Sustainable Agriculture, Income Generation and Food Security
Session Facilitated by
Maxwell Mudhara
Farmer Support Group, University of KwaZulu-Natal

Sixteen participants attended the session. To start the session, everyone introduced him/herself, including a brief explanation of the major activities of the organization they represented. Most participants were involved in food security through food gardens as a strategy to mitigate the HIV/AIDS challenge and poverty.

The session comprised of three activities, i.e., the background presentation by the facilitator, the presentation by four presenters. In the last part, participants identified the challenges and opportunities their programmes faced with respect to achieving Sustainable Agriculture, Income Generation and Food Security.

My presentation focussed of defining food security. It also showed how food security is linked to both sustainable agriculture and income generation. “Food security” was defined as the availability of food and the ability to purchase food. We also noted the following points about food security:

• It means having a reliable source of food and sufficient resources to purchase it.
• Food security at a household level is dependent on access to nutritious food.
• A family is food secure when its members do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.
•  

The linkage between food security, sustainable agriculture and income generation were presented diagrammatically as follows:

• I pointed out that the major focus of the session was to share the following:
• How organisations have worked to increase household food security?
• What have been the successes and failures?
•  

Participation

My presentation also indicated that we would need to consider the extent to which the target communities participate in the programmes in aspects such as sequencing of interventions and targeting of beneficiaries, including gender sensitivity.

The presentation posed the question of how could agricultural productivity be increased? The following options for enhancing agricultural productivity were presented:

• Increase access to inputs such as seed, feed, fertilizer, machinery, and irrigation systems.
• Expand access to knowledge “extension services,”
• Increase access to financial services, e.g., microfinance, community savings groups.
• Improve natural resource management to ensure sustainable gains in productivity and reduce the impact of agriculture on the environment.

Lessons
What lessons can be taken back to participants’ programs?
What aspects of local innovations and initiatives could be stimulated/ promoted?

During the last part of the sessions, participants were given coloured cards on which they wrote: (i) the strengths and (ii) the weaknesses of the programmes participants are involved in, taking the presentations as cases.

• Strengths
  
• Programmes incorporate all gender
• Projects are involved in value addition
• Programmes are implemented with specific exit strategies
• Holistic approaches are pursued
• Where products are produced, there is insistence o quality production
• Skills are being transferred to communities
• Targets are people living with HIV
• Food security interventions go beyond vegetable gardens
• NGOs have sufficient levels of human resources
• Income generation incorporated as a food security intervention
• Working partnerships with government departments and other projects
• Working with existing local structures (where available)
• Working with local knowledge to ensure sustainability and ownership
• Diverse interventions employed
• Organic farming promoted for sustainability of agricultural interventions
•  

Challenges

• Scarcity of water and fences
• Illiteracy
• HIV/AIDS
• Shortage of land, poor soil
• Getting the community to take ownership of projects
• Limited resources
• Dependency syndrome
• Lack of markets for products
• Climate change/hot weather
• Gender-based violence
• The access to markets might perpetuates the capitalist model and oppresses the poor
• Shortage of seeds
• Theft

Observations and Recommendations:

It was good that we had four presenters to share their organisational experiences in the session. The presentations generated a healthy discussion from the floor. However, the presentations took longer than anticipated and this was at the expense of group activities.