Small farmers say they're overlooked in climate talks

Nelson Mudzingwa, 51, has been a farmer all his life. He grows diverse food crops and raises livestock in Masvingo province, a semiarid region in Zimbabwe, with the skills inherited from his parents and “respecting the values we derive from Mother Earth,” as he put it.

But droughts are becoming more prevalent, making water an increasingly scarce resource. Mudzingwa said that in the past 20 years, local farmers have recorded only four good seasons, measured by how much rainfall they got.

“That’s an indicator we are going towards worse conditions,” he said, speaking over the phone from his farm, with the sounds of roosters crowing and dogs barking in the background.

While Mudzingwa said he is concerned about the impacts that climate change will have on his farming options, he’s more worried that he won’t have much say in the solutions. With food systems and agriculture becoming more important in the climate debate, smallholder farmers lament that their voice is underrepresented at climate negotiations, especially around adaptation policies.

That’s particularly relevant with the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP 26, just around the corner in October and November. Policymakers and scientists are usually key players in the run-up to such big international events where world leaders, flanked by their advisers and skilled negotiators, agree on new or beefed-up policies to tackle the climate crisis across sectors.

“The climate community is always doing science-based kind of work in terms of calculating all the emissions and reduction needs. Yes, that's important, but there’s also this kind of lived experience that also counts as important and legitimate evidence,” said Patty Fong, climate program director at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, a group of philanthropic foundations aiming to give more voice to farmers. “These are essential insights and experiences that must be sufficiently integrated into the rest of the climate agenda.”

Smallholder farmers produce around one-third of food globally, according to recent research from the Food and Agriculture Organization. “Five of every six farms in the world consist of less than two hectares [4.9 acres], operate only around 12 percent of all agricultural land, and produce roughly 35 percent of the world's food,” it found.

“Around 2.5 billion people depend on the world’s 500 million small scale farms for their livelihood,” yet “small-scale farmers are responsible for only about five percent of global greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a blog post from the International Fund for Agricultural Development at the end of last year.

In sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, smallholder farmers produce up to 80% of the food consumed by the regional populations, but they are disproportionately affected by climate change and extreme poverty.

“Usually at the COP negotiations, you have seen climate activists, environmentalists, big NGOs that have been engaged, with relationships cultivated over years of campaigning and political engagement,” Fong said. “Farmers are busy working the land, feeding themselves, and our communities. In November, it's harvest time for many. … They don't have time or the means to go to COP.”

She added, “This raises big questions about governance, participation, and access to resources that are needed to enable them to be represented, to create associations and engage.”

The lack of farmers’ voice is also noticeable in more general working groups and dialogues throughout the year around climate and food, which are meant to feed into the bigger climate debate, said Yvan Biot, a senior associate at U.K.-based charity group Farm Africa and a former public servant with Britain’s now-defunct Department for International Development.

For example, the Koronivia joint working group on agriculture was set up in 2017 during COP 23 to look at agriculture’s vulnerabilities to climate change. But Biot said it largely includes agricultural scientists rather than farmers themselves, unless a scientist also happens to be a farmer.

“While there are a lot of clever ideas about how food systems can change in the context of climate, they are not involving farmers in this,” said Biot, who has participated in many COP negotiations and was also involved in setting up the Adaptation Fund. “They all talk about the need to involve more farmers, but there’s never farmers in the conversation. That was very shocking. These farmers have a lot to contribute but feel very left out.”

Different countries also rely on smallholder farmers for various things, he added, which makes alignment on needs and access to debate even more challenging. In low-income nations, smallholder farmers are the backbone of food production, while in high-income countries they represent a niche market.

“Will we allow a world in which smallholder farmers can continue to develop in a way appropriate to them and give them an opportunity to see what they can do,” Biot asked, “or are we going to replace this with a top-down, simplified farming system that benefits developed nations?”

Over the past year and a half, Biot and colleagues at charity Nourish Scotland have been working to build a global movement of smallholder farmers from the developing world to engage in the climate agenda through a series of locally facilitated events known as Fork to Farm dialogues. The goal is to convene farmers from around the world at COP 26 for the first time, both virtually and in person, to share their experience.

Also present at COP 26 will be the World Farmers’ Organisation, which brings together national farmers’ organizations and agricultural cooperatives. However, it represents both big and small farms across the globe, so tailoring positions to smallholder farmers in low-income countries is a challenge, experts said.

“Making things happen on the ground is much more than getting the policies right; it’s about getting people enthusiastic about this, getting people to feel responsible for this, and getting to do things that are compatible with their personal circumstances,” Biot said. “Global policies require local action.”

As for Mudzingwa, who is also national coordinator at the Zimbabwe Small Holder Organic Farmers' Forum, he said he regularly arranges meetings between local-level policymakers and farmers to discuss how they are adapting to the impacts of climate change — but he’s not always successful.

“Top-down frameworks are not favorables to the practices of the farmers,” he said. “Farmers are usually considered illiterate, but they have experience on the ground.”

For example, he said his farming community is adapting by finding ways to harvest as much rainwater as possible and opting for more drought-tolerant crops.

“At the end of any resolution, there must be action,” Mudzingwa said. “But that should not sideline the values of the farmers.”