The moderated discussion of the Policy Dialogue focused on how advances in science and research can better reach smallholders to promote sustainable agriculture. The panel included six guests, namely: H.E. Mr. Ghulam Sakhi Ghairat, Ambassador, Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan; Dr. Kasdi Subagyono, Execuitive Secretary, Indonesian Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (IAARD), Ministry of Agriculture, Indonesia; Dr. Raghunath Ghodake, Director General, National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI), Papua New Guinea; Mrs. Miliakere Nawaikula, Director of Research, Fiji Agricultural Research Division, Fiji; Dr. Grace Wong, Senior Scientist , Forests and Livelihoods Programme, Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR); and Ms. Ika N. Krishnayanti, International Relations Officer, Indonesian Peasant Alliance. Ms. Kate Lamb, Journalist for Voices of America, moderated the panel.
The Green Revolution has not covered all needs yet
Dr. Raghunath Ghodake, General Director of the National Research Institute (NARI) in Papua New Guinea stated that, despite much advancement in agriculture, there is still a need to focus on improving technologies. The Green Revolution, for instance, “didn’t profit equally to all the countries and we still find many neglected commodities, such as roots and tubers, or underperforming sectors such fishery and livestock.” Not to mention that climate change is also generating new needs for research.
Illustrating the situation in Fiji, Mrs. Miliakere Nawaikula, Director of Research, Fiji Agricultural Research Division (FARD), underpinned that taro is certainly one of the main crops in the Fiji islands and that recurrent drought provoked by climate change is of great concern to the Fijians. Mrs. Nawaikula also pointed out that research on soil health and livestock feeding costs could greatly benefit farmers.
Technologies: also a matter of adopting and adapting
Agricultural innovation is not only about finding the right technology, as reminded Dr. Kasdi Subagyono, Executive Secretary of the Indonesian Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (IAARD). “How the technology is adapted and adopted matters as much,” he stressed. In a country as socioeconomically and agroecologically as diverse as Indonesia, tailoring technology is certainly a major focus.
Priorities also vary according to locations, as H.E. Mr. Ghulam Sakhi Ghairat, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Indonesia illustrated. “After 40 years of war, our main focus for the moment is education, among other efforts in the agriculture sector,” he said. Afghanistan is also undergoing a necessary transition from opium farming, which implies finding alternative crops and thereby adds on to the research needs at national level.
Farmers should be recognized as researchers
In our efforts to increase agriculture productivity, the way research engages with smallholder farmers needs to evolve, according to Ms. Ika N. Krishnayanti, International Relations Officer, Indonesian Peasant Alliance (API). “Researchers should look beyond the issue of production and productivity and encompass the area of processing and marketing,” Mrs. Krishnayanti declared.
Ms. Krishnayanti introduced Ms. Maria Loreta, member of API's National Board of Peasants and Head of API’s Peasant Women Committee, who recently received an award for her conservation of local species as well as supporting successful rice adaptation made by farmers in East Java to suit saline soil conditions. With this introduction, Ms. Krishnayanti stressed that “farmers should be recognized as researchers, and not only seen as scientific findings recipients.”
Dr. Grace Wong, Senior Scientist at the Forests and Livelihoods Programme, Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), replied that participatory research has been underway in Indonesia for a number of years already. “It certainly worked well in some instances, but much less in areas where socio-economical and bio-physical constraints were high.” Nevertheless, she concluded that research sustainability depends on the collaboration between research institutions, the private sector, NGOs and civil society...
Governments’ role: a matter of synergy
Governments have a role to play in this collaboration too, according to H.E. Mr. Ghairat. By investing in education, infrastructure, and supporting foreign investment, they can create an enabling environment.
Dr. Subagyono further elaborated that governments can contribute to ensure that the right technologies reach smallholders by creating synergy between stakeholders and subsidizing initial investments that the farmers cannot finance on their own. Government can also facilitate market access, which certainly acts as a major bottleneck “as one can see in the soya bean sector neglected nowadays by farmers for the more profitable maize market.”
“Unfortunately, what is seen at farmers’ level is actually a lack of coordination between central and local governments,” considered Ms. Krishnayanti. She reminded that if farmers are turning their backs on soya bean production, this is actually very much a result of import policies that profit USA and Argentina products at the expense of Indonesian soya bean, despite its comparative quality advantage.
“One-for-all” policies are not an option
Dr. Wong observed that to create this enabling environment, specific policies need to be supported in order to benefit smallholder farmers’ access and adoption of agricultural technologies. And a key aspect that should be taken into account is small scale farmers’ heterogeneity. “The one-for-all policies aren’t working and must be replaced by declination to specific needs.” Outgrowers schemes can be profitable to small scale farmers in some remote areas if governments can provide the necessary incentives to larger plantations so that fair contracts can be established. Dr. Wong noted that in other inaccessible regions, policies focusing on infrastructure and social nets mechanisms will constitute the priority.
Dr. Ghodake discussed limitations that policy makers face in designing and implementing these inclusive policies, and put forward time constraints for designing policies. He also declared that: “policies should be prescriptive and descriptive and serve to empower farmers.”
The moderator invited questions from the audience that triggered interesting reactions and feedback from the participants.
Mr. Iftikhar Ahmad, Chairman of the Pakistan Agriculture Research Centre (PARC), re-emphasized the failure of mixed policies. “Small scale farmers should have separate policies from large scale farmers, and government should protect small scale farmers’ markets and prescribe compulsory obligations from large scale growers towards small scale ones.”
Another participant initiated a debate over the role of the private sector. Dr. Ghodake differentiated between large holders, who certainly have a role to play in exporting, processing and business and service providers. Dr. Subagyono added that governments cannot fix all farmers’ needs and that much space was left for the private sectors to address those gaps.
In his attempt to determine which was the priority policy for small scale farmers, a panelist from India brought location specificity to the forefront once more. If climate change and resilient agriculture rank first in terms of Indonesian research needs, the private sector is more important for Fiji, while education is of top concern to Afghanistan.
Reported by Ms. Annick SCHUBERT, annick.schubert@gmail.com.
