Putting farmers and their communities at the centre of development

This paper on the Community Area Based Development Approach (CABDA) proposes an alternative approach to food production in Africa and may have some learnings for how to produce food globally in a more sustainable way.

It is based on a Programme in E. Africa (in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Malawi) over the past 15 years.

The main points of the paper are summarised below. The full text can be accessed from: http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/specialist/natural-resource-perspectives/119-community-based-development-agriculture.pdf

Main points of Paper

Past approaches to increasing food production in Africa have failed because they have been technical fixes imposed from the outside, which cannot be afforded nor are relevant to the needs of the majority of the peasant farmers who produce 90% of the continent’s food

Instead, CABDA puts these farmers and their communities at the centre of development: They are involved in identifying their food production problems and in planning and implementing the solutions. These are solutions that they can afford and manage.

Using CABDA, farmers make important gains in food production through a combination of early maturing composite varieties of staple crops, crop diversification, new/improved methods of growing crops (agro forestry), introduction of drought resistant crops and better use of water through low cost, manageable technologies. .

CABDA involves the whole community, including women who are key to increasing food production. It also addresses some of main causes of food insecurity: erosion and soil degradation which reduce crop yields and food production.

Under CABDA, farmers control and drive their own development through the creation of farmer and community owned and run institutions that provide the inputs, improved seed and market support that they need.