The 3rd European Forum on Rural Development took place in Palencia (Spain) from the 29^th  March to 1 April 2011. This Forum was a follow up to the previous forums held in Montpellier in 2002 and Berlin in 2007, respectively. Organized by various European stakeholders, the 3^rd  Forum was convened by the  European Commission, the Government of Spain and the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development.  Convened under the theme “Future agriculture and rural development to fight against hunger”.  The forum consisted of Plenary sessions, breakout and Special sessions, Practitioners from Africa, Asia and Latin America gave in-depth talks,  real-life examples and scientific research. A special session on ICTs and rural development was also organized by Technical centre for Agriculture and Rural development - CTA

Food security is a complex issue, covering aspects of food availability, access to food, prices, quality and predictability. Poverty in turn is a key determinant for access to food and for vulnerability to food shortages and to price changes. Paradoxically, most of the poor and hungry people live in rural areas. They are smallholder farmers, farm labourers, pastoralists, and fishermen. Rural development is essential for empowering the rural poor, for eradicating poverty and hunger, and to offer  a sustainable livelihood. Moreover, rural development also contributes to achieving the other MDGs, in particular the MDGs on child mortality, maternal health and basic education.

 During 2009 and 2010 several key processes and events contributed to shaping the global response to the food security challenges. These included the establishment of the UN High Level Task Force on Food Security (and the production of the UN Comprehensive Framework for Action, updated in 2010), the 2009 Rome Principles on Food Security, as agreed at the November 2009 FAO Summit, the advance in the reform of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS; with the first meeting of the reformed CFS held in October 2010), the launch of various financial initiatives to facilitate the fulfilment of L’Aquila commitments, the new EU policy framework to assist developing countries in addressing food security challenges, and the MDG High Level Event in September 2010. ( refer to the  concept paper http://www.ruralforum.info/images/ficheros/cp-1-en.pdf)

Forum objectives

The Forum had three specific objectives;

i) To promote exchanges between policy-makers and practitioners, linking rural development policies and their implementation, and informing the wider policy debate with practical experiences and empirical evidence.

ii) To share experiences on key issues (e.g. agro-ecological approaches, land policies, market and prices, rural women, etc) where rural development has achieved results in fighting against rural food insecurity and poverty.

iii) To build networks of rural development practitioners, bridge stances of stakeholders in rural development / food security and thereby facilitate development effectiveness.

WOUGNET’s participation at this Forum could not have been more timely given the work that WOUGNET  is implementing  with rural women in Agriculture and ICTs and their contribution towards food security. In Africa and the developing world in general, global trends towards rural development can only have meaning with the full engagement of the youth and women but keeping in perspective the gender dynamics in the different communities.

 Indeed among the concluding statements of the Forum, it was strongly emphasized that the inclusion and participation of women in rural development could not be undermined, if sustainable development was to be achieved. The nutritional status of children especially in the third world where there is  a high mortality infant rate can only be averted with a good food security systems and practices in place.

 Some of the concluding remarks included

Ø     Innovation, Research and Technology as important  elements in  Rural development

Ø     Evidence informed dialogues  needed if advocacy in Rural development is to be effective especially at policy decision making level

Ø      The participation of farmers, farmers organizations, CSOs and the Private sector in all the Rural development processes

Ø     Dialogues and Financing  on Climate change should be concurrent with Food security discussions  as opposed to the parallel dialogues taking place  currently.

Ø     Explore new instruments for Price violability  taking place now

References for further reading

http://ww.ruralforum.info

http://www.donorplatform.org

http://www.cta.int

 This article has been compiled by Janet C Achora- Sr Programme Officer - WOUGNET. WOUGNET's participation was generously supported by CTA and the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development