Arguing about agronomy: the changing politics of agronomy research

A new article in Outlook on Agriculture explores how agronomy has been affected by social change since the 1970s. The science of agronomy informs crucial decisions on development. It is often seen as a practical, problem-solving field, but like other areas of study is affected by politics and power.

The authors suggest a 'political agronomy' approach, which takes account of the contestations that can arise around the generation and promotion of new agronomic knowledge and technology.
From the article:

“…the creation and use of knowledge and technology – which are of course at the heart of agronomy – are embedded in complex political, economic and social worlds that are characterized by asymmetric power relations. In agronomy and agricultural research more broadly, power is (and has long been) exercised in the framing of problems and the setting of priorities, through funding decisions, through ‘partnerships’, through crop variety release procedures and through the peer review and publication process.”  

• The changing politics of agronomy research by James Sumberg, John Thompson and Philip Woodhouse, Outlook on Agriculture (vol. 2, no. 2, June 2013)


• Contested Agronomy: agricultural research in a changing world - a book in the STEPS Pathways to Sustainability series, edited by Sumberg and Thompson

Image: Healthy barley despite drought under conservation agriculture by CIMMYT on Flickr

This article was originally posted on the The Crossing.

Voices from the field: an entrepreneurial farmer from Gutu

For the next few weeks, I am going to highlight our videos, 'Voices from the Field'. They offer a brief overview of the perspectives of different farmers who have been involved in our on-going research in Masvingo province. They don't try and offer a full picture of land reform in Zimbabwe, with all the background and history, as hoped for by some, but just a flavour or what people are up to. The case studies in each film are introduced by an overview of the project that lasts for about a minute.

This week, I want to introduce, Mrs Masiiwa who is an entrepreneurial farmer on an A1 villagised site in Gutu district, Lonely farm. She has a mix of crops, including maize, groundnuts, beans, bambarra nuts and also vegetables. Part of her field is on a vlei (wetland). This means she is able to grow some crops under hand irrigation from a well. She sells locally but also transports produce to the informal market in Masvingo, where she sells them to traders. Some traders export produce, selling in South Africa. She makes a tidy profit that she is reinvesting in her farm, but also spending the proceeds on supporting her children and their schooling.  She hopes to fence her field, and buy a pump to expand her irrigation. She has already bought a cell phone from her proceeds, as well as some pigs which she feeds with feed purchased from crop sales.



For the full set, go to: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZimLandReform

This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland

Invest in African farmers, don’t take their land (Pan African Land Hearings day 1)

The Pan African Land Hearings got underway yesterday in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a day of preparations as people from 12 countries gathered to prepare their testimonies of how their communities had been affected by ‘land grabs’.
Their stories detail cases of private sector investment, usually with state sanction, in which community land held under customary tenure has been acquired, often against the will of local people, and without adequate compensation.

The hearings are being co-hosted by Oxfam, ActionAid, the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) and the Future Agricultures Consortium.

The testimonies are to be presented today to a panel of eminent persons, including the Pan African Parliament, at the hearings, held at Constitution Hill, home of South Africa’s Constitutional Court.
"We are here to tell our story of people directly impacted by land grabs", said Lamine Ndiaye of Oxfam GB in Senegal, one of the event's co-organisers.

The majority of land in Africa is not titled, yet this does not mean it is not the property of the people who hold it.

Lamine said, "We want to see consultation with communities, fairness and equity" whenever there are land transactions. Examples from Oxfam’s work in Ethiopia, Zambia and Tanzania showed how land grabs had disproportionately affected women, whose food crops were displaced by ‘male crops’ like sugarcane, and that industrial farming created few jobs, mostly for men, and was often poorly-paid and insecure. While governments often call this ‘development’, small-scale farmers who feed their families and market their surplus become workers on their own land, experiencing growing food insecurity.

Communities’ fighting for their land is part of a global phenomenon, explained Ruth Hall of PLAAS and Future Agricultures. Presenting an overview of the drivers and patterns of land grabbing in Africa, she showed how the convergence of food, fuel and financial crises from 2007 onwards had produced growing investor interest in accessing African farmland cheaply.

"The land is presented as unused and available", she said, and Africa has been described as a "vast under-utilised land reserve" – yet this ‘vacant land’ discourse is fundamentally flawed. "Land is a basis for people’s livelihood, not just a commodity for trade and speculation." Africa has been at the centre of the ‘global land grab’ precisely because most land is held under customary tenure, which states and investors do not recognise as constituting a real property right. For transactions to not be ‘grabs’, a basic first step is for customary rights to be recognised in law and in practice as holders of real property rights.

Such basic standards are already contained in the African Union’s Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa, as well as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. These frameworks establish norms and principles for land governance and recognition of rights, but steps towards their implementation are still in the early stages in Africa.

Delegates agreed that the non-recognition of unregistered rights enables land grabs, pointing out also the problems about who is consulted in communities, the roles of domestic business and political elites, and local traditional authorities, in facilitating deals without securing permission from landholders who stand to lose their land.

"We have companies that come and say they want to help us and invest in our land," said Emily Tjale, who is from South Africa’s northernmost province of Limpopo, and is an activist with the Land Access Movement of South Africa. "We don’t know what happened with tribal authorities that made decisions and agreements on our behalf. They gave our small farms, mine of about 10 hectares, to the company for reducing those carbon emissions, and suddenly we find we do not own our own land anymore."

Jesinta Kunda of Zambia spoke from the perspective of a community threatened with eviction, insisting that foreign investors are not the only ones at fault. "Our leaders suffer the same sickness. They go and proudly say how much land they have acquired." Because politicians have their own interests in accumulating land, they are not ready to enact policies and laws that can protect customary rights, she argued. Zambia’s land policy has been in draft for the past 14 years, since 1999.

These concerns were echoed from West Africa. Mariam Sow-Enda from Senegal confirmed: "we know that these things are happening not only because of the international community but also because of our governments... How will we convince our governments [to secure land rights]?" she asked. "It is a question of will of our governments."

Responses from participants quickly moved from the need to secure customary tenure rights to the need to provide alternative forms of investment. "African agriculture does need investment," said Marc Wegerif of Oxfam GB in Tanzania, but external private investors should "invest in African farmers without taking their land."

• Find out more about the Pan African Land Hearings
• Our research on Land

This article was first posted on the Future Agricultures blog.

Can 'value chains' and 'innovation platforms' boost African agriculture? 11 reasons to be sceptical

This post was co-written by Toni Darbas and Jim Sumberg. Toni Darbas is a social scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia. Jim Sumberg is the Youth theme convenor of Future Agricultures and KNOTS fellow.



(Picture: chain by pratanti on Flickr)

Over the last decade the notion of ‘the value chain’ has come to dominate agricultural development discourse and intervention in Africa. Indeed, this domination is now so complete that it is only with reference to ‘the value chain’ and/or ‘the value chain approach’ that research and interventions are legitimised (and funded). This has occurred against the backdrop of economic liberalisation, and the associated interest in the promotion of non-traditional agricultural exports.

A new focus on ‘the value chain’ is also associated with discourses around ‘markets for development’, entrepreneurship and institutional and technical change. These discourses converge upon the idea that policy makers, development professionals and smallholder farmers must all see agriculture as a ‘business’ that must be ‘professionalised’. But this focus on the value chain is open to critique.

What are innovation platforms?

In practice, value chain approaches often include the creation of ‘multi-stakeholder platforms’ (also called Inter-Professional Bodies). The idea is that these platforms re-group the various actors in a particular value chain (i.e. everyone from producers through to retailers), and can be used to analyse and coordinate actions across the chain for the benefit of all. An ‘innovation platform’ is a multi-stakeholder platform which is meant to stimulate or promote innovation within a particular value chain.

While there may well be some value chains in Africa where multi-stakeholder platforms and innovations platforms in particular can be valuable, we believe that there are good reasons to be sceptical about their ability to deliver on the high expectations that are being laid at their door.

Reasons to be sceptical

These reasons include:

1. There is little direct evidence of their positive impact in relation to poor farmers in Africa.
2. In the rush to promote the establishment of such platforms, little account is taken of the implications of different kinds of commodities, or the structure, form or characteristics of different value chains.
3. The framing of ‘the value chain’ as an arena of consensual action where everyone (all ‘stakeholders’) can win – as opposed to an arena of intense contestation and struggle for advantage – is highly problematic.
4. The assumption that consensus is possible and desirable is likely to gloss over differences and invite formulaic development responses.
5. The focus on achieving consensus may act to inhibit radical or disruptive innovation in existing value chains and/or the development of innovative new value chains.
6. Agency is bounded by tradition and pressing material interests, so the scope for creative and adaptive decision-making is often over-played. Community leaders can be authoritarian, private sector actors disinterested in small players and the participation of women limited by cultural and time constraints.
7. The single-minded focus on multi-stakeholder innovation platforms may lead to a new round of ‘blueprint development’ that is insensitive to varied contexts.
8. Multi-stakeholder innovation platforms cannot include everyone. They may have negative exclusionary effects on some actors: there is no reason to believe they will necessarily achieve more than the ‘islands of progress’ that resulted from working with, say, ‘lead farmers’.
9. Private sector actors will not necessarily be interested in providing the public goods – e.g. roads, market infrastructure, and electricity – required for value chains to function to the advantage of small-scale producers. Over-emphasising coordination of private sector players ignores the need for better coordination of private AND public actors and resources.
10. There is little knowledge about the new transaction costs involved with engagement in innovation platforms: how do they compare to existing transaction costs and how do they evolve over time? Does an innovation platform offer sustainable financial incentives to cooperate or merely exhortation?
11. There is often too little attention to potential feedback across scales: sudden policy shifts at the national scale (e.g. driven by rising world food prices) could easily derail the efforts of an innovation platform that is locally or regionally organised.

Avoid formulas, be sensitive to context

Agriculture is now at the top of the policy agenda in Africa. There is a genuine window of opportunity to demonstrate how a focus on agriculture can promote broad-based rural poverty alleviation, food security and employment generation.

However, there is the constant danger of slipping into uncritical, formulaic and context insensitive responses. Now, more than ever, this must be avoided.

A much more critical and realistic approach to the potential contribution and applicability of both value chain approaches and innovation platforms would likely pay large dividends for the future of African agriculture.

(Picture: chain by pratanti on Flickr)
This article was first posted on the Future Agricultures blog.

First Sundarbans Health Watch asks 'How healthy are the children of the Indian Sundarbans?'

Professors Barun Kanjilal and Rabindranath Bhattacharya
present a copy of the Sundarbans Health Watch - Series 1

KOLKATA, INDIA - On 1 August 2013, researchers, practitioners, policy makers and media represnetatives gathered to gain a better understanding of the key trends in child health in the Sundarbans region of West Bengal, India. In addition to presenting findings from the first Sundarbans Health Watch, various local and international NGOs -- such as Terre des Hommes, Child in Need, CRY, Save the Children and the Riddhi Foundation -- discussed their current activities in the region.The introductory address by FHS India leader, Professor Barun Kanjilal of IIHMR, presented the Sundarbans Health Watch, which asks 'how healthy are the children of the Indian Sundarbans?'. The study is based on intensive surveys conducted in the Patharpratima Block of the Sunderbans and throws light on some alarming – and largely ignored – facts about the health status of the children of the Sundarbans. It also attempts to explore the 'structural holes' in the service delivery of public health care system and the role of informal providers in filling the gaps.

While the vigorous reproductive and child health care initiatives of the state have been able to protect the rights of children and their mothers to obtain preventive health care (such as, immunisations, ante-natal care, etc.), there are glaring gaps in addressing their rights to easily access quality-assured basic curative care and nutritional services. Repeated climatic shocks and geographical adversities, especially in the remote islands, add to the complexities and make it imperative for the local policy actors to adopt a special child-focused lens to fill in the gaps and reach the hard-to-reach children.

Key findings (which can also be viewed as an infographic) of the study include:

• More than one-third of the children are chronically malnourished. More than one-third of the mothers are also malnourished.
• Children of the Sundarbans face an extra burden of morbidity, with data suggesting that 0.3 million children will be ill in a month and 26,000 children will need hospitalisation in one year in the Sundarbans.
• Prevalence of respiratory infection or gastrointestinal disorders among children is much higher in the Sundarbans than the district or state average.
• A quarter of the children (of surveyed households) aged 0-12 months took birth and spent the first week of their lives without any medical supervision from any health worker.
• The available public health care system is grossly inadequate to maintain child health. Primary Health Centres (PHCs) are not only less available, but many of them run ineffectively with shortage of critical inputs.
• Given the failure of the public health care system to cater to child health care needs, a parallel market has cropped up to bridge the huge gap in the curative care market. Unqualified RMPs dominate this parallel market, which is, obviously, a potential threat to child health. But this scenario also offers an opportunity for the government to challenges these sector through training and other innovative strategies.
• 85 per cent of the outpatient treatment for ailing children is provided by the Rural Medical Practitioners (RMPs) of questionable quality.
• There are many NGO initiatives but too few focusing on child health.

Following the report launch, Terres des Hommes presented on their efforts to combat child malnutrition in disaster prone blocks and convergence with state led Integrated Child Development Services. The Child in Need Institute, a national level implementation NGO, also put forth their initiatives for addressing malnutrition. CRY argued for a child rights approach in addressing child health, while Save the Children called for linking up livelihood and health initiatives especially in climatically challenged zones. The Riddhi Foundation called for an effective and judicious usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) both in ascertaining the demand and supply of health services in disadvantaged regions for betterment of child health.
Based on these presentations, the former Additional Chief Secretary, M. N Roy, called for close collaboration of the panchayat and the health system for effective delivery of the health services to the children of the poor families in the Sundarbans islands. Additionally, Dr Abhijeet Choudhur, the founder of the Kolkata chapter of Liver Foundation, called for training of the rural medical practitioners (RMPs).

Participants in the meeting agreed that, to improve the lives of children in the Sundarbans, a series of initiatives engaging all types of service providers and innovatively putting pieces of interventions together was required. These initiatives need to come together to create a big push and reach a sustainable, equitable and high level of delivery system. Participants insisted that the time has come to acknowledge the uniqueness of the health care needs of the complex, climatically vulnerable, topographically challenged and economically underperforming region called the Sundarbans and focus on them with special attention.

There have been numerous media reports of the event. The Hindu, for example, notes that 'Sunderbans children highly susceptible to diseases, says study'. And several news organisations, including the Business Standard, carried the story 'Climate change affecting health in Sundarbans'.

Originally posted on the Future Health Systems blog