Agriculture, Food Security and Inclusive Growth - SID Netherlands ...

does not need to buy into either of these camps; there is another way. IFAD
believes smallholder agriculture can be a route out of poverty, a first step on the
ladder out of poverty for many people. It is not going to be for all people, and for
those where it is a route, it may not be their only activity. But if it is a route out of
poverty it needs to change, it needs to be more commercial and better linked to
agricultural markets. Farming as a business needs to be promoted. Agriculture
needs to be more productive, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where yields
are far lower than their potential. Yields need to increase and returns to labour
need to increase as well. There needs to be a more sustainable use of natural
resources; for example, better management of soils, maintenance and use of
water resources, and in particular less polluting methods. Agriculture needs to
become more resilient to the shocks of climate change and production systems
need to be able to withstand heavier rainfall or longer drought periods and higher
temperatures. Systems have to become more commercial, productive, resilient,
and sustainable. These are not choices, you cannot choose between one or the
other. Four legs are needed for a table, otherwise the table will tumble.
There are two sets of priorities for governments and development
organizations here: (1) Assisting agricultural value chains to develop, with
farmers engaging in them on better terms and using those value chains to create
employment at the farm level or in upstream and downstream enterprises. This
is an area that donors and governments are starting to come to grips with. (2)
Helping farmers to intensify their production in a sustainable manner, providing
the productivity base for commercialized production systems. When we talk about
sustainable intensification, we are suggesting an alternative to conventional
approaches, but also about complementing them. A more holistic or systembased
approach to farm management needs to be applied, one that gives greater
emphasis to internal agro-ecological processes, particularly for managing soil
fertility and as well as water resources. There are many examples of practices
that are already being used by millions of farmers, practices that need to be
scaled up. Examples are conservation tillage, which has been practiced in large
parts of Latin America, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia as well, but
also a whole array of soil and water management techniques, systems of rice
intensification, crop rotation, and integration of crop and livestock production.
This requires a very different sort of farming than conventional approaches
to intensification. The Green Revolution worked on the basis of improved seeds
and fertilizer and it was relatively easy to extend these techniques to farmers;
with known technologies and packages, all farmers had to do was apply
them. This is different – sustainable intensification requires experimentation
by farmers, adaptation of technologies to their own circumstances, taking
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