Earlier this month, consultant Yves Leenaerts, working with colleagues from the EuropeAid Rural Development, Food Security, Nutrition Unit, borrowed the capacity4dev video camera and editing suite, and created two videos. “I was lucky that two experts on agricultural development agreed to share a part of their knowledge and experience with me through these video interviews,” says Mr Leenaerts.
The first video, which is presented here, is a Skype interview with David Dawe, a Senior Economist working for the Agricultural Development Economics Division at the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.
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This year capacity4dev.eu has been testing new and interesting ways to present Voices & Views. Among others, we have had Voices & Views written by users from the field, and we worked with two of EuropeAid’s thematic units in order to organise themed weeks; one on food security and the other on gender. Now we’re trying something new again. We would like to highlight some of the interesting videos that are produced in collaboration with our users. They are usually uploaded within groups, and are thus buried deeper within the platform meaning that they are often only viewed by members of those groups. |
Mr Dawe explains that a key driver of agricultural development in Asia has been the improvement of agricultural technology, which is important for both growth and equity. The green technology revolution increased farmer productivity and also labour demand, providing jobs for landless farmers. The lessons learnt for other developing countries were the importance of investment and better technology.
Mr Dawe then discusses how technological improvement in Africa is more difficult than in Asia, as the production environment in Africa is less homogeneous than the one in Asia. Therefore more research will be required for Africa.
Finally he examines the role of civil society, sharing the interesting example of Indonesia. During the Soeharto regime, the rural economy made a lot of progress resulting in increased productivity and a mass movement of people moved out of the poverty barrier, despite the lack of a strong civil society movement. Civil society has played a much more prominent role in Bangladesh, however, where it deserves much of the credit for the progress in poverty and hunger reduction.
The second interview was conducted in person with Professor Philippe Lebailly, who works in the Economy and Rural Development Department at the University of Gembloux in Belgium. This interview is in French, and was later published in August: Follow-up to Asian Agricultural Development.
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If you would like to find out more about agriculture and food security on capacity4dev.eu then you can visit or join the following groups, where you will find content ranging from videos of lunchtime conferences held at EuropeAid Infopoint to documents and events created by members:
The Agriculture and Rural Development groups are administered by the EuropeAid unit for Rural Development, Food Security and Nutrition, and link colleagues in the Commission, both at Headquarters and in Delegations, with other development practitioners and policy makers working in this field. ROSA is the Operational Food Security Network set up by EuropeAid to strengthen coordination and pooling of information amongst Food Security sector. |
This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Yves Leenaerts and Raymond Lataste, with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team.
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