SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
the beneficiaries work on improving the rural environment by building roads and engaging in many activities related to water, including water harvesting, drought proofing, flood control and irrigation.213 One risk with these public works schemes is that they may divert small-holders from vital farming activities, such as weeding, especially if they are offered participation during periods of high agricultural activity, which are also the food-insecure periods.214
Instead of crop insurance, it may be better to offer weather-based insurance. In this case, the insurance is based on a local index, say, of rainfall shortage or days of hailstorm or snow or frost. Farmers are compensated, if the index reaches a trigger level, regardless of their crop losses. Without the need to check on the situation of each farmer, payments can be made rapidly, so farmers need not resort to selling their assets in the event of a bad harvest. In addition, farmers covered by weather-indexed insurance should also be more credit worthy and thus able to invest in greater productivity.218 On the other hand, an insured famer may suffer a loss, yet not receive a payout.
These and other social protection programmes can have both intended and unintended gender implications. Many programmes target women, on the grounds that, compared with men, they are more likely to allocate incremental food or cash to their families, especially their children.215 But the conditions applied also represent extra demands on over-worked mothers who have to ensure that children attend school and clinics. Apart from reinforcing traditional gender roles, these conditions can displace women from farming or income-generating activities. Similarly, efforts to target women in public works projects by setting gender quotas can lead to perverse outcomes, if women who are already over burdened and “time poor� have to do even more work.216
The main challenge to the widespread adoption of weather-indexed insurance is the relatively high cost: the premiums may be too high for smallholders, which suggests that this is better addressed through public systems of social protection.
Activist administrations The looming threats to food production will require Governments in Asia and the Pacific to take active measures to protect their poorest people. Most already have considerable experience in this area, but could also learn from the approaches taken in other countries. Nevertheless, most of the efforts to achieve greater food security take place at the local level – as illustrated by examples in the next chapter.
Some argue that, in certain cases, it may be better to target men. A programme that transfers draught bullocks could target men who are usually responsible for ploughing and who control land and other assets. This would mean accepting inequities, pending the vesting in women of ownership rights over productive resources.
Insurance systems A further way to offer greater security to farmers is through insurance mechanisms. Few smallholders have access to crop insurance, so a harvest failure can have disastrous consequences. Thus far, however, systems of crop insurance for smallholders have largely failed, for a number of reasons: high transaction costs, moral hazard, adverse selection, covariate risk and delayed payouts.217
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