Why a Food-Secure Future Means Focusing on Smallholder Farmers

Why a Food-Secure Future Means Focusing on Smallholder Farmers

Dan Collison , Farm Africa

Ending hunger by 2030 is the second of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets that were internationally agreed in 2015 as a universal call to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.

But today, just past the halfway mark to the 2030 deadline, progress towards achieving SDG2 (Zero Hunger) is woefully off-track.

According to UN projections, in 2030, more than 600 million people are expected to suffer from hunger. Today, nearly one billion people live with severe food insecurity and regularly do not have enough to eat. And over three billion people across the world are unable to afford a healthy, nutritious diet.

Vulnerable groups, including children, are those most affected. The number of children under five suffering from acute malnutrition is estimated to have been 45 million last year, and this preventable, life-threatening condition remains the single biggest contributor to childhood deaths.

The Global Food Security Summit set out the UK’s vision for 2030 for a food-secure future for everyone: a roadmap to help ensure families everywhere no longer have to send their children to bed hungry. And because smallholder farmers are the beating heart of the global food system, their voices need to be heard at every step of the way in developing and delivering any strategy for a food-secure future.

Smallholder farmers manage 80 per cent of the farmland in sub-Saharan Africa. And it is they who hold deep-rooted knowledge and understanding of the ecosystems they depend on. Locally-led adaptation is almost always more effective than adaptation interventions run in a top-down manner because local actors are aware of the nuanced context in which they operate.

Harnessing science and technology for Smallholder Farmers

What’s important is to ensure that technology is accessible to those producing most of the food: smallholder farmers. Currently, many smallholder farmers struggle to access the high-quality inputs, such as seeds for drought-tolerant crops, they need to adapt to climate change. This is becoming more urgent with every harvest as more frequent extreme weather events result in crop failure.

Smallholder farmers are also underserved by agricultural extension services that disseminate knowledge about how to best use technology. Female farmers are those most excluded from training and access to markets, despite providing the majority of labour on farms.

There are simple and effective solutions to ensuring that technology and information on its use gets into the hands of smallholder farmers, such as the Village-Based Advisor model used by Farm Africa in Kenya, whereby private sector lead farmers offer training, inputs and aggregation services to neighbouring farmers.

This means farmers gain access to the right seeds to grow the right crops, and knowledge on good agricultural practices to ensure a healthy harvest and to cut post-harvest losses.

And female farmers can gain access to the finance they need to buy high-quality inputs by taking part in village savings and loan associations (VSLAs), simple community saving schemes.

Read the full article on Farming First.


Vinod Dahake

Retires Scientist G & Scientist In charge MERADO Ludhiana CSIR / CMERI and Ex Commander (Indian Navy)

7mo

admire, small fragmented land holders require small tractor (30 to 35 hp) and matching implements. It is herculean task to develop matching implements for ech corp and each operation. the tractr utilization would remain low until then and not cost effective. Limited and selective automation is also desirable to pave way for Precision & conservation farming. Second, major issue is water management Indian conditions may not be far away

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