Indianfarmers

FEEDING THE WORLD—CARING FOR THE EARTH
ASIA CONTINENTAL MEETING
23-24 MARCH, 2010, NEW DELHI

PROCEEDINGS FOR THE SECOND DAY (24th March)

Morning Session (9.30 am to 12.30 pm)

Jose Osaba:

He outlined some broad objectives which are as follows:

For family farming, declaration from umbrella body (UN) is required. For this declaration, amalgamation of policies and proposals are necessary.

Proper implementation of family farming requires definite land ownership. This is a ‘key issue’.

Farmers’ organizations need to take active roles.

Situation of women farmers needs to be improved.

Under broad category of agriculture, fishermen should also get benefited.

Local issues must be given due priority.

Overall, the objective is to obtain bottom-up approach and incorporate local realities.

Based on the question raised by African lady, he talked about the procedure of getting ‘International Year’ tag from UN. Basically it needs 50-60 countries’ votes in General Assembly. UN engages some specific agencies for programme implementation. In this regard Mr. Reddy suggested that migratory farmers need to get benefit out of family farming and the name of the wife should also be included in the land document. He also raised concerns on the issue of farmer suicides. He sought UN recommendations for raising nation’s concerns regarding these issues.

Workshop-1

Present members were divided among two groups (Group 1 and Group 2) for discussing two questions—

How do we achieve the declaration of the “year”?

What do we do during the year?

Group 1

Group 1 concentrated mainly on answering the second question. Mr. Galdos remarked that there remains huge gap between government projects and farmers. Hence, projects could not reach to farmers. Discussion among group members like Mr. Galdos, Mr. Reddy, Mary Jo, other delegates from Taiwan and others revealed some common answers to the second question:

Farmers’ participation in plans, empowerment and govt. access to rural farmers.

Implementation of govt. programme through strong leadership of rural local bodies, technical training to farmers’ organization, and human resource development issues.

Men- women equal property rights over land

Govt. allocation of 10% of its national budget for agriculture (following Africa)

Circulate and celebrate success of family farming in public

Sustainable family farming by integrating horticulture, fishing, bee-keeping, animal husbandry etc.

Farmer family’s access to quality education, health and welfare issues

Land reforms for achieving land availability for each and every farmers, distribution of govt. land

Food security for the human being during recent climate change

Establishment of agricultural infrastructure by Govt.

Establishment of agricultural market

Some common answers of question 1 were-

Food security

Collecting information through various agencies, NGOs etc

Role of Policy makers and media, stakeholders, affected farmers’ or their organizations

Signature campaign and establishment of national level coordination committees (Mr. Taon from Vietnam)

Group 2

The focus of discussion for Group 2 was the first question (ie., how do we achieve the declaration of the “year”?). Representatives from various countries and international organizations put forward their suggestions in this regard.

Suggestions from Vietnam representatives:

Stressed the need for one national organization which would involve the government (Agriculture Minister, Prime Minister).

Suggestion from David Kahan (FAO):

It is important to make broad based awareness involving ministries in the individual countries.

Stressed on two track approach: (a) grass root mobilization, creation of coalition and debate issues and (b) since this approach is likely to take a much longer time, it is important to take issues at the higher levels of policy making. Therefore, the parallel approach is to conduct letter signing and approach the government of different countries directly from above. In other words, both top-down approach and bottom-up approach should be undertaken simultaneously.

There is most likely to be a conference in September (organized by FAO) and a concept paper on family farming should be prepared keeping in mind this conference. In the paper, the argument for family farming should be unique. In other words, the argument for family farming should not come under the umbrella of hunger and poverty.

Involve champions and opinion makers in this movement. Some of the names which were suggested by the group members were M. S. Swaminathan, Jeffrey Sachs, Bill Gates.

Suggestions from Indonesia representatives:

*Popularize the campaign through multi-disciplinary discussions and debate.
*Lobbying with the government.

Suggestions from Nepal representatives:

*Form a national network involving farmers’ associations and NGOs.
*Involve media into this campaign for family farming.
*This campaign should also be a part of the SAARC process.
* Involve politicians and parliamentarians into the process of building opinion.

Suggestions from Malaysia representatives:

*Build a joint programme where a cluster of countries should work together.

Suggestions from Thailand representatives:

*Bottom up approach involving people’s organizations.
*Work closely with farmers’ associations.
*Define priorities and influence politically.

Suggestions from India representatives:

*Generating opinion at the grass root level involving farmers’ associations and NGOs is going to take a lot of time. So, the focus should be on lobbying with the government and policy makers.

Combined discussion involving both Group 1 and Group 2

During combined session presentation, both the groups presented their views. After that, discussions and reviews carried on. Mr. Prasad emphasized upon short-term and long-term goals, family farming consciousness, improved livelihood and stability in rural life.

Mr. Jose Osaba identified three phases of this process. In the first phase called the campaign phase, diplomacy is extremely important. During this phase the document which is prepared should be a global document and not any country specific policy matter. For the second phase (which is during the year of family farming), and the third phase (which is the period after that), the specific activities which are to be undertaken are yet to be decided. He also talked about decentralized but unitary conceptual document which was inclusive in nature.

Mr. David stressed upon better vision, sustainability issues, business aspects and management things. He stressed the importance of having a clear definition of family farming which may vary across countries. According to him family farming has the potential to act as the bridge between home economics and agricultural extension. If family farming is made viable, then it can ensure nutritional requirement of the household and at the same time generate some income for the household as well. Also it is important to identify the gaps in this approach.

Christian emphasized that the programme should not be in conflict with the policies of the governments but rather should synchronize the larger objective of the government.

Afternoon Session (2-5.15 pm)

Members were again divided in two groups for bringing out action plans for IYYF campaign in different regions. Group-1 discussed about action plan for south Asia. Mr. Reddy, Mr. Prasad, Mr. Arjun and others participated here. Action plan emphasized on following issues:

Awareness building through public, NGOs, governments and meetings. 2 month time line was decided for common English materials and different vernacular languages. Within 5 months, there would be a S.Asian all countries’ meeting for discussing issues with invited representatives from politics, media and others.

Help of sensitive media for highlighting family farming schemes

Networking, lobby and advocacy by one year

Concept papers and research through CIFA, AMEF, MDS, Jeevan Jyoti etc NGOs

Contacting opinion leaders and identifying champions like M. S. Swaminathan, Aruna Roy and other new scientists, new M.Ps

Mobilization of resources at local, national and global level; help from Ministry of Agriculture, Planning Commission, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, IASSTD.

The focus region for Group 2 was South-East Asia. In this group, opinions were sought from representatives belonging to different countries. The specific suggestions made by the representatives from different countries are as follows:

Indonesia

*Try to influence the minister of agriculture through personal meetings.
*Possible to locally mobilize resources and NGOs.
*Broaden the coalition by contacting organizations having common interest.
*Issuing letters which can be sent to the permanent representatives in New York, Rome and other places.

Thailand

*Discuss the issue with the department of agriculture.

Malaysia

*Get other NGOs to be a part of this movement.
*Prepare a brief stating the issue.
*Form a broad coalition involving more people and more organizations.

Cambodia

*Organize meetings and workshops with stakeholders.
*Media campaign through radio and newspapers.
*Influence the government officials.

In the combined session presentation, both the groups explained their action plans. Mr. Jose felt the necessity of quick planning and implementation.

Dr. V. V. Sadamate, Advisor to the Planning Commission of India was present and suggested some plans for the campaign:

*There should be local campaign in every country and farmers’ organization, civil society organizations will have to take the lead.
*Importance of definite timeline for national and regional campaign
* Preparing a draft which goes to the ministry of external affairs and then to the Prime Minister’s office.
* SAARC can play a very important role in this issue.
* Experience sharing on progress across different countries.
* Identify different activities to be undertaken during IYFF.
* Setting up of nodal agencies for each continents and for each nations
* Each one involved in the movement must take a greater role in igniting interest among others.
* Interactions after 3-4 months must be conducted at a higher level.
* International research institutions and agencies should be involved in the process.

Presentation by Mary Jo Kakinda:

She gave a simple and cogent presentation on proceedings of 1st Preparatory Committee meeting held in Dakar, Senegal in January 2010. She described how concept of family farming was campaigned through the association of farmers’ organization, intergovernmental organizations, regional economic commissions, prominent personalities and resource persons. As a result of their campaign, 60 letters of support has already come from Africa. They are looking forward to official launch of the campaign.

Concluding Session:

Mr. Prasad gave brief accounts of day proceedings. Mr. Reddy felt the necessity for opening the key of family farming-“one farmer, one family”. Mr. Jose asserted that given proper assistance, small farmers can produce enough food for the entire population. He felt the necessity that farmers should be considered as a part of the policy making process. He assured all the members present in the meeting that all their suggestions will be incorporated in the documents in future and that there is now a clear orientation to work on.