In countries that invest little in agriculture there is generally
little scaling up. Investments are generally undertaken in small projects, with small amounts of donor aid and small portions of public sector budgets allocated to agriculture. Thus, very rarely are the investments at a sufficient scale to have an impact on large numbers of people. This situation, when combined with poor policy environments, leads to low agricultural growth and contributes to the hunger and rural poverty problem characteristic of these countries.
How the aid community participates in scaling up
Though donors are generally not as critical for scaling up as are developing country governments, they can be helpful—or harmful— to this agenda. The reason that the donors have often been harmful is, first, that there are so many of them. According to research by the Brookings Institution, the aid business is generally characterized by numerous small projects. Official aid data provides information on 925,000 projects covering 327 donor agencies since 1946, with around 100,000 active projects in any given recent year. An example is Ethiopia, where the World Bank documented 20 donors supporting 100 agricultural projects in 2005. This fragmented aid, when placed in a poor policy environment, often has little to show in terms of impact on significant numbers of people or agricultural growth rates. Creating aid-financed projects in support of larger government programs, or convincing governments and other donors to scale up successful projects, is the direction shown to be successful. In the wake of the recent global food crisis, this is beginning
to happen. At the G8 summit in L’Aquila in 2009, governments from North and South committed themselves to ratcheting up investments in and donor funding for agriculture, improving policies, and forging public-private partnerships at the country level and globally. Specific actions include
• the commitment by donors to dedicate $20 billion to this cause;
• the establishment of new facilities, such as the Global Agricultural and Food Security Program;
• the commitment to regionally focused public-private alliances such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and the Coalition for African Rice Development, which focuses on scaling up rice value chains;
• the increase in funding for agriculture and rural development by IFAD and other donor agencies; and
• the creation of the Council for Food Security and the Comprehensive Framework of Action, with its High Level Task Force.
In addition, improved sector investment planning and
harmonized implementation in countries have been reinvigorated under initiatives such as the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program. Most of these initiatives are at an early stage, and most of the L’Aquila aid pledges have not been forthcoming, so results are not yet apparent. However, donors and countries are beginning to recognize the importance of scaling up. For example, during the 9th Replenishment Consultation of IFAD, which concluded in December 2011, all members enthusiastically endorsed a scaling-up agenda.
Conclusion
There is clear evidence that where agriculture contributes a significant portion of gross domestic product, rapid agricultural growth is an effective tool for generating overall economic growth and reducing poverty. There is also good evidence about the types of private and public investment and policy that stimulate agricultural growth. The contrary is also true: there are policies and investments (massive fertilizer subsidies, export restrictions, and severe farm price controls) that inhibit agricultural growth or have negative impacts on natural resources, making agriculture less sustainable. Poor governance and civil unrest also curtail agricultural growth; good governance and stability help it. Public investment programs, supported by aid, in large-scale agricultural programs focused on what works can generate very high agricultural growth rates, in turn contributing to poverty reduction. But operating at scale with substantial resources is no panacea. If policies are not enabling, or governance is bad, big programs at scale are much less likely to work. Scaling up successful projects and policies is effective in generating growth and poverty reduction, but more readily so in countries with good policy environments and under reasonably good governance regimes. Brazil, China, Laos, Morocco, and Vietnam, and more recently Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, and Peru provide good models.
For further reading: S. Benin, A. Kennedy, M. Lambert, and L. McBride, Monitoring African Agricultural Development Processes and Performance: A Comparative Analysis. ReSAKSS Africa-Wide Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) 2010 (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2011); International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), “Experiencias Innovadoras en los Proyectos del FIDA en la República del Perú, Evaluación Temática.” Rome: 2004; N. Islam, “Foreign Aid to Agriculture: Review of Facts and Analysis.” IFPRI Discussion Paper 1053, Washington, DC: 2011, based on OECD DAC data World Bank, Agriculture for Development: World Development Report 2008 (Washington,
DC: 2007).
Kevin Cleaver (
k.cleaver@
ifad.org) is associate vice president, Programs, International Fund for Agricultural Development. Contributions to this brief by Johannes Linn, David Nabarro, Rodney Cooke, Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Shyam Khadka, Cheikh Sourang, and Sara Bridges are acknowledged.
www.ifpri.org
Copyright © 2012 International Food Policy Research Institute. All rights reserved. Contact
ifpri-copyright@cgiar.org for permission to republish.
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