Arriving at chapter 4 "No Smallholder Farmer Left Behind" by Jane Nelson,I was acutely aware of the news from India in the (N) autumn. Smallholders and family farmers protested about newly enacted farm laws. The government claimed the changes would protect the farmers from bullying middlemen, while the farmers were afraid of price instability and the rise of corporations*. Even in today's news I note this issue is ongoing. Very quickly any romantic notions of smallholder farmers are challenged reading this book and must be set aside. How can being a farmer (and agricultural laborers) equate with being among the world's poorest and most vulnerable and yet they number an estimated 500 million? There are 200 million smallholders producing food as part of formal supply chains and yet they are in extreme poverty and were circumstances are improved, there is a risk of relapse.
The talk of public-private partnerships, even if 'new' is disconcerting. This is the 21st C. though as 'inclusive business models' are defined. I was (slightly) shocked at the proximity of businesses and corporations, what choices do 'small-players' have? This is the value of the book, correcting parochial notions from Wigan Pier.
With an eye on the Green agenda though, and reading of the role for technology it still unsettles me thinking about bio-genetics, digital colonialisation when reading of the role of digital technology. With low and high Earth orbits filling up, there should be improved broadband access in remote locations, but I do wonder about choice. This is were the authors and organisations will no doubt push an advocacy role (p.68).
As I mention orbits and digital technology, mapping is key and to smallholder farmers too:
It is good to hear of development work that is also climate-smart. Leapfrogging is a important idea in the book (to follow) but I hope that as mobile technology has jumped the communications infrastructure of some developed nations that small-holders here can also leapfrog. The book's footnotes do not leapfrog, they are fairly constant and a very rich thread of learning and sources. A key and literal platform for leapfrog is big data and AI (p.70) [ https://www.brookings.edu/research/using-big-data-and-artificial-intelligence-to-accelerate-global-development/ ]. Hopefully, this blog demonstrates my enthusiasm and interest in STEM, again with these influences I can't help recalling my review of Friel's LITTLE-big book on climate change and the people's health in which attention to the nutritional value of food is stressed. When Nelson asks of the poorest farmers "What are they eating?" (p.76) yes, you do have to ask.
Give me a page of text and certain words standout a kilometer. 'Holistic' is one. So, holistic investment in infrastructure is needed (p.77) and a holistic approach to on- and off-farm interventions. The expertise, experience and political awareness of the development community is evident here in accounts of measures and evaluation. Rurbanomics (p.77) concerns the linkages between rural and urban economies and in policy terms there could be specific mention of the rural phenomena of 'empty villages' (in the EU too?) and the need to better manage the movement of people from rural to urban environments.
The chapter organisation is almost logical moving to refugees and migrants [Chap. 5]. I've posted before on geopsychiatry and it will be interesting to see in coming years if non-refoulement (p.79) routinely enters the news lexicon. At this time, how the majority of us wish we could travel, and p.82 had me wondering about ancient history before 'countries': no nations. Discussion of the definition and its limitations of 'refugee' 1951 is very informative, especially as it relates to the SDGs, which includes migrants. You can see how much crossover there is (and must be - sustainable determinants of health ...) between the SDGs and hence the need for all governments to address this in policy and law.
Working in healthcare and c/o Brexit and the COVID crisis you are aware of the global nursing and social care workforce. This is described here in terms of training (p.96) To state the obvious, politically, refugees and migration remain a charged matter. Quite rightly the gains from international refugee and migration flows have a section of their own. Since the 1990s you become ever more aware of remittances sent abroad (and until recently the cost of the same). Talk of seasonal work has an analogue in the seasonal routes that people at great risk whatever their reasons, make from Africa and Asia. I've mapped some content from chapter 5 to Hodges' model:
INDIVIDUAL
|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
GROUP - COMMUNITY - POPULATION
mental health
post-traumatic stress
knowledge diffusion |
access to shelter, water,
health care and sanitation
rural - urban
border regions
cities |
social media
social attitudes in receiving nations
sexual and gender-based violence
|
formal labor market access
informal camp employment?
remittance flows
'mechanism design theory' p.93
land registration
having an 'address'
|
I learned of What3Words quite a while ago** and the addition of 'having an address' in the POLITICAL domain is an addition. I knew an article in May (FT Magazine, 16-17 May 2020, pp.32-35.) would come in handy:
"Where the streets have no name" by Deirdre Mask - The Address Book.
An illustration by Andy Robert Davies says it all:
Mask's book points out the obvious that if you are Stateless you are address-less too. The health - political implications here are serious and this problem is not restricted to 'developing' nations. So much is tied to this: track and trace, having a bank account, being able to vote all can depend on this specific information. Without an address, a default - whether acknowledged or not - of 'data missing' in census data gathering follows. For many nations the 'census year' has been disrupted by the pandemic.
Referring back to migrants, refugees and the recent politicization and nationalistic rhetoric, reading made me wonder about government's ability to envision the positive potential of migration flows and refugees. The statistics are revealing in the impressions provided by social media and news reporting. The problem for (some) policy makers and resident populations given the bias and misinformation of reporting seems to me, extracting individual and family narratives from the collective.
The reader is very well served with the index, if needed, while reading and my writing here. Unless I've missed it, there is a missing reference to 'tax' on page 312, which we'll reach next time. It is an important one.
Homi Kharas, John W. McArthur and Izumi Ohno, (Eds.) 2020. Leave No One Behind: Time for Specifics on the Sustainable Development Goals, Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
*https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/12/1/why-are-thousands-of-indian-farmers-protesting
**https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2016/04/what3words-mapping-globe-hodges-model.html
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