A widely discussed issue relating to feeding the world’s growing population is the debate between conventional farming VS. organic methods. A special ‘food report’ by the Economist a few weeks ago made their view very clear. They argue that organic farming could feed Europe and America but not the rest of the world.

This debate is extremely clear cut. For example, the biotechnology and agribusiness perspective would argue there is no alternative to using GM crops. Moreover, it is perceived that without large inputs of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, food supply would automatically decline due to crop loss as a result of weeds and pests.

On the other hand, there are a growing band of academics, practioners and smallholder farmers who disagree with this view. For example, a report from the University of California provides some insightful case study examples of comparisons between organic and conventional farming methods. According to the author, the experiments showed, ‘the ability of organic agriculture to produce comparable yields’ to convention methods and ‘organic farming systems have proven that they can prevent crop loss to pests without synthetic methods.’

Moving beyond a simplistic organic vs. conventional systems approach, there are some who argue for a synergy between both. For example, Don Seville, Co-director of the Sustainable Food Lab believes it is more worthwhile to try and increase organic practices (use of compost, biomass, rotations with legumes, and integration of animal manure) in conjunction with artificial fertilizer and pesticides. The goal would be to increase organic fertilisation, without necessarily trying to ensure the strict certification standards of ‘organic’ are met. This appears to be an ideal middle way approach.

When talking about ways to feed the world population and which production techniques are the best we must be cautious. In today’s context, approximately 925 million suffer from hunger and as I have mentioned in previous articles, this is mainly a result of poverty, distribution and wastage of crops during production. Therefore, we need to focus on these problems in conjunction with production techniques. Without a doubt, there is a definite need to integrate sustainable farming methods to promote soil and water conservation. This is necessary in order for land to continue being productive for the years to come. We must also be weary of proponents of purely conventional methods, as the real focus to feed people may be overrun by business interests.

Tea farmers in Kenya are at risk of having their livelihoods seriously disrupted as a result of the adverse effects of climate change. As a result the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) and German International Corporation (GIZ) have partnered with CIAT to identify potential solutions to this problem. The aim of this project is to identify future climatic change and forecast their projected impacts on local tea farmers.

Analysis of our data revealed that future climatic suitability for some of the major tea growing areas in Kenya will decline significantly by 2020 and even more so by 2050. Climatic suitability, however, will also increase in some areas and remain constant in others. Overall, the impacts will be highly localized and is likely to require site-specific adaptation strategies.
In a bid to develop these adaptation strategies, DAPA has examined the suitability of alternative crops for these areas under future climatic conditions. Alternative site that will be more climatically suitable have also been identified and the feasibility of such options have been documented. Sites that will maintain suitability will require farmers to adapt their agronomic management to maximize efficiency under the new climatic conditions of the area. Overall, this projects seek to inform policy decisions that will make the farmers agricultural practices more environmentally and economically sustainable. Full report can be viewed here.

Global food prices are reaching unprecedented levels signalling fears about food security and the possibility of political instability. The FAO food price index is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities (cereals, oilseeds, meat and sugar) and last month hit an all time high of 231 points, above the previous record set in June 2008 during the food crisis. The price index is up 3.4% from December and in the second half of 2010 it leapt by 32% alone, another indication of increasing volatility.  “These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come. High food prices are of major concern especially for low-income food deficit countries that may face problems in financing food imports,” said FAO economist Abdolreza Abbassian.

Many have attributed the need for democratic revolution as a key driver of the recent popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Undoubtedly, this has played a role but some commentators are arguing that food price inflation in both countries is equally culpable for widespread public dissent. Worried about what has been going on, neighbouring countries have taken urgent measures to ensure the price of bread does not bring about their collapse. For example, Algeria purchased approximately 1 million tonnes of wheat in January alone to ensure domestic food stocks are well supplied. Jordan, Turkey, Libya, Qatar, Morocco and Lebanon are following suit. Food hoarding is likely to continue and food exporting countries are expected to endorse protectionist measures.

Prices have risen consistently for the past 7 months.

At the recent World Economic Forum  in Davos, world leaders have warned that food prices will lead to greater social unrest and trade wars between nations. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said that with population rising, increasing pressure on food, energy and resources could lead to economic war. Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France called for greater regulation of commodity markets to prevent speculation and price volatility. However, business leaders at the conference rejected calls for controls on commodity speculation. Some argued that apart from speculation, governments buying food to secure supplies was equally responsible for soaring prices.

The prices are not only affecting the developing world but also the pockets of consumers in richer countries. Nonetheless, the poorest in the Global South are affected much more as they spend a higher proportion of their household income on food. In this sense, increased food prices has a regressive impact on families.

In reference to Africa, the World Bank believes that despite rising food costs, increased investment in agriculture since 2008 has left it in a better position to cope with price volatility. According to the WB’s African vice president, Obiageli Ezekwesili: ‘’the 2008 unrest led to a rediscovery of the importance of agriculture and food security. Those that have made the reorientation have seen much more progress. A significant number of African countries are now able to have agricultural productivity growth of 3 percent per annum. It was below 1 percent before.’’

It is a simple matter of political economy that countries are buying food supplies to ensure their populations do not starve and to prevent riots. If business leaders blame governments for pushing prices up further due to hoarding, then we must question why they countries are doing this in the first place. Commodity speculation is largely responsible and with increasing concerns about climate change affecting food production, rising prices are likely to continue.

In recent weeks food production has become one of the most hotly discussed global debates. In particular, a number of reports and comments have been released by leading organisations about agriculture’s ability to feed a growing world population subject to changing climatic conditions and land constraints.

One of these latest report’s was released yesterday by a UK government-commissioned study. The Foresight Report on Food and Farming Futures argues that the current system is unsustainable and immediate action must be taken or widespread hunger will not be resolved. The study took two years to compile and received input from a wide range of disciplines (involving 400 experts from 35 countries).

Hunger levels could increase in the future

The report emphasises radical change stating that increasing yields should not come at the expense of sustainability. Moreover, incentives should be given to the agricultural sector to address malnutrition. Similar to the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World report (mentioned in the previous post), the authors believe that more has to be done to reduce food waste; where in developing countries, a majority is attributed to poor storage and inadequate transport facilities. However, in richer nations wastage is often caused, simply by consumers’ throwing away food.   Another contradiction between the developed north and developing south is the huge disparity in consumption levels (925 million people suffer from hunger while 1 billion people overeat). Professor Beddington, who commissioned the study, believes that those who overeat indicate yet another failure of the current food system because of its inability to deliver good health.

The authors are calling for agriculture to become a higher priority in the political agenda. This must be collaborated with efforts to address the effects of climate change, declining water supplies and the loss off farm land. Perhaps the most radical statement is: “Nothing less is required than a redesign of the whole food system to bring sustainability to the fore.”

Others are also taking a critical stance including Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food.  His radical and outspoken views about country and donor practices are leading him to be seen as a champion for smallholder rights and food security. In London this week to present to a UK parliamentary group, he has challenged leading actors by discussing what he believes are mistakes being made in the current system. Speaking to the Guardian, here are some of the statements he made:

“Chronic underinvestment in agriculture over the last 20 years combined with trade liberalisation has trapped many developing countries in a vicious cycle of low agricultural productivity and dependence on cheap food imports. The one exacerbates the other as local farmers struggle, and fail, to get a decent price for their produce in competition with imports, which have often benefited from government subsidies.”

Mr de Schutter has launched some fierce views on the current food system

“Since the early 1990s, the food bills of developing countries have increased by five- or six-fold,” this addiction to cheap food leads to balance-of-payments problems and then political instability. It deprives countries of their abilities to feed themselves.”

“Donors are finally recognizing the need to invest in agriculture, but the danger is that they put money into monoculture cash crops for export, a strategy that that has no impact on improving food security for the poorest.’’

Overall, de Schutter is a fan of strengthening public goods (better infrastructure, improving local markets, and building storage capabilities). Moreover, he thinks smallholder need to increase their bargaining power by organizing themselves, which would give them a greater voice. To solve hunger issues and develop the rural economy, de Schutter argues for the development of grain reserves. Grain can be bought at a good price from farmers. Then when there is a price hike, it could be sold to the population at affordable levels.

In conclusion, more and more attention is being given to global agriculture because of rising fears of future food crises. Hopefully, with stronger and more critical views being expressed as mentioned above, food can be given a higher priority in politics, which may eventually lead to these key problems to be solved.

The Worldwatch Institute has recently published its annual State of the World report titled, “Innovations that Nourish the Planet”, which makes some very insightful proposals on tackling hunger and supporting rural liviehoods.

The report argues that previous attempts to feed the world’s population have failed because approximately 925 million people globally still go hungry everyday. Instead, it suggests that rather than increasing food production, which is the most common measure argued to solve hunger issues, a more concise strategy has to be adopted where food security and climate change are addressed in tandem. For example, measures that encourage self-sufficiency and waste reduction in both developing and developed countries: ‘’f we shift just some of our attention away from production to consumption issues and reducing food waste, we might actually get quite a big bang for our buck, because that ground has been neglected,” said Brian Halweil, co-director of the Worldwatch Institiute’s Nourishing the Planet Project.

The report also believes that smallholders are vital in maintaining food supplies and after many years of neglect have finally started to receive investments again. Moreover, the authors outline 15 environmentally friendly and sustainable strategies to address hunger. These include the expansion of organic farming, sourcing food locally and targeting food waste.

The Worldwatch Institute is an independent research organisation based in Washington in the USA. The report was published with the support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The New York Times (NYT) last month published an article discussing the displacement of small farmers in Africa as a result of land grabbing. Since the 2007/08 food crisis, the acquisition of land in developing countries by other nations has been on the rise and in this post I discuss these new developments.

There are two main motivations to buy land in another country. Firstly, private companies can exploit business opportunities and create supply chains catering to their consumers’ needs. Secondly, by buying land in another country, other nations are able to secure their own food security. I will concentrate on the latter as this is what has been hotly debated over the last two years.

The place that has seen the largest investment has been Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Leading the investments abroad have been the capital rich Gulf States, which face water and land constraints. China and India follow with the need to feed their burgeoning populations. The green revolutions in these countries were remarkable. However, their environments’ have taken a hit as a result. For example, China has reached physical water scarcity and industrial farming methods have turned 18.1 % of the country’s formerly productive lands into desert. Apart from factors relating to land and water constraints, investments are also driven by lower production costs and climatic conditions for preferred staple crops. Other than maintaining food security, countries are also keen to invest in land for bio-fuels.

The decline of state led spending in rural development makes a valid argument for large scale land acquisitions, as they can bring a number of benefits to resource scarce developing countries: ‘foreign aid for agriculture has dwindled from about 20 percent of all aid in 1980 to about 5 percent now, creating a need for other investment to bolster production.’ Advocates of such investments argue that some of the advantages include; creation of farm and off-farm jobs, improvement of rural infrastructure, development of schools and health services. By far some of the most significant are spill-over effects from access to new agricultural technologies, which can transform regions producing low yields to food hubs. Let us look at Mali for example. Approximately 3million acres along the Niger River and its inland delta are managed by a state-run trust named the Office du Niger. In around 80 years, only 200’000 acres of the area has been irrigated. Therefore, the government considers new investors as a miracle, with even the Abou Sow, the executive director of Office du Niger, stating, “Even if you gave the population there the land, they do not have the means to develop it, nor does the state.”

Benefits aside, large scale land acquisitions have been termed ‘land grabbing’ by populist media and the phenomena is often described as a form of neocolonialism. There are obvious drawbacks to these types of investments but some news articles have had a tendency to over-exaggerate their implications. There is now even an anti-land grabbing website continuously updating all articles on the issue. A closer look at facts on the ground can reflect another picture. Although news articles have helped shed light on land grabbing, the exact details of deals, amount of land purchased and price paid are not very clear and have not been widely documented.

Undoubtedly, problems have arisen with overseas land acquisitions. The impact on food security is one of the most widely talked about. Land acquisitions have taken place in many countries from Cuba, Mexico, Philippines and Pakistan but those in Africa have been the most severely criticized. As domestic production is weak and hunger widespread through SSA, it remains contradictory that countries are making food for other countries: ‘It is ironic that some farms in Ethiopia produce food for other countries when it needs more than $116 million in food aid itself’, says Jose Cendon from Bloomberg.

The other major issue is the displacement of people once the takeovers take place, which the NYT article looks into. According to IFPRI, this issue is exacerbated by problems related to inequalities in bargaining power. Smallholders may not have formal titles to land but often use it under customary tenure agreements. Since, governments formally own farm land, when foreign investors come; the rural poor often get displaced in favour of the investor. However, land acquisitions have not taken place so easily because of considerable bottom-up resistance. In 2009, a South Korean conglomerate was about take over half of Madagascar’s arable land. However, an opposition movement formed, which ended the deal when the president was overthrown. Furthermore, Mali saw angry protests in its capital last month, with people demanding the government to stop selling land to investors.

IFPRI makes a number of suggestions of how the land investments can be made fairer with greater effects for the communities involved. In my opinion, three of the most important are:

1. Transparency in negotiations- actors driving the deals must involve all those people that are likely to be affected in the negotiation process.
2. Sharing benefits- local communities should benefit from foreign investment and conditions need to be enforced in a pro-poor context should deals take place.
3. Commitment to national trade: if domestic food security is at risk, production for local markets must take priority.

Overall, we need to take a balanced approach to large scale land acquisitions and not been drawn into the populist rhetoric that mainstream media portrays. There are both advantages and disadvantages to be found in these investments. To negate the disadvantages, civil society, governments and the private sector need to work towards developing more transparent and fairer deals.

Last month, the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability published an article identifying the 100 most important questions facing the future of global agriculture. Policy making is often hampered by the lack of collaboration between actors from different backgrounds and fields of work, which the authors are keen to point out: “The complexity, and often lack, of information flow between scientists, practitioners and policy makers is known to exacerbate the difficulties, despite increased emphasis upon evidence based policy.’’

Therefore the article’s main objective is to improve understanding between agricultural research and policy. The 100 questions have been pointed out by leading experts and representatives from major agricultural organisations. With this approach, sound scientific evidence can be used to inform decision making and steer policy makers in the future direction of agricultural research priorities and policy planning.

A holistic approach has been offered and the questions have been split into 4 sections covering 14 topics relating to agriculture’s most important concerns. The 4 sections are:

1. Natural resource inputs.
2. Agronomic practice.
3. Agricultural development.
4. Markets and consumption.

Click here to access the full article.

Just to add to Katie’s last post, I have summarised some the important messages of IFAD’s findings. Titled ‘’New realities, new challenges: new opportunities for tomorrow’s generation’’, the report highlights a number of prospects and challenges facing the rural poor today.

IFAD, start the report referring to the food price hikes in 2008 and the one earlier in the middle of this year. However, the FAO and OECD have both predicted that food prices are likely to remain at 2010 levels or higher for at least the next decade. Therefore, the immediate concern is food security and the need to formulate policies to feed the estimated 9 billion people in 2050. Current food production will have to increase by 70% to meet the population’s requirements in 2050.

One of the key messages of the report is that rural poverty continues to be a major problem across the developing world. Despite, 350 million rural people being pulled out of extreme poverty in the last decade, 70% of the world’s 1.4 billion very poor people are still rural. The results are also context specific. For example, East Asia has reduced rural poverty substantially, with China being responsible for much of the decline. In Latin America, extreme rural poverty has decreased by more than 50% while in the Middle East and North Africa, rates have fallen by nearly half. However, incidence rates remain high in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

With Globalisation and the rise of countries such as Brazil, India and China as major world players, agricultural markets are continually evolving, where there are now clear incentives to invest in the countryside of developing nations. The importance of rural economic development is emphasised with data from studies: “a 1 percent growth in GDP originating in agriculture increases the expenditures of the poorest 30 per cent of the population at least 2.5 times as much as growth originating in the rest of the economy.” IFAD recognises the development and support of smallholder agriculture as one of the best solutions to rural poverty and maintaining sufficient food supply. Moreover, IFAD states that the stereotypical perceptions of smallholders need to change. Rather than being viewed as “charity cases’’, small scale farmers need to be seen ‘’as people whose innovation, dynamism and hard work” can bring prosperity to their communities.

Climate change, state fragility, ill health, insecure access to land and natural resource degradation are all cited as ‘risk’ factors that the rural poor face. Apart from agricultural markets, IFAD believes the rural non-farm economy and migration are methods, which communities use to diversify income and reduce risk. Nonetheless, what remains critical is for donors, NGOs and policymakers to design effective policies to build sustainable market relations for smallholders. The report ends on this note: ‘’If all these stakeholders want it enough, rural poverty can be substantially reduced. What is at stake is not only the present for one billion rural people and the prospects for food security for all, but also the rural world and the opportunities within it that tomorrow’s rural generation will inherit”.

This week IFAD released a helpful and incredibly insightful 2011 Rural Poverty Report. Many things have changed since 2001, when the last report was released, and this years focus takes an interesting look on the roles of small farmers, markets, and private sector development.

Enjoy a link to the report here for download.