Mr. Harmon Returns from One Place to Another
Sustainable Agriculture: Food Is Security
February 13, 2010
Originally published at AshokaTech.
Joseph Sekiku / netnotwired, CC license
The panel The Ever Green Revolution: Trends in Agriculture featured Amitabha Sadangi, Tarcio Handel, and Ashoka-Lemelson fellows Joseph Sekiku and Muthu Velayutham. One of the key questions in the discussion was how entrepreneurs can empower farmers who may only be able to feed their families to develop their farms into sustainable businesses.
Amitabha is the CEO of International Development Enterprises India (IDEI), an organization that provides affordable technologies for poor families in India. In his portion of the panel, Amitabha stressed that problems facing farmers all have their roots in the lack of readily available, clean water. "Water is scarce in most parts of the country and most parts of the world," he said.
Tarcio discussed the distinction between farming to feed one's family and farming as a business. His organization, Agencia Mandalla DHSA, is committed to building the capacity of rural farmers in Brazil. He said that the goal of social enterprise in agriculture should be to help farmers adopt practices that will produce more good crops — first to feed their families and then for a profit. "We need 2300 caloriess per day to keep our bodies functioning," he said. "The first market is the family market." He told us that through his organization, families have gone from making nothing to making 1200 dollars a month.
Joseph educates farmers in Tanzania on adopting more sustainable, less expensive, and less environmentally costly practices. He explained that through a community radio station, he's able to provide information on sustainable, cost-effective farming. Farmers can send questions by SMS message and he and his group research and broadcast the answers. The system gives a large number of people access to a wealth of information for a small cost.
Everyone agreed that due to environmental and market problems, it's hard to make a living farming today, but that those same issues make farming more important today than it's ever been. "Food is security," Joseph said. "Places where food is lacking are the most dangerous. There are so many people in the world today who can't eat."
