“The great problem is that we have no sure markets where we can buy and sell,” Emiliana Aligaesha explained exasperatedly.

“This makes the young people discouraged to deal with farming because they see their parents and neighbors do it. They see them die poor, so they are not interested.”

Emiliana Aligaesha (left) with Mwanahamisi Salimu, Campaigns & Advocacy Manager for the GROW Campaign in Tanzania at the Oxfam America offices.

Emiliana Aligaesha’s visit to DC last week corresponded with the Senate and House’s decisions to increase local and regional procurement by just $20 million. Much more work remains to be done to achieve the kind of real reform the Administration has asked for and that Oxfam supports. (Listen to this Humanosphere podcast on the politics of aid reform with Oxfam’s Eric Muňoz and Jon Scanlon, who both accompanied Aligaesha last week.) 

Oxfam invited her as a farmer in the developing world who would stand to benefit from food aid reform. Emiliana Aligaesha formed a successful farmer’s cooperative, Kaderes Peasant Development Ltd. (KPD), with her fellow community members in the Karagwe District of northwest Tanzania in 2007. After getting support from USAID, they gained a small contract for beans with the World Food Programme (WFP). (Read more here.)

Below are Emiliana Aligaesha’s words, pieced together from various events, but exactly as she said them to stakeholders this week. (You can watch a livestream recording here of an event at which Aligaesha appeared, Enough Food For Everyone If: The G8′s Role in the Fight Against Global Hunger.)

As we bemoan the vested, status quo interests that prevented reforms proposal from gaining much ground, hardworking and innovative farmers like Aligaesha will carry on.

Her words speak for themselves.

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“I believe in farming because many people at our area cannot get employment. So farming is another way to create jobs to the people. So many of the people are farmers. These small farmers feed their families, feed all the urban people, and nearby countries.

“Most of them are women, working hard, feeding their families, providing all their needs, fetching water, paying school fees. At the end of the day, they are the poorest in the area because they use much energy and profit almost nothing.

Aligaesha and two of her cattle in the Karagwe District of northwest Tanzania. Photo: MaishaPlus2012 / Oxfam

“The problem here is that whatever we produce, we sell under the [production] costs. This breaks the heart of farmers. At harvest, we don’t know who is going to buy our products. You have no opportunity to bargain with these middlemen during harvest. They can simply go away to another farmer. Within the same day, prices can change, because if they see five people come with beans. Some of us have very small houses for family use, but we have nowhere to keep these products [after harvest]. So we need to sell quickly, another way to benefit middlemen. When people run out of their own food, they will have to go to these middlemen who will sell food back to them at two or three times the price.

“KPD competes with the middlemen, but it is not enough. If we can increase the WFP contract [currently only 5-10% of the beans harvested] to buy more and get more contracts, this will help make the price stable. We don’t have malnutrition issues in our area to the same extent because we produce different kinds of food. The soil is fertile. Take beans from our own home country because it supports these farmers, these women, and can help people in war or people in difficulties.

“I sometimes sit with women and do research. I ask, ‘If you want to get 20 kilos of beans, how many days can you work there? How much seedlings are you going to put? How many days have you gone there and each day? How much are you to be paid?’ When we look at production costs [and profit], it is empowering.

“If we get means of transport, we can help children survive in other regions of Tanzania and other countries. What is needed here is… Farming with hand hoes, up to now farming with hand hoes – it makes you tired. You have to bend your back. If we get improved farming tools, this could help us much, and irrigation methods. We have rivers, Lake Victoria, but just need some systems to use the water.

“I met different women’s groups in Texas and New York. I visited official offices in Fort Worth and New York and Washington, DC [Kay Granger, R-TX Nita Lowey, D-NY, Lois Frankel (D-FL)]. All American people are all smiling to me. I feel at home.

Emiliana Aligaesha. Photo: MaishaPlus2012 / Oxfam.

“I am also happy that the environment here is almost the same at home. Everywhere is green. The difference is those very, very high buildings. Whenever I meet people, they are all busy, thinking to promote their lives.

“I believe in farming because it has supported my children’s education. I have six cows. I have built a water tank for my farming [to collect rainwater], rehabilitated half of my house. I suggest that farming is good because I always have something to eat. Whenever any visitor knocks on my door, I know what to do. I am almost 70 but I never grow old because I have food.”

“Africa is suffering from a new AIDs crisis: ‘Air-conditioned Induced Decisions.’  Our leaders live in air-conditioned homes, travel in air-conditioned cars, work in air-conditioned offices.  And it affects the decisions they make.” ~Maiko Zulu, Zambian reggae music star and activist

I had a chance to meet Maiko Zulu last week.  He wears frustration and disappointment with his country on his sleeve (and in his music).  Zambia is a country that should be improving economically.  Driven by mining large copper and cobalt reserves, economic growth has been high for the last decade, not less than 5% per year and more than 7% as recently as 2010.  The Economist in 2011 listed Zambia as one of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies. Since, 2000, average income per capita has grown by more than 40%, lifting Zambia from “low-income country” to a “lower middle-income country.”

But high economic growth and increased average income have not translated into reduced poverty or better conditions for most Zambians.  If Zambia’s national income was a dollar, the poorest 10% of Zambians receive less than $0.02 and the richest 10% control $0.43, making Zambia one of the most unequal countries on earth. Despite good news on growth and income, Zambia is becoming more unequal and poverty is actually rising.

This analysis comes from a very important report released last week, Equity in Extractives, launched by the Africa Progress Panel.  It looks closely at the 20 African resource-rich countries that depend on extractive industries and finds they are performing quite badly in converting their mineral and energy wealth into benefits for the public. A few factoids:

• Twelve of the 25 countries in the world with the highest child mortality rates are resource-rich African countries.
• Equatorial Guinea, rich with oil, is actually now classified as a high-income country with an average income of more than $27,000 a year, higher than Poland.  But Equatorial Guinea’s child-death rate is 20 times higher than Poland’s.

In general, the resource-rich African countries are badly under-performing on basic human development and poverty reduction, despite how much money they’re making.  This chart tells the story: on the left are the countries’ ranking on wealth (actually income), and on the right is their ranking on human development indicators.  That rightward slope means people aren’t getting the health, education, and opportunity that they deserve.  Most resource-rich countries under-perform in every indicator. (Tanzania and Ghana are notable.)

One of the most interesting bits of the report is a forensic analysis that shows that inequality is growing in resource-rich countries, or at least in those the report analyzed.  The data is hard to come by, but seems to show that not only is the economic growth and revenue from oil and mining boom not being shared, but the elite are capturing (stealing?) ever more of the money over time. This means less poverty reduction than there should be, and in some cases more poverty than there was.

More than that, revenues that rightfully belong to the people of these countries are diverted through poor governance, thereby robbing the majority of citizens from the chance to improve their lives via social services and government investment intended to diversify economies. By not widening opportunities away from dependence on extractives and creating more jobs, inequality is not addressed.

Gawain Kripke and Maiko Zulu in Cape Town last week.

The paper is important, and not only if you’re interested in extractive industries.  The analysis provides useful insights and ways to look at the issues that will interest anyone who cares about development and poverty.  The paper is studiously optimistic about the role extractive resources can play in benefiting development and poverty reduction.

Meanwhile, the truth of the inequality of growth is becoming more evident to the public in these countries.  As Maiko Zulu observes above, there is a disconnect between the public interest and those of the plutocrats and oligarchs who are running the countries.

“We can’t speak of economic growth when people are dying of poverty.”

Will disconnect eventually lead to discontent?  That’s a risky proposition that could lead anywhere…

To read the Equity in Extractives report, click here.

The chair of the Africa Progress Panel, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, has pushed back on an oil industry attack against the landmark US Dodd-Frank Act oil and mining payment disclosure provision. In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Annan said the lawsuit launched by the American Petroleum Institute against the US Securities and Exchange Commission was a “strategic folly” and those companies supporting the suit, such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell were “swimming against the tide of reform”.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Chair of the Africa Progress Panel. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

The Africa Progress Panel’s 2013 report “Equity in Extractives” was released today in Cape Town and focuses on steps to take to ensure that Africa’s oil, gas and mining boom actually benefits the majority of African’s rather than a select few. The panel includes the former head of the IMF, Michel Camdessus; former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo; former first lady of Mozambique Graca Machel; and Peter Eigen, founder of Transparency International and former chair of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, among others.

These heavy hitters stand behind a report that says there “is no credible evidence to indicate that the Dodd-Frank requirements will impose significant additional costs, let alone threaten the competitive position of some of the world’s largest companies.” The report says that the “Cardin-Lugar” or Section 1504 provision of Dodd-Frank and forthcoming European Union disclosure requirements provisions represents an important opportunity for African civil society groups to work with multinational companies to “achieve higher standards of disclosure” but notes that some companies appear “to be squandering that opportunity” with the US lawsuit.

In advance of June’s G8 summit, the report says “all countries must adopt and enforce” project-by-project disclosure standards such as in the US and EU—“as major players in Africa’s extractives sector, Australia, Canada and China should be the next countries to actively support this emerging global consensus.”

Oxfam’s new Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, is from Uganda, a country undergoing its own oil boom, and is in Cape Town for the World Economic Forum Africa. She said “African governments must use oil, gas and mining to raise revenue, but this boom must not steamroll the rights of communities living on top of Africa’s mineral wealth. It is important that local communities are informed and consulted about extractive industry projects that affect them.”

With the political boost from today’s African Progress Report we are one step closing to realizing the so far unrealized potential of Africa’s resource endowment.

As a mother of two, I now know that all my years of schooling did not prepare me nearly as well for working life as being a mother. As all mothers know, mothers are the ultimate project managers and multi-taskers, juggling many tasks at once, carrying out strategies but always being nimble to change course on a dime in the face of a temper tantrum, dirty diaper, or sick child. But for mothers in the developing world there are even bigger and more dire challenges, like where the next meal will come from, how to get medicine for a sick child, or finding potable drinking water. And yet, mothers in the developing world learn to cope with these challenges daily. That’s why so many are now realizing that investing in women is the key to feeding the planet and to economic growth.

According to a recent Gates Foundation report, “When women don’t control resources and income, their households may suffer from malnutrition. Men are less likely than women to reinvest their income in the health of the family.”  In a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, women are deemed to be the key to food security indicating that “if women had equal access to agricultural resources and services, food security would be greatly improved and societies would grow richer, and not only in economic terms.”

But it isn’t just NGO’s and UN bodies claiming a good return on investment when providing resources and opportunities to women, Goldman Sachs, the large investment firm also conducted research with the World Bank and concluded that “investments in women—particularly in education and labor force participation—lead to read GDP growth, as women take their earnings and invest them back in their families and communities.” And just last week the billionaire and investment guru, Warren Buffett also expressed his bullish take on women in an essay published in Fortune magazine where he declares his optimism for America’s future lies with American women, untapped resource!

So to all those mothers and multi-taskers, here is a list of 10 (thought there are undoubtedly more) tasks that women in the developing world take on each day:

1. Child rearing

This mother and child fled their villages and had just arrived at the El Salaam camp in North Darfur. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

2. Cooking

Cooking “arroz chaufa” (stir fried rice) in the communal pot, village of San Jacinto, Peru. Photo: Evan Abramson /Oxfam America

3. Growing commodity crops for sale

Etchi Avla on her cocoa farm in Botende, Ivory Coast. Photo: Peter DiCampo / Oxfam America

4. Selling at the market 

Since she received an Oxfam cash grant, this market vendor in Darfur is able to support her children, brothers and sisters. Photo: Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam America

5. Fetching water

Jainaba Bojang carries a tub of water home from a bore hole and water pump in the village of Oupat, Gambia. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell:Oxfam America

6. Chopping and gathering firewood

Howa Abdullha comes back to Kebkabiye, North Darfur, carrying firewood she has gathered outside town. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

7. Laundry

Hencia Josena does laundry at work in a Haitian hospital. Photo: Liz Lucas/Oxfam America

8. Maintaining the house

Members of Ratnaweera family stand outside their new house in Sri Lanka.  Photo: Atul Loke/Panos for Oxfam America

9. Growing crops for food

This Cambodian farmer used system of rice intensification (SRI) practices to cultivate rice. Photo: Patrick Brown/ Oxfam America

10. Caring for elders

These three elders at the Internally Displaced Persons Magunga Camp noted that they had family looking after them. Photo: Liz Lucas/ Oxfam America

The President is moving towards putting more aid resources directly into the hands of local citizens around the world in his 2014 budget, particularly with regards to food aid reform.

Why does this matter? Changes to foreign assistance could mean more for farmers like Emiliana Aligaesha.

Photo: Brett Eloff / Oxfam America

Emiliana Aligaesha (pictured) formed a successful private company selling coffee and beans with her fellow community members in the Karagwe District of northwest Tanzania in 2007. They have become so successful that the World Food Programme is now a customer of the group, which is known as Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. USAID, through the Karagwe Development and Relief Services, has been helping to guarantee better prices for Aligaesha and her fellow farmers.

Since 2008, Kaderes Peasant Development Ltd. (KPD) has sold 1600 tons of beans to the World Food Programme, ensuring that farmers benefit from more competitive prices. As part of their success, in 2012 the World Food Programme upgraded KPD’s status from a small supplier to a large supplier of food in the region.

Partnerships with local farmers offered through companies like Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. saves the money and time it might take to bring the same food aid from the US or Europe, and, more importantly, ensures a market for hardworking and innovative farmers like Aligaesha. These purchases also have a multiplier effect as KPD uses profits to support other farmers with training, access to farming implements, and information on markets.

Despite these common-sense reforms to US food aid and US foreign assistance broadly, they have come under fire from vested interests in Washington and globally. The food aid reform fight is the latest in a series of reforms, led by the administration, to make foreign assistance much more effective.  The US government is identifying local partners where US foreign assistance can be used effectively, allowing the US to look in places they haven’t looked before. This is not just good policy; it’s the right thing to do with people like Aligaesha, whose company is exactly the type of supplier that the US government can support through steps towards local and regional procurement of food aid.

Emiliana Aligaesha and her fellow farmers in Karagwe, Tanzania formed a successful private company selling coffee and beans. The World Food Programme has been a customer and USAID has been helping to guarantee better prices. Photo: MaishaPlus2012 / Oxfam

Emiliana Aligaesha taught herself to farm when she became a widow and her teacher’s salary did not make ends meet. When Aligaesha found herself facing a lack of reliable markets, changing weather patterns, and a shortage of farming equipment, she joined forces with fellow farmers in her community to make sure they got the best prices for their produce. For example, in 2012 Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. bought coffee from local farmers at 1500 Tanzanian Shillings per one kilogram (equivalent to 1 USD), while other buyers paid 900 Tanzanian Shillings.

As well as leading Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. and growing coffee, bananas, beans and maize herself, Aligaesha owns six cows, operates her own irrigation systems, and also supplies quality seedlings to other villagers. Even though she has had little formal agricultural training, Aligaesha has become a kind of researcher in the village, testing out new agricultural techniques for others to follow, and encouraging women to be more involved in agriculture and business.

At Oxfam, we’re excited that the US government is finally recognizing that supporting people like Aligaesha and her fellow farmers at Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. can be a sound investment of our food aid dollars.

As a former teacher, most important to Aligaesha is that her eight children have all been put through university as a result of her hard work.

Mining industry big-wigs will gather in South Africa next week for Mining Indaba, billed as the “world’s largest mining investment conference.”  As has become de rigeur in recent years at this kind of event, there will be some discussion of social and environmental “sustainability” issues.  The final day of the event is in fact devoted to this and boasts an impressive-sounding set of panels featuring mining company CEOs, World Bank executives, government officials, and a smattering of NGOs.  This is consistent with a recent spate of mining sector sustainability initiatives including, among several others, the International Council on Mining and Metals’ Resource Endowment series, which looked at how mining can contribute more to economic development.

While this attention to sustainability is in general positive, it hasn’t driven the fundamental change in industry practice that is urgently needed.  US-based Newmont Mining’s history in Peru is one example.  Following a series of problems in Peru and elsewhere in the mid-2000s, the company commissioned a report that produced recommendations on improving its relationships with local communities.  The company’s implementation of these recommendations has been spotty at best.  Last year it was forced to postpone its massive Mina Conga project in the face of community opposition.  In December the company released another damning external review that described a “state of fear” among communities living near the mine.  Clearly the learning from past reviews hasn’t sunk in with company management.

To address this situation and the critical sustainability challenges facing the mining sector, we offer a few recommendations for the mining execs gathered in in Cape Town to consider as they schmooze, golf, and down some of those delicious South African red wines.  (Goats do Roam is my personal favorite.)

Dominic Nyame, a member of the Concerned Citizens Association of Prestea, an organization in southwest Ghana negotiating with a mining company around issues related to air and water pollution, and the proposed expansion of mining operations. Photo: Jeff Deutsch / Oxfam America

First, mining companies need to start fully respecting community consent.  While industry rhetoric on this point has improved significantly in recent years (which Oxfam has highlighted in a recent report), good examples of implementation are still lacking. Industry types often make the practice out to be more difficult than it really is and worries about communities vetoing a project are overblown.  Newmont’s problems at Mina Conga in Peru exist not because communities there are inherently anti-mining.  Rather they stem from the company’s bungled handling of community relations (by its own admission) during the early days of its presence in the community.  Getting these relationships right from the beginning and actively addressing to community concerns are critical to avoiding these problems.

Ensuring respect for the rights of women in the communities where companies operate is also critical for ensuring sustainability.  Women are often the guardians of communities’ long-term interests.  They suffer most directly from the negative impacts of mining, via the domestic violence and alcoholism to which mining often contributes.  Mining companies must carry out more rigorous and independent gender impact assessments.

Transparency has become somewhat of a cliché in discussions of sustainability in the extractive industries, but it’s an area, like women’s rights, where much work still remains to be done.  Mining companies should fully disclose all payments they make to governments – down to the project level where their impacts are felt.  To its credit, the mining industry hasn’t joined the American Petroleum Institute’s odious lawsuit seeking to block a new US law requiring these disclosures.  This is positive and should be coupled with all companies publicly embracing the law and disclosing this information beginning this year.

The thirsty folks gathered in South Africa will know that there is no sustainability issue more critical to the mining industry than protecting water resources.  South Africa itself is awash in acid mine drainage, or sulfuric acid that leaches out of mine sites and destroys ground and surface water.  This problem is a ticking time bomb in developing countries and it is incredibly expensive to fix once it starts.  Once it does, the acid needs to be treated forever.  Mining companies have the technology now to know when mining in particular ore bodies is likely to cause this problem.  They also know they shouldn’t mine there.

Finally, if mining companies want to contribute more to sustainable development, they should accept the fact that that may mean reduced profits for themselves.  Mining companies are masters at negotiating deals that enable them to avoid paying significant amounts of taxes.  In contract negotiations, industry lawyers routinely take under-trained and under-resourced government officials to the cleaners.  Yes, companies should be able to make profits, but they shouldn’t do so by exploiting unfair advantages.

Ultimately, making progress on these issues will depend on the degree to which mining companies incorporate community consent, the rights of women, transparency, and protection of water resources into their business models.  Creating incentives for performance on these issues will be critical.  Investors can play a role by only buying shares of companies with independently-verified performance metrics on sustainability, including demonstrable progress on the issues listed above.  Companies themselves can link compensation and career advancement to performance on sustainability.

It’s time for sustainability to become a central part of mining industry standards in Africa and elsewhere, rather than a sideshow.

Malawian health advocate Martha Kwataine is working to make sure her national government responds to the needs of Malawians in rural areas, not just those living in the capital.

As Mayor of San Martin Alao, Peru, Manuel Dominguez is working to better manage his own municipal funds to clean up waste blighting his town.

Village Chief Kojo Kondua IV of Abuesi, Ghana, is making sure national officials enforce fishing regulations fairly, ensuring his village’s source of jobs and food for the future.

Tanzanian farmer Emiliana Aligaesha and fellow farmers formed a successful private company; she now trains other farmers to improve their yields and market access.

Monday is Inauguration Day. As President Obama takes the oath of office for the second time, his foreign policy team is getting a makeover. Obama’s nominations of John Kerry for State, Chuck Hagel for Defense, and Jack Lew for Treasury will put new faces in the three US government cabinet roles with the most impact on America’s global development efforts.

Congress will soon be grilling Kerry, Lew, and Hagel in their confirmation hearings. Senators will likely ask questions about the nominees’ plans to protect key US alliances. No doubt many of these questions will focus on America’s military, diplomatic and trade relationships.

But some of the most powerful alliances America has aren’t with governments—they are with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things. This week Oxfam America’s Aid Effectiveness team launched an ad campaign featuring four of these American allies. (Click on the images to learn more about each of them.)

The basis of these alliances is the tiny amount of US assistance that the United States invests in fighting poverty around the world. It’s less than one percent of the federal budget—but it’s the tool that helps local leaders like Kwataine, Dominguez, Aligaesha, and Kondua deliver powerful results.

America partly does this because we’re generous. But more important are the selfish reasons; when local leaders like these four are successful in improving their countries and communities, it delivers a world that is fairer, more peaceful, and more prosperous—which, after all, is the stated goal of much of America’s foreign policy.

Local leaders like these four need a few things from the United States to be successful. First, they need America to be honest and transparent about our goals and policies, so they know how to work with us. Second, they need us to be willing to work directly with them, and invest our time, money, and effort in their success. Finally, they need us to be willing to trust them to know what works best for their own communities and countries, rather than impose our own politics and processes on them.

So now is the time to make sure Senators ask the right questions in these confirmation hearings. How do the nominees plan to protect and deepen our development alliances with people like Kwataine, Dominguez, Aligaesha, and Kondua? Will they support strong development policies that put more trust in local leaders like these? Will they faithfully pursue policies that give local leaders in developing countries the information, capacity and control they need to solve their own problems?

The answers could determine whether President Obama is able to build a lasting legacy on fighting global poverty.

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Related Pages

Slideshow: Don’t cut aid. It’s working.

Ray Offeneheiser, President of Oxfam, in the Huffington Post: Don’t cut aid. It’s working.

Coming to a billboard near you: A very different portrayal of aid, by Jennifer Lentfer on Oxfam’s First Person blog

Press release: Novel ad campaign urges no cuts to poverty-fighting foreign aid

Storify compilations of tweets about the ad campaign: A very different portrayal of aid and Is Oxfam America just like all the others?

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Note: Oxfam America does not take U.S. federal funds, but we do support effective development programs.

A little over three months ago, I sat attentively listening to the give and take between Nigerian Female Food Hero, Susan Godwin, and Chicago Council on World Affairs Senior Fellow, Roger Thurow. Thurow was moderating a panel at the World Food Prize Symposium called A Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World Sustainably? Also part of the discussion were Sir Gordon Conway, scholar and author; plant breeding and genetics pioneer, Gebisa Ejeta, and Jane Karuku, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Roger Thurow and Susan Godwin at the World Food Prize Dialogue. Photo: Jacob Silberman.

Now, an online dialogue, The Future of Agriculture, is considering much the same question about addressing hunger in the face of many challenges ahead. This discussion also includes my acquaintances, Susan Godwin and Roger Thurow. Mrs. Godwin writes eloquently on the challenge of passing the legacy of farming on to the next generation in  My Daughter Wants to Be a Farmer. Thurow again plays the role of summarizing and connecting the dots at the end of week one of the conversation.

In the first week, writers like Bill McKibben, writer and founder of 350.org, and Jose Graziano del Silva, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), argued that moving away from an agriculture dependent on fossil fuels could not only benefit the planet but set the stage for a more resilient and productive agriculture.

Joining McKibben and del Silva were thought leaders with very diverse points of view and from different parts of the world. All considered what future farming might look like if we better considered the role of women, risk, farmer-based knowledge, and less reliance on fossil fuel.

The discussion continues through this week with a new set of essays posted each day. So far the discussion has been lively. But to help build our understanding we need broad participation and dialogue. So please take some minutes each day to visit http://blogs.oxfam.org/en/future-of-agriculture. The essays are short; the implications for our future tasks are great.

After reading both Roger Thurow’s and Susan Godwin’s online contributions, I thought back to that hall in Iowa with over 800 people attending. Mrs. Godwin told how her community and other had asked her what she might offer to all the highly educated and important people that she might address in the US. She said that most important she would tell them how her work had improved the lives of her family and the other women in her community. And after a pause, during which the audience grew even more quiet, she declared, “I will tell them that I am a farmer!”

That day, that large crowd filled with educators, scientists, political leaders, and activists rose to their feet. They acknowledged that the hope for a well-fed future depends on the efforts of all stakeholders, and ideas from all sectors.

The Future of Agriculture discussion is no different. Join the conversation today.

Rohit Malpani is a campaigns advisor at Oxfam and leads the organization’s access to medicines campaign. Oxfam’s response to Progressive Economy’s “Trade Fact of the Week” 11/28/12 is cross posted from the Progressive Economy blog.

Oxfam disagrees with the analysis set out in your November 28 article about patent protection for medicines. The article incorrectly explains the TRIPS Agreement, and we do not believe there was ever a global consensus in support of the intellectual property (IP) approach promoted by USTR, as implied in your article.

The TRIPS Agreement sets out minimum standards for IP protection, and explicitly includes a series of exceptions and limitations to IP rights that may be used by governments in order to achieve public policy objectives, including improvement of health outcomes. We have long been puzzled by efforts to portray compulsory licensing as a legal tool that may only be used during health “crises” or “emergencies”. Put simply, this interpretation is unsupported by the text of the Agreement itself. Similarly, the Doha Declaration confirms the right of countries to use all IP flexibilities in TRIPS “especially”—not “only”—in relation to health emergencies and pandemics.

We question the “policy calm” that you state has existed for 10 years in relation to patented medicines. In fact, that “policy calm” has never existed. Instead, there have been on-going tensions due to the endless efforts of the USTR, under pressure by the multinational pharmaceutical industry, to renegotiate the terms and conditions of the TRIPS Agreement through other means, and especially to strip away the public health limitations and exceptions that were included in the TRIPS Agreement in 1994. Developing countries are finding increasingly that they must endure against these tensions and challenge the pressure because many patients in their countries cannot obtain the medicines they need – especially newer treatments that are still under patent protection, which tend to be out of reach. Certainly governments in poor countries should allocate more money to health care, but the exorbitant prices of many patented medicines, an increasingly familiar problem in the United States, are an absolute barrier to health care coverage in resource-deficient countries.

Together with other humanitarian groups, we have documented a persistent, severe lack of access to new treatments and quality health care across developing countries, with the lowest income groups most affected. Upgrading health infrastructure is a crucial part of the solution, as is use by governments of all the policy options available to them, including IP flexibilities, to promote the availability of quality, low-cost versions of new treatments for their populations.

Medicines, including but not only “essential medicines” as identified by the WHO, are an important component of healthcare. Depending on their affliction, patients need access to quality, effective treatments regardless of whether these are on the WHO essential medicines list (EML). Moreover, medicines are selected for inclusion in the EML based on a range of factors, including affordability; because patent-protected treatments are more expensive, they are generally not included in the list. This is a critical flaw in the papers cited in your analysis, which found—unsurprisingly—that many medicines on the EML are off-patent.

Health care also does not only refer to AIDS, TB and malaria. To say that India has a “relatively small patient population” with cancer and other non-communicable diseases is wrong. Today, the World Health Organization notes that 80 percent of all non-communicable diseases (cancer, heart disease, diabetes) are in low-income countries, especially as life-styles and eating habits undergo a dramatic shift. By some projections, there are up to 2.5 million cases of cancer in India today. Likewise, by 2025, India will have over 75 million cases of diabetes. These are not problems which can be addressed through charity and insurance. They require serious, Marshall-Plan like investments by governments to both prevent development of these diseases and, inevitably, to provide treatment to ensure that their own citizens can lead healthy lives.

Improving health outcomes in the developing world will require substantial investments in health infrastructure, services, and medicines. At the same time, we urge governments to use policy tools available to them to promote availability of quality, effective treatments at the lowest possible cost.

In late October, a week before Hurricane Sandy arrived on the East Coast of the US, I entered a maelstrom of food and people in the scenic region of Italy at the southern foot of the Alps. It was the Terra Madre event in Turin, northern Italy, the biennial occasion that draws over 200,000 people from around the world to celebrate and discuss food production, preparation and enjoyment. And next Monday is Terra Madre Day, a day to celebrate our locally grown and produced food.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ET18_QNgIY[/youtube]

Carlo Petrini established both Slow Food and Terra Madre “to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”[1] At the opening ceremony, the sage of the Slow Food movement declared that “caring for food means caring for all living beings.” And after long applause, Petrini added that promoting the dignity, well-being, happiness and community means taking a “political approach.”

African garden display at Terra Madre. Photo: Jim French

I attended the October event as an Oxfam America delegate upon invitation of Slow Food USA. During the opening event, sitting by my side was Frederick Msiska, a farmer from Malawi. He coordinated a Slow Food Garden Project in his country and had come to help construct an amazing 400 square meter African garden in the Oval pavilion at Terra Madre. Showcasing the vast variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and medicinal plants that grow on the continent, the garden was a visual symbol of the cultural communities working to support a diverse and healthy food system. It also expressed a political idea: the value in investing in and empowering small scale producers to help support a well-fed, fair, and sustainable planet.

Esther Jerome and Marianna Yatsyshina at Terra Madre. Photo: Giorgio Gori

Frederick Msiksa was joined by hundreds of small farmers from developing nations. These included Tanzanian Food Hero, Esther Jerome, and, Grow Method honoree from Siberia Marianna Yatsyshina. these small-scale producers represented the ideal of what can happen when people are given the means and resources to grow, prepare and market food. But they also spoke about the injustice that occurs when companies, governments or wealthy investors buy up or seize land and displace people, or when native fisheries are decimated by industrial operations, or when indigenous practices and skills are neglected and lost.

The theme of this Terra Madre: “Good, clean, fair.” seemed to me like a good fit with the GROW Campaign triad of Food, Justice, Planet. Slow Food’s broad global network is more often associated with the pleasure of preparing and consuming good food rather than justice issues.But, in a world now facing climate change, conflict over land and water, and the need to meet the world demand for food while eradicating hunger and safeguarding the environment, the common ground of Oxfam and Slow Food is growing.

A well-fed world is one that must cultivate justice and sustainability and produce nutritious and good tasting food.