After a peri­od of enjoy­ing good and diverse food dur­ing the hol­i­days and in Tana, we are back in the vil­lage and have to do with what is on offer here. For a few days no bread has been avail­able, a sign that the road way to Ambat is real­ly suf­fer­ing from the rainy sea­son by now. Fred­dy was plan­ning to go that way with the car today but that was can­celled because it is too wet. For­tu­nate­ly, we brought all kinds of canned food and spreads from Tana. And there is enough that we can buy around us. Green beans, toma­toes, onions, man­goes, and rice of course. With eggs, flour and milk, we make our­selves a good lunch.

This week, Oxfam has pub­lished results of their research “Good Enough to Eat”. In this, they com­bine data on var­i­ous aspects of food: Do peo­ple have enough to eat, can they afford it, how is the qual­i­ty, and what is the extent of dia­betes and obe­si­ty? The coun­try that comes out as the best place to eat is the Nether­lands. Of course, that is rea­son enough to men­tion it here. But with my stom­ach filled with pan­cakes and look­ing at the neighbour’s maize field, I also won­der how Mada­gas­car is scoring.

Let’s start with ‘enough to eat’ — as mea­sured by the per­cent­ages of mal­nu­tri­tion and under­weight chil­dren — here Mada­gas­car dan­gles on the third worst posi­tion. More than one third of the chil­dren in the coun­try are under­weight. When it comes to qual­i­ty of food Mada­gas­car even has the low­est score in the sur­vey. Peo­ple most­ly eat nutri­ent-poor cere­als (rice) and root crops (cas­sa­va). In gen­er­al, it can be stat­ed that this is linked to high food prices. Espe­cial­ly in coun­tries in Sub-Saha­ran Africa the price of food is high in com­par­i­son to oth­er prod­ucts and ser­vices. We do not expe­ri­ence the mis­er­able posi­tion of Mada­gas­car every day. We are in a region that pro­duces a lot of rice and enjoys rel­a­tive pros­per­i­ty because of that.

In the con­clu­sion, Oxfam gives the rec­om­men­da­tion that we have heard before from devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tions and donors: Invest­ing in small-hold­er agri­cul­ture in devel­op­ing coun­tries. The word invest implies that prof­its can be made in terms of high­er pro­duc­tion and mar­ket access. How­ev­er, the real­i­ty often shows that invest­ments in new tech­nolo­gies do not sim­ply lead to changed prac­tices. This is part of Freddy’s research on the adop­tion of Con­ser­va­tion Agri­cul­ture, a tech­nique that helps in adapt­ing to cli­mate change. He looks at the process­es of edu­ca­tion and the ways in which farm­ers make choices.

The vast major­i­ty of the African pop­u­la­tion makes a liv­ing by sub­sis­tence agri­cul­ture . The oppor­tu­ni­ties and choic­es of these peo­ple will shape the future, for them­selves, for the cities and the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment . We are try­ing to learn more about this. In order to do this, we some­times need to tem­porar­i­ly for­get our num­ber one position…