Focus:
FAO Special Programme for Food Security

In 1994, the FAO Director-General initiated a review of the Organization’s priorities, programmes and strategies, which concluded that improving food security should be reaffirmed as its top priority, and the urgent need for its programmes to focus more sharply on increasing food production, improving stability of supplies and generating rural employment, thus contributing to more accessible supplies. The Director-General also proposed that FAO should launch a Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS), focused on the 86 Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs)-countries least able to meet their food needs with imports. This approach was endorsed by the 1996 World Food Summit, with a Plan of Action in the following areas: ensuring enabling conditions; improving access to food; producing food; increasing the role of trade; dealing adequately with disaster; and investing in food security.

FAO Photo

SPFS commenced its operations in late 1994. A budget of $10 million was provided for the 1996/1997, 1998/1999, and 2000/2001 bienniums. Its main objective is to help LIFDCs to improve food security at the national and household levels, through rapid increases in food production and productivity, by reducing year-to-year variability in production on an economically and environmentally sustainable basis and by improving people’s access to food. The underlying assumption is that in most LIFDCs viable and sustainable means of increasing food availability exist but are not realized because of a range of constraints that prevent farmers from responding to needs and opportunities. By working with farmers and other stakeholders to identify and resolve such constraints, whether they are of a technical, economic, social, institutional or policy nature, and to demonstrate ways of increasing production, SPFS should open the way for improved productivity and broader food access. Its formulation is a national responsibility, supported as necessary by FAO, and usually carried out by a team of government staff or national consultants, guided by a Steering Committee, bringing together representatives of the public and private sectors, farmers’ organizations and in some countries NGOs active in the rural sector.

The South-South Cooperation Scheme under SPFS strengthens cooperation among developing countries at different stages of development, with the support of interested donor countries and FAO. It allows countries to benefit from the experience and expertise of more advanced developing countries, who provide a considerable number of experts for two to three years to work in the recipient countries, directly with farmers in rural communities involved in SPFS. FAO launched the South-South Cooperation Scheme at the beginning of 1997. In addition, arrangements to support SPFS have been made under the programme for technical cooperation between developing countries (TCDC).

SPFS is also a vehicle for collaboration between FAO and its development partners. When FAO receives a request from a member country for the initiation of the Special Programme, the organization initiates discussions with interested develop-ment partners-bilateral and multilateral-as well as with NGOs and the private sector, through its representation offices at the country level. Where concrete agreements are reached, joint missions are organized at the formulation stage, as well as during the implementation process, to monitor progress and ensure the achievement of the Programme’s objectives.

SPFS: Structure and Dimensions
In June 2001, SPFS was operational in 64 countries covering more than two thirds of the countries listed as LIFDC. The regional division is as follows: Africa, 38 (LIFDC coverage, 86%); Asia, 14 (58%); Europe, 2 (67%); Latin America, 8 (86%); and Oceania, 2 (33%). SPFS is in various stages of formulation in another 17 countries. Besides LIFDCs, more and more developing countries are coming forward to implement SPFS and managing to find resources to do so-examples are Zimbabwe, Uganda, Peru and South Africa.

One of the distinguishing features of SPFS is that it aims to link practical demonstration work conducted by farmers with changes in the institutional and policy environment that address constraints to the wider replication of successful innovations.

For this reason, institutional arrangements have to be made at the local level to ensure a high degree of farmer participation, and at the national level to bring people who are influential in the processes of policy and institutional change together. There is also a clear need for strong and competent technical leadership. How these requirements can best be met will depend on country circumstances.

In some cases, where there is already a large degree of decentralization, mechanisms may already exist that provide for adequate farmer participation in the design and management of local-level programmes. Some countries also have high-level National Food Security Commissions, chaired by the President or Prime Minister. Others are in the process of setting up such bodies as part of their commitment to the World Food Summit’s Plan of Action. In such cases, options for building SPFS management into existing structures warrant careful examination. Elsewhere, it may be advantageous to create an entirely new institutional framework for SPFS management and oversight.

This could consist of:

1. An inter-ministerial policy committee: Chaired by a Head of Government, with the participation of the ministers for agriculture, livestock, water resources, forestry, fisheries, planning and finance and other ministers involved in food security matters. It would provide policy guidance, ensure necessary intra- and inter-sectoral coordination between institutions, programmes and projects operating at national level, including external assistance on food security/rural development/poverty alleviation related matters, monitors the implementation of the SPFS National Action Plan and would act upon the policy-related feedback from the pilot activities.
2. An inter-ministerial technical committee: Consisting of directors of agriculture, fisheries, livestock, forestry, planning, agricultural research, etc., providing technical leadership and ensuring integration and coordination of SPFS with other national programmes and activities undertaken by donors, NGOs and the private sector.
3. An interdepartmental regional committee, preferably chaired by the head of the region or district, consisting of representatives of local government institutions, agricultural services, health officials, the private sector, NGOs, women’s and farmers’ organizations, etc., providing guidance and supervision to the formulation, implementation and evaluation of the programme, and ensuring its integration with other relevant regional/district activities.

East Qian Lake, Zhe Jiang Province, photograph by Wang Ren Ding. From "Photographs of Jiangnan China", courtesy of the Jiangnan Photographic Society, which held an exhibition at UN Headquarters in August 2001.

4. Local implementation committee, established at every SPFS site, consisting of technicians dealing with the four components of the Programme: water control, crop intensification, diversification into short-cycle animals and constraints analysis, as appropriate. It would ensure implementation of SPFS at site level in accordance with the work plan.

Most participating countries have appointed a national project coordinator for SPFS responsible for both formulation and implementation of the Special Programme.

Farmers in Baimamiao village in the Sichuan Province of China have increased the yields of their four major crops by as much as nearly 70 per cent since 1992, thanks to work carried out under SPFS. Sweet potato yields showed the sharpest increase, jumping from an average of 2,085 kilogrammes per hectare in 1992-1994 to 3,540 kilogrammes per hectare in 1997. Yields for maize, wheat and rice also improved, with increases of 43 per cent, 24 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively. In the past, Baimamiao village was a low-income food-deficit area, where poor soils, inadequate and ageing irrigation systems, and the lack of modern agricultural inputs and practices kept crop production and farmers’ incomes low.

Local government, with the support of SPFS, decided to focus on water management and soil improvement to help farmers increase their production and incomes. After three years, farmers and SPFS staff can see the results of their work. Arable land from the valley floor to the hilltop has been rehabilitated. Dryland has been converted into paddy, and existing paddy land has been reshaped and the soil deepened. The infertile thin soils on the hillside have been converted into terracing. Old irrigation facilities have been repaired and new irrigation and drainage channels have been built.

“...The work on water control and irrigation has had a particularly beneficial effect, reducing vulnerability to drought, wastage of water, waterlogging of land and soil erosion...”

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