Public Service Review: International Development - Issue 15
Food for thought
Wednesday, September 23, 2009Food security is an issue likely to be prominent for many years to come. Despite $20bn being pledged in the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative, deep concerns – compounded by the impacts of the global economic downturn on developing countries – remain regarding international efforts to support the world's poor. Here, experts give their views on how to reduce poverty, expand food production and ensure that the developed world does not default on its promises
Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive, Oxfam
The response may be little and late but the good news is that the food security of hundreds of millions of poor people is finally being taken seriously at the highest level.
In July, President Obama persuaded his fellow leaders to sign-up to a $20bn package of agricultural investment at the G8's annual summit in Italy, signalling a break with three decades of neglect and policy failure.
Today one in six of the world's population goes hungry, more than a billion individuals. One child dies every five seconds because they do not have enough to eat.
These statistics are perhaps the most shocking illustration in the world today of how it was wrongly assumed that markets would take care of the problem, allowing free trade fundamentalism to take precedence over the needs for fairness and promoting practical solutions to practical problems.
The classic narrative of the food crisis is that it began in 2007, caused by a combination of high oil prices, rising demand and perhaps (depending on the political leanings of those in question) speculators. The well informed also acknowledge the role played by the switching of land for biofuel production.
According to this version of events, the crisis followed a so-called 'Goldilocks' era when, it is argued, food prices remained neither too high nor too low: high enough to support poor country farmers but low enough to keep the number of hungry people relatively stable.
But while this analysis is a good description of events from 2007 onwards, it ignores the fact that more than 800 million people in the world suffered from chronic hunger before prices began their steep upward path. That is more than the population of the United States, Indonesia and Brazil combined. For them, the cupboard was bare, an era of Old Mother Hubbard rather than Goldilocks.
Donors' attitude during this 'pre-crisis' period was complacent at best. Agricultural aid to developing countries fell by 75% between 1980 and 2008, from $20bn to just $5bn a year. Two-thirds of the world's rural poor, particularly those living in remote or marginal areas, did not benefit from the little investment that was made.
Agricultural investment became unfashionable; food was just another commodity to be traded according to the economic law of comparative advantage. Poor countries, such as Haiti, were persuaded to slash tariffs on foodstuffs exposing domestic farmers to foreign competition. Countries whose farmers could not compete with imports were encouraged to allow their agriculture to wither on the vine.
The all-too-predictable result was that, when global prices shot up, many poor countries were left helpless in the face of hunger. Even when global prices fell at the end of 2008 (they are now rising again), the cost of food at markets used by poor people remained stubbornly high.
The reason to recount this here is not to provide an agricultural history lesson or to say Oxfam told you so. It is because – without urgent action – the problem will get much worse in the foreseeable future. The Feeding of the Nine Billion, a report published in January by Chatham House and part-funded by Oxfam, finds that the upwards pressure on food prices is likely to intensify in the coming decade as the world's population increases, climate change takes hold and energy water scarcity becomes an increasing problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns climate change could put between 40 and 170 million more people at risk of hunger worldwide.
Already people are being seriously affected, from coffee producers in Uganda who are losing 40% of their produce, to farmers in China who are losing a third of their wheat.
Where free trade has failed, intelligent investment can succeed. Agricultural aid can and should play an important part in helping people to adapt to climate change by providing drought-resistant seeds, building irrigation systems and helping farmers to diversify their produce. The solutions can be amazingly simple, for example, swapping chicken for ducks in parts of Bangladesh at risk of flooding.
Reducing dependency on mineral fertilisers, whose price tracks that of the oil used to make them, may be bad news for agribusiness but it will make farming in developing countries more sustainable and reduce carbon emissions. According to research by the University of Michigan, a switch to organic production could even boost yields in developing countries.
Changing the farming habits of vast swathes of the globe will take both time and money. Unfortunately both remain short. The G8's $20bn fund is spread over three years. Even if all was new money, it would not be sufficient to return agricultural investment to its 1980 level, never mind meet the challenges of the future.
But there is hope. The good news is that in the most vulnerable region of Africa, leaders have made commitments to increase their investments in agriculture, spending 10% of national income on agriculture. And finally, the world's one billion hungry people have the attention of rich country leaders. If the $20bn is a first down payment of a sustained increase in investment, then there is real hope that in a few years' time we may be celebrating a calamity averted. If not then, terrible as it sounds, we may look back with fondness at the days when only one in six people in the world went hungry.
Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Professor, Cornell and Copenhagen Universities, Member of the Leaders Group of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Project on Global Agricultural Development
Poverty and food insecurity are widespread and worsening in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. According to FAO, 265 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) now suffer from food insecurity. This is an increase of 100 million (or 60%) since 1991. The deterioration was particularly bad during the last three to four years, during which the number of undernourished increased by 25%. About 325 million fall below the poverty line of US$1/day and the number is increasing. In South Asia, poverty and hunger are also on the increase and there are now more than half a billion poor people in that region.
Even though the large majority of the poor in the two regions are in rural areas, most of them are net buyers of food and much of the recent deterioration in their living standards is undoubtedly due to the recent food price increases. More than two-thirds of the farmers in SSA are unable to produce enough food to feed their families, not because they are lazy but because agricultural and rural development has been all but ignored by most African governments and development agencies. The necessary investments in agricultural research and technology appropriate for smallholders are not being made, and the rural infrastructure and institutions needed to assist farmers, traders, and other private sector agents in doing their jobs are not being developed.
Farmers do not have access to effective markets for what they produce and they do not have access to the plant nutrients, credit, healthcare, water, knowledge and, in some cases, land they need to produce more. They are effectively in an economic straightjacket unable to respond to price changes. The increase in global food supplies resulting from the international food price increases in 2006-08 came from farmers in the United States, the European Union, Australia, Brazil and other countries where investments in rural and agricultural development had been made. Smallholders in SSA were unable to expand production. Those who tried usually did so at the expense of the environment, by cultivating hillsides, cutting down forests and expanding farming into soils at high risk of erosion.
So how can governments in SSA and South Asia help farmers out of the economic straightjacket while at the same time expand food production, reduce poverty and the pressures on natural resources and the climate, and how can international and bilateral assistance agencies contribute? Is it in fact possible to meet the food demands of future generations while eliminating poverty and managing natural resources sustainably? Yes, it is. But it will require more enlightened policies and strategies than those we have seen during the last 30 years. A comprehensive strategy tailored to each country and region should be pursued. Such a strategy is likely to include the following five components.
First, governments in low-income countries, including most of those in SSA and South Asia, and international and bilateral development agencies should prioritise rural and agricultural development for at least five reasons:
• The large majority of the poor and hungry are in rural areas. Failure to solve this problem will accelerate migration to urban areas beyond their income generating capacities;
• Farmers are key stewards of natural resources in these countries. Actions by poor farmers to survive cause serious harm to natural resources;
• Agricultural growth has larger economic multiplier effects on the overall economy than virtually any other sector. Each US$1 increase in agricultural incomes generates general economic growth of around US$2-3;
• Agricultural productivity is low and offers tremendous opportunities for expanded food production and economic growth. Grain yields in SSA are less than one-fourth of what they could be;
• Productivity increases in agriculture lower the unit-cost of food production, making food available at lower prices, and generating incomes for farm families. The Green Revolution reduced unit-cost of wheat and rice in Asia by 30-40%.
Second, national governments, supported by international and bilateral development assistance, should expand investment in agricultural research and technology dissemination using all appropriate scientific methods, including genetic engineering and other molecular biology-based methods. Research to expand agricultural productivity per unit of land and water on small farms, while assuring sustainable management of these natural resources, should be prioritised along with research to increase the capture of greenhouse gases and reduce greenhouse gas emission.
Third, investments in rural infrastructure and institutional development to facilitate effective and efficient domestic food markets, transportation and access to farm inputs and credit should be expanded and fourth, national agricultural education and research capacities should be enhanced through the strengthening of universities and research institutes.
Finally, international institutions such as the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and regional institutions, such as CAADP, should be strengthened to support national research and development.
The global food crisis was a warning of what happens when the food sector is ignored by governments and development agencies. Unless action is now taken to repair the food system, the food crisis of 2007-08 will look like child's play compared to what is to come. The L'Aquila Food Security Initiative endorsed by the G8 members and several other countries and international institutions on 10th July 2009 is a giant step in the right direction, if the proposed action is funded and implemented and if African and South Asian governments follow through with appropriate action.
Kanayo F Nwanze, President, International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD)
On 10th July, the G8 and other world leaders, responding to the ongoing global food crisis, signed the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative, a comprehensive strategy that will focus on making developing country agriculture more productive and sustainable. This is what the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and other agricultural development organisations have focused on and supported despite 20 years of declining international support for the sector.
The initiative promises to mobilise US$20bn during the next three years to strengthen global food production and security, and to use existing institutions to implement enhanced food security programmes. If this pledge is fully realised, it will be one of the most substantial investments in the agricultural systems of developing countries since the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which was spurred on by a food crisis in Asia and Africa and largely driven by agricultural research.
The full implementation of the L'Aquila initiative should help developing countries and their partners to launch a second-generation Green Revolution, especially in Africa. With the right support and full government commitment, this could be a first step towards solving the world hunger problem.
Agricultural technologies have helped deliver considerable results over the past century, substantially raising yields while helping limit agricultural land expansion. And science-based technology must play a key role in kick-starting and fuelling this second Green Revolution. The challenge of promoting sustainable increases in agricultural production and improving food security can best be met by supporting scientific innovation in ways that build on local and traditional knowledge systems maintained by smallholder farmers in developing countries.
Adequate and fair reward for traditional knowledge is a key concern in these poor countries where farmers grow a wide range of varieties and save seeds. For this reason, we need to help these farmers understand what their rights are. And at the same time, we need to ensure that public research institutions and private corporations understand their ethical obligation to reward farmers for the traditional knowledge that they provide.
IFAD has a long history of investing in agricultural research. As a co-sponsor of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), we have supported many successful examples of development and diffusion of promising crops and commodities, from rain-fed durum wheat, to Faba beans and roots and tubers such as cassava, and legume crops such as pigeon pea.
The impact these investments have on the lives of rural men, women and children is enormous. I have seen the extraordinary changes that can come about when poor farmers are given the means to improve their lives. When I headed the CGIAR Africa Rice Center, for example, we developed new rice varieties – known as NERICA – that combined the hardiness of native African rice species and the high productivity of Asian rice. As a result, many poor farmers in Africa were able to more than double their yields.
The NERICA varieties have been a major factor contributing to the growth in rice production in Africa. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), rice production on the continent has risen steadily over the past seven years and was expected to reach more than 23 million tonnes in 2008 from the level of 16 million tonnes in 2001.
The right investment in agricultural research can result in new varieties of other food staples being developed and propagated, leading to similar increases in production.
With 1.7 billion more mouths to feed by 2030, global agriculture has never been under greater pressure to increase production and productivity. And with the promise inherent in the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative, science-based technology will have the opportunity to play a major role in making sustained world food production a reality.
Dr Kanayo F Nwanze is President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) working with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes, and determine the direction of their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$11bn in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, empowering some 340 million people to break out of poverty. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialised UN agency based in Rome – the UN's food and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 165 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).