Diversifying sustainable farming systems: behaviour change is key.

• Author: Fiebig, William

Save the Children US is part of the International Save the Children Alliance that works in over 100 countries worldwide. The goal of its Food Security Program is to reduce the number of children who suffer from hunger and malnutrition. It has 13 long-term programmes in: Sub-Saharan Africa--Angola, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda; Latin America and the Caribbean--Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua; and Asia--Bangladesh, Indonesia and Tajikistan. Generally, these are five-year programmes that address the health and nutrition of children and their families, including improving household access to a wider range and greater quantities of nutritious foods, by intensifying and diversifying the management of food production systems.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Behaviour-focused programming is at the centre of the Save the Children's strategy to reduce the number of children suffering from hunger and malnutrition. It tries to understand why some families in the developing world survive the hunger season without malnutrition or illness, and how they are able to produce more than their neighbours who have similar socio-economic environments. These families work the same size plots as their neighbours, cultivate the same marginal lands and endure the same rainfall, yet they are better able to withstand moderate shocks and stress in their farming systems. Social scientists call them "positive deviants", and Save the Children develops behaviour-change messages that help these farm families adapt new crops and crop varieties to diversify their farming systems and reduce their risks and vulnerability to food insecurity.

In the initial phase of its programme activities. Save the Children's agricultural team characterizes the farming systems in the communities where we work. This includes conducting an inventory of the local biodiversity that households depend upon for their food production systems: local crops commonly grown, agro-ecological and socio-economic characteristics of different varieties of each crop; species of fruit trees and vegetable crops grown; and types of root and tuber crops common in their farming systems. Knowledge of these characteristics provides the means to restore food production systems affected by disasters and to identify new crop varieties that may be more productive, less susceptible to disease and pests, and/or drought resistant.

The Save the Children's approach to reducing risks of and vulnerabilities to food...