Food for All - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 80

them illegally moving onto the national park is drastically reduced. This
makes the park authority happy because they can spend less on guards and
weapons. Like all these cases of agricultural transformation, not every-
thing is perfect. Farmers struggle to find markets, infrastructure is poor,
and research and extension agencies are often unaware of the progress that
is being made.
Nonetheless, Irma and Elias are not alone in forging a new way for
agriculture for those who have been excluded. One of the most extra-
ordinary changes to have occurred in the past decade and a half is the quiet
emergence of a revolution in developing country agriculture amongst
small and large farmers. It has been driven by farmers who are increasingly
rich in knowledge about nature, and how to use it to increase food
production, and who have the willingness and capacity to collaborate in
order to solve common problems. Many poorer farmers have made the
transition from largely pre-modern agricultural systems directly to
sustainable and highly productive systems. In every case, there are important
lessons for us all.
Critical Choices for Agricultural Development
The gloomy global predictions about increasing numbers of people,
growing demand for cereals and meat, and stubbornly persistent hunger
and poverty raise an important question: whom should we target? Many
now agree that if women have access to food, and the means to produce
it, then this food is also more likely to get into the mouths of children.
Low birth weight is now known to be a vital factor in both child malnu-
trition and premature death. But this, in turn, is caused by a mother's poor
nutrition before conception and during pregnancy. Foetal under-nutrition
also contributes to increasing incidences of chronic disease in later life. Each
year, 30 million infants are born in developing countries with impaired
growth, comprising 6 per cent of children in South-East Asia and Latin
America, and close to 15 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa. In the year 2000,
a quarter of pre-school children in developing countries had stunted
growth, where height is less than two standard deviations for the age, with
proportions rising to 50 per cent in East and South-Central Asia. 1
But this stunting carries forward to school-age children, too. In four
out of ten countries recently surveyed, more than one third of children
were stunted. This is due to insufficient and poor-quality food, with
deficiencies of key vitamins and minerals most common. Worldwide,
2 billion people suffer from iron-deficiency anaemia, including three-
quarters of pregnant women in South-East Asia, half in Africa, one third