World Food Day Action Countdown: Talk about empowered small scale farmers!
Earn 500 OCC points every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can get an additional 2,500 points. Submit your actions for points here.
-Emily
Today’s Action: leave a comment to this post telling us your thoughts/ideas/feelings about how to empower small-scale farmers. Don’t forget to report your action for OCC points.
How can purchasing locally improve people’s lives?
- In the US, increasingly people buy food locally to support their farming community. In the developing world, buying from local farmers can provide a lifeline and source of hope to farmers living in grinding poverty.
- In Africa 8 out of 10 farmers in Africa are female, and so buying locally often acts as a form female empowerment too.
Anne Rono lives in southwest Kenya. This year, her seven children helped her harvest their produce. The youngest is three years old, and helps by picking up maize dropped on the ground by the older siblings.
Normally, her one-acre farm produces about 14 bags of maize. But this year’s crop filled just four bags. Even so, Anne needs to sell some of her grain to pay for school fees and essentials that she can’t grow on the farm.
Normally, Anne is at the mercy of Kenyan traders, who take advantage of small scale farmers by offering them below-market price for their maize.
But this year, under a World Food Program initiative called Purchase for Progress or P4P, Anne has another option.
By giving small scale farmers access to fairer prices and a reliable buyer, the program puts more cash into the hands of small scale farmers and improves lives.
Anne is excited that her seven children will benefit from the program.
“P4P can change my life, because by selling maize, I will get money, so my kids can get a better education, they can change their lives, they can wear good shoes, clothes,” she says. “And then, even me, I can get money so I can get fertilizer for the farm. So I know that P4P can help us.”
Although Anne’s farm is small, buying better seeds and more fertilizer will enable her to produce more. With programs like P4P, Ann and other small farmers throughout the developing world can make real improvements in their lives.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
As I have stated before, I didn’t realize how absolutely blessed I am to have been given the life I have today. The task of raising my own produce to provide for myself and family is incomprehensible to me. I am conditioned to a lifestyle where I go to work and recieve a paycheck bi-weekly. I know that I will get paid every two weeks as long as I have a job. I can’t imagine having to depend on greed stricken traders to give me a minimal price for my hard labors. This blog and website have infinately opened my eyes to the struggles that millions of people encounter everyday throughout the world. I am extremely grateful for the life I live. So much in fact, that I find myself yearning for time to read posts such as this one, just so I can truly realize the blessings I have. Since I have joined ONE, I feel that I must try to help impoverished people throughout the world. I know that I can’t solve all of the issues that plaque these humble people alone, but I do feel that I have found a purpose in life through this organization and its activities. Just recieving this awareness allows me to have hope that one day we can all join hands and work together to ease the pains that pulse through third world societies. I find myself wanting to tell all those around me about the hard lives that millions presently live, and how we can easily make life easier for them. Thank you for continuing to inform me of what is actually happening, and providing me ways to help.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Purchasing food from a local farmer can have a tremendous impact on people’s lives. Farmers are the most affected by famine despite the fact that they grow food. This stems from that fact that most famines occur because a lack of purchasing power and not a lack of food. I feel that one way we can empower small-scale farmers is to provide them with tools that will increase their crop-yield. This tools are simple things that all American farmers over look: fertilizers, hybrid seeds and farming tools. If we were able to provide farmers in developing nations with these things, their lives would would greatly improve. Just look and see how the government issued started packs in Malawi have improved farmer’s lives there.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I think that empowering local agriculture in some of the poorest areas of the world is one of the most effective methods we have to alleviate extreme poverty, especially when coupled with microfinance and education. It’s amazing how all of these things are so interrelated. We need to communicate the best kinds of fertilizer for the soil, how to build the best water infrastructure and to support the building of that infrastructure so that their annual income isn’t left up to chance; small farmers around the world shouldn’t have to wait and wonder if it is going to rain or if the seeds are going to get to their farm in time. And we need to make sure that they have the right agricultural technology to put them on par with other farmers around the world. President Wade Abdoulaye of Ghana has it right with his GOANA program – I’m waiting to see how that works!
November 10th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Cool website, I’ll bookmark it