According to a recent study by the Technical Advisory Committee of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, nearly two-thirds of the rural population of developing countries - almost 1.8 billion people - live in less-favoured areas, including marginal agricultural areas, forest and woodland areas, and arid areas. If we observe carefully areas where poverty is most concentrated, we see that they are areas without irrigation, where upland agriculture dominates and the majority of crops grown are secondary crops. However, secondary crops in these regions receive less attention from the government due to many reasons. Among these, the most widespread, is the conventional wisdom held within policy-making circles that strategies for development in developing countries which emphasize public investment are greatest in favourable areas (for primary crops).

Public policy is whatever governments choose to do or not to do. It is concerned with what governments do or not do, why they do or don't do it, and what difference it makes. Note that the focus is not only on government action, but also on government inaction, that is, what governments choose not to do.

Pro-poor policies in developing countries are a necessary/ prerequisite for poverty alleviation. Understanding causes of poverty in a particular region/location is important for governments to then decide on how best to address the causes of poverty. Understanding when and where to implement the policies is also crucial. Governments and their development partners must design and implement policies that can build the capacity of the poor to escape poverty. The range of options includes diversifying the income base, investing in agricultural research and transferring technology to farmers, allowing markets to function properly, micro-financing, investment in roads and other infrastructure, and promoting the sustainable use of the natural resource base.

Several studies look at how public policy in rural areas is linked to poverty alleviation, combining cases in Indonesia, India and Bangladesh. In Indonesia, one of the ICASERD-Poverty' studies conducted in East Java, Riau and East Nusa Tenggara Provinces shows that even though there have been many policies implemented to reduce poverty in these "poverty pockets", they would have been more successful if poor people had participated in and played an active role in the formulation of (local) policy. Regarding India, Ravallion stated that three out of four of India's poor live in rural areas. Each state has its own characteristics for effective public policy implementation. Punjab and Haryana, for example, benefited from agricultural growth, whereas Kerala benefited more from public and universal education. In Bangladesh, IFAD's programme of microfinance in rural areas shows that credit given to mostly women and landless farmers can significantly improve their social economic status and foster their entrepreneurship. Bangladesh's experience in its public policy scheme serves as an example of how to augment the livelihoods of poor people through providing microfinance in the rural areas.

From these studies and many other studies implemented in developing countries, one can conclude that public policy can have a great impact on poverty alleviation. Negative impacts may also occur if governments chose not to do anything to help the poor (government inaction). One should ask the question whether a government itself created poverty by designing and implementing policies that were not pro-poor oriented, or, according to the definition above, by not doing anything to address poverty.

Secondary crops offer a good opportunity for pro-poor policy options because they are produced by many poor farmers in marginal areas (hilly, dry-upland, remote, etc.), and have a diverse range of uses through the food and feed industries. Secondary crops offer many options for rural income improvement. These options demand action .

Written by Erna Maria Lokollo, Programme Leader of R&D, UNESCAP-CAPSA; Senior Agricultural Economist of ICASERD, IAARD, MOA, Republic of Indonesia.

(References available upon request)