Tackling rural poverty, together

Willi Graf, Ph.D.

Senior Adviser, Natural Resources & Environment, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Berne

Cross-sectoral nature of RD demands more coordination between stakeholders in health, education and agriculture in rural areas.

Nater: What are some of the structural issues the Platform should address?

Graf: One is the interaction between public and private sectors. What sort of institutions are needed for this to work? We started discussions on this at the Platform’s Annual General Meeting in Brussels earlier this year. There's no clear answer to that yet. Another issue with special significance is the dynamics between secondary cities and rural areas. A third is the complicated multi-sectoral approach that the very nature of rural development imposes on us all. How to accommodate and integrate, in a pragmatic way, the private-stakeholder-related services of the Ministry of Agriculture with those of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, for example? And more generally, I think that key messages about the role of agriculture should be incorporated into classroom teaching.

Are these also the SDC's concerns?
Yes. The Platform is designed to address concerns that are shared by many donors and that potentially can be solved by donors working in concert. The SDC can add to that list, of course. For example, how can we help organise and finance networks of institutions into demand-responsive, sustainable rural-service systems? How can we help link local and regional markets with local production in a way that makes local production competitive? And how can we drive global policymakers to favour local and regional agricultural production over the senseless global shipping-around of low-value agricultural goods?

What makes you passionate about your work?
When I was in secondary school, I realised I wanted to work in development. I’m not a practicing Christian, but I was very influenced by a young pastor who was passionate about the theology of liberation in Latin America. When the time came, I asked myself, what can you study to be useful in development? I chose agriculture. My Ph.D. thesis for the Faculty of Agronomy at the ETH in Zurich was about wheat weed control on six organic farms in Switzerland. On that subject, the farmers knew more than the research institutions. I got passionate about the way people work in rural areas. Their life is authentic. You put something in the soil. Then you harvest it. It's serious. I have great respect for small farmers’ knowledge and values. It’s made me a strong believer in the participatory approach to rural development.

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Photos: Timothy Nater

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