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Farm investment helps slow migration
2006-10-21 08:34:52
By Kasembeli Albert
More investment by governments in agriculture and the right farm policies would help keep rural populations on the land and reduce migration.
This is among the conclusions of a major United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) research programme aimed at analysing the various roles played by agriculture in the societies and economies of developing countries.
The study addresses the problem of rural-to-urban migration, but, says Randy Stringer, the senior economist in charge, ”It’s clear that the forces at play are the same as the ones in international migration.”
Funded by the Government of Japan, the Roles of Agriculture (RoA) programme was launched in 2000 and targeted 11 countries representing a broad range of economic and environmental conditions in three continents.
One of RoA’s main conclusion is that governments and policy makers are largely unaware that ”properly managed, agriculture can not only produce food but also have a positive impact in such areas as poverty alleviation, food security, population distribution, and the environment.”
In the past 50 years, according to RoA, some 800 million people have moved from the countryside to the cities.
Currently, the report notes, rural dwellers represent over half – 60 per cent – of the population of developing countries.
However, this is expected to drop to 44 per cent by 2030 as millions more head for the cities.
Appropriate agricultural policies can do much to regulate the rate of rural out-migration and ease the pressure on urban centres, the report says.
This translates into reduced pollution, congestion, crime and disease caused by over-crowded living conditions.
But another reason was that governments and policy makers failed to appreciate agriculture’s indirect, non-food, importance in the development process.
RoA’s researchers found that agricultural growth often helped reduce poverty more than any other economic sector. It had dramatic effects on poverty and hunger.
But farm production had to move from the subsistence level to some scale of commercialization before any impact was felt on food insecurity and poverty.
Just how agriculture impacts on economies in areas that have nothing to do with food, is best illustrated by the ”Elephants or onions” riddle facing the Kenyan government.
Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, a spectacular, 392 km sq wildlife reserve at the foot of Mt Kilimanjaro, features elephants and other land animals and is one of the world’s leading bird sanctuaries. In 2004 it attracted some 200,000 tourists and earned about US$ 3.5 million.
The Amboseli area is inhabited by Maasai pastoralists whose traditional herding activities are compatible with the wildlife.
On the contrary, they provide the park with such ”services” as environmental management and bear the costs of living cheek-by jowl with wild animals in terms of personal safety, grazing competition and damage to crops.
But they receive no payment for their indirect contribution to the tourism industry and have consequently turned to farming to increase their incomes.
Some of the land is now adjoining the park’s southern and eastern borders is therefore now fenced in to protect the Maasai’s tomatoes and onions from intruding elephants.
But the fences limit the animals’ access to water, food, breeding grounds and seasonal migration routes.
The quandary is whether to protect the Maasai’s onions or the tourists’ elephants. The solution offered by RoA is to pay the Maasai in recognition of the services they provide to the park.
Such PES (Payment for Environmental Services) would mean they no longer had to grow tomatoes to make ends meet. They could easily be funded by a one-dollar increase in the park entrance fee.
While the Maasai’s services to Kenya’s tourism industry remain unrecognised (and unpaid) there are many other ways in which agriculture assists the economic and social development of nations.
It can play a crucial role as a social buffer in times of economic crisis. In many cases, the farm sector has proved more resilient than others in economic downturns, providing an economic and social safety net for urban workers, who migrate back to the countryside and for the poor in general.
It is also an essential element in preserving the environment, impacting at global level on biodiversity, climate change and wildlife habitats and at regional and national level on such areas as soil conservation and the rural landscape.
The issue should thus be addressed as early as possible in the development process – possibly through direct incentives to small farmers to invest in the protection of natural resources, RoA said.
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