cases from tanzania - Sustainet

Sustainable agriculture: A pathway out of poverty for East Africa’s rural poor
• New partnerships A new set of commodities may mean the organization has to deal
with a new set of partners – in input supplies, processing, marketing, etc. It is vital to help
farmers build up a range of such partners to avoid dangerous over-reliance on a single
buyer, for example. But building up such partnerships takes time and can be difficult.
political scaling up
Political scaling up means “changing the rules of the game” that sustainable agriculture is
part of. Most organizations involved in sustainable agriculture are relatively small and have
limited funding. They can multiply the effects of their work if they work with and influence
the government – a much bigger player in rural development, and one that not only provides
a wide range of services, but also sets the rules within which other players operate.
Political lobbying can be done on the local to national and international levels. The local
government level is important because it implements the national laws (through by-laws) and
implements or oversees all development programmes. Advocacy at the national level aims to
influence national government policies. Lobbying can also target international bodies, donors
and research agencies such as FAO, IFAD, international agricultural research institutes and
ministries in donor countries. Such lobbying can influence funding priorities and ensure that
funds are provided in ways that will benefit small-scale farmers.
local
Sustainable agriculture organizations can develop close relationships with local administrations
– from the village level up to district and province levels.
• Enforcing national laws National laws – for example, to protect forests – are often
weakly enforced at the local level. Sustainable agriculture organizations can lobby with
the local administrations responsible for enforcing them, and can raise awareness among
local people and village leaders that such rules exist and why they are important.
Figure 25 Poltical scaling up means changing government policies to encourage farmers to
adopt sustainable agriculture
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