The Importance of Horticulture: Success Stories
AGRI-HORTI-FORESTRY FOR TRIBAL REHABILITATION (WADI)
Promotion of tree based farming on private wastelands for food security and income generation is a major programme of BAIF. With the denudation of forests, tribals, representing 10% of Indian population, have been deprived of their livelihood. The poor families participating in this programme popularly known as Wadi (Orchard Development), establish drought tolerant fruit crops such as mango, cashew, Indian gooseberry, tamarind, custard apple, ber, etc. on their marginal or wastelands covering 0.4 to 1.0 ha. The interspace is used for cultivating arable crops, which they have been growing earlier and the field bunds and borders are used to establish hardy shrubs and trees useful for fodder, fuel, timber and herbal medicines.
Over 0.1 million poor tribal families, who participated in this programme are now earning (USD 600) per annum to lead a sustainable livelihood. This programme has ensured women empowerment, food security, healthcare, education for children and prevented migration. It has addressed the twin problems of poverty and environmental degradation and has evolved as a replicable model for conservation of bio-diversity while enhancing rural prosperity.
New Jobs and Economic Opportunities
Horticultural crop production creates jobs. On average it provides twice the amount of employment per hectare of production compared to cereal crop production (Ali et al., 2002). The move from cereal production towards high-value horticulture crops is an important contributor to employment opportunities in developing countries (Joshi et al., 2003). The horticultural commodity chain is also longer and more complex than the cereal crop one and as a result job opportunities are more abundant (Temple, 2001).
Women have the most to benefit from the increasing importance of horticulture in rural economies. Women, in general, play a much more significant role in horticultural crop production compared to starchy staple crops. For example in Bangladesh, women account for 48% of all labor in vegetable production compared to only 11-20% for cereal production (Rahman, 2000). Similar findings were made in Latin America and Africa (Weinberger and Lumpkin, 2005). Throughout the developing countries of Africa, women play a dominant role in the production of horticultural crops and cultivate more than half of the total smallholdings.
Besides creating jobs on the farm, the horticultural sector also generates off-farm employment, especially for women. This is the case for export and value-added processing industries, which are important sectors of the economies of Latin America and Africa. In Mexico, for example, 80-90% of people engaged in packing operations are women, and even higher percentages of women workers are involved in fresh produce field operations. Evidence from Africa reflects a similar trend: women comprise 91 % of horticultural employees in Zimbabwe (Dolan and Sorby, 2003). Since horticultural production is very labor-intensive, landless laborers also benefit from the new employment opportunities created by horticultural crop production. These jobs usually provide more income than jobs obtained by the laborers in most other sectors (Weinberger and Genova, 2005; Weinberger and Lumpkin, 2005).
Improved Food Security and Nutrition
All of the hungry and many of the overweight are afflicted with micronutrient deficiency (lack of vitamins and minerals). Over two billion people, the vast majority of whom are women and children, suffer from micronutrient deficiencies (UN/SCN, 2004; Gardner and Halwell, 2000). Horticultural crops can play a vital role in solving this global micronutrient crisis. Vegetables and fruits are the most sustainable and affordable sources of micronutrients in diets (UN, 2004).
Healthy diets improve the learning capacity of children and the productivity of workers (Weinberger, 2004). ln contrast, micronutrient-deficient diets lead to reduced mental and physical development, poor performance in school, loss of productivity in the workplace, and the likelihood of poverty in future generations (Haddad et al., 2002).
Vitamin A deficiency alone weakens the immune system of 40% of children in developing countries (UN, 2004). This deficiency increases a child's risk of severe illness and death from infectious diseases, which are the leading causes of death in developing countries. Vitamin A deficiency contributes to higher rates of anemia as well as morbidity from common childhood infections such as respiratory and diarrheal diseases (Sommer and West, 1996), measles (West, 2000) and malaria (Shankar et al., 1999). Deficiencies of vitamin A and other micronutrients may increase the likelihood of HIV/AIDS transmission from mother to child and hasten the progression of the disease in infected persons (Fawzi et al., 2002; Semba et al., 1994).
Iron deficiency affects at least 2 billion, and perhaps up to 3.5 billion people. Shortage of iron in the diet causes reduced productivity, which results in economic losses of billions of dollars globally (Weinberger, 2004; UN, 2004). These losses are so substantial that economists at the Copenhagen Consensus in 2004 agreed that relieving iron and other micronutrient deficiencies should be the second highest priority in world development initiatives, second only to relieving the HIV/AIDS crisis (Economist, 2004).
Although essential in diets, not enough vegetables and fruits are available, especially to poor families in developing countries. Rates of production of vegetables and fruits cannot satisfy consumer demand and these micronutrient-rich food sources are often too expensive for the poor. Production of vegetables and fruits unfortunately is often accompanied by misuse and abuse of pesticides with their negative effects on human health and potential impact on the environment. In the least developed countries, the consumption of fruits and vegetables is declining (FAO 2004b). Steps must be taken to reverse this trend through provision of a range of safe, affordable and nutritious vegetables.
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