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From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

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3 POVERTY AND WEALTH LIVING OFF THE LANDAt the same time, productivity must be increased in a way thatbenefits poor people and reduces inequality. Technology will have <strong>to</strong>be governed in a very different way if it is <strong>to</strong> help achieve these objectives,with a much higher degree of state regulation and direct involvementin R&D, backed up by an enhanced voice for farmers and other citizens’groups in how technologies are developed and used. The currentsituation, dominated by large corporations, with farmers as mereconsumers of technological change, skews agriculture <strong>to</strong>wards achemical- and capital-intensive model that is likely <strong>to</strong> bypass smallproducers and ratchet up inequality and environmental damage inthe countryside.Whether and how agriculture rises <strong>to</strong> these challenges will dependin large part on how poor people in rural areas organise <strong>to</strong> makethemselves heard, and on the willingness and ability of the state <strong>to</strong>pursue a pro-poor development path. The next section explores thisessential combination of active citizens and effective states.POWER IN MARKETSA hundred rice farmers, men and women, are gathered in the shade ofa giant mango tree in the village of Ruwayo, in central Nigeria. Thesound of women cracking peanuts in<strong>to</strong> tubs provides a backdrop <strong>to</strong> arambling conversation about the life of the small farmer in Nigeria.‘We used <strong>to</strong> feel the government support in the old days, in the 1980s’,says one woman.‘They gave us fertilisers, we could hire trac<strong>to</strong>rs.’ Nowbanks will not lend money <strong>to</strong> farmers without collateral, whilemoney-lenders charge eye-watering interest rates. The local farmers’organisation set up a savings and loan scheme, but their problems donot end with credit. Farmers must take the prices offered by visitingbuyers because they have no transportation of their own. If they renta truck, the police demand bribes at every roadblock on the way in<strong>to</strong><strong>to</strong>wn.For many of the poorest farming communities, the way forwardlies not through high-tech innovation, but through improved organisation<strong>to</strong> enhance their market power. Small farmers lack power inmarkets precisely because they are small, poor, and unorganised. Thismakes it harder for them <strong>to</strong> obtain information on markets and prices,133

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