IVORI

About the projectProject Brief

 

Scenario planning is a tough (but rewarding) exercise to undertake. The process is straight forward in the sense that different stakeholders with complementary skills and knowledge about food security and agriculture development come together and undergo a process of imagination on what is likely to happen in the future in regard to food security, given the enormous uncertainties and dynamism of today’s food production and food market. In the process, they are able to come up with an understanding of different sets of likely future scenarios of food insecurity. Scenario planning underscores the importance of ‘big picture’ analysis rather than specific focused problem-solving approach that many governments pursue to deal with economic emergencies. It enables public policy and business strategies to be developed in advance (“anticipatory policy”) and how they must be implemented to achieve food security.

Scenario Planning for EAC Agricultural Development (referred as SCP-EAC), supported by Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA), is a scoping study which aims to facilitate integrated development of agriculture sector in the EAC region. It is expected that this project will help, facilitate and contribute in achieving food security by these countries by 2020. The ultimate goal (food security) could be realised by achievement of the project primary objective which is to prepare and propose a suitable direction for an agricultural sector through a Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) for the region as a whole. While preparing and proposing the direction, CUTS will rely on various country based interviews and consultations with the stakeholders of the project. These include farmers, government officials, among others.

Objectives

This project bears two key goals, which are: (a) achieving sustainable food security by 2020 in the East Africa Community (EAC) within an overall productive agricultural development and (b) establishing a regional food security policy for the EAC that fosters poverty reduction and improvement of standard of living. Specifically, the project aims to achieve the following:

• Understanding of current state of agriculture development and food security in EAC.
• Understanding of the current public policy on agriculture development and food security in EAC.
• Understanding of drivers and critical uncertainties with an influence on EAC food security.
• Outline scenarios for food security in EAC developed.
• Report disseminated to policy makers and policy debate stimulated to influence public policy change at regional and regional level.

 

Outcomes

The intermediate output of this project is that all the stakeholders in agriculture and food security agree on the need for revised public policies and clear about their own roles. Ultimately, the final outcome could be that public policy could be changed at national and regional levels.

About the projectProject Brief

 

In Kenya, small-scale farmers account for over 70% of agricultural production and 50% of marketed output. Their production meets about 75% of national food demand, often in the context of subsistence farming. For along time now, evidence has shown that poverty largely overlaps with small-scale farming. Therefore, until recently, small-scale production was deemed unrewarding, inefficient, outdated, and uncompetitive in local and external markets, affected by low commodity prices, and injurious to the environment. However, the debate around small-scale production has increasingly moved from “crisis” to an imperative for “revival”.

These farmers depend largely on markets for their survival. However, market access is irrelevant if the farmers cannot produce enough food to first feed their families, and then take surplus to the market. There is an expanding regional market in East Africa which small-scale farmers in Kenya should take advantage of. However, productivity-related competitiveness issues (low agricultural productivity in Kenya, particularly in the production of staple food) and under-development of agricultural markets in the East Africa region are blocking farmers’ efforts to improve their standards of living through trade and alleviate from their poverty conditions.

There is not one single cause or circumstance that is responsible for the challenges small-scale farmers face in improving their productivity, competitiveness and market access; a complex confluence of factors deriving from policy, technology and nature are responsible.

Today, productivity enhancement, market access, pro-poor growth, private sector involvement and social responsibility have become central themes in the search for development. But, the role of producer organisations, governments and big businesses in making markets work better for development are all disputed, especially since each of these stakeholders have their own set of assumptions and recommendations about the risks and opportunities for small-scale farmers. But, in most cases, there has been a top-down attitude towards small-scale farming where the farmers themselves are least consulted when stipulating options for them.

In order to position themselves and make effective choices in the face of the crisis that they are facing, small-scale farmers and their organisations require knowledge and capacity to organise their interests and take effective action. But, fundamentally, this requires a multi-stakeholder approach with stimulated involvement of multiple stakeholders: governments, producer and business community, intermediaries, and civil society organisations to map out the challenges, understand, and enunciate appropriate options for the farmers.

Objectives

The goal of this project is to contribute to poverty reduction and improvement of livelihoods in Kenya through improved agricultural production and sustainable access of smallholder producers to markets.

The two main objectives to be realised are:

• an understanding of the constraints blocking productivity-related competitiveness of smallholder producers and their sustainable access to markets;
• to enunciate options for unblocking the above constraints to bring about improved agricultural productivity and competitiveness and pro-poor market development and access by small-scale farmers to those markets; and,

Ultimately, the information generated above is to be used to initiate a small-scale farmers’ movement in Kenya, by which the farmers groups are provided the knowledge, opportunity and space to contribute in the process of evolving and implementing relevant policies that will alleviate them from their present state of poverty into prosperity

Outcomes

Ultimately, the information generated above is to be used to initiate a small-scale farmer’s movement in Kenya, by which the farmers groups are provided the knowledge, opportunity and space to contribute in the process of evolving and implementing relevant policies that will alleviate them from their present state of poverty into prosperity.