Preliminary Analysis of Development Programs Performance

The regional development programs promoted by the national governments and international multilateral agencies, like the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank, are oriented to public policies under which public goods, like public services and infrastructures, are supplied to underdeveloped regions, many in Latin America. More a more evidences are pointing to the fact that success of these programs depends in a good part of externalities, which are related to the changes in the form of networking and values among the stakeholders in the territory. These externalities are defined as the Social Capital. As externalities, they are not directly evaluated in the projects economic and social impact, but accepted to exist and the planners of the projects do acknowledge the importance of social networking, although never assessed. Several approaches have been proposed for the assessment of the Social Capital. For managing development projects, the Woolcock approach is considered one of the more interesting. The objective of the research project described in this paper is to measure up front the social capital of a given regional development project, from the project plans before implementation, and to compare the social capital results with those of the benefits according to the drafted project framework agreed upon the multilateral agencies and the region authorities. The regional program selected is the "Programa de Desenvolvimiento da Zona da Mata" (PROMATA) in the State of Pernanbuco Brazil, under the sponsor of the Inter American Development Bank. The project was designed to induce development in which community resources were to be mobilized, with the intention of getting the stakeholders involved as proponents and protagonists of social change in their territories. That social based bottom-up framework was a very interesting opportunity to observe the social capital component given the profile of the project. The research was carried out with the project just finished, which provided the background to compare the up-front analysis with the changes in the social network and values observed. The drafted project plans, including all programs and actions to be implemented, and the preliminar budget, are evaluated using a modified Regnier Abacus by a panel of experts in International Development Projects adapted to reflect the Social Capital model based on Woolcock attributes. The results were processed using Correspondence Analysis and Bayes Model to produce the indexes associated with Woolcock attributes reflected in the decision matrices used to represent the Social Capital status

Framework for Food Security Analysis at national Level

The purpose of this work is to face the fresh food security function in the developing nations. It is not an easy task; on the other, it is a very important feature on people's welfare, nations' development and social stability at a national level. The methodology applied will be the Porter's Diamond. The ensemble of resources, either physical infrastructures or capable companies or adequate regulations, to support the implementation of efficient and functional food security networks in many countries, frequently is provided without analysis of the population demand profile and resources available, normally importing other country model. Given the importance of food security to provide the correct amount of food to the different populations in a country, a framework for analyzing the competitive balance of the factors involved and the different models under consideration has been selected. Michael Porter described the Diamond in 1990 in his seminal work "The competitive advantage of Nations". It considers different national factors that interact to produce the competitive advantage, such as home demand conditions, related support industries, factor conditions, companies` strategy and rivalry and Government regulation. With the Diamond the profile of the different factors are analyzed according to priority and importance. The resulting model allows detecting weaknesses and strengths considering the principal actors that build a food security network. Also it is possible to represent graphically the points of analysis, which allows to explore together different models of food security networks. The food supply it is a vital factor in every country for the population survival. The fresh food production, mainly fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, needs a net work of markets, at wholesale and retail level in order to distribute that fresh food from the farms where is produced to the final consumer, mainly located in the big cities (farm-to-fork). The whole activities related to bring food and supply to the final consumers is denominated "food security". There is another concept associated to the food security which is called "food safety". In some extend both are related, but different. The food safety concept means that the food must be "safe" for human consumption (innocuous). This simple difference (security-safety) has created some confusion in some countries. Food security guarantees the quantity of food supplied to people. Food safety guarantees the quality of food from human health perspective. Food security it is much more important in the poor than in the affluent countries or its regions. In countries with less than 1000 US$ per capita, the amount of money expended on food it is around 40% of the average income. In that case, a change in agricultural costs or on food prices has tremendous influence in the whole society. Many countries have developed a National Plan for food security in order to create markets network. This network operates as a group of engines pumping food from origin to destination. Thanks to this organization has been possible to correct many deficiencies in the population's food supply. The wholesale markets either in food origin area or in destination are not easy to establish. They need many important aspects to be evaluated before start the wholesale market design. The influence area determination; the right dimension of the premises; the type of buildings and pavilions; the protection of the market; the wholesalers transference; the users' relationships; the working rules; tariffs; timetables; gathering and distribution of the daily commercial information; connections with other markets; and a very long etcetera. All that set of aspects varies from country to country. Not all the societies or human groups have the same choices and behaviors. The final design must be adapted to every particular country. The income level; consumption habits, feminine work outside home; industrial development; classification and grading; etc. must be taken into account in order to tailor the market to the society cultural values. The results will be agricultural promotion and development of food distribution efficiency; income distribution among farmers and rural population; better population nourishment; food industry development; commerce and services increasing; food exports boosted; and general improvement of the national welfare for any country undertaken this economical and global activities

A proposal: "AGRO-Erasmus"

The rural population is getting smaller as percentage of the total population in the countries. There is a constant depopulation of rural areas to urban areas. The most extreme data are in countries like USA, where the rural population is 1.5%, from which 1% of that amount is part time and only 0.5% full time. On the other side, we have countries with more than 50% rural population. Related to training, cultural development, business and specific weight in society, rural residents have no significance in their societies. As they are few, and separated across the territory they have no influence on their societies. Comparing the USA farmer with one from the EU, we see that the American one is a businessperson and the European one, in most cases is a farm worker. To reduce this gap between these different farmers, we believe that we must train the new generations of children belonging to farming Europe. They must have a common language, English; they must know other countries culture and farming systems, live and network with other young Europeans colleagues, future young farmers. It is what we have coined as AGRO-ERASMUS. A project to be placed within the EU Common Agriculture Policies. The project must be designed before its implementation. Even some previous experience should make better viability. It should make use of a network of agricultural universities in several European countries. Each university would build a "farm school" where young people would learn "English", and visit and work in small agricultural practices with a correct use of the time. One important subject dealing with should be agribusiness. The procedure based on the "Farm School" (F-S) experience, should start with young people from 13 years up to 18 years. Their attendance, every summer, to the F-S should be rotated between different countries besides their own. The first and second year, with young people 13/14 years old, the Farm School would last less than three weeks in an English speaking country (Ireland, UK or someone else). They should live with a local family the time they stay outside of the Farm School (F-S). This two years period must be devoted to learn and become familiar with the English language and cultural differences. The rest of the four years left, the Farm Schools will have longer duration and be placed in other countries from the network. The living way would be in multinational teams of young people where the only spoken language would be English. After six years of summer coexistence speaking English and learning new competences and skills with colleagues from other countries, we would have a great team of young and future European farmers, able to travel free and confident through the whole Europe and ready to be engaged in productive, commercial and research activities. These new young farmers may revive European agriculture and would not look any more like rural habitants, but international business-farmers, professionally speaking. In a brief survey among the assistants to the Fifth International Academic Conference titled "Alternative Income Sources in Small Agricultural Holdings of the European Union" held in Krakow (PL) in June 2015, participants from universities and countries like Poland, Hungary, Rep. Czech, Portugal, Romania, etc., expressed the necessity of addressing this problem in a new and bold way