Social protection and pro-poor agricultural growth: what scope for synergies?

Social protection (SP) and livelihood promotion have conventionally been handled by different departments within governments and donor organisations. Taking the example of agriculture, this paper argues that the scope for synergy between them is limited.However, there is substantial unexploited scope for introducing the perspectives of the one into the design and implementation of the other, i.e. for giving aspects of SP more of a growth-promoting dimension, and for designing agriculture initiatives in ways aiming to reduce risk and vulnerability.Policy conclusions include: With few exceptions, questions of how social protection and the productive sectors relate to each other have been neglected in policy debates, yet are central to the notion of ‘pro-poor growth’. To address them is all the more urgent in the context of the high risks linked to growing commercial (including global) market exposure; reduced public investment in agriculture; the imperfections in agricultural input and output markets where privatisation has been overhasty, and the growing constraints on recurrent budgets that any expansion of SP is likely to face.Different measures and instruments within SP impact differently on agriculture and vice-versa, and trade-offs need to be considered carefullySP can be growth promoting where, for instance, it stimulates thrift and credit schemes, creates physical assets through employment schemes, and promotes personal insurance, but transfer payments can also be indirectly growth-promoting Several types of agricultural strategy can both promote growth and reduce risk, including revisions to legislation and regulation, investments in soil and water conservation and transport and communications infrastructure, innovative types of insurance, and appropriately focused provision of services, including research and extensionExamples of synergy between SP and the productive sectors remain rare, but the principle underpins donor action in at least one major case and, if implementation problems can be overcome, may have wider potential.Inadequate planning and/or weak implementation of SP measures have at times impacted negatively on agriculture, as in the disruption of local markets caused by mis-timed food aid.Social protection programmes might usefully distinguish among three categories of rural poor households:those well-established in productive activitythose highly vulnerable to risks that may force them to sell productive assets and re-engage (if at all) only as labourersthose such as the sick or very elderly who are chronically unable to engage in productive activity. </uL>Initiatives such as the World Bank’s Social Risk Management Framework has mainly been concerned with the first two categories, but is now expanding towards the thirdTransfers to the third category (who are generally among the poorest) can allow them to influence the local agricultural economy as consumers, a role rarely considered hitherto. However, they can also influence production, e.g. where part of formal transfer payments (such as pensions) are invested in production, and where existing informal transfers are ‘released’ into productive activity (or consumption) as they are replaced by formal ones. Food transfers and cash transfers have very different implications for agriculture, which are rarely considered.Growing evidence that food insecurity in southern Africa has important chronic dimensions requires a rethinking of approaches, so that food aid to relieve any acute shortages is complemented by longer-term combinations of protection and promotion.[author]