Country: Benin

Benin: Rural communities recover peasant seeds to improve nutrition and livelihoods

Posted on by fredsaxo

But efforts to recover peasant seed systems are improving the livelihoods of peasants in a remote northern area.

“It’s thanks to the cowpea that this year my children did not have to work in the fields,” says Niamy Djamou, a peasant in the northern village of Tora. “When the famine [month of food shortage] came I did not have maize or anything … If we did not have the cowpea the famine would have really affected our family.”

 

Government programs aim to increase incomes in rural communities, yet many families have faced food shortages and malnutrition, especially in years of low harvests. The uptake of industrial seeds has resulted in the abandoning of peasants’ own seeds of traditional local crops. Many families found themselves in a situation where they had to buy their seeds every year as well as fertilizers and pesticides that are necessary to grow the hybrid, high-yielding varieties – instead of recycling their own seeds.

Organisation Rurale pour une Agriculture Durable (ORAD) has supported the villagers of Tora to recover their peasant seeds from traditional crops like sorgo and cowpea. These seeds can be re-sown every year and are constantly adapted to changing conditions, which is becoming increasingly important in the context of the impacts of climate change. Most of the villagers are peasant farmers. Selecting and re-sowing their seeds makes families more independent as they no longer have to buy seeds every year. Most importantly, recovering peasant seeds of traditional local crops has ensured sufficient food and improved nutrition for the families of Tora.

“Last year, when some of us started to grow cowpea again, people said ‘what will that bring?’ But this year, we saw the benefits,” says Euphrasie. “When the month of famine came, those who had grown cowpea had food to feed their families. Some of them even had enough to sell to others. This year we will all grow cowpea so that we can eat and have some income.”

ORAD and communities also have initiated a dialogue with mayors and other local authorities in order to make them aware of the benefits of peasant seed systems for the right to food and nutrition and rural development. Speaking with authorities is also important for local peasants because of a new threat: Benin’s neighboring country Nigeria has recently authorized field trials of genetically modified (GM) cowpea. This has raised serious concerns that GM seeds could cross the border and contaminate rural communities’ fields and seeds.

Peasants and their organizations are asking the Benin authorities to protect and support peasant seed systems and put in place policies that support agroecology.

Securing communal lands and forests

Posted on by fredsaxo

Since October 2014, FIAN International, together with African CSOs academic and non-profit research institutions have been inquiring into  the conditions under which the CFS/FAO Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) can serve to increase bottom-up accountability amidst the pressures of the  global rush for land.  Current approaches are changing the use of land and water from small-scale, labor-intensive uses like peasant farming for household consumption and local markets, toward large-scale, capital-intensive uses such as industrial monocultures linked to metropolitan areas and foreign markets.

Last week, the findings were presented to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to the Land Policy Initiative of the African Union, the African Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa (LPI-UNECA) and to the regional office of FAO. Held in Abuja, the dialogue which followed focused on what ECOWAS can do to support efforts of bottom-up accountability across West Africa, particularly in the framework of the Land Policy Initiative of the African Union and of the implementation of the CFS VGGT.

During the three years of the participatory action research, several African NGOs involved in the project, namely National Coordination of Peasant Organizations of Mali and the Malian Convergence against Land Grabbing (CNOP-CMAT), Environmental Rights Action (ERA)/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, were able to successfully anchor their community organizing, actions and deepening reflections on the VGGT to hold local officials and transnational companies accountable in Large Scale Land Acquisition (LSLA) deals.

The research found that LSLAs impacted women and men differently. Forced evictions, land dispossessions, inadequate compensation for livelihoods and biodiversity losses, environmental degradation, as well as other LSLA related activities, resulted in landlessness or limited access to land. This negatively impacted social cohesion and peace and increased the burden of household food provision on the shoulders of women, as the latter sometimes had to; take full responsibility of malnourished kids, as well as ensure that there was food on the family table. Considering this finding and its implication for food security/sovereignty within the affected communities, it is important to engage with ECOWAS in the context of its ’Zero Hunger Initiative‘ which will work at local level with family farmers, at national level with governments and civil society and at regional level with ECOWAS countries for the promotion and realization of the right to food in the region.

As noted by Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director of ERA small scale farmers “should be supported to assert their communal land rights to farmlands in order to promote staple food production rather than the promotion of transnational corporations such as Wilmar-PZ involved in land grabbing for palm oil that is mainly for export”.  “Since Africa can feed herself, therefore, we must promote a culture of food crops for food to feed the teeming population rather than fuels for machines and cars. Thus, expanding the frontiers for the African Convergence for food will be essential to support,” he stressed.

Commenting on empowering local communities, Ibrahim Coulibaly, President of CNOP-CMAT , noted:  “we must work to put development parameters in the hands of local people, therefore local organizing and ownership of lands through VGGT and communal land rights should be the areas of policy change to favour local farmers and the prevention of large scale land acquisitions.” We implemented multi stakeholder roundtables to carry a common message on customary land tenures, especially around the process of the new Agricultural Land Law in Mali. The Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles West Africa will continue to liaise with the relevant authorities such as ECOWAS to ensure land that community land tenure is respected across Africa”.

The environment is our life, it is not for sale.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

  • The organizations and academic and non-profit research institutions involved in the project are the following: National Coordination of Peasant Organizations of Mali and the Malian Convergence against Land Grabbing CNOP-CMAT Mali, Environmental Rights Action ERA/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Katosi Women Development Trust KWDT-Uganda, Masifundise Development Trust MDT-South Africa, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLASS) and Transnational Institute.
  • The project was funded by the International Development Research Centre Government of Canada (IDRC).

Mali to host next Global Dialogue on the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition

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Weeks after the last session in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the next Global Dialogue lands in Bamako, engaging with national governments’ representatives and grassroots organizations from across West Africa. Organized by the National Coordination of Peasants’ Organizations (CNOP), together with the Centre for Equity Studies (CES) and FIAN International, the event will serve as a platform to share and build knowledge in fighting hunger and human rights. 

For two consecutive days starting on 28th June, policy endeavors and developments around the right to adequate food and nutrition in Brazil, India, Mali and other West African countries will be showcased and discussed. After being kicked off by the Malian Ministry of Rural Development, the first day will include the presentation of the strategies for tackling food and nutrition insecurity in Mali, as well as of the laws and programs that brought about success in Brazil and India.  

Brazil and India represent two distinct experiences of significant state efforts to advance the progressive realization of the human right to food and nutrition, and their examples may therefore be insightful for others. Brazil and India will not be presented as models for emulation, but rather as a source of indicating viable choices when countries work on policies and program towards ensuring food security.

Participants will be playing a major role on the second day, which will be devoted to the exchange of views around strategic issues such as “major challenges concerning food and nutrition security in your country” and “extent to which the Brazil and Indian experiences provide guidance to tackle hunger and malnutrition.”

The participation of the Malian government, as well as of the Malian Convergence against Land Grabbing (CMAT), will provide a unique opportunity to debate and build knowledge on the country’s policy endeavors to ensure food security as well as make this next Global Dialogue distinctive. 

For media enquiries, please contact delrey[at]fian.org