This paper proposes a comprehensive new national rice policy, aimed at boosting farmers’ productivity and incomes. To bolster these investments, the paper proposes a price stabilization system that ensures that imported rice sells at a minimum entry price, with a variable tariff that rises when the price of imports falls below the minimum level. This system would not have a high impact on either producer or consumer prices.

This case study focuses on the Palmas del Ixcán company and the social, environmental and economic effects of its oil palm plantations on local communities in northern Guatemala. The evidence gathered reveals practices that violate people's basic rights and indicates lack of a thorough impact assessment, of effective democratic planning, and of contract transparency.

Organized by the Alliance for the Defense of Rural Women’s Rights and Oxfam’s GROW campaign, the San Salvador event was an opportunity for women like Henríquez, a mother and small farmer, to present their demands to members of the National Assembly and government officials.

What Henríquez is fighting for is good and healthy food for her and her family, and a sustainable way of producing it.

“If I have food security, I have it all: a variety of healthy food, land, physical health—my children and grandchildren won’t fall sick because they eat healthy— and education,” said Henríquez.  “To me, sovereignty is the guarantee we have to food security [and to] be the owners of our land, our lives.”

Thanks to the training she has received from different institutions, Henríquez now knows how to make organic fertilizer, conserve soil, and work with bees to make honey.

She also benefits from a government program that provides the poorest families with about 100 pounds of fertilizer and two pounds corn seeds. But from Henríquez’ point of view, that doesn’t add up to food security, because when the program ends, the situation will be the same as before. What rural women need, she said, are native seeds which will guarantee sustainability by not only producing crops, but a new round of seeds for planting the following season.

Seed variety isn’t her only worry. Small farmers like Henríquez also face severe challenges from increasingly unpredictable weather.

“This year we lost our crops because of the drought. Last year we lost the whole bean crop because of Tropical Depression 12E,” said Henríquez. That storm dumped five feet of rain in nine days. “I took a loan to invest again, and when this (the drought) happened, I was crying because I didn’t know how to pay back the loan. Thank God the bank came to study my case and canceled my loan.”

Despite the hurdles she and her fellow rural farmers are confronting, Henríquez is confident that all the work they do as part of Alliance for the Defense of Rural Women’s Rights will bear fruit.

“If we go back to using native seeds, we can produce more and more permanently,” she said.” If we have irrigation systems to store water for the dry season, if we have access to information to what is happening in our country—economy, education, health—access to knowledge about soil conservation and how to conserve the environment, than we will have everything we’re all longing for: a dignified live and health.”

Henríquez speaks with the authority of an empowered and independent woman. She is convinced that by speaking out and engaging in the fight for women’s rights, change will come.

“Even if I don’t get to see the changes I’m fighting for, others will, and that gives me great satisfaction,” she said.

That’s why an Oxfam America emergency response launched in La Pelota last October sought not only to meet people’s immediate needs, but to help them mitigate the risks of their community for the future.

When it rains hard, La Pelota is one of the first communities in the area to flood, in part because a vigorously growing plant called la ninfa clogs the local waterways. The plant is a sign of another problem people face: poor infrastructure for sanitation. Most families rely on pit latrines whose contaminants feed the growth of la ninfa.

In October, Tropical Depression 12-E hit. It rained for almost two weeks straight. On one side of La Pelota the lake overflowed, and on the other side its natural drain spilled its banks.

“It began to rain quite a lot. Little by little, the lake drained, but then the water level rose as it continued to rain,” said Juan Francisco Flores, a 32-year-old community member. “The lake doesn’t flow fast enough through the channel. The water backs up and that’s what floods the community… The stream was flooding on one side and the lake on the other. We were isolated.”

The response from the community to the flooding was well planned and evacuation was timely, due to preparedness work that had been done by Oxfam partner Fundación Maquilishuat (FUMA), in recent years. However, damage to crops was severe.

Together with FUMA and the World Food Programme, Oxfam America launched a food-for-work initiative that not only helped families in La Pelota survive in the first months after the emergency, but reduced the risk they would face in the future. FUMA and citizens of La Pelota decided to clean out the channel to allow the water to flow more easily and prevent flooding. Oxfam provided material to do the work, FUMA provided monitoring and technical assistance, and the families carried out the work.

The project provided people with 100 pounds of corn, 33 pounds of rice, 20 pounds of beans, and a gallon of cooking oil, in exchange for 80 hours of work a month.

“The food-for-work project has been well received. It was very effective to implement this project at this time of year, when people usually don’t have work,” says Sandra Quinteros of FUMA. “There’s been a selection process for the FFW program, with several criteria—that they lost at least 50 percent of their production; that they live on less than two dollars a day; that they have many children or older adults to care for; that they are day laborers; and that they are willing to work.”

The food-for-work project has been implemented in 99 poor communities like La Pelota, in 15 municipalities throughout El Salvador. A total of 3,800 families earned a three-month supply of corn, beans, rice, and oil for a family of five, enabling them to recover from their losses and now live in better prepared communities.

A shorter commitment won't get the job done. It takes time to help people build skills and infrastructure, to get policies changed, and to ensure that governments spend their money more effectively.

Smart development demands monitoring and evaluation. Organizations should be accountable to report not only what they do, but also how they measure it. Don't believe stories that guarantee long-term impact after one or two years' investment; that's barely time to lay some groundwork.

We all crave the easy answer, the quick solution, but if eradicating poverty were simple, people living in poverty would have sorted it out long ago. They may lack resources like land, but they certainly don't lack intelligence or insight. Poverty is a global challenge—one that we can overcome together, but listening and learning from people living in poverty, and developing solutions with them, takes time and sustained effort.

This issue of OXFAMExchange includes inspiring stories, but they are just snapshots from a family album: moments in a long journey together. Each story is ultimately about perseverance and the need for long-term commitment.

Oxfam's work—whether helping Guatemalan women organize to fight gender violence, funding irrigation projects in Ethiopia, or standing with people in Darfur—is about building the resilience of local communities over the long haul. We cannot prevent shocks, but we can help our sisters and brothers access some of the same resources we have to cushion us when times are lean.

We cannot rush from crisis to crisis with short-term fixes. What more evidence do we need than what is happening in East Africa now? This is not the region's first famine, but imagine the headline: Africa's last famine.

High and volatile food prices are one of the biggest political issues of 2011. The pressure points map can be embedded directly into any website to give audiences an easy way to raise their voice and take action on the food price crisis. The tool is part of Oxfam’s global GROW campaign to fix the broken food system.

“The poorest people from Kansas to Yemen are suffering the impacts of high and volatile food prices,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “Food price volatility has pushed tens of millions of people into poverty and contributed to violence and instability that is dangerous for global security and costly to American taxpayers. Meanwhile Congress has its head in the sand hoping for it all to go away.”

Food prices have hovered near an all time peak since late 2010 sending tens of millions of people into poverty. After decades of steady progress in the fight against hunger, the number of people without enough to eat is again rising and could soon again top one billion. Leaders from the US and other G-20 nations have delivered little more than band-aid solutions giving little hope to struggling communities.

The map displays countries that are highly vulnerable to price spikes, have seen price spikes contribute to violence or unrest, or have suffered extreme weather events that have contributed to price hikes. Some examples of the impacts the map reveals include:

• Yemen: One-third of the population—7.2 million people—suffers from acute hunger. In the capital city, imported wheat flour prices were 117% higher in May of 2011 than the previous year contributing to unrest in the country.
• Tanzania: Despite a strong economic performance, more than half the population lives in extreme poverty and is vulnerable to increasing food prices.
• Mozambique: In 2010, after record harvests, Mozambique was still slated to import almost a quarter of its food. Food prices are volatile because of both domestic production and import dependence.
• Russia: In most of Russia’s regions, the price of the average food basket went up by 20-30 percent between July 2010 and March 2011. Russian food prices remained high even after the Russian government introduced a grain export ban that led to a surge in prices on the international markets.
• Guatemala: Nearly half of children under 5 in Guatemala are chronically undernourished, and the proportion of the population suffering from malnutrition has been rising. In rural areas, up to 70 percent of children are malnourished.

/ENDS

Notes to editors

The map can be found here: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/articles/food-price-spikes

Copy and paste the following code to add the map directly on your website:

To shed more light on the impacts of food price spikes, Oxfam has created an interactive map of Food Price Volatility Pressure Points. This map shows the impacts of price spikes in some of the countries where food prices have complicated the lives of poor people and offers a chance to take action on to help address price volatility.

The map shows are areas that are highly vulnerable to price spikes, countries that have had extreme weather events contribute to global price hikes and places that have seen price spikes contribute to violence or unrest that has shaken the foundation of global stability. While this map alone does not tell the full story of how price spikes have impacted our world, it offers a global snapshot to give us a better understanding of what is happening in communities near and far.

Put this map on your website or blog

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What causes food price spikes?

Failed crops—often caused by our changing climate—hit food prices hard. So does the rising cost of oil—used to grow, fertilize and transport food.

Short-sighted biofuels strategies play a part too—taking food off of people's plates and putting it into car tanks. And dysfunctional commodities markets mean that food prices go up faster and higher than they should.

But despite all these complex causes, the effects on poor people are painfully simple. Parents choose between feeding their children and feeding themselves.

Whole communities face an uncertain future, because all anyone can think about is where their next meal will come from.

It's time to grow out of food price spikes.

The way to grow

Food price spikes happen because of things like climate change and rising oil prices—so a major part of the solution involves getting those root causes under control.

But what's also needed is more effective global handling of food price crises when they do happen. That way, the poorest families have somewhere to turn even when things do get desperate—and when they suddenly can't afford even the meager amount they could afford a week earlier.

For our world to grow together, we need to get food price spikes under control.

The difficult reality

The macroeconomics of the rising price of staples are complex, but its effect on the lives of three women interviewed by Oxfam America is simple: they feel it every day.

For María Antonia León, or “Toñita”, life has never been easy. She remembers a time when she earned $3 to $4 a day selling tamales, pastries and snacks from her food cart and was able to buy weekly staples to feed her family of five. With this income, she could get six pounds of beans, half a pound of cheese, half a pound of cream, four pounds of rice, eggs, a chicken, and other basics.

“Before, with $20, I was able to fill a shopping cart. Now I can’t… I spend $40 and it’s not enough. I can’t even fill a shopping basket because everything is so expensive. Beans are $2.50, and cooking oil for 15 days is $2. We just can’t manage. This current crisis is really tough,” says Toñita. She doesn’t know how she will find the money to buy shoes or clothes.

Alternatives that help

But Toñita has now found a way to provide her family with nourishing food: Inspired by Saving for Change, she has started a garden and is raising chickens for their eggs. Saving for Change is an Oxfam program that encourages women to use the capital generated through their savings groups to participate in projects that help them achieve a sustainable livelihood. One such project seeks to promote women’s production capacity, entrepreneurial, and self-reliance skills by helping them establish vegetable gardens.

With her garden, Toñita has a new means to feed her family and avoid paying the high prices at the market. The cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and mustard greens she is growing are providing her family with the vitamins and proteins they weren’t getting before. And now she is teaching other women in her community how to do the same thing. The best part is she sells her extra produce at below market prices to her neighbors facing similar difficulties.

Health and other things pushed aside

Ana Elizabeth Barrera works at a market in the city of Santa Tecla. She cooks and sells prepared foods, and therefore intimately knows the issue of rising food prices. Ana Elizabeth has seen the price of staples climb steadily over the past five years, but notes an accelerated rise of 60 to 70 percent in the past year, most notably with oil, rice, beans and sugar.

“Six to eight months ago I would invest $100 for oil, rice and other basics, and today I am spending between $150-160 which buys the same amount. Consequently, I have to raise my prices, which means that sales have gone down,” says Ana Elizabeth. She has lost 40 percent of her clientele and has had to let go one of her two employees.

Iris Madrid finds herself in a vulnerable position after losing her job a few weeks ago. Although her income was modest, it was stable and allowed her to buy basic items for her home and support her three children. Now, without a salary and facing rising food costs, she depends on her mother who sells beauty products via catalog.

“If there is detergent, then there is no soap. Or if we have soap, then we have no detergent. If we have beans, then we won’t be eating cheese. If we have cheese, we won’t be eating beans… It hurts because when you have children and they ask you for something, you can’t give it to them,” explains Iris. There are days when all they eat are the mangos from the tree outside her house.

Saving for Change is a program that is growing every day. Since its launch in 2005, it has grown to more than 488,000 members in five countries. The hope is that it will continue to grow and reach people like Ana Elizabeth and Iris, like it has reached Toñita.

Achieving farm resilience requires building up the resilience of vulnerable farmers by developing their skills, expertise and voice while supporting their use of agro-ecological farming practices. Building resilience depends not just on how farmers manage resources, but on how well local, national, and global institutions support farmers. Agro-ecological practices can empower vulnerable small-scale farmers, offering them both greater control over their lives and an accessible means of improving their food security, while decreasing their risk of crop failure or livestock death due to climate shocks. Vulnerable farmers can use agro-ecological practices to build resilient farms and improve their livelihoods, achieving multiple benefits: 1. improved food security; 2. adaptation to a changing climate; and 3. mitigation of climate change.

People-centred resilience consists of five principles which should guide how investments in vulnerable farming communities are designed and implemented. They are:

1. Restored and diversified natural resources for sustainability.
2. Responsive institutions grounded in local context.
3. Expanded and improved sustainable livelihood options.
4. Sound gender dynamics and gender equality.
5. Farmer-driven decisions.

Following these principles ensures that investments support farmers in their efforts to become food-secure and adapt to climate change. Four institutions central to delivering people-centered resilience are: secure land rights; dynamic farmer associations; responsive agricultural advisory services; and public support for environmental services.

In a survey of the area in mid-October, Oxfam staff reported that many families had lost 80 to 100 percent of their harvest this year.

“There’s no food in this community,” Francisca’s aunt Margarita Rosales, 54, says.

Chronic food shortage

Lack of rain in Guatemala has reduced harvests this year, pushing up food prices in stores and creating a crisis in poor communities. The government declared a food emergency in September.

Malnutrition and chronic food shortages are not unusual in Guatemala. Lack of investment in small-scale agriculture has reduced food production over the years, and the country now has the highest rate of malnutrition among children under five in Latin America: nearly 50 percent, according to the World Food Programme. The malnutrition rate for indigenous children is higher; close to 70 percent. The Famine Early Warning System warns that 350,000 families in Guatemala are at risk this year, especially in the south, east, and central regions of Guatemala’s “dry corridor."

Many men will finish their harvest and migrate to coffee- or sugar-cane producing parts of the country to work on large plantations to earn extra money. This year such income will be more crucial than ever, for farmers in Baja Verpaz, in central Guatemala.

“We would like people to have more options than just migration,” says Gloria Gonzalez, who works with the Association of Community Health Services, known by its Spanish initials ASECSA. Oxfam is working with ASECSA and the Training Institute for Sustainable Development (IEPADES) to help farmers in Baja Verapaz survive the coming winter. Oxfam is helping these organizations in the following areas.

• Family gardens: seeds and tools to help families grow winter vegetables to improve their nutrition.
• Veterinary medicine and feed to raise chickens, pigs, and ducks.
• Traditional agriculture: help farmers produce their own organic fertilizer and insecticides and select native seeds, to help reduce costs and increase production of corn, beans, peanuts, and other food crops.
• Training health promoters to provide nutritional counseling for families with young children, to improve diets and reduce child mortality.
• Community service: cash for work on local infrastructure like irrigation systems, production of organic fertilizer, and other ways to improve the community and increase the sustainability of local agriculture.

Oxfam is committing $269,000 to the project, which will assist nearly one thousand families in Baja Verapaz.

"Resuscitating Doha is essential to right the rigged rules of trade, but what's been simmering on the WTO stove will simply not deliver for poor countries, said Oxfam America president Raymond C. Offenheiser. "The financial crisis, which started in developed countries but is taking its worst toll on developing countries, should be the impetus for a change in course."

In a new report released today called "Empty Promises," Oxfam details how the Doha Round has become an exercise in prying open developing country markets rather than an effort to rebalance decades of unfair agricultural and industrial trade rules. In the midst of a global economic crisis, a food crisis, and a climate crisis, nations with the least blame and with the least capacity to cope with the consequent effects must not have to pay even more to enable their economies to develop, according to the report.

Over 50 million people stand to lose their jobs, remittances are collapsing, and growth in sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to fall by 70 percent this year trapping 90 million more people in poverty, because of the crisis. Food prices meanwhile remain high for poor consumers: by the end of 2008 a further 109 million people had been added to the ranks of hungry, topping 1 billion people worldwide. As the world experiences the sharpest drop in trade in 80 years, a "development" trade deal—as originally promised—remains crucial, according to Oxfam.

"Now is the time for WTO members to come back to the negotiating table, recognize that the current crisis provides an opportunity to address urgent development needs, and change the course of negotiations, much as they did nearly eight years ago in Doha," said Offenheiser. "At this time of desperate need for a change of course, the Doha Round has to step up to deliver on its development promise. There is little credit left for another failure."

The welcome political commitment from the G8 could lead to a fresh start to negotiations, but it cannot be business as usual. In the past eight years, developed countries have used the talks to continue to push to open up new export markets. Developing countries have resisted, saying they were promised a deal that would give them space to protect their farmers and new industries, an end to rich country trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, and more access to rich markets for their farmers and industries.

The widespread food price crisis has shown that food and livelihood security cannot depend solely on market forces. Development, rather than liberalization, has to be the central objective of negotiations and trade rules must respond to the needs of the most vulnerable people first and foremost, according to Oxfam. It is the responsibility of WTO member states to analyze the role of trade in the recent global crises so that the Doha negotiations take into account the new global context and contribute to a solution, rather than exacerbate the problem.

"What's on the table is no silver bullet since it continues to favor the richest and biggest farmers and industrialists in the US and Europe and sidelines the needs of the poor," said Offenheiser. "We have seen what can be done when countries find the resolve to avert problems at home, and this resolve must be translated to the multilateral trade agenda so that the much-needed conclusion of the Doha Round can be achieved in a manner that addresses developing country needs first and foremost."

Members of Oxfam International have also provided grant support for neighborhood social programs, such as the world-renowned Martin Luther King Center, a leader in popular education.

Cuba's civil evacuation and protection system is widely renowned for its excellence. Oxfam works with Cuba's Civil Defense to help communities prepare for disasters and has helped Cuba significantly reduce its vulnerability to hurricanes. In 2004 Oxfam America, as part of Oxfam International, documented these experiences and lessons in the publication "Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction in Cuba."

Gender equality is a priority in all the projects Oxfam supports. While Cuban women enjoy a wide array of rights, there continue to be gaps, particularly at home. Supporting research and sensitivity training, particularly in regards to violence against women, is a priority for Oxfam in Cuba.

As part of Oxfam International, Oxfam America has contributed roughly $1.1 million to Oxfam International's work in Cuba since 1995. All of Oxfam America's grants were approved by the US Department of State, and mostly supported agricultural transformation projects designed to improve food security.

Breakfast is no longer part of her children's morning routine. Alexandre can't afford it. Most of what she earns as a street vendor in the Carrefour-Feuilles district of Port-au-Prince she was already spending on food for her family. But the steep rise in the cost of rice, a Haitian staple, is pricing Alexandre and her family out of regular meals.

Less than 20 years ago, the country was nearly self-sufficient when it came to rice production. But in 1995, when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund pressured Haiti to cut import tariffs on rice from 50 percent to 3 percent, cheap subsidized rice from the US began to flood into the country. Urban consumers benefited for a while from the low-cost imports, but they caused national rice production to plummet. Today, Haiti is now importing 80 percent of the rice it consumes—just as world prices have doubled.

More than half the country's population is malnourished, and more than 80 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty line. Rising prices provoked riots in several Haitian cities earlier this spring and forced the resignation of the country's prime minister.

"If people are hungry, they have no stake in stability," said Hedi Annabi, the UN special representative in Haiti. "They will be ready for anything--for anarchy--because they have nothing to safeguard or to fight for."

While the entire country is affected, cities--where 40 percent of the populations lives--are especially hard hit.

Agriculture, which employs more than 60 percent of the Haitian workforce, is one of the areas most affected by trade liberalization policies. An estimated 830,000 jobs in Haiti have been lost in recent years, primarily in agriculture.

What is Oxfam doing?

In the capital, Port-au-Prince and the town of Jacmel in the southeast, Oxfam is helping families hardest hit by the rising food prices. Working through local partners, Oxfam is supporting subsidized community restaurants, school canteens, and helping parents pay off debts to schools. Cash-for-work community clean up activities are also planned for several neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince.

In rural areas in the north of the country, Oxfam is organizing a cash-for-work canal cleaning project, improving and diversifying crops and vegetables, and improving market links for small farmers.

It is through the community restaurant that Alexandre has found some relief from her hardship.

"I am the sole provider for my children," she said. "Their father dies a year ago and now I am alone. If he was here, it would be much easier to manage."

For just 13 cents, Alexandre and her children can now buy a daily subsidized hot meal at one of eight community restaurants supported by Oxfam.

"It's unthinkable that I would be able to buy a meal for my kids for 5 gourdes (13 cents)," says Alexandre, smiling. "It means that every day I have been able to save a little bit of money for other things. Now not all of my money must go on buying food."

Run by a local organization, the restaurants provide immediate relief to those families hit hardest by rising food prices. They are open from 10 a.m. to noon four days a week, and serve up to 200 meals a day, ranging from cornmeal and fish to bouillion, a hearty Haitian vegetable stew.