It is increasingly recognised that agriculture must play
a role in pro-poor economic growth in countries with
large, poor rural sectors. There is also a major focus on
social protection interventions to address risks and insecurity
affecting poor people. However current policy
debate and formulation makes only limited attempts to
integrate agricultural and social protection policies. This
paper outlines significant paradigm shifts in policies
affecting both these fields and highlights pertinent issues
arising from interactions between agricultural and social
protection policies.
The paper begins by setting out the sources and effects
of stress in rural people’s livelihoods, and their responses
to stress. Poor rural people’s livelihoods are complex,
diverse and risk prone with inherent seasonal instability.
Vulnerability not only affects people’s welfare, it also
reduces growth, directly by destroying assets, and indirectly
as the threat of shocks and stresses diverts assets
from more productive activities to those that reduce
vulnerability. These responses involve removal of, resistance
to, recovery from and relief from stresses. These
responses are nested within three broader livelihoods
strategies which people adopt (often together) to survive
and to advance their welfare:
•• ‘Hanging-in’, where activities are undertaken to maintain
livelihood levels at a ‘survival’ level;
•• ‘Stepping-up’, where investments are made in existing
activities to increase their returns; and
•• ‘Stepping-out’, where existing activities are engaged
in to accumulate assets as a basis for investment in
alternative, higher-return livelihood activities.
Development normally involves shifts in emphasis in
people’s livelihoods, from hanging in (through low risk
/low return subsistence activities) to stepping up (in
higher risk / higher return commercial agricultural activities)
to stepping out (from agriculture to higher return
non-farm and often urban activities). Social protection
and agricultural development policies should support
this progression, but means of support should change
with structural changes in livelihoods and in rural economies.