Headline: Small Farmers Can be Agents of Change: IASS Talk at United Nations Side Event

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about 840 million people live in chronic poverty across the globe. Many of them are small farmers. In recent years their position has become more difficult. “Soils are rare, increasingly degraded and unfairly distributed. Due to population growth, per capita access to soils halved in the period from 1960 to 2008”, remarked Jes Weigelt, coordinator of the IASS Global Soil Forum, at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development of the United Nations last week in New York. His lecture opened a side event on “Small food producers and family farmers as agents of change for sustainable agriculture and food systems in the post-2015 agenda”.

The United Nations are currently working on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are due to be integrated into the post-2015 development agenda. According to a survey conducted by the UN General Secretary among member states, the issues of food security and sustainable farming are considered crucial to a sustainable development process. Weigelt stressed that “growth strategies that foster the small-farming sector have a disproportionately high impact on poverty reduction.”

For that reason, the SDGs should explicitly acknowledge “the important role played by small food producers and family farmers in attaining food security and reducing poverty”, said the agricultural economist. The target of a “land-degradation neutral world” formulated in the Rio+20 Final Report must be adhered to. According to that report, soil fertility must not be allowed to deteriorate and degraded soils should be rehabilitated for agriculture and forestry. Weigelt explained to those attending the side event that in order to determine and guarantee legitimate land tenure rights, it was important to introduce complaint mechanisms to enable small food producers to assert their rights.

He pointed out that high-tech products are not necessary for rehabilitating degraded soils. One of many such examples, the documentary film “The Man Who Stopped the Desert” about a farmer from Burkina Faso, shows how local traditional knowledge can play a decisive role in sustainable land management. The film documents the work of the farmer Yacouba Sawadogo, who brought an infertile swathe of land back to life using the Zaï technique. However, Sawadago has since had to give up a part of his farmland, which was designated building land as part of a city expansion project. “Secure land tenure is pivotal to creating the necessary incentives for people to invest in their land and it ensures that people can reap the benefits of their investments”, said Weigelt. That is why the Global Soil Forum is supporting the UN target of a land-degradation neutral world and campaigning for secure tenure rights.

Photo: (c) IASS