IFAD social reporting blog

Hace unas semanas viajé a México. Antes de ir al aeropuerto para volver a casa pasé por CEPAL y un buen amigo y colega me mostró un libro que recién había recibido: Peasant poverty and persistence in the 21st century: theories, debates, realities and policies. Me dijo “dale una hojeada, te va a interesar”, y si querés te consigo una copia. En realidad terminó prestándome la suya. Haciendo escala en Frankfurt le mando un Whatsapp y le digo “¡este libro es un bombazo!”. De allí en adelante nos dimos a la tarea de organizar un conversatorio con uno de los autores, Julio Boltvinik.

No conocía personalmente a Boltvinik, pero su nombre y sus ideas me eran familiares desde el año 2002 cuando la red de las universidades jesuitas de América Latina (AUSJAL) decidió diseñar e impartir el primer curso continental sobre pobreza. Mente aguda y muy comprometida con el tema, que habla transmitiendo pasión y sentido de urgencia.

La publicación trata de dar respuesta a dos preguntas: ¿por qué todavía hay campesinos en el mundo? y ¿por qué son pobres? De hecho, haciendo referencia al Reporte de Pobreza Rural 2011 del FIDA, el cual estima en aproximadamente en mil millones el número de personas pobres que viven en el medio rural, sugiere que las metodologías utilizadas para la medición de la pobreza subestiman el fenómeno.

Desde allí quedé enganchado y a medida que avanzaba pensaba en la enorme necesidad que tenemos de hablar de pobreza y campesinos. Pensaba en América Latina, región dizque mayoritariamente urbana, con niveles de pobreza que se han estancado en los últimos años, y con grandes, enormes, deficiencias en las instituciones que atienden la agricultura y a las personas que habitan el espacio rural. Pensaba en esos países donde casi se ha maldecido la palabra campesino, y la ha arrinconado en la esquina de términos peyorativos y politizados, que despiertan reacciones tan viscerales como irracionales.

¡Bien que nos caería reabrir esa conversación! Darle contenido y tratar de entender a ese sujeto tan vilipendiado como mitificado. Sujeto que ha quedado enterrado bajo eso que podríamos llamar los silencios de la ruralidad: el silencio narrativo, pues sabemos de sobra que la manera más efectiva de restarle importancia a algo es ignorarlo, dejar de hablar de ello, dejar de generar estadísticas y medirlo, hacer como que no existe. Y el silencio institucional, que siempre es el espejo operacional de una narrativa, de un discurso político y social que ignora y mira convenientemente hacia otra parte.

La tesis central de la publicación gravita alrededor de la estacionalidad agrícola y las consecuencias que tiene sobre las condiciones de vida del campesino. Es decir, el ciclo de un cultivo, que solamente demanda trabajo por una parte del año, obligándolo a buscar formas de generar ingresos complementarios en otras actividades. Y de la manera en que lo logra se derivan explicaciones de su pobreza pero también de su supervivencia a lo largo del tiempo, a lo largo de la historia. Se trata entonces de entender y proponer formas para resolver la aparente contradicción entre la lógica del mercado, que tiende a organizarse en formas de producción homogéneas y continuas, y las formas de vida del campesino, que son diversas por naturaleza.

Como bien lo describe Armando Bartra, otro de los autores del libro, “(…) los mesoamericanos no sembramos maíz, creamos milpas. Son cosas diferentes. El maíz es una planta y la milpa un estilo de vida. El maíz plantado solo es algo monótono, mientras que la milpa es variedad: en ella, el maíz, los frijoles, los guisantes, las habas, la calabaza, el chile, las peras vegetales, los tomates silvestres, el amaranto, los árboles frutales, el nopal, y la variada fauna que los acompaña, todos se entremezclan. (...) Ellos en climas fríos producen sus alimentos en plantaciones homogéneas mientras que nosotros, cuando nos dejan continuar nuestra vocación agroecológica, lo cosechamos en jardines barrocos.”

En tiempos de alta volatilidad climática y económica es muy importante recuperar perspectiva en la comprensión del campesino, sus formas de vida y su papel en el desarrollo. No hacerlo es seguir insistiendo en un relato incompleto, que ignora o esconde la realidad de una parte importante de Latinoamericana: pobre, rural, y muy desigual.

By Tomás Ricardo Rosada Villamar, Regional Economist in the Latina America and the Caribbean Division at IFAD

I did not know Mr. Boltvinik personally, but his name and ideas have been familiar to me since 2002 when the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AUSJAL) decided to design and offer the first continental course on poverty. Mr. Boltvinik has a keen mind and is very committed to the subject, which speaks of his passion and sense of urgency.

In his book, he attempts to answer two questions: why are there still peasants in the world, and why are they poor. In fact, referring to IFAD's Rural Poverty Report 2011 -- which estimates the number of poor people living in rural areas at around one billion -- the author suggests that the methodologies used to measure poverty underestimate the phenomenon.

I was hooked from that moment and, as I went on, I thought about how important it is for us to talk about poverty and peasants. I was thinking of Latin America, a region that is supposedly mostly urban, with levels of poverty that have stagnated in recent years and with extremely weak institutions serving agriculture and people living in rural areas. I thought of those countries where the word campesino, like “peasant” in English, has been relegated to the list of derogatory and politicized terms that meet with visceral and irrational reactions, if it has not been banned completely.

How beneficial it could be to reopen that discussion! We should analyse and try to understand the reality of this figure that has been both vilified and mythologized, a figure that has been buried under what we could call the silence of rurality: a narrative silence, because we know full well that the most effective way to downplay something is to ignore it, to stop talking about it, to stop generating statistics or measuring it, and to act as if it does not exist. And then there is the institutional silence, which is the operational equivalent to the narrative silence, a political and social discourse that also ignores it and turns a blind eye.

The central thesis of this publication centres around the seasonality of agricultural activities and its consequences for peasants’ living conditions; in other words, a crop cycle that only requires work for a part of the year and, thus, forces peasants to look for ways to generate a complementary income in other activities. The strategies used to achieve this provide some explanations of both their poverty and their survival over time. It then becomes a question of understanding and proposing ways to solve the apparent contradiction between the logic of the market, which tends to be organized in homogeneous and continuous forms of production, and the peasant's way of life, which is diverse by nature.

As described by Armando Bartra, another of the book’s authors “(...) Mesoamericans do not sow corn, we create milpas. These are different things because maize is a plant and the milpa, a lifestyle: the milpa is the matrix of Mesoamerican civilization. Planted alone, maize is monotony, while the milpa is variety: in it, maize, beans, peas, broad beans, squash, chilli, vegetable pears, wild tomatoes, amaranth, fruit trees, nopal, century plants and the varied fauna that accompany them all intermingle. (...) In cold climates they produce their food in homogeneous plantations whereas we, when they allow us to continue our agro-ecological vocation, harvest them in baroque gardens.”

In times of high climatic and economic volatility, it is very important to regain a perspective on the peasants' understanding, their way of life and their role in development. Failing to do so means continuing to insist on an incomplete narrative that ignores or hides the reality of an important side of Latin America: poor, rural and very unequal. ​

Follow the book presentation on 1 June from 14:00 to 17:30 (Rome time).

By Vivienne Likhanga and IFAD Sudan Country Office  

Nadia with her children in the little farmyard

‘Eww! Yucky!’ the kid shrieked, jumping to avoid an earthworm. His friends laughed at him.

From plastic bags to proper packaging with labels, Niue’s popular Lupe Niue-brand Maholi banana chips has come a long way, and is now a hit with locals and tourists alike.

The European Union-funded Increasing Agricultural Commodity Trade (IACT) project, implemented by the Pacific Community, with additional support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), transformed what was once a local savoury into an internationally-marketable product.

It all started in a Tongan woman’s humble kitchen. The woman was struggling to raise her four children all on her own. Her daughter, Feofaaki Fou, watched her mother fry banana chips and pack them in plastic bags day in and day out. The banana chips, which the woman sold at the local market, were a family lifeline – providing just enough to put food on the table and send Feo and her three siblings to school.

School was tough on Feo; she shut herself away, willing the school years to fly by, so she could reinvent herself somewhere else and write a new story for her life. The next chapter would not include banana chips – or so she thought.

For a time Feo worked at Niue’s hospital caring for the elderly, but was unable to make ends meet. ‘I had a connection with my patients and fell in love with my job, but I struggled with the pay’, she said. ‘Mum was getting sickly too, and it struck me right there and then – I could continue what Mum started! I’d watched her many times and all this information was just there at the back of my head where I had pushed it to, in my search for what I thought would be a better job, away from the house.’

Feo decided to pursue the family business, and though she improved on her mother’s packaging, she continued to fry the chips at home.

‘With better packaging I was able to place the chips in supermarkets and the demand grew.’

To expand her market base, there was a need for proper processing facilities in order to obtain health and safety certifications. Funding from the EU, IFAD, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and the Pacific Organic and Ethical Trade Community, allowed Feo to transform her humble start-up into a successful business. With the injection of financial support and her husband’s contractor skills, she was able to build a new kitchen and boost production levels significantly.

‘I’ve also been able to expand to the tourist market and in coffee shops around the island’, Feo said. However, with growing demand, the availability of raw materials has increasingly become a challenge. Sixty bags of chips requires ten kilograms of raw banana.

‘I used to buy [bananas] at NZD 30 a bundle, but as the chips became popular, my suppliers pushed up their prices to NZD 70,’ she said.

In response, Feo has started a banana plantation of 300 trees with the hope it will buffer a shortfall in supply from farmers. Feo is keen to see young farmers start up banana plantations, especially through an organic system.

‘The first day I went to the market to sell my banana chips, I cried because I was so ashamed; and the way [the other vendors] looked at me – I could feel what they thought of me’, Feo recalls. ‘But that day I went home with NZD 1500 in my hands from selling banana chips and jewellery. … I still felt the same the next time I went to the market, but I started to question my feelings seeing that I made so much money’, she added.

Feo was 22-years-old then. Now at 27 she is proud to have built a thriving business from farming, and believes other young Niueans can also benefit from working hard and using the fruits of the land.

‘It was hard but … the funding support has made all the difference … We had the business ideas but it [took] a bit of capital and support to lift us to the next level … and [now] we want to empower others.’


This blog was originally posted on POETcom website.

By Messias Alfredo Macuiane, Monitoring and evaluation officer, ProAqua project

Rita Dickson, a fish farmer from Mucuti, Sussundenda district explaining her vision and how her two children will help her to build a better house through crop production and fish farming. Picture taken by Wendy Lowe.