1.
Poverty Alleviation and Research
Partnerships
Dr Steve Jennings
Oxfam

2.
Before you start a research partnership ...
• Is research the solution?
• Do you agree what the problem is that research can help
resolve?
• Do your incentives align?

3.
What is the challenge?
• The obscenity of our times: 842 million people – 12 percent of
the global population – were unable to meet their dietary
energy requirements in 2011–13 (FAO 2013)
• Food security: all people, at all times, have physical and
economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet
their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and
healthy life
• The four conditions for food security:
• Availability: supply of food through production, distribution, and
exchange
• Access: affordability and allocation of food
• Use: ability to metabolize
• Stability: availability, access and use over time

4.
The nature of the solutions
• The food system is complex, so solutions can
create perverse outcomes as well as positive ones:
despite the green revolution, the 1.5-2 billion
people dependent on smallholder agriculture
include half the worlds undernourished people
• Yet economic growth in smallholder agriculture is
far more effective at reducing poverty and food
insecurity than growth in other sectors: in Viet
Nam investment in rural infrastructure (all-
weather roads, irrigation systems, electrification
and sanitation), increased public spending on
agriculture and land reforms have transformed
Viet Nam from a food-deficit country in the 1990s
to a major food exporter today. Thus, investment
in smallholder agriculture has been a key driver
behind Viet Nam’s transformation from one of the
poorest countries in the world 25 years ago to
lower middle-income status
40-50% are subsistence (e.g. maize),
buy in food, and get most cash from off
farm work.
20-30% are occasionally
connected to markers
and are food buyers
3-15% are
regularly
selling into
markets
1-2% ‘market-ready’
farmers
Rural world 1
Rural world 2
Rural world 3

5.
But what is the nature of the challenge? Malthus vs Sen
• Malthus: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a
geometrical ratio, subsistence increases only in an arithmetical
ratio”
• ‘Malthusian’ side solutions tend to focus on production, be
technological, ‘simple’, attractive to policy makers (eg new
varieties or agronomic techniques)

6.
What is the nature of the challenge? Malthus vs Sen
• Sen: “Starvation is the characteristic of people not having
enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there not being
enough food to eat”
• Food wasted by consumers in industrialised countries each year (222m
tons) is almost as high as the total net food production of sub-Saharan
Africa (230m tons) (Gustavsson et al 2011)
• Providing the additional calories needed by the 850m people facing
hunger would require just 1% of the current global food supply (Raworth
2012)
• In 2008, more than 1.4 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight. Of
these over 200 million men and nearly 300 million women were obese
(WHO 2013)
• Sen side solutions tend to focus on access and entitlement and
be contingent, context specific, involve power, and are ‘messy’
(democracy, redistribution, land reform, social protection)

7.
Even if you agree on the problem, and research is part of
the answer, do your incentives align?
• Time
• Language
• An end in itself or a means to an end?
• Roles and organisational purpose

8.
When the alignment is right ...
• Food Price Volatility research (Oxfam and the Institute of Development
Studies)
• We aim to generate evidence about how high and unpredictable food
prices affect overall well-being and development in poor or vulnerable
communities.
• 4 year, longitudinal study in 10 countries funded by DfID, Irish Aid,
Oxfam and the BRAC Development Institute
• ASSAR (Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions) University of Cape Town,
University of East Anglia, START International, Indian Institute for Human
Settlements and Oxfam
• Aims to develop and trial relevant actionable strategies for adaptation;
enable systemic capacity strengthening for adaptation in research, policy
and practice; and ensure research is used so as to shape policy and
practices.
• c. 4 year, 14 countries, funded by IDRC (International Development
Research Centre) and DFID

9.
Take home messages
• Poverty alleviation is a complex socio-economic problem (Viet
Nam)
• When it is, don’t assume that you agree on the nature of the
problem: producing enough food for everyone isn’t the same as
everyone having enough food to eat (Malthus vs Sen) ...
• ... Or that your incentives align (time, purpose)
• Finding these alignments does happen, and does yield research
partnerships which have an impact on poverty