View previous stories
	How the poor are coping with higher food and fuel prices by Mark Tran Guardian News   When the global financial crisis struck in 2008, the World Bank''s social development unit and the Institute of Development Studies in the UK set out to examine in "real time" how around 3,000 people in 17 developing countries coped with the shock of higher food and fuel prices.   The joint project has resulted in a book, Living Through Crises. The book, published last week, covers eight countries – including Bangladesh, Cambodia and Kenya – and research is leavened with lots of voices from the ground.   In a foreward to the book, Prof Robert Chambers says it covers what is so often missing in the development discourse: "The personal and emotional cost, the stress, the exhaustion, the tension within families, and the agony of the cruel choices that poorer people at the margins are forced to make."   As one Cambodian villager said: "My children dropped out of school a few months ago. I did not want them to stop but they stopped themselves. Now they go out to collect wild mushrooms and morning glory to sell to help the family."   The researchers found a common set of responses from interviewees. The adults worked for longer hours, ate less and bought cheaper and less nutritious food, reluctantly took their children out of school. Families skipped medical treatment, sold off assets such as animals, and sank deeper into poverty. Women were particularly hard-hit as they continued to bear the burden of household responsibilities despite experiencing long hours in paid work.   An important finding was that the analysis of macroeconomic indicators alone can be misleading. In particular, the resumption of GDP growth in late 2009 and 2010 in many developing countries gave optimism to governments and donors that the impacts of the crises were relatively short-lived and that the poor were not strongly affected.   However, even temporary shocks to the formal economy have long-lasting impacts. The reason is that the initial impact – incurring debt, foregoing healthcare – is followed up by a second round of negative impacts: sale of assets and more competition in the informal sector.   "In many surveyed countries, poor people were living through this second round of negative impacts at the same time the national economies were showing strong signs of economic recovery," the study said.   Three years of compounded crises have meant that households across east Asia lost their land or houses to creditors while smallholders in rural Kenya have become impoverished.   The study found that in all eight countries, the informal safety net – families, friends, neighbours, community groups – played a key role. Often such networks were the only support for the poor. In Cambodia, construction and garment workers pooled money or rice sent from villages and cooked and ate together in large groups. In Senegal, small traders shared market spaces.   "Informal safety nets provided by relatives, friends, and community and religious organisations were important for coping everywhere. Even though the amount of support through informal safety nets was inadequate relative to the large and growing need, it was often the only source of support available," said the study.   The case studies lead inexorably to one conclusion: the need for more effective and more generous social protection systems. In fact, in the countries with pre-existing social protection schemes – formerly socialist states such as Kazakhstan and Serbia – poor people were better protected in comparison with countries that lacked such schemes.   Meanwhile, existing social assistance programmes suffered from several weaknesses: not generous enough, poorly targeted and, in some cases, an inability to sustain pre-crisis initiatives because of budgetary pressure.   Current social protection programmes that tend to focus on modest cash transfers should be widened, the study said. It noted the value of free or subsidised health and education programmes in protecting the poor during the worst of the crises.   Hossain, one of the study''s editors, argues that it pays to have a strong safety net in the long run. "Whenever I talk to policymakers about this I always say, ''beware the false economies of the woman-powered resilience''. It costs more in the medium-term not to deliver better social protection. And social protection can be better designed – both to better support the vulnerable and to work with people''s coping strategies. Supporting people so that they don''t pursue damaging coping strategies is good value for money."
	Empowering women in agriculture by Oxfam Grow Campaign   In spite of the old adage “don’t count your chickens, before they hatch,” these days we take chickens for granted. Walk into any supermarket in European and North American cities and increasingly across the developing world and you will find rows of them in their plastic packaging. A generation or two ago, chickens were a luxury item; nowadays, a chicken costs less than an hours’ minimum wage of a UK worker ($9.52).   For rural women in many parts of Africa, three quarters of whom survive on less than $1 a day, chickens cannot be taken for granted; they are a vital source of livelihood.   Chickens are low maintenance and can be reared at home where women are juggling a multitude of other tasks and responsibilities: looking after small children, pounding and sifting grains, cooking, vegetable growing, collecting water and fuel wood.   Chickens can be sold easily for cash when needed to cover basic household needs such as medicines or school fees.   They are one of few household possessions over which women can easily keep control. They provide eggs as well as meat: vital sources of protein for the family.   Dr. Sheila Ommeh, a ‘chicken geneticist’from Kenya visiting the UK on International Women’s Day, well understands the importance of chickens to rural women.   When disease wiped out the chickens in her natal village, it usually meant no school. Having managed against the odds to secure a good education herself she has gone on to be a highly trained scientist, she is now working with African women farmers to promote chicken breeds that are resistant to disease and more productive.   Oxfam understands the importance of chickens to rural women but also that, as urban populations grow in Africa, the demand for chickens is increasing. In Tanzania we support women alongside men to organize to produce and market chickens. We provide support to access vaccinations, build marketing centers and training. Sales of poultry are increasing and so are incomes.   There are wider benefits: school attendance is increasing and women report a decline in violence as their contribution to the family is recognized.   As well as assisting poor women chicken farmers in Tanzania, we are also supporting women’s involvement in marketing vegetables and rice. Honey in Ethiopia. Milk in Colombia. Shea butter in Mali.   Our enterprise development programmes seek to promote ‘women’s economic leadership’. Through such programs supporting women to have more say in more decisions and more benefits from activities carried out alongside men.   For Oxfam,‘women’s economic leadership’ means listening to and supporting women to identify where there are growing market opportunities. It means women farmers selling the produce they grow on their own terms, for a reasonable price. It means women farmers playing a leading role in organizations which help them market their produce, and deciding how the money earned is used. And having access to new technologies which enable them to reduce their workload, learn new skills, or move into more profitable activities.   And being able to secure finance to invest in their farms and businesses, without fear that their land, or equipment will be taken away. And, ultimately, being recognized in their communities on equal terms with men.   Through our GROW campaign we are working with farmers and women’s networks to ensure that governments and companies invest in small scale agriculture in ways that benefit women. And that the rights of rural women are strengthened, including their rights to land, basic services, and their rights to have a say in their own future.   But ultimately it is the vision and perseverance of African rural women and the collective efforts of organized rural women which will ensure lasting change. Visit the related web page
	View more stories