Conflict and Seed Security programming across Africa
ISSD Africa partners have recently launched a new working paper, exploring how emergency seed security programming can be more effective in regions and times of conflict. The working paper supports practicioners to be more “conflict-intentional” in their programme design and implementation, sharing actionable recommendations based on a wide and diverse array of experiences. In this interview, Louise Sperling from SeedSystem.org, and James Mulkerrins from Wageningen Social & Economic Research and ISSD Africa, reflect on the journey towards and findings of the paper.
Please access the full working paper here.
“Conflicts in smallholder farming areas may last for seasons, sometimes decades. We crucially need to tailor any seed security work to respond to shifting needs: conflict-intentional programming. If farmers can pivot, so can humanitarians.”
Can you share more on why you decided to write this article?
Smallholders continue to farm in conflict-affected areas of Africa. Not for one season, but for many seasons - up to 60 in the Kivus. Our seed security-linked aid to these zones has also continued for decades. Donors, governments and humanitarians working in these zones need to ask at a very basic level if our aid is sufficiently responding to conflict-induced changes. Can we do better? Can we stimulate implementers to be more explicit about how their programming takes account of on-the-ground realities in conflict areas? Can donors ensure that emergency seed security responses are designed on the basis of evidence or assessments?
To respond more effectively, interveners in seed security programs (us!) felt it urgent to understand much more clearly the changes, stresses and opportunities that might take place to seed systems in volatile contexts. Seed-support inventions potentially can boost production, income, and sometimes even nutrition - and quickly - just what farmers being assailed might need!
So, we first scoured all and any literature around seed system descriptions in conflict zones, across east, west and southern Africa spanning three decades. We also focused way beyond the actual planting material - like seed or tuber or vines - to look at production, delivery, input, prices, transformation, anything that might affect when, how, where, what or why farmers plant and sow. It was incredible donkey work (via libraries, internet, stored document piles) and the evidence was scant, piecemeal, often buried in obscure field reports or informal report-back notes. Maybe interveners focus first on getting the job done - not necessarily writing up results? And many, if not most, were not ‘seed people’.
Changes to seed systems - conflict- induced ones - prove to be very diverse, intense and wide-ranging. They embrace phases of crop and seed management from the beginning of production to the end: what type of land will be used, what plot size, which crop, which variety, which seed source, planting time, non-seed input use, crop management, post-harvest management (processing, storage), sale, and more.
Way beyond ‘doing no harm’ in conflict zones (i.e. not stirring up more tensions), interveners have to clearly make some important technical pivots, as farmers themselves are shifting, adapting and innovating to deal with a volatile, dynamic agricultural scenario.
Hence the notion of ‘conflict intentional’ programming, a new addition to the vocabulary in seed security, and the central tenet of this paper. The core of conflict intentional programming lies in guiding implementers to identify seed system changes induced by conflict, and in turn steer their humanitarian response to better adapt to, or mitigate, those effects.
The paper outlines how programmes are and should be designed. What do its findings mean for different stakeholders in emergency seed security programmes?
Analysis of the objective changes taking place in seed systems in 10 different countries led usto review the seed security interventions actually being implemented - some 25+ cases (again via literature digging, with select interviews especially with private sector seed enterprises). The types of seed security interventions being implemented included a wide range of responses and largely paralleled those being effected in normal times and contexts, there were nearzero elements of technical refinement to address conflict-induced changes. That is, essentially no conflict- intentional programming.
We did scout out separately seed security interventions specifically linked to promoting social cohesion and elements of peacebuilding. There was a small, focused set (seed and peace days, collective gardening, seed sharing networks) and the paper explores reasons why seed itself might be one good entry point for promoting the HDP-Nexus.
The implications of the paper are fundamental, and might serve as a foundational building block for intervening in conflict contexts
Beyond “Do No Harm”, there may be substantial room to “Do Technical Good”, as so many changes are taking place!
To “Do Technical Good”
Decision-makers and Designers (Governments, donors, program managers, field staff) must concretely understand the technical changes taking place
Program design then needs to respond to these technical changes - mitigating effects, adapting, pivoting all together - that is, effecting conflict-intentional program design and implementation
What is your call to action for the SeedNL community after reading this working paper?
SeedNL is a knowledge diffusion group and a convener of diverse stakeholders - both critical functions for moving forward conflict-intentional programming - in this paper, focusing on seed security.
Among possible key actions:
Popularize/debate the notion of conflict-intentional programming among implementers and donors (briefs, blogs, webinars)
Help gather more field evidence/insight, as evidence has been so challenging to find. Possibly through a high profile Workshop among Dutch intervening agencies?
Specifically convene discussions on Private Sector strategies needed vs NGO ones. The differences might be revealing - and both stakeholders are central to SeedNL and Dutch society at large
