Op-Ed by Wolfgang Jamann, CARE International's CEO and Secretary General
The global food system has failed. Almost two billion people are malnourished. In 2014, 161 million children's growth was stunted because they did not get proper nutrition. At the same time, enormous amounts of food are lost post-harvest, or go to waste in the richer world.
It is clear, then, that the system cannot be fixed simply by producing more food. Global trade, as it works today, and increased productivity will not by itself make chronic hunger a thing of the past. Nor can we ignore the fact that climate change is making agriculture and access to food more difficult for those very people who are already struggling the most to stay healthy and alive.
In order to ensure that enough food is available to everyone – in a way that is sustainable and does not deprive people of dignity – we need to look at how food is produced and utilized.
Putting Vulnerable Communities in Charge
CARE believes that a significant part of the solution is to put poor and vulnerable communities in charge of their own development. It is ironic that the majority of hungry people around the world are smallholder farmers. They need the means to adapt to a changing climate. They need effective tools, better information and more say in political decisions. They seldom lack the ideas or the will to contribute to change, but they do lack opportunities to plan and influence.
We are working with these communities in a variety of ways to make this possible. Some methods are new and innovative. Others build upon the ways people traditionally have coped in difficult environments. We want to find and develop the best ideas for how to eradicate hunger, and we are delighted that this is the topic of the World Expo 2015 in Milano.
Whatever method will work best, we do know that knowledge and organization will be keys. That is how the potential of people unfold. Much of CARE’s work to promote food and nutrition security is based on this basic truth: People can achieve more working together than separately. Equal opportunities for women and men is another key factor. Most smallholder farmers are women, but they frequently lack the right to own property, making investments impossible.
Village Savings and Loans Associations
In 1991, CARE got together with women in poor villages in Niger and pioneered what has come to be known as Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs). Today, these groups have millions of members around the world where people have no other access to basic financial services such as safely putting away money, taking up small loans to make investments and buying insurance. It is the members who run the groups. It is they who provide each other with opportunities. Importantly, the big majority of members are women. Through group activities women are able to demonstrate the difference they can make, thereby changing gender norms and dynamics for the better.
The VSLAs are the most effective channels through which CARE works with local communities. They are conduits for information, platforms for training opportunities and exchange of ideas. In Bangladesh, Niger, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique, CARE has helped establish early warning systems and ensure access to weather information, enabling communities and local governments to reduce the risk of food insecurity. We train local volunteers to measure how well different adaptive practices work and share the information, thus ensuring that community members are at the heart of monitoring and decision-making. CARE aggregates data at district, national and global levels to analyze how groups progress over time.
Information Sharing, Adaptation, and Learning
The Farmer Field and Business School (FFBS) is another information-sharing initiative that has succeeded in increasing smallholder women farmers’ productivity and profitability. Groups of 25-30 farmers meet regularly to experiment and learn about new methods of production and marketing. In Mozambique, groups have seen up to 400 percent increase in yields from farms. 50.000 women have managed to increase their income by a total of $3.9 million.
CARE’s Adapatation and Learning Programme shows show that for every dollar invested in putting local communities at the center of planning for resilience to climate change, communities and governments see four dollars in return. And according to the World Bank, removing gender-related constraints on women farmers would increase agricultural production in developing countries by up to four percent.
Improved and cheaper technologies are continuously creating opportunities to explore new ideas and scale up initiatives that work well. We have the means to make chronic hunger history within the next 15 years, but this will require development organizations, governments and the private sector to work together to and put vulnerable communities into the center of their efforts.
Read More about CARE's work on Food Security.