Food security- Asia
Technology Transfer for Food Security in Asia is a regional approach of the Food Security Thematic Programme, aimed at improving the food security and nutrition of the poorest and most vulnerable in South and South-East Asia. It will improve the livelihoods of the smallholder farmers who have a minimum of assets and who are normally excluded for reasons such as poverty, gender, ethnicity and remote location. They will gain access to livelihood engancing technology such as; improved cropping systems, pest control, conservation agriculture, storage, irrigation etc. The Programme has two main components, namely “Sustainably raising agricultural productivity and promoting effective market linkages” and “South-South dialogue and intra-regional learning”. Projects have been selected through two Calls for Proposals. The contribution of the EU is € 22 million and the duration is 48 months (by 2016).
|
New ! 7 projects are currently in implementation. The activities implemented within the Programme will focus on the one hand on facilitating the adoption of productive and environmentally sustainable agricultural technologies, and on the other hand on creating and improving market linkages. A key goal of the Programme is to bring together farmers and researchers across the region to diffuse lessons into general practice and leverage these lessons for policy and institutional changes. The major activities will be implemented on the countries and states with the highest food insecurity in Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal and Pakistan and several states in India. The 2009 Global Hunger Index of the International Food Policy Research Institute showed that these countries showed a serious or alarming hunger problem (with an index value of 19.0 or higher). |
What's at stake?
Despite dramatic increases in food production, developing countries in Asia still account for a majority of the world’s poor and the highest proportion of the undernourished. The recent food price crisis further aggravated the problem. According to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, South Asia alone is expected to account for over 48% of the malnourished children in the world by 2020. South and South East Asia include the countries with the highest food insecurity in Asia.
The situation is aggravated by several constraints:
- the size of landholdings is declining,
- production resources are shrinking and the agricultural work force is, in some countries, becoming increasingly feminized and older.
- the labour force in agriculture often lacks basic services, education and health care.
- limited access to productive assets and essential services further worsens their situation, which is characterised by high levels of child labour as unpaid family workers.
Input-intensive cultivation in various agricultural sub-sectors has led to environmental challenges in Asia. Many of the current patterns of agricultural development increase pollution and environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity, and pose major threats for agricultural production and poverty reduction in the long run. Despite the existence of resource-conserving technologies, the region is likely to continue to invest in technologies that continue or increase natural resource degradation. In addition, climate change related disturbances may lead to decreases in production and worsening poverty in affected areas.
These concerns require a shift from a focus on maximising production to technologies that recognise the trade-offs between production enhancement and conservation of natural resources. There is a need to transfer the existing technological advances to farmers and thus to increase the efficiency of resource use in practice.