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Food rise has Bolivia’s coca farmers planting rice instead of cocaine
Canadian Press
SINAHOTA, Bolivia — Soaring food prices may achieve what the United States has spent millions of dollars trying to do: Persuade Bolivian farmers to sow their fields with less potent crops than cocaine’s raw ingredient.
The unlikely advocate for change is Bolivian President Evo Morales, who as leader of a powerful coca growers union fought U.S. crop-substitution programs for two decades.
However, rising grain prices and food shortages have made him reconsider.
He’s now asking coca farmers to supplement their crops with rice and corn as a way of holding down coca production while helping to feed South America’s poorest country.
(20 July 2008)
Re-posted at Bolivia Rising
The promise and perils of agricultural trade liberalization: Lessons from the Americas
Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University
Based on seven country-studies examining both the promise of export agriculture and the perils of trade liberalization for small-scale farmers in Latin America, the authors of this collaborative report call for a thorough review of agricultural trade and development policies in the region. The project assesses Mexico’s performance under NAFTA; the South American soybean boom in Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia; and the impacts of rising imports on small-scale farmers in El Salvador, Bolivia, and Brazil. The authors suggest that the most important policy reform Latin America needs now is a much more selective and careful management of international trade, particularly in agriculture.
Among the report’s main findings:
* Agriculture and rural development remain important economically. More than 20% of Latin American residents still live in rural areas, as does a large portion of the region’s poor, with an estimated 58 million rural residents (46% of the rural population) living below the $2/day poverty line. Sustainable rural development for local and regional markets is critical to reducing poverty.
* Export agriculture, through expanded access to global markets, is not by itself a reliable engine for broad-based development that benefits the rural population. South America’s soybean industries are undeniable winners from global trade liberalization, but few of the benefits go to rural communities. Based on high-input, industrialized monoculture farming, employment and wages have both declined despite rising production.
* Ecological harm from agricultural expansion onto sensitive lands leaves lasting damage. The “extractive” model of soybean cultivation is unsustainable, squandering the region’s natural assets for short-term private gain.
* Smallholder agriculture can be made more productive and can serve as the catalyst for integrated rural development and poverty reduction. With appropriate government investment, many small-scale farmers can increase their productivity, meeting critical domestic food needs while reducing poverty.
* Governments need to play an active role that emphasizes productivity and breaks from the prevailing focus on anti-poverty programs. The withdrawal of government investment in favor of targeted anti-poverty programs relegates rural communities to the role of welfare recipients rather than food producers.
* It is critical to recognize, enhance, and reward smallholders’ role as stewards of the rural environment. The deregulated market fails to recognize the contributions of small-scale farmers to the maintenance of a healthy and productive environment. Government policies need to find ways to reward these critical ecological services – seed diversity, watershed management, soil preservation, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, etc.
(June 2008)
Africa’s last and least
Cultural expectations ensure women are hit hardest by burgeoning food crisis
Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post
… In poor nations, such as Burkina Faso in the heart of West Africa, mealtime conspires against women. They grow the food, fetch the water, shop at the market and cook the meals. But when it comes time to eat, men and children eat first, and women eat last and least.
Soaring prices for food and fuel have pushed more than 130 million poor people across vast swaths of Africa, Asia and Latin America deeper into poverty in the past year, according to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP). But while millions of men and children are also hungrier, women are often the hungriest and skinniest. Aid workers say malnutrition among women is emerging as a hidden consequence of the food crisis.
“It’s a cultural thing,” said Herve Kone, director of a group that promotes development, social justice and human rights in Burkina Faso. “When the kids are hungry, they go to their mother, not their father. And when there is less food, women are the first to eat less.”
(20 July 2008)
