As Ag Demba described coaxing crops from the drought-prone soil, dozens of Iowa farmers watched from hay bales scattered around the barn.
That October Saturday marked just one stop on a nationwide speaking tour by Ag Demba and three of his fellow small-holder farmers—Le Ngoc Thach, from Vietnam; Jacqueline Morette, from Haiti; and Duddeda Sugunavva, from India. Brought together by Oxfam America, Africare, and WWF-International, the farmers spoke at venues from the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines to the World Bank offices in Washington, DC. They told their stories to agricultural scientists, US Senators’ staffers, Florida churchgoers, Oxfam volunteers, and ordinary people all over the country. All four spoke about the obstacles they faced in their efforts to feed their families, and the gains they’d made when they used innovative methods to improve their harvests.
“The people who feed the world are facing enormous challenges—from climate change to economic hardship. And that leads to widespread hunger,” said Jim French, Oxfam America regional advocacy lead and a farmer from Kansas. “But the answers are simple: We need to invest in small-holder farmers, and give them the tools that can help them become more resilient.”
It was early that same morning—October 16, World Food Day—when the four international farmers arrived at Neher Acres, a family-owned 500-acre corn and soybean farm in Grundy Center, Iowa. Thach strode out into the cornfield first, his slight, dark-suited figure nearly vanishing among the tall stalks. Morette followed; plucking a ripe ear of corn, she skimmed it clean with her thumb, cupping her palm to catch the golden kernels.
Soon the farmers, their translators, and various staffers crowded around Lyle Neher as he explained the workings of his family’s farm.
“How do you plant the fields?” asked Sugunavva, her flame-bright sari ruffling in the wind.
“How many acres per bag of seed?” asked Thach. A few minutes later, Neher’s son went into the farmhouse and returned with a printout he’d made for the visitors that converted the farm’s measurements into the metric system.
Though harvest time was over, the Nehers had left a patch of corn still standing for their guests. One by one, the four farmers clambered up into the cab of a red combine harvester, taking turns driving the bulky, roaring machine through the rows.
“It’s exciting for me to see these methods, but sad, too,” said Morette, leader of the Oxfam partner organization the United Women’s Association of Pouille. “I wish we had access to this kind of equipment.” She demonstrated corn harvesting methods at home: one person walking through the rows to pluck the ripe ears while another strips the kernels by hand. She said it would be hard to imagine a field this size in Haiti, where the average farmer’s plot measures about 3.7 acres.
The scale felt more familiar at the farmers’ next stop. At Marshalltown, Iowa, Community College, an agricultural extension program teaches new and immigrant farmers to cultivate small plots of land using sustainable methods. As students demonstrated a composting worm box and a moveable pen called a “chicken tractor,” Morette sketched careful diagrams on a yellow notepad. “These are techniques I can adapt to use at home,” she said.
At High Hopes Gardens, an organic farm in Logan Township, Iowa, the visitors sat down for a lunch of locally-grown food, from crisp vegetables to a sweet raspberry cobbler. Bees hummed in the air as about 70 Iowa farmers and their families joined them at picnic tables in the shadow of the red barn.
Later, everyone crowded inside to hear the visiting farmers’ stories. Morette spoke first, describing how she helps women farmers convert crops into more long-lasting and profitable products, like jams and peanut butter. Ag Demba, Thach, and Suganavva talked about their successes using the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), an innovative technique that yields more rice using less water and fertilizer. “Now, thanks to SRI, we can eat three meals a day instead of two,” said Ag Demba, who explained that his village used the surplus funds from the rice harvest to build its first school.
Many of the Iowa farmers asked questions, comparing the guests’ farming techniques to their own methods here in the US.
“I grew up on a farm, in a small town, with an open mind,” said Ellen Walsh-Rosmann, who runs a 200-acre Iowa organic farm with her husband and his family. “A lot of Iowa farmers claim that we feed the world. If we truly do, then we should think about poverty and hunger, and our relationships with farmers worldwide.”
It was just one day in what French described as a successful effort to bring the farmers’ stories to life for Americans. “Our role at Oxfam is not to speak for these farmers, but to bring them together with those who can support their efforts,” he said.
And in Iowa, he added, their audience may have understood the message best of all.
“No matter where we farm, we all share a common bond with the land,” said French. “We all want the same things: clean water, a decent living, food on the table. If we can understand that, we can come to solutions together.”
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In a new report released today, which is based on the experiences of the three organizations with farming communities in Vietnam, India, and Mali, SRI is shown to increase yields by 50% or more using 25-50% less water and almost 25% lower costs. As a result, farmers, in particular women, saw significant income improvements. In Vietnam, farmers introduced to SRI saw their income increased by about 50%, while in Mali farmers almost doubled their income.
“SRI can be a game changer helping to increase farmer incomes and reduce hunger for millions of poor people around the world,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “This can be a win-win-win for donors, poor farmers and our planet. Even modest investments can lead to immediate and impressive results, improving farmer livelihoods and community food security. This shouldn’t be a question of ‘if’, but ‘how-much’ to invest in SRI.”
The report calls on all major rice-producing countries promote adoption of SRI, with a goal of at least 25% of their current irrigated rice cultivation systems converted to SRI by 2025 and all new irrigation schemes designed to support SRI farming. Additionally, bilateral and multilateral aid agencies are urged to significantly increase their investment, through aid or loans, in supporting farmers toward SRI and complementary technologies and practices.
“This is a no-brainer,” said Offenheiser. “SRI is a low-cost, high-impact strategy to address food security needs, improve rural livelihoods and increase resilience to a changing climate. USAID and other international donors should move fast to support and implement SRI wherever they can.”
SRI addresses one of the major challenges of this century: how to increase the amount of food necessary to feed the world’s growing population as climate provokes more erratic weather patterns and water shortages. Current rice production practices are highly water intensive, accounting for one-quarter to one-third of the planet’s annual freshwater use, an unsustainable practice given predicted impacts of climate change.
Rice is the major source of calories for half the world’s population and the single largest source of employment and income for people, especially women, who live in rural areas. Around 80% of the world’s hungry live in rural areas, thus, any viable solution to eliminating hunger must address the challenges of small-scale farmers, particularly rice producers. Global warming and more extreme weather conditions are making farming more uncertain, as evidenced by recent droughts in India and the floods in Pakistan.
Implementing SRI is simple, and once learned can be spread farmer to farmer to achieve rapid impact with only modest initial investments from donors. Farmers transplant younger single seedlings into un-flooded soils and space them in a square pattern wider than in traditional practices. Soils are kept moist rather than continuously flooded. The plants develop with higher grain yield and more resistance to climate extremes, pests and diseases. Farmers, who are often primarily women, require less time for transplanting seedlings and can harvest their crop 1-2 weeks sooner. This allows additional time to diversify production with higher value fruits and vegetables or livestock to further enhance their diets and incomes.
“I have experienced the benefits of SRI, this simple, easy to use farming practice that has made my life and the lives of my fellow farmers better,” said Le Ngoc Thach, a Vietnamese farmer and president of the Dai Nghia Cooperative who traveled to Washington, DC for the report release. Mr. Thach introduced SRI practices to his fellow cooperative members in 2006 and after only four cropping seasons, all households had seen the obvious benefits and adopted SRI methods on the cooperative’s 420 acres, reducing their use of water and agrochemical inputs and increasing their incomes.
The benefits of SRI have been documented in 42 countries, where more than one million farmers are using some or all of the recommended SRI practices. Increasingly, the principles are being applied with success to other crops such as sugar cane, teff and wheat. Private sector partners such as retailers, wholesalers, distributors and international food brands can accelerate conversion to SRI practices by targeting their rice purchases and designating, for example, that 10-25% should be SRI-grown.
“SRI is a ready opportunity that can benefit everyone from farmers to businesses to consumers immediately,” said Offenheiser. “We cannot wait 10 or 20 years for research and development efforts to deliver new tools to improve food security. SRI does not require major investments in infrastructure or research and once implemented can quickly bear results. If we are serious about increasing the impact of our aid dollars and making development work to bring people out of poverty, we will get serious about SRI.”
Note: the report is available in its entirety online: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/publications/more-rice-for-people-more-water-for-the-planet
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For four days, participants exchanged their experiences using "Getting It Right," a dynamic tool developed by Canada-based Rights & Democracy. Designed especially for communities and their support organizations, the tool enables teams to conduct HRIAs of private investment projects, such as infrastructure projects, agro-industry, dams, extractive industries, and other initiatives.
This report summarizes key lessons learned and recommendations from participants, based on their pilot experiences in Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, the Philippines, and the United States.
]]>Tragedies such as this compelled Thach to serve as president of the commune agricultural cooperative. When he was elected to this post in 2001, he says he made a commitment: “I told myself to find new technology to help farmers get a better life.”
In his research about ways to help farmers in Dai Nghia, Thach learned about a new and innovative way to grow rice, Vietnam’s most important food crop and the main source of nutrition for many small-scale farmers. It’s called the system of rice intensification, SRI, and involves techniques that help farmers save money on seed, fertilizer and other chemicals, and cuts down on labor needed for transplanting.
Oxfam and the Plant Protection Department, which is part of Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, have been running farmer field schools to help rice farmers learn the new techniques, and in turn teach other farmers about SRI. Oxfam began this work in Cambodia, and then expanded it to Vietnam in order to help small-scale farmers learn new farming methods, develop their skills to analyze and solve agricultural problems, and teach each other to improve their farming.
Thach was excited about bringing SRI to his village. “I saw with my own eyes the obvious benefits of SRI in all the places I visited,” he says. “So when I introduced the method to my farmers, I knew exactly that victory was on my side.”
Despite his confidence, Thach knew there would be doubts among the farmers. For example, SRI recommends transplanting single rice seedlings, instead of bunches of them. Many farmers did not believe this would increase their yield. “How can one rice seedling produce more than four or five seedlings together?” Tran Minh Tien, member of the Dai Nghia Agricultural Cooperative, said as he recalled farmers’ reaction when Thach first introduced SRI in the commune.
But Thach was willing to take the risk. In 2006, he made a bold promise to the farmers, “If you apply SRI and the yield is lower than the yield from your ordinary practice, I will take my own money to compensate for your losses.”
With this assurance, he convinced 50 families to try SRI on a 10-acre plot. Initial successes attracted more farmers to try SRI. Farmers learned from each other as they helped their neighbors work in the field, and they all witnessed more and better rice in the SRI field. The number of SRI farmers in the commune tripled in less than a year, and in the spring crop of 2008, all the 2,000 members of the cooperative applied SRI on the entire commune’s 420 acres of paddy land. “I’m very happy to win this confidence from all the farmers in my cooperative,” Thach said. “It is my most precious achievement.”
Farmers in Dai Nghia work closely with Thach to grow two rice crops and one non-rice crop including soybean and vegetables per year. Those who used to spend one month to transplant their rice now spend from 10 to 15 days. This allows them to have more time to do other work such as raising livestock or growing vegetables.
“Now I have more time to become a seller at the market, and my husband has more time to work in construction,” said Nguyen Thi Dua, one of the first women who started using SRI in the commune. “We earn a little more income for our family.”
All farmers in Dai Nghia are now embracing this growing method with results that are boosting household incomes, helping them to send their children to school, and fund other essentials.
The Plant Protection Department reported that on an average field just smaller than an acre, farmers can save $53 per year of two rice crops on seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and on hiring labor for transplanting. The combination of input savings and yield increase contributes to extra income of about $70 on the same size of paddy land. That’s enough to pay for one year of school or two year’s worth of seed for the next growing seasons.
Thach takes pride with this achievement for the commune. “I’m proud to see farmers in my community increase their income and improve their living conditions,” Thach said. “SRI has brought about a better life for Dai Nghia.”
Thach and other farmers have been concerned about the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in Dai Nghia. The fertilizers were actually decreasing soil fertility and making the rice plants even more dependent on artificial fertilizers. A lot of pesticides were released into the environment to kill pests such as stem borers, but the chemicals also killed beneficial soil bacteria and other valuable species including fish. Some of the chemicals travelled into the air, soil, and water sources, causing environmental concern for the people who depend on the resources. But the rising prices of these chemicals forced them to find alternatives.
Growing SRI rice reduces farmers’ reliance on pesticides; the plants are farther apart, which makes them healthier and more resistant to pests. Thach says he can see the effects of less spraying of pesticides: “I think SRI creates a better biodiversity condition for the rice field. There are more fish and other creatures living in the field.”
Nguyen Thi Dua, an SRI farmer in Dai Nghia, said due to the wider spacing of seedlings, her rice plants get better exposure to sunlight and have stronger roots, which reduces vulnerability to pests. “I don’t need to spend too much money on buying pesticide anymore,” she said. “The fields are looking good, and I’m pleased with the clean and sound environment.”
Thach remains committed to exploring new and better ways to grow rice and to sustain the environment. Farmers who used to grow barely enough rice for family consumption now have a surplus.
But perhaps most importantly, farmers in Dai Nghia are open to new ideas. “SRI is a success in Dai Nghia commune,” says Tran Minh Tien. “We’re now working with the [Hanoi] University on organic rice, and the research over the last year shows some success. This can lead us to adding more value to our rice, and a safer product for consumers.”
]]>While time is running out, the global crises push the Millennium Development Goals desperately off course. The only chance of avoiding failure is a rescue plan for all MDGs that includes the necessary measures, both political and financial. Halving hunger is still possible if developing countries take the lead with the right policies and investments, donor countries increase dramatically their aid to agriculture, food security and social protection under nationally and regionally-driven plans, and the global issues affecting food security are collectively addressed.
]]>It’s supported by PADELAN, or the Project to Assist Local Development and Agroforestry in Nippes, a collaboration between Oxfam Quebec and the Ministry of Agriculture that uses money from the Canadian International Development Agency to fund projects identified as priorities by local development committees.
And in Anse-a-Veau, this store was one of those priorities--desperately needed.
Several doors down, Mayor Telisme Dutelien sits behind his desk in a small office in the town hall. On a mid-May morning, the room is dim and sweltering. No lights shine and no fan churns: the community’s generator, which provided electricity, stopped working the month before, explains Dutelien. It’s just one of the problems that has plagued Anse-a-Veau in recent years, ever since its population began to drop in the 1980s, dragging the community’s commercial vitality with it.
The decline of Anse-a-Veau is symptomatic of what has happened across Haiti as Port-au-Prince, the capital and hub of opportunity, sucked people from the countryside for jobs, for schools, for a better life—or the promise of one. But in January, disaster struck there: an earthquake leveled great swaths of the city, killing 230,000 people and shaking the nation to its core. That calamity brought into sharp focus the drawbacks of centering so much of a country’s lifeblood in one sprawling place.
Now, the call for decentralization, long a national goal, is again sounding loud and clear. As international donors promise enormous financial resources to help Haiti rebuild, what are the steps it needs to take to answer that call? Some ideas can be found in the initiatives Oxfam had launched before the quake—programs based on the needs of communities, as voiced by the people who live in them.
They are small, but steady steps and the store in Anse-a-veau is one of them. Open since December 2009, it operates six days a week, its shelves of canned milk and crackers, matches and razor blades plugging the household needs local growers can’t fill themselves.
Nearby, in Paillant, Guerline Rubin stands at the entry to her house, carrying a stack of cardboard crates loaded with eggs. They are from the chickens clucking in a henhouse in the corner of the yard—another of PADELAN’s community projects designed to help local families find ways to boost their incomes.
The chickens belong to Rubin’s father, a participant in the egg-production project which has targeted 20 households in the area. Each of them received 60 chickens, whose value the farmers will slowly pay back—at the rate of 500 gourdes a month, or $12.40—to the local development council that provided the birds. They lay about an egg a day.
For Rubin, that means trips to the market at least twice a week to sell her family’s cache. She ports the fragile eggs via tap-tap, a small colorful bus that lurches over the dirt roads between villages. Each egg fetches about five gourdes, netting Rubin’s family about 2 gourdes, or about 5 cents.
Added up, that bit of income becomes a precious resource for farmers trying to put food on their tables, pay for medical care, and have a little cash left over to invest in a hardier variety of seeds that can promise a decent harvest—and give families a reason to stay in the countryside.
A few hills over, Marie Camel Rubin bends over her field of beans, corn, and manioc. Behind her, in the distance, a low building rises from the sea of green—it’s a new mill built with the help of PADELAN to grind corn and sorghum. Open six days a week, the mill saves local farmers the time-consuming trip via bus to another community to have their grain ground.
Rubin is one of the local farmers happy to have their own mill nearby. And while it saves her time, she still struggles to make ends meet. Weeding along with her through the rows is her son, Noel Jolins. He’s 8—and he would be in school if his mother could afford the fees. But he had to quit when she couldn’t scrape together the money to send him.
That’s one of the reasons Laventure Benad is so eager to see a small irrigation system completed in the hills of Colora in central Haiti. The father of seven children, he can afford to send only four of them to school now. But with irrigation—and the opportunity it will provide for three harvests a year instead of just one—Benad hopes he will have not only more food for his family, but enough income to pay for additional schooling.
“We’d like to go forward,” he says as a pair of young men behind him hammer at a heap of rocks, cracking them into gravel to help build the irrigation system. Channeled into a pipe, water from the mountain stream flowing by them will find its way into more than 60 acres of fields below where it will help 150 farmers.
With the help of Proyecto Binacional Artibonito, an Oxfam Quebec-supported project known as PROBINA, the irrigation could eventually bring them a measure of financial independence, say farmers. They expect that within three years they will be doing well enough to b able to buy their own seeds and fertilizer.
For Markens Louidort, a 26-year-old student in Liancourt in the Artibonite Valley, education holds the key to a better future, he says. He has enrolled in a computer-training program offered by APPEL, or Association des Parents and des Professeurs d’Ecole de Liancourt, an Oxfam partner that provides post-secondary vocational training.
“The world is going on with technology and it’s important for someone to learn computers,” says Louidort. In a country with unemployment as high as 70 percent, Louidort is hoping this new, hard-won skill will help him land a job.
Three days a week, for four hours each day, he settles in behind a computer in the stifling APPEL classroom. A series of batteries from Oxfam, recharged with the help of a generator at a nearby radio station, provide the electricity for the computers. Every seat is taken. This is the most popular class APPEL offers and some students share computers. A mood of deep concentration hangs over them.
At the head of the classroom, teacher Dieunel Prince talks the students through the next step of a program that will allow them to format certificates. Later, he explains privately that one of the biggest challenges he faces in working with these students is the fact that so many of them never had the opportunity to learn how to type—a handicap for those hoping to dive quickly into this new field.
That gap in learning is an indication of the struggles Haiti has had with providing a solid education for its citizens—about a quarter of the districts have no schools and 38 percent of Haitians over the age of 15 are illiterate. Education is one of the fundamental services rural regions will need to offer if decentralization is ever to become a reality for Haiti.
Michelle Lisette Casimir, mayor of Saint Michel in Artibonite, knows that well. Many of the families in the area sent their children to Port-au-Prince for advanced schooling, and some of them died in the quake. What Casimir longs for Saint Michel to have is a professional school of its own.
“We can’t talk about the future without being concerned about the youth—they way they are living,” says Casimir, adding that education is her top development wish. “With education...we will keep them.”
]]>The poor conditions for farmworkers in this country exist, in part, because of the fundamental lack of enforcement of basic labor standards. Employers that do not feel threatened by labor law enforcement often take the risk of paying less than the minimum wage to save money. Businesses that wish to comply with the law but compete against such labor law violators feel pressure to violate the law as well or to pay the bare minimum. This spiraling down of labor standards must be thwarted.
]]>“Come into the sun, everyone. Stand in the sun with me,” Velazquez said, swooping his arms together the direction of the field in front of him.
Grudgingly, some of the hundreds of marchers who had gathered in Winston-Salem in support of farmworkers, eased out of the shadows into the field.
“This is what farmworkers are dealing with right now, right here in North Carolina,” said Velazquez, President and Founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) referring to the heat, which at 88 degrees was 16 degrees above average for the day. “(The) workers are stooped over in the fields making the life of leisure for the people in (RJ Reynolds’) executive offices. It’s not only an injustice, it’s a moral disgrace.”
The endlessly energetic Velazquez, and hundreds of farmworker and FLOC supporters, were in Winston-Salem for RJ Reynolds’ annual shareholders’ meeting to introduce a shareholders’ resolution that would require the company to adopt a strict human rights policy. In addition to the resolution, FLOC is seeking a formal meeting with RJ Reynolds CEO Susan Ivey to discuss ways to improve the working conditions in tobacco fields.
Despite having little chance of being adopted, the shareholders’ resolution is an opportunity to bring the issue of farmworker justice directly to RJ Reynolds officials. This year, Oxfam America Campaign and Advocacy Advisor Irit Tamir asked Ivey and others to support a stronger human rights policy. Oxfam and its allies believe that the weak human rights policy adopted by RJ Reynolds’ in February does little to ensure that the workers who pick the company’s tobacco – merely encouraging the company’s contractors to improve tobacco picker conditions, not demanding it.
And those conditions are brutal. Tobacco workers face some of the toughest conditions in the industry, including racism, long hours of stooped labor, exposure to dangerous chemicals and annual incomes of less than $8,000. Though RJ Reynolds claims an ‘independent’ survey of tobacco workers by a company it hired reveals that tobacco pickers are satisfied with their working conditions, it’s doubtful the workers at the May 7 rally would agree.
In its effort to rectify these conditions, FLOC has repeatedly sought a meeting with Ivey, only to have those overtures ignored. FLOC is also making its case publicly at shareholder meetings and through the media.
RJ Reynolds adopted its existing human rights policy partly in response to that work. While simultaneously distancing itself from the workers who pick its tobacco, claiming that because they work for a Reynolds contractor, they aren’t Reynolds employees. While technically true, FLOC and Oxfam believe that Reynolds has the responsibility and the power to demand higher standards from its contractors, and only purchase tobacco from contractors that ensure safe and healthy working conditions for its workers.
Though the shareholders’ resolution was defeated, the FLOC campaign against RJ Reynolds still maintains its goal of meeting with Ivey, and the ultimate adoption of a human rights policy that truly enforces human rights.
What you can do:
Planted long ago by a French worker from a nearby farm, jatropha was unknown to Maluleque. He’s since become one of the most experienced local cultivators of this unusual plant, now prized for its seeds used to produce biodiesel fuel. In 2006, when an international company approached Maluleque about managing the nursery for its 27,000-acre jatropha plantation in his town, he leapt at the chance.
“I was so happy,” he says, sitting beneath the jatropha bush. “I wanted to get a car and build a nicer house and educate my children at a higher level.” The company, called ESV Group, piped water into the village. It hired doctors and teachers to work there.
Right now Mozambique is devoting millions of dollars and more than 200,000 acres of land to growing biofuel crops for ethanol and biodiesel. The country is encouraging foreign investors to use its land in exchange for jobs and fuel to reduce its dependence on oil imports.
The diversion of agriculture from food production to biofuel crops represents a significant contribution to increasing food prices. Between 2005 and 2008, global food prices spiraled up more than 80 percent according to research by Oxfam and others. This has been a significant burden for poor people who often spend more than half their income on food. The food price increases pushed more than 100 million additional people into poverty globally. Some studies show that increased production of biofuel is responsible for 16 percent of that food price increase.
Small-scale farmers increase their vulnerability when they commit to biofuel projects. Things were looking good in Inhassune that first year, but then ESV started to have financing problems. When it abandoned the venture, local government officials ordered all the workers to stay on the job. Not all have, but for those like Maluleque who have continued to work, 14 long months have passed without pay.
Maluleque says he’s kept farming his own land but has been unable to afford to plant all of it. He planted on several acres, and cut back to one daily meal. In November 2009, Maluleque reported that he had practically exhausted his resources and was considering going to South Africa to look for work.
About four hours south of Inhassune, farmers in Nzeve face a different problem. This village of 137 people—located in the rolling, coastal hills near the resort town of Bilene—was told by the government that farmers each had to release about 80 percent of their land (usually about six acres) for a 49,000-acre jatropha project led by a foreign company. Locals were told that working on the plantation would offset any loss of food production. The government said that since the soil in the area was sandy, it was better for growing jatropha than corn anyway. It seemed reasonable until the company ran into cash flow problems and laid off workers.
Violeta Sithole, 47, lives in Nzeve and worked in the jatropha nursery until she lost her job. “They were going to give us a school and electricity … but we are not seeing any of it,” she says. “Now that I am no longer working, we need more money and we are not growing enough in our field. All we eat is cassava.”
Reports from communities about pressures on farmers have prompted Oxfam to begin studying the effect of biofuel production on farmers in southern Africa. Preliminary findings show that small-scale farmers are the ones caught in the middle of these global trends. They welcome jobs because it’s hard to earn cash in poor communities, so people in Inhassune and Nzeve want local plantations to succeed. But, the government and companies gambling on jatropha, also put local farmers at risk when they demand land and make no plans in case the scheme fails.
Fans of the jatropha plant rave about its potential: they say it can grow almost anywhere and needs little water. And—although jatropha is a weed and poisonous, known as “bellyache bush”—in 2009, Air New Zealand flew a jet powered in part by the plant’s oil.
Sound too good to be true? It may be. Dutch researchers say jatropha needs good soil and more water than corn or sugar cane for optimal growth. Repurposing land without local input can be disastrous because communities risk losing areas valuable for hunting or grazing livestock. Poor countries must move forward carefully and ensure that local communities are made aware of potential costs and benefits and have a voice in decision making.
Editor’s note: ESV announced in late November 2009 that it had sold its jatropha venture in Mozambique to an Italian partnership for $4 million—contingent on payment of all back wages and taxes by ESV.
]]>The Canadian organization Rights and Democracy has developed an assessment tool that communities can use to answer these questions for themselves. The system is called the “Getting it Right” Human Rights Impact Assessment tool, and is designed so that local organizations and citizens can, with minimal training, carry out their own study of how their basic rights -- such as free speech, water, safe working conditions, shelter, and education -- are affected by the actions of governments and companies establishing mines, agricultural operations, factories, or oil and gas pipelines.
“A lot of companies will do an impact assessment on their operations, using an outside consultant, but these don’t always do much for the stakeholders in the community, or promote accountability,” says Chris Jochnick, director of Oxfam America’s private sector program. “Helping community members conduct their own human rights assessment strengthens their capacity to examine their situation, frame their issues, and engage with a company or government,” he says. “We think this will produce a more robust and balanced assessment than one done by outsiders.”
The Rights and Democracy assessment tool helps people document how their rights are supposed to be protected under national law, and the actual effects of an investment project on these rights. It helps community leaders create a team, plan out the work and specific rights to assess, carry out surveys and community consultations, validate findings, write reports, and meet with companies and governments to urge action to address the problems uncovered in the assessment.
Rights and Democracy commissioned five assessments to test the system starting in 2005. One of them looked at the effects of a metal refinery on women’s rights in La Oroya, Peru, concentrating on the rights to water, health, adequate housing, and working conditions. It was done by the Centro de Promoción y Estudios de la Mujer Andina. The organization concluded that lack of enforcement of environmental rules by the state was one of the main contributors to the poor public health situation in the city. The report also cites lack of commitment by the Doe Run Peru SRL company to improve the environmental performance of the plant.
“By looking at the health problems in La Oroya through a woman’s eyes, this assessment helped uncover a pattern of children’s and reproductive health issues that was clearly connected to lead poisoning,” says Gabrielle Watson, Oxfam America’s planning and learning specialist who helped develop the assessment tool with Rights and Development.
Oxfam America is helping two organizations carry out a Human Rights Impact Assessment. One is related to a proposed natural gas operation in Bolivia where the Centro de Estudios Aplicados a los Derechos Economicos, Sociales y Culturales (CEADESC) will carry out the study with local Guaraní indigenous communities that were denied their right to be consulted about the gas exploration activities in their territory. The other case concerns tobacco pickers in the United States, and will be carried out by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). FLOC will look at efforts by migrant and undocumented farmworkers to improve working conditions on tobacco farms.
Watson says the human rights assessments will help people take control of the type of development carried out in their name. “Local people are the experts about human rights impacts of private investment projects in their communities. This tool puts them in the driver’s seat in the search for safer, more equitable outcomes that are good for everyone.”
]]>According to Peru's Civil Defense Institute, the rains have hit 18 of the country’s 24 regions, causing suffering to more than 190,000 people and damaging more than 28,000 homes. Particularly hard hit are communities located along the major Andean rivers in Cusco and Puno in the south.
With a $100,000 grant, Oxfam is supporting its local partner, PREDES, to help 529 families living in temporary shelters in the provinces of Anta, Calca, and Urubamba.
"At the moment, we're improving the temporary shelters to ensure they have clean water and basic sanitation, and so avoid major health problems", said Oxfam’s Elizabeth Cano, who is coordinating the humanitarian response for the organization.
Work includes the installation of separate toilets for men, women, and children as well as the distribution of hygiene kits equipped with basics such as toothpaste and soap. Oxfam and PREDES are also working with civil defense committees to help communities and local authorities improve coordination to be better prepared for future natural events.
"The only thing we haven't lost is our health and our lives,” said Eufemia Araníbar, a member of the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood committee in the district of Izcuchaca. "We haven't lost our children or our husbands. Everything else we can rebuild, because we have our health", she tells us firmly.
In Cusco, on Saturday, Jan. 23, people were already looking with concern at the clouds in the sky and the swollen rivers. Persistent rain had caused the rivers to rise, particularly at their confluence points. In a matter of hours, the Vilcanota, Jatumayo and Huatanay rivers and Huacarpay Lake had overflowed.
"Since Saturday 23, we've been in a state of alert, protecting ourselves, putting sandbags along the edge of the river. But it overflowed upstream, where we didn't expect it, and the houses have collapsed,” said Urbana Huamán, a 43-year-old single mother from Anta Province, as she showed a team from Oxfam the curved shape of a nearby river and lamented the miscalculation.
While in some areas residents stayed on the alert, elsewhere they had observed a reduction in the turbulence of the river and, instead of going out to keep watch and put up barriers, they went to bed, assuming they were safe.
"During the night, the water came and caught us unaware,” said 34-year-old Eufemia Araníbar. “Some people were awake, digging ditches, but some of us were asleep. Suddenly we were woken up by shouting and whistling. When I stood up, I felt water on the floor. My shoes were already wet.”
The first thing she did was to get her children out.
"We couldn't save anything, just a few clothes,” added Araníbar. “The water took everything. It took my pigs, my guinea pigs, my chickens..." And with them she lost she lost her savings.
Since that January night, the rain has not stopped. In March, the Quesermayo, Antarhualla and Kitamayo rivers in Calca Province broke their banks. There have also been landslides and more homes have been destroyed.
]]>Now, it’s all gone—their home and their livelihoods--destroyed in floods triggered by heavy rain in the mountains of southern Peru. Across the country, the rains have affected more than 190,000 people. Eighteen of Peru’s 24 regions have been hit, including Cusco, which has experienced unprecedented amounts of rainfall.
"Suddenly we found ourselves with no house, no business,” said Salinas, as she showed an Oxfam team the plot of land on the river bank where her house used to stand and where now there is only debris.
"I didn't want to leave. I had to be carried out,” Salinas said, describing how the river water rose hip-deep in her house. She wanted to save her goods and her husband's work tools. Three days after she was evacuated, the house collapsed. Now the couple is living in the temporary shelter in a stadium, thinking about how to start over again.
María Gutiérrez, 50, from the district of Izcuchaca in Anta Province told a similar story.
"I used to be a storekeeper,” she said, using the past tense because the disaster has left her with no capital. She would buy corn, wheat, and beans, and store them in her house to sell. But all of that was washed away by the river.
"Even if I had the money, I couldn't set up my business again because I used by house for storage and now I wouldn't know where to store the goods", Gutiérrez added.
While shopkeepers wonder how they will recover their losses, a larger worry for the region may be the harvest. According to Peru's Civil Defense Institute, 21,730 hectares of crops, or more than 53,000 acres, have been destroyed and more than 130,000 acres have seen a partial loss of crops, mostly in the Cusco and Puno regions.
"Nearly 100 percent of the crops have been lost,” said Juvenal Durán, mayor of the district of Yucay in the Sacred Valley. "The farmers have lost their crops: the corn and cabbage are rotting. Agricultural insurance only covers 400 soles ($141), and there are people who rent their land, so what are they going to do when the crops fail? Yucay is dependent on agriculture. What are we going to eat? Where are we going to live? How are we going to be able to send our children to school?"
The communities in the upland regions have also been affected.
"In my community the crops are riddled with pests, late blight. What's more, as we farm on slopes, the soil is being washed away,” said Alejandro Huamán from Andahuaylillas. He’s worrying because farming is how his family makes a living.
The local authorities are aware that the focus must be on how to safeguard the next harvest.
"We've got a plan to ensure the next harvest: seeds, fertilizer, training, river defenses. In addition, we need to rebuild the bridges to improve trade and the irrigation channels,” said Gilberto Gil, a councilor in Urubamba.
At the same time, officials know that they need to think about how to help local communities adapt to unpredictable weather.
"This is going to be permanent due to climate change. We must prepare for rains and droughts. We have to address the immediate problems but also plan for the long term,” said Gil.
"One of our biggest concerns is that these disasters will increase poverty", said Elizabeth Cano, Oxfam’s humanitarian aid coordinator in Peru. "One of the main sectors that has been affected is the small-scale farming sector. Unlike the tourism sector, many small-scale farmers live in poverty, so it takes them longer to recover. We are appealing to the central government to increase support measures for this sector."
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