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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Strengthening Rural Communities from the Bottom Up
  • Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:56:44 -0700


Groundswell International: Strengthening Rural Communities from the Bottom Up
http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/groundswell-international-strengthening-rural-communities-from-the-bottom-up/
By Supriya Kumar

“We believe that in order to address our broken agricultural and food system,
and create one that is better for human beings and the planet, family farmers
around the world can be and need to be lead actors in that process. We need
to support their capacity and power to spread sustainable agricultural and
local food systems solutions,” says Steve Brescia the International Director
of Groundswell International. Created in August 2009, Groundswell
International is a partnership of NGOs that is working with small scale
farmers in seven countries –Burkina
Faso,Ecuador,Ghana,Guatemala,Haiti,Honduras, andMali – to scale up healthy
and agroecological farming practices from the bottom up.

“Globally we now have over 60 years of experience with industrial
agricultural approaches, and we can see the trends in terms of hunger,
climate change and concentration of resources and wealth. As many studies
are now confirming, it is time to scale up more appropriate agroecological
farming approaches that can help create more positive trends. Groundswell
International works with local farmers’ organizations and movements to help
build local capacity to spread those alternatives,” said Brescia. They do
this by encouraging farmer experimentation – for example, farmers in
Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti experiment with soil conservation, cover crops
and improved local seed on small sections of their land to discover what
works without risking an entire season’s harvest. They also encourage
farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing. InBurkina Faso, for example, Groundswell
supports exchange visits between village women’s groups and expose them to
successful farming practices. In this way, farmers become leaders and change
agents for their own communities.

Groundswell International also works with partners to monitoring and
evaluating their programs so that they can continuously be improved. Since
the main goal is to strengthen local capacity, Groundswell partners work to
strengthen farmers’ organizations to plan and evaluate their own development
processes. For example, these organizations assess their progress and
strategies through the use of participatory tools that measure changes in
household food security, levels of savings and seed bank reserves, and
household economic status, to name a few. This approach to evaluation has
helped improve various local initiatives, from promoting knowledge sharing in
Burkina Faso to the strengthening of local peasant associations in Haiti.

According to Brescia, partners in sub-Saharan Africa are emphasizing the need
to address the food crisis through long-term solutions to improve soil
fertility, through conservation and recovery practices such as the use of zai
pits, composting and contour barriers. Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration
(FMNR) of trees is a promising practice contributing to re-greening of the
landscape. Already in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, FMNR is helping to
regenerate the soil, increase crop production and animal fodder, while also
reducing women’s workload by providing a source of firewood. Many rural
families have depleted their assets due to the chronic crisis, and these need
to be rebuilt according to Brescia, for example by supporting the creation of
local food banks and reserves managed by farmers groups.

By empowering farmers to take charge of their own prosperity, through support
for agroecological farming practices and the creation of knowledge sharing
networks, Groundswell International is strengthening the capacity of
small-scale farmers to improve their food security and livelihoods, from the
bottom up.

Do you know of other projects or organizations that are working with local
communities to improve food security and raise incomes? Let us know in the
comments section!

Supriya Kumar is a research fellow with Nourishing the Planet.

To read more about building local capacity, see: SEWA: A movement to
transform women’s lives in India and beyond, Empowering the Women of India’s
Poorest Region, Strengthening Rural Women’s Leadership in Farmer and Producer
Organizations, and Putting Development Back into the Hands of the Community.





  • [Livingontheland] Strengthening Rural Communities from the Bottom Up, Tradingpost, 12/25/2011

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