There are going to be winners and losers…

Daniel Gustafson Daniel J. Gustafson, the FAO Representative for India and Bhutan, shares FAO’s perspective on the various aspects of rural livelihoods and the important role of ICTs in an interview with Manish Kumar of OneWorld South Asia. What is the perspective of FAO on the livelihoods issue in the South Asian region? Basically the idea of livelihoods is to look at various aspects that need to come together to improve the well being of the rural households. The idea of livelihoods is to get away from compartmentalisation, where we look at different pieces of the household’s consumption and income activities as standalones. Our strength is looking at social assets, family assets and human capital; bring them all together and make them work towards the improvement of livelihoods. From our point of view, to a large extent, we will be focussing on the vulnerabilities of different livelihoods and will try to focus on what might lead to them. In the case of South Asia, where you have a lot of information on poverty and malnutrition, it is good to have a characterisation based on household vulnerabilities. This helps in arriving at workable strategies. Are there any major initiatives being undertaken currently in India and Bhutan? At the moment there is a project on characterization of livelihoods groups in Orissa and Himachal Pradesh that ties into rural poverty and household food security. There is also some work going on in Bhutan as part of their National Development Plan. Their Tenth five-year plan is about to be formulated soon and within that there will be a chapter on National Food Security Strategy, which will also take the livelihoods approach. I think, from FAO’s point of view, especially in South Asia, the connection between livelihoods, food security and poverty reduction at the national level is extremely tight. So poverty reduction largely comes from improved agricultural livelihoods, the circulation of that additional income at the village level and so on. Partly because most of the poor families live in rural areas and also because of the way agricultural income improves village economy, you get the real impact of agriculture on poverty reduction. So you can’t look at livelihoods, poverty reduction and food security separately. Does this mean sustaining a higher agricultural growth rate is necessary for increasing sustainable livelihoods opportunities? Probably, it is a sine qua non. Not to say that economic growth comes only from agriculture, it comes in many different ways, but to support the livelihoods of millions of people, you really have to increase the dynamism of the agricultural sector. What should the Indian government do? There have been many discussions centring on the issue. We recognise the need for more credit, more efficient use of government programmes, subsidies that benefit farmers rather than industries. There are a lot of changes underway that will improve the farmers’ income and create greater commercial opportunities. At the same time, there are also threats to poor farmers’ income from the commercialisation process. This is a major dilemma throughout the world but in India in particular, because the marketing system tends to limit the income improvement that should be making its way through the system. Apart from the above, Indian agriculture also requires better natural resource management, reduced dependence on rains and better extension services. How favourable is the existing policy to agricultural development in India? The policy direction of the country is definitely conducive to agricultural growth. I think the major problem lies in the area of marketing, and other innovations like contract farming, and so on. The policy direction is fairly correct. The difficulty is in having that direction work at the State level with agriculture being a State subject. It is a complex political problem. The awareness about what needs to be done at the block level by both the State and the Central Government is very good. The complication arises because policies have to be implemented in an incremental way within a viable time frame so that they have the utmost impact. The awareness about the role and importance of agriculture in national growth is quite high among most circles. The difficulty lies in spreading that awareness through the state, district and other government machinery in a way that does not upset the whole system. Do you see a pro-active role for Panchayati Raj Institutions? Definitely. In fact, a number of Indian states have gone quite far in this regard. The 73rd and 74th amendments are clear in their intentions but are still not adapted in practice. However, we will see some major changes in this context in the next couple of years. In India, the small and marginal farmers dominate the landholdings. Do you think contract farming is beneficial in Indian context? Yes, I mean the experience with contract farming, globally, is reasonably good provided that safeguard mechanisms be included in the contract. I think that contract farming is here to stay and will be increasingly adopted. I think, ideally, both buyers and producers benefit from contract farming. But actually, contract farming is only the tip of a large set of issues in direct marketing outside the mandi system. Contract farming can loom larger in the picture here, even though some experiences have been successful and some not so. The downside of contract farming and other aspects of increasing specialisation and commercialization is that you leave behind a large number of farmers. These activities are good, particularly for those who have better management capacity, more resources and assets but could be detrimental for the marginal farmers. How important is non-farm diversification to generate rural livelihoods opportunities? Quite important! The percentage of rural income that is derived from non-farm activity throughout the world is quite high. It’s universally true for every country that non-farm income is really important. Of course, it is driven by agriculture. The Indian government plans to implement Employment Assurance Scheme but has not been able to do so till now. How practical is its implementation? I am not an expert on it but I think the intention of ensuring sufficient employment is certainly central to the policy. The social safety net idea is really good but to implement it in a country like India is a huge challenge. I am sure the government will work out a strategy to implement it. Is there a synergy between the policy and the field level projects? I think there is a synergy. What happens often in agriculture for example is that the government subsidies do not necessarily achieve the intended results in most countries. So the intermediaries rather than the poor farmers end up being the main beneficiaries. This has been seen in the case of the fertiliser policies or subsidised electricity for pump sets and other things, that the consequences may not be the same as the policy intended. That’s one set of issues. The other problem in the implementation of government programmes is in areas where poverty is high and governance is poor. In the World Food Summit, the two main issues that were raised were political will and financial resources. In South Asia, particularly in India, the political will and financial resources are there but the unevenness in the implementation of the programmes is a big issue. Tell us about FAO’s initiatives in the area of ICTs and livelihoods in India. One is a programme called VERCON, the Virtual Extension and Research Communication Network. It aims to harness the potential of the Internet and apply it to strengthening and enabling linkages among the research and extension components of the national agricultural knowledge and information system. Different countries have taken different approaches. There is a new project starting in Bhutan and some interesting work is being done in other countries like Philippines where they are linking the university with other research and extension units. Increasingly, we will be working on the idea of using ICTs for the exchange of experiences and knowledge management. Is it something similar to the ENRAP project? Well, it is more than that. It will be connecting smaller communities of practice. Let us say that there are NGOs working in the area of livestock livelihoods for the below poverty line households. We would support the development of networks connecting such groups or households. So, in other words, we would be operating in areas where desired groups work on issues of common interest. A combination of face-to-face meetings and the use of e-mails, networks for discussions among users will be employed. This is an area where we are going to work in, articularly in India since there is so much experience that’s localised but needs to be included into the general archive of experiences. The other uses of ICTs in FAO has been in the area of database technology to capture information on crops and cropping systems, plants, insects, and watershed management and make it accessible to everyone in a relatively easy way. How can ICTs create more employment when the general perception is on the contrary? It’s a good question. It’s not unique to ICTs, it’s true for every new technology. I suppose what most market-oriented thinkers would point towards is that the more you go in this direction, technology may lead to diminishing employment in a certain sector or in a certain activity but overall it contributes to much higher income and more employment opportunities. Certainly, there are going to be winners and losers, the hope is that on balance you have more jobs created than lost even though many people would end up losing. How does migration affect livelihoods in rural areas? The overall impact comes from a lot of different factors. Apparently, the men leave for towns whereas the women stay back. In such a situation, the women have to play a dual role, out on the farm and within the household. The downside of the migration is that it exacerbates the HIV/AIDS problem. It spreads the disease further into the general population. This has serious implications for rural livelihoods. Is there any scope for ICTs to improve the governance? I think to a large extent programme implementation depends on the information available to the beneficiaries of what programmes are going on, what is being offered, what are their rights etc. So the more information you can disseminate and the more transparency you can bring in, the better the implementation is. We have witnessed the crucial role played by the ICTs during the Tsunami relief work. The lessons learnt from Tsunami work will help in improving the programme implementation. How important is community control over and access to the resources? It is quite critical, probably the starting point. Not only the access but also the management and understanding of resources by the community is essential. We have not yet applied ICTs to these processes but we are now looking at these issues as well. There are a number projects supported by FAO where the goal is to build farmers’ literacy around scientific knowledge and options of what might be best for their crops. This information comes from Integrated Pest Management where you have to understand the dynamics of the insect and also its relationship with the crop. You need a scientific understanding of what is going on in the field rather than simply using a pesticide. So the relationship between scientific literacy and enhanced decision-making capacity has been central to many of our projects. What could be the impact of the new WTO regime? The main challenge is to see if there are new ways of bringing together small and marginal farmers associations or cooperatives so that the combined strength of such producers’ associations can bargain for their rights rather than remaining at the mercy of increasing specialisation and commercialisation. How can it be ensured that the community benefits from indigenous knowledge? This whole issue of farmers’ rights around germplasm and biodiversity is a critical area. Here again, where we would see the use of ICTs in connecting people who are working in different areas, so as to give a voice to the various stakeholders. Water is becoming one of the major constraints to sustainable livelihoods. What is your viewpoint on the issue? Certainly, water use efficiency is not near its optimal usage by any means. There is a lot of scope for improvement in the management of irrigation systems, rain water harvesting and groundwater recharge, etc. Old and new technologies combined with farmers traditional knowledge need to be utilised in a participatory way for ensuring efficient water utilisation. However, the focus must be on the human aspect and not on technology alone. About Daniel J Gustafson: Daniel J Gustafson is the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Representative for India and Bhutan.

User comments