Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 08/2009

Investing in Poor Farmers Pays: Rethinking how to invest in agriculture

Emily Alpert, Melinda Smale

June 2009

Oxfam Publishing

Abstract

High in the Andean hillsides of Peru, Jose Gonzalez Condo, an alpaca farmer, does not have enough money to feed and shelter his herd. Aissa Tenin Sidibe, a mother and cotton farmer in the dusty fields of southern Mali, struggles to afford fertilizer for her crops and to manage her work alongside caring for her family. Alami Bera and her husband are wheat and teff farmers in Ethiopia, and worry whether they will be able to feed their eight children. And across a continent, in Cambodia, Rort Kea strives to make a living from growing rice.