typically category 2 and 3 families make up the largest percentage of program participants, yet our inclusive approach welcomes the participation of all families regardless of their position in the community. Also, we go out of our way to involve as many category 4 families as possible, because they need our support more than anybody. This often means visiting their homes repeatedly to engage them in the process. It was for this reason that I found myself in Paris Saintilma’s home.

Things did not begin well the day I first met Paris. While crossing the ravine separating Paris’ house from his neighbor’s (who we had just visited), we were greeted by a rain of insults and threats warning us not to approach. Rodelin, Paris’ son, stood in the doorway with a club in his hand and a menacing look on his face. Meanwhile, with his koulin (machete) at the ready, Paris yelled, “Don’t come any closer, we won’t tell you anything, we won’t talk, go away!’’

At first we thought we had stumbled into an argument between family members or with a neighbor. But no, Paris’ family did not want us – a young man from the same community of Vious, two curious children, and myself, a total stranger – to approach their house. More than a little surprised, we stopped in our tracks, reluctant to take another step forward. I offered a greeting to Paris’ wife. She did not respond. Then I said hello to Paris’ adult daughter, who also offered no response, but was at least not openly hostile toward us.

I broke the silence by listing the names of neighboring families who had already welcomed us, and then I did my best to show Paris and his family that I was the same as them, just a man with two eyes, two ears and a nose; that I was a Haitian who spoke the same language as them; that I ate squash like those hanging from the trees in their yard; that I had just visited the home of Benn, their neighbor.

After several minutes of this Paris began to calm down. And a little while later, after we talked a good deal more, Rodelin agreed to shake my hand and take a photo with me – he still had his club but his face was less stern. Soon, Paris also agreed to take a photo with me, and Paris’ wife went and changed her cloths to take a photo with Paris and their grandchildren.

Paris, his wife and grandchildren had become my friends, but why did they feel so threatened at first?

Later that day I shared my misadventure with some families in the lower part of Vious. They were not surprised by the way the Paris’ family treated me at the outset. They told me stories about the family that portrayed them as the pariah of the community. They described Paris, his wife and children as scornful people who had no interest in being part of the community. Of course, I discovered this was not true at all. Once I demonstrated my interest in getting to know them, Paris’ family was welcoming and friendly.

So why do the other families in Vious think so poorly of Paris’ family? I cannot say for sure, but I can tell you that Paris’ household is a clear example of a category 4 family on our wellbeing index, and I can guess that years or perhaps decades of marginalization have forced Paris to embrace his status as the pariah in order to maintain his dignity.

These are the sorts of challenges we must address if we want to achieve social change. Otherwise our work is just sustaining the same distorted social structure that got us here in the first place, and we are just helping a few people rise to the top while we teach the rest to manage their poverty. Real change will only happen when everybody, including people like Paris, has the opportunity to improve their lives.

• In September, CIKOD organized a one-day meeting with 20 women leaders from the Lawra and Nandom communities of the Upper West Region to introduce the CIKOD/Groundswell program. Women were introduced to Madame Rebecca who acts as the regional coordinator working in conjunction with CIKOD. By the close of the meeting, the women leaders demonstrated an understanding of CIKOD and Groundswell and their efforts in Ghana, and, most importantly, they expressed interest in participating.
• In early October, CIKOD organized another one-day workshop with 11 women leaders for planning the exchange field visit to Burkina Faso. In order to prepare the women leaders, CIKOD staff briefed them on the Saving for Change program and the schedule for the upcoming exchange visit, and then they discussed how to best learn how they might implement a similar agroecology / saving and credit program in Ghana. By the close of the meeting, women leaders demonstrated a commitment to the learning exchange visit.
• On October 20-21, 11 women leaders from the Lawra Rural Women Farmers Association (RWFA) in Ghana participated in a two-day exchange field visit with leaders from the Association for Rural Development Formation (AFDR) in Burkina Faso. The overall purpose for the exchange and learning visit was to enable RWFA to experience firsthand the structure, strategies, successes and challenges present in the rural women’s groups in Burkina Faso, with emphasis placed on learning how a program similar to the Saving for Change program could be implemented in Ghana. The exchange visit took place in two villages – Ley and Ramdollah – located approximately 25 kilometers outside of Ouahigouya
• On November 7, CIKOD staff held a debriefing and planning meeting in Lawra with the 11 women leaders who participated in the Burkina Faso learning and exchange visit. The purpose of the meeting was to share experiences, highlight key lessons learned as well as challenges, and plan next steps for implementing a similar program in Ghana.

In the months since the exchange visit, the women leaders who participated have begun setting up pilot groups where they live. In 2012, Groundswell and CIKOD will support this process by providing training on the principles and the various stages of Saving for Change group formation to CIKOD staff and group facilitators; developing a manual for a Ghanaian savings and credit groups based on the model seen in Burkina Faso; and, accompanying women leaders step by step as they implement a savings and credit and agroecological strategies.

It is also worth pointing out that while the formal objective of the exchange visit was to learn from women’s groups about the Saving for Change program, the Ghanaian women leaders were also exposed to climate change challenges impacting the communities they visited in Burkina Faso. They learned about innovative strategies farmers had developed for mitigating and adapting to climate change, including stone terracing on fields in order to prevent soil erosion and increase soil fertility and multi-crop planting in order to ensure crop resistance and better development. This learning on climate change adaptation proved highly valuable to the women leaders as it provided an opportunity for them to make connections to their local, agro-ecological realities in Ghana, to evaluate the farming strategies used in their own communities, and to witness alternative best practices for mitigating the negative effects of climate change.

Africa's Sahel region is experiencing a major food crisis that could turn into a full blown famine.

This crisis did not happen overnight. The Sahel Working Group report (Escaping the Hunger Cycle; Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel), led by Groundswell’s Peter Gubbels, found that food insecurity in the Sahel is part of a persistent and predictable reservoir of chronic acute food insecurity affecting a predictable and growing portion of the region’s population.

Unfortunately, the international community’s responses to the last two food crises in the region – in 2005 and again in 2010 – did not address these persistent problems nor did they begin in time, even with the food aid they eventually gave to address the short-term effects of the crises. As a result, millions of households resorted to extreme coping mechanisms, selling off their assets (including productive ones) to buy food to survive for a few months. This severely compromised their ability to farm, produce food, and earn a living over the long term. The lack of systematic change in the way families farmed and used their land also ensured that another crisis would develop when there was a new shock or accumulation of stresses as there is now, i.e., high food prices, drought, etc.

Escaping the Hunger Cycle: Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel by Peter Gubbels.

Groundswell and a number of other like-minded organizations are pursuing and strongly advocating a new type of response that takes into account the chronic, structural vulnerability of the Sahel. Instead of just providing food aid, the response from international organizations must focus on: promoting agro-ecological methods of farming, improving soil fertility, establishing water retention and tree cover better adapted to the changing climate, supporting measures to reduce the risk of predictable disasters, addressing the root causes of malnutrition, and providing long term social protection to the most vulnerable households.

The efforts we are presently undertaking with Oxfam to improve soil fertility, seed quality and water management to sustainably improve production and livelihoods are precisely the sorts of interventions needed to avert another famine and make Sahelian farmers more food secure and generally more resilient to shocks of all types. Through SfC Plus Ag, 26,000 women living 200 rural villages in Mali are learning to sustainably improve their agricultural production by introducing simple technologies to improve soil fertility (using nitrogen fixing trees and cover crops), seed quality (short cycle seeds), and water management.

A.  Partenariat pour le Développement Local (PDL) supports small farmer families to improve agriculture and food production and promote sustainable development by starting where they are – by meeting and engaging with farmers on their own fields and farms. We work with them to assess and analyze the constraints they are facing. These are mostly related to issues like land overuse leading to decreasing soil fertility, erosion of topsoil, poor seed quality and limited access to seeds at planting times, challenges to pay day laborers to help with soil preparation due to the lack of access to loans at fair prices, tools that are expensive and of poor quality, post harvest losses due to insects and fungus, the very low costs of the agriculture production at harvest time, and in turn the high price of the same grains, beans and seeds at planting time, and poor infrastructure to bring agricultural products to markets – things like roads, transportation, and local plants to process agricultural products to add value.  After analyzing these constraints with local peasant organizations, PDL works step by step with them to take action to overcome some of these constraints.  We develop practical alternatives and build local strength and capacity to address the challenges.  

Cantave Jean-Baptiste talking with group of farmers in Saint Michel, Haiti.

Some of the keys to doing this are helping to organize the farmers around common interests they identify, or strengthen existing farmers’ organizations to improve their work.  We support them to develop solutions at a small scale, and then build on these good examples to move forward.  We help them link to other peasant organizations to work together and advocate for more access to basic productive services and infrastructure.  At this stage, the networks of peasant organizations advocate to influence decision makers in supporting autonomous, sustainable and decentralized development. We believe grassroots and civil society organizations in Haiti should take the lead in this movement, with the support of other key international organizations.

Q.  We have seen the numbers that tell how many people and communities PDL and Groundswell supported over the last two years.  But how would you describe the key successes since the earthquake?  

A.  There are a number of successes we can talk about.  
 

Farmer leader in Maissade, Haiti showing soil conservation work undertaken by IDPs with earthquake donations.

First, there was the speedy support we were able to provide to the internally displaced people after the earthquake. While most of the national and international organizations concentrated their efforts on Port-au-Prince, PDL went to the countryside to meet the displaced victims who had fled there and provided support both to them and the rural families hosting them.  The poor farming families offered hospitality – sharing their living space, their clothes, and even providing as food the seed grains they had stored for the coming planting season. PDL’s support consisted in working with local peasant organizations to create temporary jobs to improve productive infrastructure – like rebuilding roads and soil conservation on farms – replenishing the seed stocks of the farmers for the planting season, providing small loans for both displaced people and host families, and developing community-run stores so people could obtain the basic goods they need.  Most of those activities are still running and are contributing to rebuilding the rural economies and self-resilience.

After the outbreak of cholera, PDL was the first organization to bring assistance to remote areas in the Artibonite that were affected.  The hospitals and other health centers were overwhelmed and could not respond to rural communities.  PDL staff mobilized to bring antibiotics, oral rehydration fluids and chlorine (to purify water) to save lives.  Later, PDL sent medicines, oral and intravenous rehydration fluids, and chlorine to about 20 communities and health centers in the Artibonite, North and North East departments.  As cholera has become an epidemic, we have continued education and prevention programs.  We are supporting peasant organizations in building water filters and latrines to prevent the spread of cholera.

Learning from our previous experiences, PDL has been moving pretty quickly in promoting and strengthen new local peasant organizations in six new communal sections. The number of gwoupman (solidarity groups of 8-15 people) formed has largely passed our initial plans.  Village level coordinating committees among the gwoupman in the six program areas have been formed, and they are assuming responsibilities for managing local activities.  The inter-village peasant associations in these areas will be inaugurated late 2012 or early 2013.

These new community organizations played an important role in mobilizing people to limit the consequences of the cholera outbreak. The local leaders and the community health promoters played an invaluable role.  Their actions increased local people’s respect for the peasant groups, since they organized and served the entire population without discrimination as to whether people were members of the peasant groups or not.  They worked to improve life for everyone in the communities.  And now the changes in people’s behavior are obvious to see: more people are building and using latrines, and more and more families are treating drinking water and making hand washing a part of their daily practice.  These areas have a lower incidence of cholera.

Q.  What needs to happen next to continue the progress in these rural communities?

Cantave with other PDL staff at their Port-au-Prince office in January 2012.

A.  We will continue to diversify our support for the community organizations in response to their evolving needs and priorities.  We are working to build the social and economic infrastructure, and the communities’ confidence in their own abilities, in order to promote the social changes Haiti needs.  A next step includes strengthening a network of the local peasant organizations to become a powerful actor.  

And we must invest in new ways and create new capacities so that peasant organizations are able to consistently and sustainably generate greater prosperity.  PDL supported nine local peasant organizations in the post- earthquake program, and we also worked with them to develop longer term economic development plans to move their economies and communities to the next level.  We are still seeking funding and hoping to support them with the implementation of these plans.

Q.  What are your hopes and dreams for the next few years in Haiti? What is possible?

A.  We are not waiting for miracles from this new government. We hope at least that they will not make any decisions that worsen the current situation.  In the government’s plans, agriculture is one of the key sectors that should benefit, so that is positive.  They are talking about facilitating farmers’ access to micro-loans, which is very important. They are also talking about improving the tourism industry, and this would imply building roads. So indirectly, the farmers could benefit if they can more easily transport their products to local markets.  We will continue to work with the local peasant organizations to develop the capacities they need to become more resilient and generate a better life for themselves and contribute to building Haiti’s future.

Severe food crises in the Sahel used to occur about every 10 years, but recently, for a variety of reasons including the impact of climate change, they are becoming much more frequent.  Major food crises occurred in 2005, 2008 (due to high global food prices), and again in 2010. There is deep concern that for the most vulnerable households, who are only just starting to recover from 2010, this latest crisis will result in true humanitarian disaster. 

Peter Gubbels and Fatou Batta, Groundswell Co-Coordinators for West Africa, visiting restored farm in Burkina Faso.

Countries in the Sahel suffered very low harvests this year, leading UN agencies and analysts to predict a 2.5 million ton cereal deficit in the region. Some of this deficit can be met by market flows from surplus areas, however, food prices in some places have increased by more than 80% over the five-year average, and have continued to rise rather than fall after this year’s harvest. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the price for millet, a basic staple crop for a majority of farm families, is 77% higher than the five-year average in the Malian capital Bamako; 93% higher in the northern city of Gao, and 85% higher in the central region of Ségou.

Even if prices were to stabilize, there would still be a major problem, as they are already unsustainably high for many poor rural households, who buy up to 60% of their food from the market. High food prices and poor terms of trade for the most vulnerable households put food out of their reach.

Response Must Address Roots Causes of Food Security and Malnutrition

Escaping the Hunger Cycle: Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel by Peter Gubbels

As recently stressed in the Sahel Working Group report (written by Groundswell International) entitled Escaping the Hunger Cycle; Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel, food insecurity in the Sahel this year is part of a persistent and predictable reservoir of chronic acute food insecurity affecting a predictable and growing portion of the region’s population. The responses of the aid community in 2005 and again in 2010 (while improved) failed to begin in time, causing millions of households to resort to extreme coping mechanisms. They sold off their assets, including productive ones, to buy food to survive for a few months, which compromised their ability to farm, produce food, and earn a living over the long term.

When aid finally did arrive, it was too little and too late. Aid appeals for West Africa are almost always under-funded; 37% of the 2011 request had come in by mid December, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Not only has the aid been insufficient and late, but it has focused almost exclusively on food aid, which does not address the underlying, long-term problems.

Groundswell and a number of aid agencies and analysts, strongly advocate a new type of response that takes into account the chronic, structural vulnerability of the Sahel. Instead of just providing food aid, the response from international organizations must focus on: promoting agro-ecological methods of farming, improving soil fertility, establishing water retention and tree cover better adapted to the changing climate, supporting measures to reduce the risk of predictable disasters, addressing the root causes of malnutrition, and providing long term social protection to the most vulnerable households.

The time to act is now. The lessons of 2005, 2008 and 2010 are clear. The challenge is to put them into practice in time to avert famine.