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	It pays to invest in agriculture by Kanayo Nwanze IRIN News Africa   Rome, 21 February 2008   The lack of political will to invest in agriculture has affected the chances of halving poverty and hunger in Africa by 2015, according to a senior United Nations official.   “Investment in agriculture, more than other sectors, provides four times the returns,” said Kanayo Nwanze, vice-president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a UN agency working to end rural poverty.   “There are some countries, like Ghana, which have made tremendous progress in the last seven years, and Uganda; we could have listed Kenya [prior to the current political crisis] which are likely to reach the MDG 1 [Millennium Development Goal to halve poverty and hunger by 2015].”   Three out of four poor people in developing countries – 883 million – lived in rural areas in 2002, according to the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, the World Bank’s flagship 2007 report on agriculture.   “Most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, directly or indirectly, so a more dynamic and inclusive agriculture could dramatically reduce rural poverty, helping to meet the Millennium Development Goal on poverty and hunger,” said the Bank’s first analysis of agriculture since 1982, which cited several success stories to illustrate its point that investing in food production can reduce poverty.   Africa has had some success, particularly in Ghana, where agriculture drove the poverty rate down from 51.7 percent in 1991/92 to 39.5 percent in 1998/99, and then to 28.5 percent. Between 2001 and 2005, agriculture grew at 5.7 percent a year, faster than the overall gross domestic product of 5.2 percent.   Since 2001, smallholder-based cocoa production has contributed about 30 percent of agricultural expansion, and “Ghana has also enjoyed strong growth in horticulture (almost 9 percent of total exports in 2006) driven mostly by pineapples,” the World Bank report noted. Uganda adopted economic policies that have resulted in a boom in coffee production.   Asia provides many more examples of effective policy decisions by governments boosting agricultural growth: in Vietnam, land reform, and trade and price liberalisation were implemented; in Bangladesh new technologies have brought rising rural farm and non-farm earnings, with lower prices for rice, the staple food.   “Agriculture was also the key to China’s massive and unprecedented reduction in rural poverty, and to India’s slower but still substantial long-term decline [in the number of rural poor],” the World Bank report pointed out.   Asia is reaping the fruits of the green revolution in the 1970s, while African leaders failed to tap into that momentum, Nwanze said. “Look at India – in the 1960s it was listed as a hopeless case, while in the same period not a single African country was listed as food insecure. Thirty years later India became a food exporter and look at Africa.”   Asian governments provided farmers with credit, price support, and input subsidies. “In sub-Saharan Africa, governments also intervened heavily in markets, but agriculture was taxed more than in other regions – and it still is,” the World Bank report commented.   Although Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe initiated maize-based revolutions using hybrid seed and fertiliser, the programmes have been difficult to sustain due to high marketing costs, fiscal drain and frequent weather shocks.   Besides reducing poverty, Africa needs to invest in agriculture, as demand for food is expected to reach $100 billion by 2015, double the level in 2000.   The report suggested improved price incentives, increasing the quality and quantity of public investment; greater efficiency in product markets; effective access to financial services, with reduced exposure to uninsured risks; enhancing the performance of producer organisations; and promoting innovation through science and technology. Agriculture should be made more sustainable and a provider of environmental services.   A recent joint report by the US-based Michigan State University and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) attempted to take a closer look at the challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Africa and why an “African green revolution” has not happened yet.   “While many farms in Asia were similarly very small at the time of their green revolutions, many of them enjoyed irrigation, higher returns to fertiliser that could be achieved with water control, and more than one cropping season,” said authors Thom Jayne, professor of international development at Michigan State University; David Mather, formerly at Michigan State University; and the World Bank’s Elliot Mghenyi.   “These factors substantially improved Asian land productivity, and partially relieved the severity of the land constraint among small farms. By contrast, the vast majority of African farms are dependent on rain and one crop season per year. “   Nwanze noted that “In Africa, unlike Asia, you have a very patchy farming system – it is not homogenous, like Asia.” The colonial legacy had left much of Africa with severe land inequalities between smallholders, large-scale or state-owned farms, highlighting the need for land reform.   The World Bank report also listed the need for infrastructure development, the lack of which has increased transaction costs and market risks, and investment in fertilisers and irrigation.   About 75 percent of the farmland in Africa is affected by severe mining of soil nutrients, and in sub-Saharan Africa only four percent of crop area is irrigated, a fraction of that in Asia.   A lack of investment in research and development is another obstacle. The main green revolution cereals in Asia were wheat and rice, largely irrigated; sub-Saharan Africa uses a wide range of farming systems and a broad number of staples. Improved varieties for many different crops would be needed to increase productivity.   Technologies developed in other parts of the world were often not directly transferable, and Africa-specific technologies would be required to improve the region’s agricultural productivity.
	Companies should take proactive steps to avoid committing human rights abuses by Human Rights Watch USA   February 19, 2008   People in countries across the world are regularly harmed when businesses fail to respect basic human rights, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law.   The clear evidence of widespread abuse and government inaction detailed in the report shows that global standards are needed to ensure that corporate conduct respects internationally recognized human rights.   “Many companies mistakenly assume that human rights aren’t their problem and don’t think they will ever be implicated in serious abuses,” said Lisa Misol, senior researcher on business and human rights at Human Rights Watch and the report’s primary author. “But the risks are greater than they think. Ensuring respect for fundamental rights is everyone’s business.”   The 53-page report, “On the Margins of Profit: Rights at Risk in the Global Economy,” was jointly prepared by Human Rights Watch and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. It illustrates how everyday business decisions have significant implications for the human rights of workers, local communities, suppliers, and consumers.   Drawing on more than a decade of research and reporting by Human Rights Watch, the report presents dozens of examples that detail the ways in which a wide variety of industries have an impact upon the whole spectrum of human rights around the globe.   Among its main findings, the report finds that:   Any type of business can be implicated in human rights abuses, not only those that have received the most attention like companies in the apparel-manufacturing and extractive industries. Bars, pubs and clubs in several southern African countries, for example, have openly discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation, while employers in the Dominican Republic’s tourism industry have routinely subjected women workers to involuntary HIV testing, in violation of their rights to bodily integrity, nondiscrimination, and privacy.   Companies can have a harmful impact on many different kinds of rights beyond labor rights. Pulp and paper companies in Indonesia that cut down vast forests affected the ability of local communities to seek a livelihood and adequate standard of living, as well as the cultural and land rights of indigenous communities in the region. When community members attempted to directly challenge company practices, they often faced brutal company-sponsored militias that used intimidation tactics, beat several people, destroyed and stole property, and detained villagers in an effort to silence them. These abuses impeded, among other rights, the villagers’ rights to property, to be free from arbitrary detention, and to exercise their freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.   Companies can be implicated in abuses indirectly through their ties to third parties who carry out the abuse. A Swiss gold refiner for years purchased gold that originated in a conflict zone in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where a murderous armed group committed atrocities on a systematic basis. The proceeds from this trade provided local warlords in DRC with the ability to perpetuate their reign of terror on local villagers.   Governments share responsibility for corporate misconduct since they frequently neglect to adopt and enforce appropriate laws to protect people from abuses by companies. Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the United States, has relentlessly thwarted the right of its US workers to form and join trade unions at its 4,000 US stores. US labor laws are so weak that Wal-Mart and other companies can violate their employees’ basic rights in the US with virtual impunity.   Victims of abuses involving businesses are often unable to obtain meaningful redress and frequently face retaliation when they stand up to powerful companies. When the now-defunct Enron Corporation decided to build a massive power plant in India, the company was unresponsive to villagers’ concerns that the project encroached on their land and diverted scarce water resources.   As criticism of the project grew amidst allegations of corruption, the company and local authorities retaliated against the project’s critics by violently suppressing their peaceful protests.   This report builds a factual foundation to support calls for the creation of a widely applicable, overarching set of standards for all businesses, regardless of where and how they operate.   There is no common, widely agreed benchmark for business conduct that provides clear rules to prevent business-related human rights abuses and provide adequate remedies and reparation when they occur. Instead, existing corporate social responsibility initiatives offer a patchwork of many different standards that address select human rights, select companies or industries, or select countries or situations.   “The human cost of making a profit can be profound,” said Professor Smita Narula, faculty director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. “Governments must ensure meaningful redress for victims and should develop global rules to make sure companies respect human rights, no matter where they operate.”   Human Rights Watch and the CHRGJ called on governments to work together to develop clear standards governing business conduct and to ensure national authorities adequately regulate companies and hold responsible those who commit abuses. This should result in a UN declaration or other international instrument agreed by governments that would define global standards for business conduct as well as clarify the role of governments and provide access to justice for those affected by misconduct.   Companies should take proactive steps to avoid committing abuses. Investors, financiers and consumers should insist that the companies they support adopt strong human rights policies and practices and put in place monitoring to ensure compliance, said Human Rights Watch and the CHRGJ.   * Visit the link below to access the report. Visit the related web page
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