INTERACTION RESPONSE TO

THE INTER-AGENCY TASK FORCE

“ONE TABLE: ADVANCING AGRICULTURE TO END HUNGER”

InterAction applauds the opening statement of “One Table: Advancing Agriculture to

End Hunger,” which, consistent with Millennium Development Goal 1, notes the urgent
need to address chronic hunger, malnutrition and poverty. To achieve global food
security and poverty reduction, we encourage the Task Force to place these objectives
prominently in the “One Table” Goal statement. We believe the chances for success in
achieving this Goal will improve greatly if the emerging strategy defines a new, more
effective partnership with U.S. NGOs, and if the current strategy is expanded and
strengthened.

InterAction therefore encourages the Task Force to:

1) Revise the Goal Statement to Clarify That:

 Consistent with the MDG framework, poverty reduction and food security are
primary goals.
 Chronic poverty rather than production shortfalls cause most food
insecurity (e.g., among the urban poor, landless, very small landholders and
unemployed).
 Boosting the incomes of impoverished food farmers, particularly women,
should be the focus of agricultural development assistance.
 Addressing the root causes of hunger in the near to medium term will
require a strategy integrating agricultural development with emergency
assistance, nutrition, health and productive safety nets.
 Programs to reduce poverty and food insecurity should address the
socioeconomic challenges women face on a priority basis.
 Women’s access to microfinance, training, appropriate technology, land
ownership and a voice in development decision making are particularly
important.

2) Partner in New Ways with NGOs to Achieve Shared Development Goals:

 The sustained developing country presence of NGOs represents a knowledge and
financial resource offering strong synergies with U.S. government development
objectives.
 The U.S. NGO voice supports ODA and strengthens the domestic alliance for
international development.
 Strengthened collaboration with NGOs would help to:
 Reduce poverty, improve food security and accelerate economic growth; refine
strategies, mobilize resources and implement programs; and marshal expertise,
share information, enhance community outreach and expand scale.
 Working Paper 6.30.09
InterAction Response to Inter-Agency Task Force
‘One Table’ Development Strategy

 Open USAID and other acquisition and assistance mechanisms to greater NGO participation
and coinvestment in development.
 Employ the Roadmap Group and InterAction resource documents in formulating a Food
Security and Agricultural Development strategy.
 Forthcoming documents cover emergency response, gender and food security, safety nets,
nutrition, agricultural technology and extension.

3) Strengthen the “One Table” Strategy Pillars to Achieve Food Security and Agricultural
Development Objectives:

Agricultural Productivity:
 Include sustainable livestock and fisheries management.
 Expand productivity strategy beyond technical focus on seed and fertilizer packages;
 Integrate other productivity-enhancing techniques such as: improved farm, water and soil
management, agro-ecological and low-external input approaches.
 Promote enhanced productivity strategies that are effective beyond regions with more
favorable agronomic, ecological, transportation and infrastructure conditions.
 Stimulate productive investment with expanded credit facilities (e.g., cell phone accessible).
 Include risk mitigation (e.g., index insurance) to protect investment and small producers.
 Prioritize secure land tenure and titling to encourage investments in greater productivity.
 Integrate productive safety nets to boost food security and reduce the poverty of landless or very
small landholders.

Post-Harvest Private Sector:

 Focus on the enabling environment, business development and infrastructure needs of small
enterprises to enhance agricultural value chains.
 Where appropriate, support public sector and multisectoral approaches to address key
development deficits where the private sector lacks capacity or initiative. For example:
 A public sector role in dissemination of market and other information;
 Strengthening co-ops and producer groups to improve quality, build volumes and improve
marketing.

Support for Women and Families:

 Retitle this pillar “Support Women Producers.”
 Clarify that in most developing country contexts women are pivotal contributors to
agricultural development and food security.
 Orient the strategy around the vital roles women play in agricultural production, household
nutrition and natural resource management.
 Focus on the social and economic challenges women face in accessing inputs, credit,
information, training and markets, and in controlling land, assets and income.

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InterAction Response to Inter-Agency Task Force
‘One Table’ Development Strategy

 Ensure women farmers have access to all agricultural development support and obtain fair
returns from their labor.
 Beyond creating a strong pillar reflecting women’s disadvantaged status, mainstream
“women in food security and agriculture” as a cross-cutting perspective in all other pillars.
 Clarify how “support to women” will require different strategies and approaches than
support to poor, food insecure or vulnerable smallholders in general.
 Incorporate gender-equitable objectives and indicators into programs to ensure desired
outcomes.
 In particular, track progress in helping women retain financial and nutritional returns from
their labor.

Sustainable Natural Resource Management:

 Fully integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation into agricultural development
programs.
 Address environmental impacts of fertilizer, pesticide, fungicide and herbicide use through
improved management, mitigation or alternative approaches to productivity gains.
 Assess and address impacts of large-scale irrigation systems on water availability, quality,
water-logging and soil salinity.
 Invest in the regeneration of degraded pastures and fields to enhance ecosystem services and
productivity.
 Integrate agro-ecological approaches into programs.
 Promote carbon-sequestering land management techniques for enhanced productivity,
ecosystem services and access to carbon markets.

Knowledge and Training:

 Re-evaluate costly research and production technologies as the primary strategy to achieve
productivity gains.
 Current technologies too often do not reach or benefit women and smallholder producers.
Greater investment in technology will not resolve this constraint.
 Prioritize investments in research and training on the basis of cost-effective productivity
gains for large numbers of smallholder farmers.
 Reconsider disproportionate investment in costly, highly technical research (e.g., plant
breeding and seed genomics) as the primary strategy to identify new or alternative ways to
increase production.
o Invest in biotechnology when the poverty-reduction, productivity, local decision-
making and environmental safety considerations are clearly addressed.
 Reinvest in extension and training in farming systems approaches to productivity gains.
 Reassess and promote effective local farmers’ knowledge, innovations and program learning
gained over decades of agricultural development field experience.

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InterAction Response to Inter-Agency Task Force
‘One Table’ Development Strategy

 Promote lower-cost, effective agricultural advisory services delivered by a wider range of

alternative service providers.
 Reassess research, training and extension models based on Western institutions that
face capacity and financial sustainability constraints in developing countries (e.g., U.S.
land grant institutions).
 Integrate applied sociology of rural production into design of extension training and programs.

Increase Trade Flows and Assess Trade for Development Impacts:

 Support market opportunities for smallholders at local, regional and cross-border scales.
 Support improved flows of market and technical information to expand market access of
small producers at local, regional and international scales.
 Promote export opportunities based on improvements in local food security and poverty
reduction for smallholders compared with other market opportunities.

Good Governance and Policy/Regulatory Reform:

 Encourage the State Department to support sound host-country enabling policies for
development as an departmental objective;
 Prioritize strengthening of public sector governance institutions in areas critical for
development, including:
 Development planning and management, enabling legal and regulatory environment for the
private sector, anti-corruption, contract enforcement, impartial judicial systems, secure
land titling, gender equity, economic rights and democratic decentralization.
 Promote a more prominent role for civil society in multi-stakeholder dialogue around priority
setting for development, implementation approaches, capacity building for good governance,
monitoring and accountability.
 Use MCC compact model (e.g., Benin) to promote sound host-country governance and local
determination of appropriate development policies.
 Promote the determination of development strategies at the country level in cooperation
with civil society, while building needed local governance capabilities.
 Balance consistent, broad program principles for assistance with flexible priorities and
implementation mechanisms to fit local conditions.
 Promote decentralized management of development activities to improve stakeholder
accountability and help prioritize capacity-building needs.
 Prioritize secure land tenure and access to critical public goods (e.g., irrigation) as essential
precursors for agricultural development.

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InterAction Response to Inter-Agency Task Force
‘One Table’ Development Strategy

Additional Key Issues for an Integrated Food Security and Agriculture Strategy:

4) Enhance Coordination and Consistency in Food Security and Agricultural Development

Within U.S. Government and Beyond It:
 Match the call for cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder development planning and
implementation in host countries with similar mechanisms in the U.S.
 Promote multi-stakeholder roles spanning needs assessment, implementation and
evaluation at domestic and international levels.
 Promote a role for civil society appropriate to the current importance of NGOs as
resource contributors, implementers and advocates for the poor and food insecure.
 Within U.S. government:
 Implement a coherent, “whole of government” strategy for international development,
including food security and agriculture.
 Reformulate the mission of the U.S. Trade Representative to promote trade
opportunities with the U.S. for low-income countries as a development objective.
 Expand development partnership models beyond a reliance on private sector
contractors.
 Reduce reliance on earmarks that result in inappropriate implementation strategies,
priorities and resource allocations.
 In engaging host countries:
 Activate the State Department to encourage host-country governments to expand
stakeholder dialogue and partnerships.
 Retain useful strategy elements from approaches such as CAADP, despite an imperfect
implementation record to date.
 Encourage CAADP and other regional efforts to undertake more active and expansive
stakeholder outreach.

5) Expand Food Security and Agriculture Strategy to Achieve Broader Development Agenda:
 Food security interventions should be considerably broader than agricultural development.
 Emergency food aid, nutrition and social safety net programs should ensure vulnerable
populations are protected against chronic and acute hunger.
 Health perspectives should be integrated into nutrition programs.
 Maternal-child health programs should focus on pregnant and lactating mothers and
children younger than two years of age.
 Clarify the relationship between the Inter-Agency Strategy and achievement of MDGs.
 Address the weak record of governments and the private sector in delivering benefits to
women farmers.
 Address these weaknesses by investing in strengthened partnership roles for the public
sector, universities, and local and international civil society organizations.

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 Working Paper 6.30.09
InterAction Response to Inter-Agency Task Force
‘One Table’ Development Strategy

Contributors:

InterAction’s Food Security and Agriculture Working Group contributed to the

creation of this document.

For questions or feedback please contact:

Brian Greenberg
InterAction
Director of Sustainable Development
202-552-8227
bgreenberg@interaction.org

Lindsay Coates
VP Policy & Communications
202-552-6530
lcoates@interaction.org

or

Vanessa Dick
InterAction
Senior Legislative Associate for International Development
202-552-8227
vdick@interaction.org