Central America, Haiti, Policy and World Hunger: Day 12 for World Hunger

Guatemala field before the help of World Neighbors

Today is Day 12 of 21 Days for world hunger and this post includes the second part of my interview with Scott Killough, VP of Learning and Innovation for World Neighbors. World Neighbors is a grassroots international development organization striving to eliminate hunger, poverty and disease in the poorest, most isolated rural villages in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Killough shares his knowledge and expertise on issues such as government involvement with world hunger, Haiti and corporate food production.  At the end of this post, I will share about what happened on Day 12 of my world hunger journey in which I mimic the diet of the world’s hungry with a limited caloric intake.

Guatemala field after the help of World Neighbors

Q:  These photographs show a field in Guatemala before World Neighbors farming methods were applied and then the same field after.  I read that World Neighbors teaches sustainable agriculture.  What types of sustainable agriculture were taught to turn that barren field into the lush oasis it is now?

Specifically to that context in Central America, which is not untypical in comparison to other parts of the world.  A strong focus on the soil as being the essential resource for agricultural production.  That’s true whether it is a hillside in Guatemala, whether its dry land farming in the Sahel region of West Africa, or whether it’s in semi-irrigated areas producing rice in Southeast Asia.

We do three things:

1)       We focus on ensuring that the soil doesn’t run down the hillside (in the case of Guatemala).  A whole host of soil and water conservation methodologies and techniques – planting trees on the hillside, contour farming along the contour of the hill rather than up and down the hill, planting leguminous plants or trees (again across the contour of the slope to help slow down soil and water running down the hill).  A real focus on trying to stabilize soil in that particular environment.  Even in relatively flat areas of West Africa, it’s amazing to see how much soil erosion you get with really heavy rainfalls in tropical conditions.  Even things like stone bunds (stone barriers that help to prevent the flow of the water with and help keep the soil in place) within the fields and along the edges of the field to help keep soil in place.

2)       Once soil erosion has been reduced, we work to improve the quality of the soil – increase the fertility of the soil.  For that we use a range of techniques.  Different things work differently depending on the context. One of the key practices is the use of legumes because of the nitrogen fixation properties of legumes to improve soil fertility.  We may also look at crop rotations; we may look at intercropping maize with a legume and then rotating those crops over time.  A whole range of practices focused on improving the soil that you keep in place.  And with a focus on introducing those practices that will either produce food themselves, or help increase the production of food crops that are already in the farming system.

3)       Once you stabilize the soil and work to improve the fertility of the soil, you work toward integrating agricultural production or diversify agricultural production.  If you are able to produce on half a hectare of land the same amount of maize that you used to produce to feed your family across two hectares of land, then that means you can produce other crops – not just maize as your basic food crop.  Fruit trees are one example of this. Once they produce (for consumption and for market), they have much higher economic value per area basis. Intensifying the livestock production by growing more grass to feed your goats, for example.  Basically, we help improve your farming system that will allow you to increase not only production but increase productivity – with a focus on food crops.

Q:  Looking at Haiti, do you have any ideas as to how many people are going hungry now than before the earthquake?

According to UN estimates, something like 3,000,000 people out of a population of nearly 10,000,000 have been affected by the earthquake – either directly or indirectly. About 600,000 people have left Port-au-Prince and have gone to the rural areas.  That’s placing a tremendous pressure on rural communities around Haiti to absorb this influx.  Many of those people are returning to family members, to their ancestral villages. Before the earthquake in Haiti, nearly 2 million people were considered to be “food insecure” – meaning that they did not have adequate access to sufficient food.  Half a million children under the age of five and about 200,000 pregnant and lactating mothers have been directly affected by the earthquake.  It is a tremendous shock to not just the residents of Port-au-Prince, but to the country as a whole.

Q:  Are government organizations doing anything to help?

If you know anything about Haiti, to say they’ve had a troubled past is an understatement.  The international NGO community has been a very strong factor before the earthquake in terms of supporting and in some cases managing the country.  That’s not always a good thing.  It’s a serious concern both before the earthquake and now.  The Haitian government has probably one of the weakest public sectors in the world.  Either because of government corruption, limited capacities, limited investments on the part of the government to strengthen its own governing systems and investing in capacity building among its own people.  Even before the dramatic events of two months ago, Haiti as a government to support development was quite weak, and that has been made worse.

What you have now is a situation in which NGO’s, international NGO’s particularly, had a very strong hand in the overall economy, certainly in development  (as a strategy for the country), and now they have a stronger and bigger role.  That has raised concerns.  On the one hand, as you mentioned earlier, it’s great to see this generous outpouring in response to the tragedy, but it has also created a situation in which the country could be drawn down even more into a situation of dependence and relying on outsiders to solve their problems.  That is a real concern.

With leadership from Bill Clinton, who had been identified as the U.S. government’s special ambassador to Haiti there were efforts in 2009 to develop a U.S. strategy to support Haitian development.  I think that was launched in December, and a month later was the earthquake.  They were looking at how can the U.S. step-up investments in Haiti but not in a way that leads to greater dependency.  Again, now that the amount of money coming into the country certainly is much higher than what was envisioned as part of that strategy, but how can we ensure that money is put to the best use.  Without further weakening the government, being diverted through corruption, or being a victim of an overlapping agenda of the NGO’s.  The NGO’s working in the country don’t always communicate or coordinate well, and so they sometimes may duplicate efforts or perhaps invest in something that doesn’t make sense or maybe somebody else is already investing in the same thing.

Side Note from Kenda: According to All Business Clinton publicly apologized this month (March 2010) for championing policies that destroyed Haiti’s rice production.  Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.

Q:  That would be a concern of mine as well.  Are the NGO’s helping the Haitians help themselves?  I know there was a rush of help.  How sustainable is that?  Where will the Haitians be when these people leave?

That is a concern.  Overall, I think most NGO’s are quite conscientious and maybe this wasn’t true twenty years ago, but over the last couple of decades many NGO’s involved in international development have become much more conscientious and much more aware of the need to build local capacity and invest in capacity that helps to develop a strategy with leaving something in place.  For the most part, that is true – even in Haiti.  But when you have a situation that is so dire, like in Haiti, and when you have so many NGO’s and when you have a situation where the needs are so great, and you have such a strong reaction; that’s kind of a perfect storm for reducing attention for capacity building in an effort to get things done very quickly with the idea of capacity building coming later after the urgent needs are met.

Q:  What do you say in response to the statement that world hunger is the massive failure of governments?

The argument is very strong that there is enough food produced in the world every year to feed everyone in the world.  Feeding hungry people in the world is more than just a problem of production.  At the same time, food that is produced is not produced evenly across the world in sync with the populations needed to consume that food.  The food that is produced may not go exclusively to feeding people.  For example, large amounts of food production – particularly grains – are being used to feed cattle; they’re being used to produce biofuels and also for purposes other than feeding hungry people.

These are issues around political priorities that are being made, for example government policies which point the way to invest in certain types of agriculture and certain uses of the food that gets produced.  There are also constraints around moving that food and getting that food into the hands of people who need it.  And then again, this increasing globalization of the food market.  It’s not just about producing food so that hungry people can eat it, but who can afford to buy the food.  With the increased corporatization – not only globalization – the stronger hand of corporate interests in the agricultural sector around the world has become almost paramount.  Let’s ensure that we produce agricultural products, including food, for people who can afford to buy it.  And not everybody in the world can afford to buy it.  I don’t think it’s entirely the failure of governments.  Certainly the governments can contribute to that.  It’s much more complicated than that.  It is related to market incentives, production constraints, government policies that invest in maybe wrong kinds of priorities to ensure that everybody eats.

Killough on Agriculture Policy

During a visit last week to the Netherlands, we spent a day with some dairy farmers and it was interesting to see that – even with the context being very different from the kinds of farmers that we’re working with in rural communities around the world – there are a lot of similar issues.  What was very striking in those conversations with farmers is that the role of agriculture policies (particularly in this case it was EU policies around agriculture, production quotas, price support, and regulations regarding the amount of manure that could be applied back on to a farm) these were all very important constraints and parameters upon which they had to look within their agriculture production system.  The influence of policy was much greater in the EU than say farmers working in Burkina Faso, but they themselves drew the links between how some of the issues they are dealing with are similar to other farming communities around the world.  That is not a link that’s always understood and sometimes it’s difficult to make that link.  But, there are similar issues facing farmers in both the north and the south.

You asked earlier about urban agriculture.  World Neighbors only works with rural farmers, but I can mention one important organization out of the Netherlands, RUAF (Resource Centers on Urban Agriculture and Food Security). They focus exclusively on agriculture production in urban and (peri)urban areas.  They look at experiences in the North, like community gardens in Chicago and New York City, but are also working with more extensive agriculture production in urban areas of African, Asian and Latin American cities.

Q:  Going back to corporate food production.  What is the role that genetically modified (GM) food plays in hindering sustainable agriculture for those living with hunger?

There are potential benefits from investments in biotechnology.  There is evidence where food crops can be improved under certain conditions.  It’s not a panacea like some suggest it is.  Like many NGO’s around the world, the concerns that World Neighbors and like-minded organizations have are:  do we really understand the risks to the environment as GM crops are introduced, and what are the potential health risks by introducing GMs into our daily diet?  I don’t think we yet have good answers to those questions.  Those who are promoting GM food, say they know the benefits are there.  We’ve seen improvements in production, and while that may be true, it may be too early to say we have all the evidence.

The original agriculture researchers were farmers.  Farmers have been testing seed varieties and making changes to agriculture for 10,000 years – since agriculture began.  It’s only in the last 150 years that agriculture research – as a science, as a practice – was introduced first in Northern Europe, then in the U.S., then openly around the world.  At World Neighbors we believe that agriculture research and science can play a role in helping to improve agriculture for small-scale farmers.  But our concern is to ensure that as agriculture researchers and research institutions are investing in developing new varieties and new technologies that they ensure farmers have a say in setting the priorities and understanding those technologies and making sure that they work and really address problems. We want to see – and actively support – farmers working in collaboration with researchers – around joint experimentation and joint learning.  This idea of researchers going out and doing research because that’s what is of interest to them and telling farmers to accept this and use it on their farm, we think this is a flawed approach.  This approach has created lots of problems, particularly in poor countries around the world.

Q:  Does World Neighbors have any relationships with any of the Agrochemical companies?  Are these researchers (you mentioned earlier) from any of those organizations?

No.  We wouldn’t work directly with a Monsanto or Pioneer Seed.  What we do, in various programs around the world, is we may work with international research centers where agriculture scientists and extension workers are trying to work to address particular problems.  And we may try to ensure that farming communities that we’re working with either directly or through partners in-country are also part of that research and test those ideas to ensure that they work.

Q:   I worry about corporate ownership of food.  What about the widespread concern of seed selling and seed ownership by the agrochemical corporations (as Monsanto)?

A big part of our sustainable agriculture is something I haven’t talked about yet.  In addition to focusing on soil and focusing on the production system and to increase productivity, an important part of that is looking at seed.  Not only traditional seed, though some of our work is based on looking at community-based storage, saving and collection and knowledge management around traditional varieties of seed.  But we are open and have had good success in introducing improved varieties of food crops in West Africa, and in Central America, as well.  We take a more practical view in that we’re willing to work with improved seed varieties, even as we want to ensure that farmers can decide which is best for them.

But the idea that farmers lose control over their genetic resources is a great concern to us.

Q:  Could you describe an improved variety for our readers?

An improved variety could be an open-pollinated variety meaning that you plant the seeds, grow the crop and harvest some of the seed and you continue to use that seed from year to year.  That would be an open-pollinated variety.  And there are some research organizations around the world that have worked to improve open-pollinated varieties.  We believe, like many organizations, it’s not enough.  That what researchers tend to focus on more are hybrid seed varieties.  A hybrid seed variety is basically a result of seed testing and plant breeding that produces a type of seed that will produce very well when you plant it and it may yield higher, it may be more resistant to pests and diseases, there may be many benefits from that improved variety; but when you go to collect the seed to use for next year, it doesn’t produce as well.  Over two or three cycles, it may not produce at all.  The only way to sustain the same level of productivity is to go back and buy more seeds.  Our experience is that farmers are willing to do that. It’s a matter of understanding the economics associated with using these hybrid seeds and the benefits to the farmers – in terms of higher yields, or lower production costs.  They may then be able to afford to go back and buy more seed.

We’ve introduced hybrid seed varieties particularly grain crops – maize, sorghum, millet and rice (in West Africa, for example)  where it increased the production so dramatically that farmers have a bit more crop to sell and that generates money.  They are more than happy to go back and buy more seeds next year because they see the benefits already.

Q: What will happen when that crop doesn’t yield and then the farmers don’t have the resources to purchase seeds the following year?  This doesn’t seem like a sustainable method to me (the layperson).

Yes, that is part of the risk involved in using hybrid seeds. But, it’s usually not a case of simply saying either hybrid or open varieties, exclusively. Instead, many farm families will use both types of seeds – they’ll almost always keep some of their traditional (open) seed varieties, even if that means that they will only plant them on a small portion of their land. But, if through a process of joint experimentation they learn about improved seed varieties – either hybrid or open – and they see the benefits of these seeds – higher yield, or greater resistance to a particular pest or disease – then, they will use those improved seed varieties.

Q: The hybrid variety, is that genetically modified?

No, traditional plant breeding is not considered as genetic modification.  Genetically modified crops really mean that at the gene level plant breeders have extracted a particular gene from one plant and introduced that gene into a totally different plant.  Crop-breeding or line-breeding of the same crop to improve the productivity of that crop – to develop a new variety – is not considered genetic modification.

Side note from Kenda: Given that I don’t fully understand what a hybrid variety is, I wrote back to Killough and simultaneously contacted a local expert, Tim Galarneau of UC Santa Cruz’s Food Systems Working Group in an attempt to better understand the meaning of Hybrid Variety.  Galarneau shared:

In terms of plant hybrids it is a natural process of selection and variation developed over time to meet the situational nuances and factors of a specific site/location.

Soon after, Killough pointed me to a link to Wikipedia definition for hybrid seeds defining it as:

In agriculture and gardening, hybrid seed is seed produced by artificially cross-pollinated plants. Hybrids are bred to improve the characteristics of the resulting plants, such as better yield, greater uniformity, improved color, disease resistance, and so forth.

Q:  So, we are out of time.  What words of wisdom can you offer the readers regarding how their food choices not only impact their own health but can have a global impact on the health of others?

One, is again the point that we talked about earlier – the absolutely important and critical understanding both conceptually and in practice between food production and health through the pathways of nutrition.  By linking those three, more people can better understand why this increasing dialogue we’re having globally around food, health and nutrition is so important.  To look at only one or the other, you may be divorced from that.  Both in terms of our own thinking and how we’re working with our partners, we’re trying to talk not so much about agriculture production but rather food production and again linking that to what does that mean in terms of nutrition and overall health and well-being for our communities and among the people that we work with. That’s an important message.

I think also, obviously how those three issues play out in rural communities say in East Timor is very different for how that plays out for folks in the U.S. or around the world who may be reading your blog or visiting our website.

Another one, particularly for people who may read your blog, the idea of understanding where your food comes from, how it’s produced, being more aware of the idea of whole foods rather than buying processed foods for the health benefits.  And also if possible and where possible, buy food that is as closely linked to the farmers that produce that food in a way that hopefully can help to reduce the power and influence of corporate agriculture.

Q: What would you like the readers to know about World Neighbors?

We would like for them to take time to better understand why we believe the work that we do is so important.  To understand what and how we think that our particular approach of focusing on people, building capacities of local people and local organizations is an important strategy – while it may take a little bit longer to see the results and benefits of that, it is a strategy that has demonstrated results in the past, and we think is the best way to really ensure the kinds of long-term positive impacts that we want for sustainable development for working with rural poor people around the world.