Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 4th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Order.

Welcome and good morning. This is meeting six of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, on Tuesday, December 4, 2007.

Today we will begin a briefing with the Canadian Food Security Policy Group, and in our second hour, after noon, before our committee business, we will continue our study of Canada's mission in Afghanistan and hear from Omar Samad, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Canada.

First, for our briefing, as witnesses we have Stuart Clark, chair of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, Canadian Food Security Policy Group. Also, we have Joshua Mukusya, founder of Utooni Development Project. As well we have Mamby Fofana, member of the board of directors, Unitarian Service Committee of Canada; Rachel Bezner Kerr, research coordinator for Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Project; and Susan Walsh, executive director of the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada.

Welcome. We look forward to your presentations.

Mr. Clark, you have some opening comments. Then we will proceed to our first round of questions.

Again, welcome to the committee.

[Stuart Clark, Chair, Canadian Foodgrains Bank, Canadian Food Security Policy Group]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sorenson.

I want to express our thanks for the previous times that this committee has heard our testimony. You'll recall that it was just ten months ago that we spoke to you. There was an all-party resolution resulting from that presentation about an agriculture sector priority at CIDA.

We're somewhat following up on that today, which I hope will be made somewhat clear, particularly in light of the negotiations going on in Bali right now concerning climate change.

For those of you who are not aware of who the Food Security Policy Group is, it's an informal network of Canadian development NGOs who work on the issues associated with hunger and food insecurity. We've been working together since 2000, and have been working hard particularly on questions of agriculture, food aid, human right to food, and agricultural trade.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, said on November 17 that climate change is the defining challenge of our era. This was on the occasion of the release of the fourth assessment report of the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

All of these initials and long names shouldn't hide the importance of what was being said at that time.

Among the things that were said, the IPCC stated flatly that neither a focus singularly on reducing greenhouse gas, or on climate change adaptation, would be alone sufficient to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change. In fact, there must be both.

Our work as the Food Security Policy Group has been around agricultural development. What we have been seeing and increasingly recognizing, of course, is that climate change is hitting small farmers around the world first and hardest.

But the small farmers are not sitting back and saying “Poor us.” They're in fact drawing on a deep well of traditional understandings of how to cope with climate change, and in many cases making very successful adaptations, at least in these early stages of climate change.

They need help to adapt. I think we come before you today recognizing that four years ago, CIDA made a commitment to increase Canada's aid for agriculture to the level of $500 million per year by 2008. Last year we were at about $200 million, and the target was $500 million, which is all to say that even at the level of simply helping farmers, never mind climate change, we are underperforming.

Therefore, we come before you today to say that in addition to the concern that brought us here last time, for an agriculture priority at CIDA, we want to put before you the need to make assistance for climate change adaptation a part of any integrated comprehensive Canadian climate change response.

To help make the case, we've brought with us three people who work on key issues related to agriculture--soil, water, and seeds.

Dealing with the issue of seeds, I would first like to introduce to you Mamby Fofana from the country of Mali. He is the proud son of a wise but unschooled farmer, and is a graduate agroforestry engineer currently working as a natural resource officer for Swedish CIDA. He also farms a five-acre farm outside the capital, which is a powerful demonstration plot for other farmers looking at how to make adaptations.

After we hear from Mamby, we'll hear from Joshua Silu Mukusya, who similarly is the proud son of a farmer and also a university-trained agronomist, and who has spent the last 30 years trying to help people become drought-proof. Drought, which of course was a frequent occurrence, is now an ever more frequent occurrence as a result of climate change. Joshua will speak about water.

We have also with us Rachel Bezner Kerr, who has been working in Milawi on the question of soil. She will not speak at this time, but she's ready to receive questions.

I'd now like to turn the table over to Mamby, who will speak to you about the adaptation work around seeds.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Clark.

Mr. Fofana, welcome.

[Mamby Fofana, Member of the Board of Directors, Unitarian Service Committee of Canada, Canadian Food Security Policy Group]

Thank you.

It is with great pleasure that I come before you as the son of a farmer and a farmer myself. From the youngest age, having been born and having lived and grown in a Saharan climate which is inherently unstable and difficult, I have admired the ingenuity of peasants. They constantly adapt themselves to changes in the climate and to all outside aggressions in order to suit their agricultural practices to reality and feed themselves and their children.

I very quickly decided I wanted to study agronomy and forestry. I was inspired in this by the fact that where I was born and grew up, peasants try to grow on the same land trees, vegetables and grain in order to have production systems that are sustainable and can be controlled in order to prevent the disasters to which we are exposed today.

Having said that, I want now to highlight a bit of the concrete work we have been undertaking with regard to seeds, androgynal seeds and indigenous seeds, which are our entry points.

I have been working for USC Canada for almost 16 years. We discovered in one remote place in Mali that farmers in cases of extreme climatic phenomena are even going to eat the seeds, and they just rely on the seeds found in the market. Sometimes these seeds are coming from very different agro-ecological zones, where the rainfall is better, much better than in Douentza. By growing these seeds, it is a cycle of failure and more failure.

What we did is to try to make a participatory rural appraisal in order to know the situation of the genetic reserve in the place, in order to keep them not on an individual basis, but through what we call community gene banks, and a community gene complex with two components--one that is a gene bank and another that is a seed bank.

Then you can keep all the genetic reserve of a place. This is very important for small-scale farmers. They are 80% of our population, and they have been developing very adequate systems for keeping alive the seeds by keeping them in the storage and bringing them into the farm the next season, linking then ex situ and in situ conservation methods.

This is a risk management system. Why? Because the seeds were kept by individual farmers, but now through the gene banks and seed banks, there is a collective or community control over of these resources, which are very important as the source or the base of any production system. They have been really adapting themselves to external aberrations like the climate, and the seeds are the result of the interactions between human resources, between soil and climate, and they are adapted.

But why is this type of agriculture now losing ground? It's because of global policies, the global market policies, and also the climate change issues, which are deep. The changes have been very complex, very quick, and very deep.

For instance, they can adapt themselves and the seeds according to interannual changes. This year in Mali, instead of starting on the first week of June, the rainy season started after July 15. Then, with traditional farmers knowing that the season will be short, they have grown what are called photoperiodic varieties, which can adjust themselves to the length of the rainy season. This is very important, and today, if the whole world can learn from this, this is very important.

I don't say that these systems are, today, very relevant, because I've said that they have been affected by external aberrations like the negative policies at the global level and the climate change issues, which have been very deep, and also the floods, because they didn't used to manage floods but they used to manage droughts. It means that the context is changing.

What Canada can do in such a process is help agriculture in other places. In helping agriculture, it's important to help members of civil society and also the governments to work together to know the current situation, to know the limits of traditional systems and how to improve them by putting together traditional knowledge, which is based on wisdom, and also modern knowledge.

Modern knowledge is not able to overcome the problems on its own because this type of knowledge has been developed outside reality, out of the climate, in the research stations. But by putting together the two types of knowledge, the problems can be overcome, and I think the whole world can learn these adaptation systems, which have been developed by the farmers throughout generations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fofana.

We'll go to Mr. Mukusya.

[Joshua Mukusya, Founder, Utooni Development Project, Canadian Food Security Policy Group]

Thank you.

As has been said, my names are Joshua Silu Mukusya, and I come from Kenya. I am going to talk about the movement of farmers in that region of Africa where we started a movement of farmers way back in 1977 to reverse the effects of drought and to enable farmers to grow enough for their feed and for themselves.

Over the years we have done a lot of work on terracing the land and trying to raise the water table by putting up sand dams or walls across the rivers. The reason we did that was simply because over the years, I looked back to when the colonial government was there; they had a program of soil conservation, which looked at slowing the speed of water. Out of those small points where they did the work, the areas remained very green, and I thought if we could develop that system and make it bigger, we would be able to be self-sufficient in food and pasture for animals.

In a period of about 30 years, we have been putting these sand dams on our dry riverbeds in the hope that we can increase the water table and create springs as well as grading our wetlands for growing vegetables and germinating trees to replace what has gone.

In that period we have had some success. We have also had failures. But mainly we have seen the biggest major problem setting us back as being the effect of climate change. After doing all that good work involving our own free labour and getting support from friends to get the materials like cement and reinforcements, the rains stood us up. They never came.

So we failed to some extent but we still think sand dams and the combination of trees and the terracing of the land is the answer to climate change and the best way the farmers can hold all their ideas to their own areas, improve their own food, with whatever support the governments of Canada and Kenya can give those farmers to improve their own food security situation.

We have seen this as a benefit to the land and a benefit to the people, but we still have a problem with other parts of the world, who have their own way of life and who have not thought about climate change, which we ourselves are trying to adapt to.

I'm thinking of governments, like the Canadian government, supporting the Kenyan government--that's being supported in the same system, doing the dams. Because of the effects of climate, that has a global cost, either in the northern hemisphere or in the southern hemisphere. If people don't take care of that, then we are back to the same problems.

We are improving and we are going back a step, because the climate is not allowing us to get to where we want to go.

It is my hope today, in this gallery, that those listening to us would have a way of finding a system that would enable future generations to enjoy the same soil we have been enjoying for the last 50 years, and to enable the poor farmers, through groups, to do the best they can to improve their quality of life.

I would like to stop there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you to all our guests for being here.

We'll proceed to our first round of questioning.

Mr. Martin, you have seven minutes.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Walsh, Mr. Fofana, Mr. Clark, Mr. Mukusya, and Dr. Kerr for being here today. It is much appreciated.

I would submit that isn't necessarily a lack of global knowledge in terms of what is available in terms of research into seeds, soil, water, and agricultural practices. The problem is trying to get that out to the field and operationalizing it.

Could you give us some guidance as to how we can make CIDA's aid money more effective in supporting the projects that you feel are needed? That's number one. And two, specifically what areas do you think CIDA should focus on to support you?

So it's a question of, yes, we need more money, but how do we make that money work better for you on the ground? Specifically, what should CIDA champion in these areas to support food security?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Fofana.

[Mamby Fofana]

Thank you.

I think the scaling up is a permanent issue, and a very strategic issue. This depends on the approaches taken. Participatory approaches can really help in scaling up.

I take the example of a small village in Douentza. When we were doing the participatory rural appraisal, we asked the elder of the village about his notions of poverty. He said that you are poor when you are buying your food in the market, meaning that you are dependent on a market and what is available in it. But by listening to people, you can really know their aspirations and help them to fulfill these aspirations. We don't develop people; people develop themselves. You can just facilitate. This facilitative role has been done though the seed program, which has been an entry point. But the whole program has become an agro-biodiversity, conservation enhancement, and utilization process in line with sustainability.

In Mali, for instance, 80% of the people are dealing with agriculture as a source of income and employment—and this is the reality of the whole society. If CIDA really wants to help people to fight against poverty, you have to start through agriculture and use NGO and civil society members, who are very knowledgeable about the grassroots and who have developed domestic—

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

That's the domestic civil society?

[Mamby Fofana]

Yes.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

And that means supporting project funding and program funding.

[Mamby Fofana]

Yes, both. The local civil society is very important for sustainability, as it's from the people, but in other places, civil society is weak most of the time. But by linking these people with western civil society members, you can then really build capacities, because our main problem in most cases is capacity. This is very important.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I'll change the question just a wee bit, if I may, just to add to this.

What should we stop doing? What you're speaking about, Mr. Fofana, is project funding, and what CIDA has moved to is program funding, so what we get is a true trickle-down effect, with huge amounts of money being consumed by administrative costs and a trickle getting to the people who need it. So what should we stop doing?

This is for Mr. Clark, Mr. Fofana, or anyone.

[Mamby Fofana]

Thank you.

In my view, what we should stop doing, right away, are those vast bilateral programs which were designed without consulting the people and which for the most part did not take into account the deeper aspirations of the local people. They do not value the knowledge and practices of those people who made their living from agriculture for many generations. This is knowledge that was generated through a dynamic process. This is not static knowledge, it is dynamic. It tries to constantly adjust to reality, which is extremely important.

We know that governments have a responsibility to put into place policies that will assist development, but governments do not have the proper tools or structures to implement the basic development capacities jointly with the people. This can better be done through civil society organizations, with governments having a policy and standard-setting role.

I believe this is very important. It is the change Canada needs to make. It should develop projects in which the people will have a voice, that value their knowledge and aspirations, and also value their means of livelihood such as seeds. These are part of their livelihood. They were developed on the basis of very appropriate knowledge, that has even been proven scientifically correct, even if people did not always take the time to test this knowledge and to verify its validity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Fofana.

[Stuart Clark]

May I just add one brief comment?

I want to make reference to the World Bank's World Development Report this year. It was particularly important. It's the first time in 23 years the World Bank has pronounced the “A” word—for agriculture--and we were very glad to see that.

Also, it was very interesting to hear resonance at the World Bank of exactly what you've just heard from Mr. Fofana, as the bank, under the topic of governance, has made crystal clear the really key importance of building on civil society farm organizations and putting them at the centre of a lot of this agricultural development.

Canada's move towards program funding and direct budgetary support has often been done under the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, moving away from support for civil society. I think even the World Bank is saying that's probably not the thing to do.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Anyone else?

[Joshua Mukusya]

I would add that civil society reaches more of the poor people than do the programs. I would be happy if the Canadian CIDA programs were given a chance to be deal with both—common programs and civil society programs—to enable the mothers who are right in the villages, who do not have access to the powers, to benefit from these programs and to produce for their children and the nation, if you understand my way here.

[Dr. Rachel Bezner Kerr, Research Coordinator, Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Project, Canadian Food Security Policy Group]

Just to add to what Joshua said, I think one of the things we are really here to emphasize, which you're partly witnessing through our guests, is how important it is to have farmers' voices at the table in programming decisions and in efforts to improve agricultural productivity and people's livelihoods in Africa. They have tremendous depth of knowledge of their own environments and are experiencing on-the-ground climate change.

So farmer organizations need to be involved in the development programs that are being implemented.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

[Susan Walsh, Executive Director, Unitarian Service Committee of Canada, Canadian Food Security Policy Group]

If I could just add something very quickly on the indigenous knowledge side of things, I will speak as an anthropologist here, having been working in this field for about 20 years.

One of the things local farmers and indigenous peoples are extremely good at is understanding the complexity of their ecosystems. They see things like a peach tree flowering early as a sign of the weather patterns they're going to experience that year, etc. There's a wealth of knowledge that even we can benefit from in a world that's facing dramatic climate changes, which I think we really need to understand as being at the root of this. If we start to ask farmers about how they want to deal with climate change, etc., that's a really important starting point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Ms. Walsh.

We'll go to Madame Barbot.