Agricultural Research and Poverty Reduction Tiina Huvio, Advisor for Agriculture and Rural Development, MFA

Agriculture and Poverty Reduction  2/3 world’s poor are small scale farmers  Agriculture is their main source of income and employment  Low price of staple food facilitates access to food and thereby reduces malnutrition  Contributes to other economic sectors

Goals of Agricultural Research  Until recently:  increasing food supplies  reducing food prices  Now: Poverty reduction  need to assess how agricultural research influences livelihood strategies of the poor

Achievements so far  Total cereal production increased three- fold and agricultural employment has grown by 60 % since 1961  In India and China, agricultural research investments are shown to be the one of the most important drivers of agricultural productivity growth and rural poverty reduction

Achievements needed  Production of the major crops of the world needs to be increased by 40 % by 2020  Increase must be based mainly on land already in use  Largest need to increase the production in developing countries

Increase of hungry people by 2025 (%) Sub-Saharan Africa South Asia Middle East/ North Africa Total Senauer and Sur, 2001

Focus required to  Agricultural Research  Improved water management & Irrigation  Improved infrastructure in rural areas  Sustainable natural resources management  Fair trade environment

How to ensure that research benefits the poor?  Benefits for the poor depend on:  equitable distribution of land and income  efficient input and output markets that are available for all,  scale-neutral technologies

Adoption of technologies  Adoption is necessary for a technology to have an effect  Factors affecting adoption:  does it increase or decrease farmers vulnerability  do farmers have the requisite assets to make the adoption worthwhile  nature of mediating institution

Dissemination  Determines who is reached with the technology and how well they are able to take advantage of them  Important to:  understand local culture and power relationships  create trust  diversify the dissemination channels

Impacts on poverty – IFPRI study  Meizen-Dick et al., 2003  Direct impact limited by multiple factors:  requirement for assets  declining food prices  diversification  Contributed to food security and increased income and employment stability and empowered some groups

Lessons learnt 1. Priorities of the poor need to be known in advance  The priority the poor place on managing risk  The types of social differentiation affecting the uptake and impacts of technologies  The variety of traits that farmers value beyond yield

Lessons learnt  The assumption that poor farmers have a surplus of labour is not always valid  The importance and role of agriculture in livelihood strategies  The value of homestead production for women

Lessons learnt 2. Dissemination strategies need more attention at the early stage 3. Formation of new partnerships is essential  in particular as regards modern applications such as gene technology

Thank you for your attention!