March 2010
Issue: No. 3
 DFID strengthens partnership with FAC
We are delighted to announce that the Central Research Department of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) has approved a grant extension for the Future Agricultures Consortium to April 2013. DFID's renewal of its partnership for FAC's work means the Consortium can now:
- Deepen its agriculture research and policy engagement activities in East and Southern Africa.
- Reinforce its core research themes of:
- Policy Processes
- Agricultural Commercialisation
- Growth and Social Protection
- Science, Technology & Innovation
- Conduct new research in important/emerging areas, like:
- Climate Change
- Land
- Pastoralism
- Youth & Agriculture
- Extend its activities into both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa.
- Expand its communications and networking activities, with an emphasis on supporting CAADP processes.
In addition, this grant will enable FAC to strengthen the capacity of young African researchers working on agricultural policy issues by providing fellowships and student fieldwork bursaries. Finally, DFID support will strengthen our efforts to establish procedures for transferring the Consortium's Secretariat from the UK to Africa by April 2013.
FAC launches new research themes: New FAC members beginning projects that widen FAC's scope
FAC is launching four new FAC themes:
- Pastoralism: This new theme will contribute to critical debates on pastoralist responses to change. FAC members will reflect on the future of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa to better understand pastoralists’ own responses to change.
- Youth: The Future Farmers theme focuses on youth and agriculture, seeking to understand the perceptions and potential roles of youth in the future of African farming.
- Land: The research will focus on the politics of land deals– something often lacking in the current debate – and therefore we embed the commercial act of exchanging land titles into a broader framework concerned with ‘land deal politics’. Through this initiative, FAC, with LDPI, hopes to engage in dialogue with social movements, activists, policy makers, and concerned academics to produce data and discuss their implications.
- Climate Change and policy processes in the agricultural sector where two policy areas will be addressed in particular: first, how international climate change policy processes shape and interact with national level policymaking in the agricultural sector, and second, the use of climate science (seasonal forecasts and climate change predictions) in support for adaptation in the agricultural sector.
West Africa transect study: if/how agricultural policy and policy processes impact on agricultural performance and livelihood outcomes in particular settings
 FAC is beginning new research in West Africa that will investigate the relative importance of and interaction among selected national and regional factors in explaining the differential performance of agriculture in southern Ghana, northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso.
The national factors of interest are: the economic policy context; agricultural sector policy; and the level and type of investment (public and private) in the agricultural sector. The regional factors include: agro-ecology (and implications for crops, technologies, systems etc); investment (public and private) in agricultural sector; and the availability of agriculture-related services. More about this study in the next FAC Newsletter.
Ethiopia extension consultations: National and Regional Panel Discussions on the future of Agricultural/ Pastoral Extension Systems
 Aimed to elicit opinions on the state of the extension system and to look forward to the future. This project brings together national and regional extension experts from government and NGOs, farmers and Development Agents, and private sector (e.g. investors in agriculture) to contribute to national efforts to improve the extension system.
Four regional consultations have been completed in Amhara, Tigray, Oromiya and SNNPR. Each panel discussion attracted up to 40 participants composed of mainly of government experts, NGOs, farmers, and development agents. A number of presentations were made including: (i) FAC summarising the extension path over the last 50 years; (ii) extension officers presenting the current status and future direction of regional extension system, and (iii) NGOs presenting their innovative approaches to extension - these included AgriService Ethiopia, Farm Africa, SG-2000, IPMS, and local NGOs.
In each region, Regional Bureaus of Agriculture and Rural Development (BoARD), Farmer Training Centres (FTC), Farmer Research Groups (FREG), local private investors in agriculture, were actively engaged in the discussion. In Oromiya and SNNPR, workshops were held outside the regional capital close to the farmer. A report of the panel discussions is being prepared.
The political economy of seed systems - Ethiopia: Understanding the political and economic processes governing the Ethiopian cereal seed systems.
 The Science, Technology and Innovations (STI) theme recently launched a study on the politics of the seeds systems in Ethiopia. The study is concerned with understanding the political and economic processes governing Ethiopian cereal seed systems. Specifically, the study wishes to understand the overall policy framework along with the main interests driving policy formulations, the roles and interaction of the different actors, and how these driving interests and interaction of the actors are related to the performance of the system on the ground.
The factors that affect the development of the seed systems include (i) the government strategy of maintaining agricultural growth through scaling up of best practices through mainly agricultural technologies; (ii) the existing decentralised political system, which is pushing a decentralised seed system; (iii) the recognition of the role of private sector in the development of the seed industry; (iv) the implementation the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) in the public sector, which created the opportunity to re-think how the public sector is working; and (v) the donor and development partners’ interest in promoting vibrant national seed systems. The study also investigates the hidden mutual mistrust between the public and private sector engaged in the seed sector. Read More.
Kenya policy engagement: FAC's John Omiti meets with policy makers
FAC's John Omiti, the Kenya country co-ordinator, held a series of meetings with senior officials of various ministries involved in agricultural and rural development in Kenya (Ministries of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, Environment & Natural Resources, and Water & Irrigation) on issues like structural changes in the agricultural sector, implications of global food inflation on globally-traded commodities (e.g. wheat, rice, fertiliser) and implications of the global financial crisis on Kenya’s agricultural sector.
Specific discussion points included:
- Understanding the structural changes in the agricultural sector that have a bearing on food production, enterprise mix, employment trends, etc. There is a lot of policy emphasis in the country attempting to be a middle income country by the year 2030 through, inter alia, transforming agriculture to be more commercially oriented.
- Implications of global food inflation on Kenya. The dominant sectors that are likely to be affected are those that are globally-traded (e.g. cereals such as wheat and rice, imports such as fertiliser) and variations in exchange rate would bear major significance. Arising out of these discussions, the country co-ordinator participated in more high-level meetings where implications of high food and fuel prices were further discussed. Many interventions have been initiated to deal with high food prices including an attempted urban food subsidy programme, a fertiliser subsidy programme and large-scale flood irrigation.
- Legal and institutional framework in the agricultural sector. This is on-going engagement will review and update the various legislations governing the agricultural sector.
- Implications of global financial meltdown on the agricultural sector. Some of the emerging messages demand informed policy options to deal with changes in global demand of Kenya’s exports (e.g. horticulture, flowers), reduced remittances, possibility of influx of returnees, etc.
Ministry of Agriculture - district studies in Kenya
 Work on understanding the Ministry of Agriculture at the district levels in a changing context is complete in Eldoret West district (previously Uasin Gishu North) and a draft report is ready. Our field researchers are due to make a final visit to Nyeri South before completing the report for that district. Initial findings from the work so far (including that conducted during the last phase) are that district offices in politically well connected districts are better endowed in terms of budget, personnel and other resources. However, even in politically well-connected areas, ongoing subdivision of districts (which is being pursued very aggressively in Kenya, such that what was once a division is now being upgraded to district status) has not been accompanied by sufficient extra resources.
As a result, capacity is under great strain. Looking across Ministries, the Ministry of Agriculture is better resourced and undertakes more activities at district level than the other rural development Ministries. Staff at the field level interact constantly; hence, the coordination problems resulting from the creation of multiple ministries are felt more at headquarters level than at district level.
Several reports from the Malawi and Kenya studies are now available on our web site:
Climate Change Adaptation
 Two FAC members (Blessings Chinsinga and Lydia Ndirangu) are involved in collaborative research on "Linking African Researchers with Adaptation Policy Spaces". This project aims to increase the ability of partners in Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (CCAA) programme in East Africa to understand climate change adaptation policy processes at local and national scales.
Drawing on the experience of the Participatory Adaptation Research (PAR) carried out under the CCAA programme, the project is conducting policy focused case studies aimed at increasing research-policy linkages of adaptation research in participating countries (Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania).
Given progress with current field work, feedback workshops (within the two countries at district and national level) plus the team planning event are planned for the 2009-10 financial year.
Read more.
Graduation... from agricultural support and social protection programmes
FAC's work in the Growth and Social Protection thematic area is focusing on the topical issue of ‘graduation’ from agricultural support and social protection programmes. Graduation describes a process whereby recipients of cash transfers, food aid or free or subsidised inputs and assets move from a position of dependence on external assistance to a condition where they no longer need these transfers, and can therefore exit the programme. Graduation is extremely difficult to define and implement at an operational level. The concept is implicitly linear – it suggests a steady progression up an income scale – but livelihoods in rural Africa are characterised by uncertainty. Farming communities and pastoralists face erratic weather and other threats to crop and livestock production. Even if a household is assessed as having passed an income or asset threshold at a point in time (say, after three years of receiving cash transfers or fertiliser and seed packs), it is impossible to predict whether the household is about to suffer a major shock (e.g. a drought or disease outbreak) that will decimate its harvest or herd, leaving the household acutely vulnerable to hunger and destitution. What does ‘graduation’ mean in such intrinsically vulnerable and unpredictable livelihood contexts? Sustainable graduation is not only about attaining a certain level of food consumption or cash income; it implies: (a) the capacity to generate adequate streams of future food and income; and (b) resilience against future shocks.
Related to this, FAC's Rachel Sabates-Wheeler and Stephen Devereux published: Cash Transfers and High Food Prices: Explaining outcomes on Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme, an ongoing and highly politicised debate concerning the relative efficacy of cash transfers versus food aid. This paper aims to shed light on this debate, drawing on new empirical evidence from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP).
Governing the Green Revolution: an online ‘Green Revolution Game’
FAC is hoping to develop a web-based, open-access version of the Green Revolution Game, which was developed originally as a board game in the early 1980s by Graham Chapman and Elizabeth Dowler.
The Green Revolution Game is a sophisticated simulation of the role of agrarian change in a traditional community of small farmers in India. In the early 1990s, Graham and several others produced a new version of the game for African agriculture called Africulture, which has more of a focus on migration and gender dynamics. Both games have been used successfully to train agricultural scientists and development professionals in a variety of settings. For a number of reasons, including the high retail price of the games, they did not sell particularly well and were never marketed widely, but they have the power to demonstrate the complexity of decision-making even in a simplified model of an agricultural society and help sensitise professionals to the impact of agrarian change on the livelihoods of small farmers.
Climate change: Research to Policy for Adaptation (RPA)
 This DFID/IDRC-funded project aims to increase the ability of CCAA programme partners in Eastern Africa to understand climate change adaptation policy processes at local and national scales, in order to maximise the use of research results in the formulation of adaptation policies in Africa. A total of eight case studies are currently undertaken by project teams in Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi. Among others, a goal of the case studies is to identify policy spaces integration of research findings into national policy contexts, and will form the basis for policy engagement strategies with each of the CCAA projects. Read More.
Land Deal Politics Initiative
 FAC is announcing a small grants programme as part of LDPI. Grants of up to US$2000 per study are available to successful applicants who wish to undertake original field research, carry out follow up fieldwork on an ongoing related initiative, or write up a paper based on research that is being/has been undertaken on any of the following themes (or combinations). The Future Agricultures Consortium will be supporting Africa-based research, with the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies coordinating the effort as part of the Consortium’s new ‘land and agriculture’ theme.
The initiative aims for a broad framework encompassing the political economy, political ecology and political sociology of land deals centred on food, biofuels, minerals and conservation. Working within the broad analytical lenses of these three fields, we will use as a general framework the four key questions in agrarian political economy: (i) who owns what? (ii) who does what? (iii) who gets what? and (iv) what do they do with the surplus wealth that has been created? We will also ask questions about social and political relations: ‘what do people do to each other?’, and questions about people-environment interactions: ‘how do changes in politics get shaped by dynamic ecologies, and vice versa?’ The aim is to ask a range of big picture questions through detailed in-depth case studies in a number of sites globally, focusing on the politics of land deals.
Pastoralism
 The new Pastoralism Theme contributes to critical debates on pastoralist responses to change. Reflection on the future of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa requires better understanding pastoralists’ own responses to change. There is considerable innovation happening in pastoralist areas but it is not documented or understood except by the people doing it. Many pastoralist innovations remain ‘hidden’, ‘under the radar’ and hence are poorly understood. The reasons why pastoralists are innovating, what they are doing, who is innovating and what are the outcomes of innovations is unknown. Pastoralists are not rejecting new technology; rather they are themselves innovators who create new institutions, tenure arrangements, and ways of social organisation and resource use to better manage new pressures as well as take advantage of opportunities.
A key challenge and question will be to examine how and in what ways formal and informal innovation systems can be brought together to support stronger pastoralist livelihoods in the future. The research under the Pastoralism is iterative and there will be regular engagement between the researchers, policy audiences in eastern Africa including NGOs, national governments and regional organisations such as COMESA and IGAD, as well as scientists in national and international agricultural research organisations.
In February 2010, a workshop was held in Nairobi with researchers from Kenya and Ethiopia, scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute, as well as representatives from pastoralist communities to discuss issues around pastoralist innovation systems and possible case studies of particular pastoralist innovations. The outcomes of the workshop included concept notes for research on pastoralist innovation systems in Kenya and Ethiopia and forward plans for research in 2010 and 2011. The researchers discussed detailed plans for fieldwork incorporating the views of pastoralist representatives. A concept note for the Pastoralism Theme was developed on the basis of the plans that were discussed at the workshop.
FAC soon to launch new web site
The FAC web site is undergoing revision and redesign. Already a pilot version of the new site is being tested at http://projecttesting.future-agricultures.org. The new site is built on the open source platform Joomla! and is expected to be officially launched in November. The site will feature a document management system that includes more than 200 FAC documents, presentations, images, reviews, etc.
 The website features:
- Our full collection of policy briefs, working papers, occasional papers, etc.
- RSS feeds from ELDIS, R4D, GFAR, IFPRI and others
- An events calendar of key African agriculture policy moments
- The collection of FAC e-debates
- A new FAC blog
- A new user comment system for articles, stories, publications, etc.
- A robust Search tool
- An RSS feeder to keep you up-to-date on new FAC materials
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