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	Purchase for Progress programme offers smallholder farmers new opportunities by World Food Programme   “We are no longer subsistence farmers – we are now simply farmers! Now, we do business," says Juana de los Angeles de Cabrera, a P4P farmer from El Salvador.   As the world’s largest humanitarian agency, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is a major buyer of staple food. In 2010, WFP bought US$1.25 billion worth of food – more than 80 percent of this in developing countries. With the Purchase the Progress (P4P) initiative, WFP is taking this one step further. P4P uses WFP’s purchasing power and its expertise in logistics and food quality to offer smallholder farmers opportunities to access agricultural markets, to become competitive players in those markets and thus to improve their lives.   The five-year pilot initiative links WFP’s demand for staple food in 21 countries with the expertise of a host of partners who support farmers to produce food surpluses and sell them at a fair price.   By 2013, at least half a million smallholder farmers will have increased and improved their agricultural production and earnings. By raising farmers’ incomes, P4P turns WFP’s local procurement into a vital tool to address hunger.   Poor farming families must be empowered if we are to be successful in the global fight against hunger and poverty, said Bill Gates in his keynote address at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in May, capturing a theme that surfaced repeatedly throughout this high-profile event.   The Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation told the story of Odetta, a Rwandan single mother of two who, like three-quarters of the world’s poorest, gets her food and income from farming a small plot of land. Through WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme, which provided key training and bought her crops, Odetta has more than quadrupled her income. The woman farmer now firmly believes that “farming is wealth,” said Mr Gates.   As of July 2011, WFP has contracted to buy over 187,000 tons of food under P4P. When WFP receives the food, the agency uses it mostly for food assistance programmes within the same country – but it also increasingly looks for opportunities to buy from smallholders for aid programmes in neighbouring countries.   Of the 21 P4P pilot countries, 20 have now bought food using P4P’s pro-smallholder program. Some 187,000 tons was contracted by WFP.   Food purchased through P4P is so far mostly used for WFP operations within the same country. The food bought from smallholder farmers is distributed in programmes such as school feeding, food-for-work, nutrition interventions or as rations for refugees. However, WFP is also looking at opportunities to meet its regional needs with pro-smallholder purchases.   In some cases, commodities have already been purchased under P4P and exported to a neighbouring country for a WFP operation.   For example in 2010, WFP bought over 6,500 tons of maize and other commodities through the Zambian Commodity Exchange for its operations in DRC and another 1,400 tons of food for its food assistance operations in Zimbabwe. Also in 2010, WFP bought 1,000 tons of rice for its emergency operation in Niger from the Malian farmers’ organisation Faso Jigi, followed by a next purchase of 2,000 tons of rice for the emergency operation in Côte D"Ivoire in 2011.   In 2011, WFP purchased 3,775 tons of food through the Agricultural Commodity Exchange for Africa (ACE) in Malawi for its operations in Mozambique. Visit the related web page
	Protecting the right to food by Olivier De Schutter UN independent expert on the right to food   While figures differ somewhat, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that at least 925 million people around the globe, almost one person in seven, go to bed hungry every night.   Hunger and malnutrition remain key global challenges, with many Governments struggling to address the needs of their populations and to meet the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015.   “Fighting hunger and malnutrition is not merely a humanitarian cause but rather a matter of empowering people to claim their rights and to hold Governments accountable,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur expert on the right to food, at a recent expert summit held in Nairobi, Kenya.   What steps must Governments take to secure the right to food in their countries? How well are countries in Eastern and Southern Africa proceeding along this path, and how can the best practices be shared? These were the questions underpinning the right to food consultation.   More than 45 food experts, parliamentarians, human rights institutions, policy-makers, food producers organizations and NGOs from Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe took part in the meeting organized by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).   “Political will, civil society participation and empowerment, and the establishment of monitoring mechanisms are key elements of any strategy against hunger,” said Mr De Schutter.   In order to meet their domestic obligations regarding the right to food, States should introduce domestic legal protections for this right in national constitutions and laws. Constitutional and broader legal protection of the right to food can often be used to challenge laws and practices that lead to violations of the right to food.   “Several countries in the region, including Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia, have succeeded in or are in the process of adopting constitutional protections, laws, and national strategies, policies and programmes to strengthen the protection of the right to food,” he said.   “South Africa has led the way with the inclusion of the right to food in its post-apartheid Constitution”. “More recently this right was included in the Kenyan Constitution approved by a popular referendum in 2010.”   Zambia may join Kenya and South Africa by inserting the right to food in a new constitution currently under review while Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda have draft laws waiting for adoption by their respective Parliaments. National food policies are also in place in several countries, including Tanzania.   “People are hungry not because there is too little food: they are hungry because they are economically marginalized and politically powerless,” said De Schutter.   “Right to Food regional expert meetings involving all relevant actors serve to share best practices and to help countries strengthen laws and policies to ensure that everyone has access to adequate food.”   The right to food is a human right recognized under international law, which protects the rights of all human beings to feed themselves in dignity, either by producing their food or by purchasing it.   The right to food is recognized under Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and under Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economics, social and Cultural Rights and Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, among other international human rights treaties.   In a recent statement, Mr De Schutter reminded States that the right to food “cannot be reduced to a right not to starve.” It is an inclusive right to an “adequate diet providing all the nutritional elements an individual requires to live a healthy and active life, and the means to access them.”   He further stressed that a large number of people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.   Vitamin A deficiency affects at least 100 million children, limiting their growth, weakening their immunity and, in cases of acute deficiency, leading to blindness and increased mortality.   Between four and five billion people suffer from iron deficiency, including half of the pregnant women and children under 5 in developing countries, and an estimated two billion are anaemic.   Iron deficiency leads children to perform less well in schools and adults to be less productive. In addition, about 30 per cent of households in the developing world do not have access to iodized salt, and children born to highly iodine-deficient mothers are likely to experience learning disabilities. Visit the related web page
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