Pressure is growing on Parliament Hill for the Canadian International Development Agency to reinstate agriculture and small farmer support as one of its priorities in overseas development work.
The House of Commons foreign affairs committee is expected to approve a motion soon calling for a CIDA policy shift. Agriculture was dropped several years ago as a stated priority of CIDA programs when the former Liberal government reworked its foreign policy and international development mandate.
Recently, the foreign affairs committee heard a plea from the Winnipeg-based Canadian Foodgrains Bank and two African witnesses that CIDA revert to an agricultural emphasis.
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“We want to make it clear that support for agriculture is the most effective way to reduce hunger and poverty,” foodgrains bank policy officer Stuart Clark told MPs Feb. 1.
Results of a three-nation study in Ethiopia, Ghana and Mozambique affirm that support for the farm sector is the most effective development policy, he said.
Yet CIDA is backtracking on its commitment to agriculture.
“More recently, we fear it is really falling off the map.”
Malex Alebikiya from Ghana, who works with rural development organizations, told MPs that CIDA’s work with small-scale farmers who cannot produce enough food to support themselves and their families has declined in recent years.
“For us, it is very worrying that agriculture and food security for the poor is falling off the agenda,” he said. “We are basically asking the Canadian government to stand on the side of the poor.”
On Feb. 2, Clark ran a workshop organized by the Food Security Policy group for CIDA employees at the agency’s head office in Gatineau, Que. The group represents non-governmental organizations such as the foodgrains bank.
He said former senior Agriculture Canada official Diane Vincent, now a senior CIDA official, is an ally.
“She is a very powerful voice in the agency,” Clark said in an interview after the workshop. “I think we are making progress.”
And support from the Commons committee, while not binding, would be “a powerful political message to CIDA.”
He said small-scale farmers in developing countries throughout Africa will be hard hit by future climate change that restricts their already limited ability to produce enough food to support their families.
“Supporting these farmers will be an important contribution to Canada’s aid efforts and an important response to global warming,” he said. “And while it may not produce a specific budget increase, naming agriculture as a development priority puts it back on the radar screen.”
After the new CIDA mandate was published and critics noted that agriculture was not named as a priority, then-minister Aileen Carroll insisted it did not have to be because agriculture was embedded in all of CIDA’s work.
