Heifer International and the food crisis:
Agroecology critical part of solution
The cost of rice and other staples has risen dramatically around the globe. In developing countries food is being priced out of reach for the world’s poorest people. Price spikes have lead to shortage-related violence in Haiti, parts of Africa and elsewhere.
As prices continue to increase, the United Nations warns, more than 100 million people could be pushed into hunger.
Coverage of this issue has largely focused on calls for additional food aid, but the forces causing prices to spiral upward – higher costs for oil and other forms of energy, increased demand for food in India and China – are not expected to abate soon. Heifer International believes that sustainable development projects can help sustenance-level farmers increase their production and they, in turn, can bring low-cost food to market. That would help feed the urban poor who are most vulnerable to market forces.
Download Heifer press release on sustainable solutions and the Food Crisis
Causes of the Food Crisis
Prices are rising because of the trends of high crude oil prices, increasing demand from rapidly developing countries like China and India, unfavorable weather, and the diversion of land from food production to growing crops for ethanol. According to a recent U.N.-backed report, despite increases in food production due to improvements in the science and technology of commercial farming, the levels of hunger and poverty have remained about the same. Nearly a third of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day.
The current model of commercial agriculture is highly industrial. It uses a centralized production and is energy intensive. It depends upon the use of chemicals, modified seeds and mechanization. The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) further concludes that modern agricultural production practices are responsible for damaging natural resources, leaving more people vulnerable to market shifts and higher prices.
Dr. Jim DeVries, Heifer’s Vice President of Programs, asks:. “In light of this new reality – the high price of energy, global warming and increased demand, what is our strategy?”
DeVries says it is becoming apparent that the industrial farming system is not sustainable. In the West, decentralizing production, with an increase in the number of family-sized farms or large family-operated farms that use methods that recycle agricultural byproducts would help improve the negative impacts of industrial agricultural production, he says. In Africa and the developing world, upgrading small rural farms through livestock used with integrated farming techniques can boost crop production while conserving and protecting the environment.
But farmers with incomes of only several hundred dollars a year can hardly afford to buy a cow or goats. Heifer’s model provides the cow or goat and then ask the farmer to pay for it by “Passing on the Gift” of offspring of his livestock to a neighbor. That spreads the benefits, and it makes it possible for farmers, with training, to begin developing sustainable integrated farms that are environmentally sound.
A case study
DeVries pointed to a Heifer program recipient, a woman who lives on the slopes of Mt. Meru in Tanzania, 40 miles west of Mount Kilimanjaro. A poor subsistence farmer, she joined a Heifer community development group that enabled her to get a cow and begin improving her farm, using terracing and organic compost using the manure from the cow. Her herd grew. She began producing cheese to sell to tourist hotels and eventually developed her own eco-tourism business, serving visitors coffee and cheese and showing them around her small sustainable farm. Her farm production uses no gasoline-powered tools, and competitors are unlikely to match her prices. Her farm is a model of sustainability. And she is better insulated from the buffeting of market forces that are beyond her control.
Heifer has helped millions of small-scale rural farmers to greater self-reliance through livestock and increased crop outputs where once only slash-and-burn or other soil-depleting farm practices were used.
Crisis a threat to peace
As the world’s poor become reliant on the global market, they lose the ability to control their own fate. Many of the world’s poorest, including the 1.2 billion who subsist on less than a $1 a day, have “cut back” on meals, “eating only a few times a week,” according to the United Nations.
Food shortages lead to instability. Heifer believes that regardless of income people should not have to choose between food and medicine or food and school for their children.
Agroecology and mixed farming as hunger solution
Heifer is not alone in pushing for greater development efforts using livestock and agriculture. Kanayo Nwanze, Vice-President of the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), outlined recently the need for renewed interest and investments in rural agriculture and development.
“Rapid agricultural and rural development holds the key to eliminating poverty in Africa,” Nwanze told a meeting of African Union and delegates to the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa.
“A concerted, coordinated and collective effort is the most effective way to tackle the triple scourge of poverty, climate change and high food prices and to guarantee a sustainable future for women, marginalized groups and smallholder farmers in Africa,” he continued.
The proportion of sub-Saharan Africans living in poverty is more than 40 percent, according to Nwanze.
Agroecology may be a relatively new term for much of the world, but Heifer International has understood its importance for many years. Integrated farms have long been a part of Heifer’s plan for sustainable development. Such farms make use of locally bred livestock animals, unmodified seeds and natural fertilizers and other agricultural products. Integrated and small farms also better protect biodiversity.
East Africa Dairy Development
Scaling up Heifer’s approach is the goal of a recent $42.8 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Heifer to expand its model to produce milk for commercial dairies in parts of Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. The goal of the East Africa Dairy Development Project (EADD) is to help one million people – 179,000 families – lift themselves out of poverty by developing 30 milk collection hubs with “chilling plants” where farmers will bring raw milk for pickup by commercial dairies.
Heifer will organize farmer business associations to own and manage the chilling plants. Milk production will be increased through artificial insemination to improve local breeds of dairy cows and through improved animal nutrition. The project will provide extensive training in animal agriculture, business practices and other subjects.
Thus, farmers with only one or two cows will be able to participate in the “value chain” of profit through the commercial dairy industry while maintaining pastoral production methods that are environmentally friendly.
The role of relief aid
Heifer applauds and supports the vital work of disaster relief organizations. However, in times of crisis, it’s important to understand the distinction between relief and sustainable development.
Ever since Heifer’s founder, Dan West, came up with the phrase “not a cup, but a cow,” in 1944, Heifer’s approach to providing global assistance to struggling communities has been characterized by long-term development, rather than short-term relief.
As writer Cal Thomas recently stated, “One doesn't 'tackle poverty,' like a football player. One shows the way of escape and provides sufficient role models along with capital and moral and educational structures that serve as ladders so people who want to climb out of the hole can do so.” Heifer couldn’t agree more. It’s what the organization has been doing since 1944.
About Heifer International
Heifer’s mission is to end hunger and poverty while caring for the earth. For more than 60 years, Heifer International has provided livestock and environmentally sound agricultural training to improve the lives of those who struggle daily for reliable sources of food and income. Heifer is currently working in more than 57 countries, including the U.S., to help families and communities become more self-reliant. Every gift of an animal provides benefits such as milk, eggs, wool and fertilizer, increasing family incomes for better housing, nutrition, health care and school fees for children.
Recipients “Pass on the Gift” of offspring of their cows, goats and other livestock to others in an ever-widening circle of hope.
For more information, visit www.heifer.org.
Download Heifer press release on sustainable solutions and the Food Crisis
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