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TITLE
?Building Capacities of Asian NGOs
in Poverty Eradication through Community Action -
Sustainable Agriculture:
A Viable Option for Resource-Poor Farmers?
RATIONALE:
Eradicating absolute poverty is becoming the single biggest challenge of development work today. The Asia-Pacific region is home to 75% of all poor people in the world. Most of them are in highly marginalized rural agricultural communities.
Poverty especially in rural communities places heavy stress on the natural resource base. At the same time, Asian agriculture is experiencing the backlash of years of environmental neglect. Studies have shown that the growth in aggregate output of rice has been declining over recent years due to rapid degradation of the environment. Pesticides poisoning, declining soil fertility, soil erosion, flash floods, and loss of biological diversity ? all these are reaching an alarming stage.
Global and regional trends denote a pattern of polarizing resources and markets to globalization with obscure benefits to the poor. Field initiatives should thus prepare for or change the effects of the threats globalization poses to food security and empowerment at the village level. Policy work that neutralizes these trends must be linked to practical field action, factored into strategies and applied at the regional level. As such, ensuring household food security is the best antidote to grassroots communities subjected to the forces of globalization.
It is imperative that household food security concerns as well as promoting community-based natural resource management is undertaken within the context of reducing poverty within rural communities. Among the many agricultural systems, Sustainable Agriculture (SA) practices and technologies have shown potential as an effective poverty reduction intervention. Moreover, it is a holistic approach to farming that is characterized by regenerative techniques inspired by indigenous knowledge systems.
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