New Era of Food Scarcity Echoes Collapsed Civilisations

February 7, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Tikal_mayan_ruins_2009_640-629x362

Tikal Mayan ruins in Guatemala. The Sumerians and Mayans are just two of the many early civilisations that declined apparently because they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable. Credit: cc by 3.0

Lester R. Brown

WASHINGTON, Feb 07 (IPS) – The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food.Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.

This new era is one of rising food prices and spreading hunger. On the demand side of the food equation, population growth, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars are combining to raise consumption by record amounts.

On the supply side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless we can reverse such trends, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread, eventually bringing down our social system.

Can we reverse these trends in time? Or is food the weak link in our early twenty-first-century civilisation, much as it was in so many of the earlier civilisations whose archeological sites we now study?

This tightening of world food supplies contrasts sharply with the last half of the twentieth century, when the dominant issues in agriculture were overproduction, huge grain surpluses, and access to markets by grain exporters. During that time, the world in effect had two reserves: large carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) and a large area of cropland idled under U.S. farm programmes to avoid overproduction.

When the world harvest was good, the United States would idle more land. When the harvest was subpar, it would return land to production. The excess production capacity was used to maintain stability in world grain markets. The large stocks of grain cushioned world crop shortfalls.

When India’s monsoon failed in 1965, for example, the United States shipped a fifth of its wheat harvest to India to avert a potentially massive famine. And because of abundant stocks, this had little effect on the world grain price.

When this period of food abundance began, the world had 2.5 billion people. Today it has seven billion.

From 1950 to 2000 there were occasional grain price spikes as a result of weather-induced events, such as a severe drought in Russia or an intense heat wave in the U.S. Midwest. But their effects on price were short-lived. Within a year or so things were back to normal. The combination of abundant stocks and idled cropland made this period one of the most food-secure in world history.

But it was not to last. By 1986, steadily rising world demand for grain and unacceptably high budgetary costs led to a phasing out of the U.S. cropland set-aside programme.

Today the United States has some land idled in its Conservation Reserve Program, but it targets land that is highly susceptible to erosion. The days of productive land ready to be quickly brought into production when needed are over.

Ever since agriculture began, carryover stocks of grain have been the most basic indicator of food security. The goal of farmers everywhere is to produce enough grain not just to make it to the next harvest but to do so with a comfortable margin. From 1986, when we lost the idled cropland buffer, through 2001, the annual world carryover stocks of grain averaged a comfortable 107 days of consumption.

This safety cushion was not to last either. After 2001, the carryover stocks of grain dropped sharply as world consumption exceeded production. From 2002 through 2011, they averaged only 74 days of consumption, a drop of one third. An unprecedented period of world food security has come to an end. Within two decades, the world had lost both of its safety cushions.

In recent years, world carryover stocks of grain have been only slightly above the 70 days that was considered a desirable minimum during the late twentieth century. Now stock levels must take into account the effect on harvests of higher temperatures, more extensive drought, and more intense heat waves.

Although there is no easy way to precisely quantify the harvest effects of any of these climate-related threats, it is clear that any of them can shrink harvests, potentially creating chaos in the world grain market. To mitigate this risk, a stock reserve equal to 110 days of consumption would produce a much safer level of food security.

The world is now living from one year to the next, hoping always to produce enough to cover the growth in demand. Farmers everywhere are making an all-out effort to keep pace with the accelerated growth in demand, but they are having difficulty doing so.

Food shortages undermined earlier civilisations. The Sumerians and Mayans are just two of the many early civilisations that declined apparently because they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable.

For the Sumerians, rising salt levels in the soil as a result of a defect in their otherwise well-engineered irrigation system eventually brought down their food system and thus their civilisation. For the Mayans, soil erosion was one of the keys to their downfall, as it was for so many other early civilisations.

We, too, are on such a path. While the Sumerians suffered from rising salt levels in the soil, our modern-day agriculture is suffering from rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And like the Mayans, we too are mismanaging our land and generating record losses of soil from erosion.

While the decline of early civilisations can be traced to one or possibly two environmental trends such as deforestation and soil erosion that undermined their food supply, we are now dealing with several. In addition to some of the most severe soil erosion in human history, we are also facing newer trends such as the depletion of aquifers, the plateauing of grain yields in the more agriculturally advanced countries, and rising temperature.

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the United Nations reports that food prices are now double what they were in 2002-04. For most U.S. citizens, who spend on average nine percent of their income on food, this is not a big deal. But for consumers who spend 50-70 percent of their income on food, a doubling of food prices is a serious matter. There is little latitude for them to offset the price rise simply by spending more.

Closely associated with the decline in stocks of grain and the rise in food prices is the spread of hunger. During the closing decades of the last century, the number of hungry people in the world was falling, dropping to a low of 792 million in 1997. After that it began to rise, climbing toward one billion. Unfortunately, if we continue with business as usual, the ranks of the hungry will continue to expand.

The bottom line is that it is becoming much more difficult for the world’s farmers to keep up with the world’s rapidly growing demand for grain. World grain stocks were drawn down a decade ago and we have not been able to rebuild them. If we cannot do so, we can expect that with the next poor harvest, food prices will soar, hunger will intensify, and food unrest will spread.

We are entering a time of chronic food scarcity, one that is leading to intense competition for control of land and water resources – in short, a new geopolitics of food.

*Lester Brown is the president of Earth Policy Institute. For further reading on the global food situation, see Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, by Lester R. Brown (W.W. Norton: October 2012).

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Environment, Lead Tagged With: ,

Salvaging Waste Food for the Hungry in Spain

December 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Inés Benítez

MÁLAGA, Spain, Dic 21 (IPS) – A recurring question in crisis-stricken Spain is how to ensure that surplus agricultural products reach those most in need. One response is citizen initiatives to protest the waste of food and to advocate efficient management along the full length of the food chain."We want government agencies and private companies to take measures," said Luis Tamayo, one of the promoters of "Comida Basura: Tu basura es mi tesoro" (Waste Food: Your Trash, My Treasure), a citizen’s platform combating food waste, created in Madrid in 2010. It promotes activities like collecting food in good condition that has been thrown out by supermarkets, asking for leftovers at restaurants and organizing soup kitchens.

Tamayo said "the laws on surplus food have been designed with an economic approach," and producers and shopping centres are required to throw out tons of food still fit for consumption.

But those responsible for most of the waste in industrialised countries are consumers, who throw out perfectly good food on their plates or get rid of food that has gone bad in their larders through sheer neglect or for lack of a little basic planning before shopping.

A European Parliament (EP) report in late 2011 said that Spain wasted 7.7 million tons of food in good condition every year, an average of 163 kgs per person.

This squandering is at odds with the fact that over 21 percent of Spain’s 47 million people are living in poverty, according to the Economically Active Population Survey by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

The same EP report indicates that 42 percent of the 89 million tons of food wasted in the European Union comes from households, 39 percent from industry, five percent from the distribution system and 14 percent from other sources.

A special event was held on Oct. 21 in the northern city of Zaragoza, when around 1000 people got together for a lunch prepared from leftover food in good condition.

It was organised "Feeding Zaragoza", promoted by the Aragonese Alliance Against Poverty and modelled on actions like "Le Banquet des 5,000," held in Paris, and "Feeding the 5,000" in London.

As a result of the "impressive" popular response to "Feeding Zaragoza," a campaign was launched to protest food waste and raise awareness, activist Sonia Méndez, who helped promote the event, inspired by Tristram Stuart, the author of "Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal", told IPS.

A study in May 2011 commissioned by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and carried out by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology (SIK) warned that 1.3 billion tons a year of food are spoiled or go to waste worldwide.

"How can we waste one-third of the food we produce when so many people are hungry?" protested Méndez, who said "we are living in a food bubble."

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said one-third of the food produced globally is thrown away, a quantity that could feed 500 million people.

People scavenging for food in the trash bins outside supermarkets are now a common sight in Spain, where more than five million people are unemployed.

Solving the problem of leftovers is "difficult" because making use of them "requires infrastructure and management," and the laws "guiding and controlling the market make donating food difficult," Javier Peña, head of Bancosol Alimentos, a food bank in the southern city of Málaga, told IPS.

"Our basic task is to find surpluses, make use of the most suitable items that would otherwise be discarded and act as intermediaries to distribute everything from fresh produce to processed and frozen foods," said Peña, who has run the organisation for 15 years along with around 100 people, mostly volunteers.

There are 52 food banks in Spain, associated in the Spanish Federation of Food Banks (FESBAL). They are not-for-profit bodies run by volunteers who deliver food donated by firms and agencies to social assistance organisations for redistribution to the needy, in order to avoid waste.

Millions of tons of food fit for human consumption are wasted due to over-production, but also as a result of defective packaging, imperfections in shape or size, or short “sell-by” dates.

"For the last year-and-a-half an organisation has been coming to collect what we have not sold. We used to throw it out," an attendant at a large commercial centre in Málaga told IPS as he removed several tomatoes from display "because they don’t look good.”

The EP report recommends modifying the "sell by" dating system that forces large quantities of food to be discarded, diversifying packaging sizes and introducing a food course in school curricula.

"One of the biggest problems is the squandering of food in homes," said Peña. "Half of what is bought goes into the bin because people don´t check sell-by dates."

Last year Bancosol Alimentos distributed 5,000 tons of surplus food from wholesale markets, supermarkets and donations from corporations and individuals, to 230 social organisations.

"Many people are hungry and poor," Roberto Suárez, the head of the Málaga Association of Ecuadorean Immigrants (ASIMEC), told IPS. Once a month, he and several fellow Ecuadoreans go to Bancosol to collect food and then distribute it to over 100 families of different nationalities.

On this occasion, Choro Sonko from Senegal, who works occasionally as a dancer, has joined them on the errand. She is an activist in Sunugal, an association through which she wants to distribute food to her fellow-Senegalese, "who are having a very rough time and feel ashamed for having to ask for food," she said.

Food banks are currently overwhelmed by requests. "They are essential," said Tamayo, who added that it is also necessary to raise awareness about efficient management of surplus food.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Economic Crisis, Economy, Europe, Health, Lead, Poverty Tagged With: , , , , ,

Farming Among the Waste in Cameroon

August 30, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Monde Kingsley Nfor

YAOUNDÉ, Aug 30 (IPS) – Cameroonian urban famer Juliana Numfor has six plots of land where she grows maize, cassava, sweet potatoes and leafy vegetables, including cabbages, wild okra and greens.The soil in which her crops grow is moist and visibly marshy, and a stream of water runs near it. But if you take a closer look you will notice that the water is dark and smells unpleasant.

In fact it is wastewater, which comes from a student residential quarter in Yaoundé, popularly called “Cradat”, that is less than 400 metres away from her plots of land.

But it is precisely thanks to the wastewater that Numfor is farming on this public land.

She told IPS that she prefers planting her crops on urban wastewater sites because she can easily irrigate them by using the readily available wastewater. She said that this was because rainfall had become increasingly irregular – coming and going when she least expected.

“The kind of crops on this piece of land can grow on any fertile land if it is well watered. But during this period in August, which is supposed to be a very wet time of the year in Yaoundé, very little rainfall has fallen. It makes it impossible for vegetable crops to grow without proper irrigation,” Numfor said.

And Numfor is not the only farmer doing this. Smallholder farmers around the Yaoundé city centre are increasingly farming on urban wastewater sites.

While there are no official figures of how many people are farming in these areas, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER) admitted that the practice was overwhelming.

Smallholder farmers in and around Yaoundé can be seen planting their crops on public land, along railways, in conservation areas, and even near roads.

“This is a long-time practice that has only intensified due to a lot of causes, climate change being one. Many farmers have resorted to urban farming with wastewater,” Collette Ekobo, an agricultural inspector at MINADER, told IPS.

One 45-year-old woman told IPS that she knew 11 other women who cultivated crops on land near wastewater.

“All I know is that the ground is very fertile. I think when people empty their sewers and other household waste into this water, it makes the land very fertile for farming. And there is water all season round,” she said.

Rural-urban migration, aggravated by the adverse effects of climate change on rural farming, is thought to be one of the main reasons behind the growing number of urban farmers in the city.

In 2011, MINADER began warning farmers about the climate variability affecting agriculture across the country. Yaoundé, which is located in Cameroon’s Centre Region, experienced reduced rainfall.

“Over the years in Yaoundé, the rainfall pattern has been so variable and not easy to understand. Rainfall has become very irregular, unpredictable and reduced … this leads to prolonged dryness and the drying up of streams, accompanied by exceedingly hot climatic conditions – all of which provoke poor agricultural performance and low output,” the ministry said.

Ekobo said that because of the changing climate, many farmers found it difficult to predict when to start planting.

“The month of March traditionally marks the start of the planting season in the Centre Region of Cameroon, following the start of the rains. But due to changing rainfall patterns, farmers have now readjusted their planting periods, a phenomenon which is rather difficult to grasp a perfect mastery of. It has caused a lot of confusion with the farmers,” she said.

She added that urban farming was integrated into the urban economic and ecological system of Cameroon.

“The land is rich with urban resources like organic waste, which is used as compost, and urban wastewater, which is used for irrigation. There are also direct links to urban consumers,” Eboko said.

But farming on urban wastewater sites is not a safe practice, according to Foongang Mathias, an agriculture expert at the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development.

“Wastewater irrigation provides the necessary plant nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorous that are required by crops for ample growth. But farming in wastewater poses both health and environmental threats, not only to the urban agriculturalists, but also to the consumers of the crops grown on that field,” he said.

He told IPS that toxic waste from homes, hospitals and industries was probably deposited or carried into the wastewater.

“This water contains pathogenic organisms and disease vectors similar to those in human excreta. Pathogens that are brought in with the wastewater can survive in the soil or on the crop and are responsible for human diseases,” he said.

In addition, according to the World Health Organization: “Available evidence indicates that almost all excreted pathogens can survive in soil for a sufficient length of time to pose potential risks to farm workers.”

Despite the risks to her and her customers’ health, Numfor told IPS that the economic gains from farming in urban wastewater areas far outweighed the dangers.

She will continue to sell her produce to customers, who include restaurant owners and retailers. Numfor said that she earned an average of eight dollars a day, but sometimes made more when she sold her crop to women who export Cameroonian vegetables to the United States and Europe.

At a local market in Obili, a neigbourhood in Yaoundé, stallholders displayed large piles of vegetables that range in price from 200 CFA Francs (50 cents) to 300 CFA Francs (75 cents) per bunch. And consumers here did not care where the produce was grown.

“I totally ignore the fact that they are grown in wastewater because even if they contain germs, the organism cannot survive in the pot with very high temperature,” one woman, who bought three bundles of bitter leaf or Vernonia amygdalina, told IPS.

Another said she felt the vegetables were safe if cooked in hygienic conditions and besides, “no one has ever complained after consuming these vegetables.”

Meanwhile, Eboko said that the government did not plan to regulate farming near wastewater areas.

“Urban wastewater farming is not a regulated activity in Cameroon, although it is an important part of the urban food system. It is not yet considered as a potential problem, but is considered as a subsistence way of life for women.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Agriculture, Development, Health, Report Tagged With: , , , ,

As Temperatures Rise in Sri Lanka, Drought Wreaks Havoc

August 29, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Amantha Perera

PUTTALAM, Sri Lanka, Aug 29 (IPS) – It is a time of extreme heat and anxiety in Sri Lanka. Even the rains last week felt like a sudden burst of cold water on the smouldering asbestos sheets on most Sri Lankan household roofs, creating a blast of cold air before the heat returns once the rains end.In some regions, like the north-central Pollonaruwa District, temperatures have been hitting highs in the region of 35 Celsius at uncomfortably regular intervals between July and mid-August.

“Temperatures have been rising for some time now, and will continue to do so,” warned Malika Wimalasooriya, the head of the Climate Change Unit at the Meteorological Department. The expert said that the rise is not spectacular or rapid, but that people have been noticing the effect of late because of the lack of rain.

The traditional southwest monsoon has been delayed by at least a month, and the first rains have begun only in the last fortnight. According to the Climate Change Unit at the Ministry of Environment, temperatures have risen by around 0.45 degrees Celsius in the last two decades.

Already this year’s dry spell is creating havoc. Seventy-two areas in the country, including almost all of the capital Colombo, with high levels of electricity usage have been slapped with a daily three-hour power cut. The interruption is due to the breakdown of a coal power plant, but the national grid has been under tremendous stress due to the depletion of hydropower production capacity.

Usually hydropower meets around 40 percent of Sri Lanka’s annual electricity demand. This has gone up to even 55 percent in years with exceptionally high rains, such as 2011. But the drought has left the water reserves in the reservoirs painfully low. Hydropower generation capacity was at 17 percent during the third week of August, according to the Ministry of Power and Energy.

Sri Lanka’s power generation capacity just about meets national demand and does not have any readily available source to supplement it if there are breakdowns or large capacity losses, said Thilak Siyambalapitiya, a former engineer with the Ceylon Electricity Board who now works as an independent energy consultant.

“When there are large losses to the generation capacity, you have to cut down usage somehow, the power cuts are doing that,” Siyambalapitiya said.

The blackouts may be an inconvenience in urban areas, but in the agro-rich dry zone, the fear is that the lack of rain will devastate crops. There are already signs that it has. The United Nations reported that over 150,000 acres of rice paddy and other vegetable land in the country’s north are under threat. Tens of thousands of acres of paddy land are also at risk in the Pollonaruwa and Anuradhapura Districts, two of the main production regions.

Tea, Sri Lanka’s main cash crop, recorded an output loss of four percent in July, attributed to the drought.

The burden on the national economy is also rising. While more and more foreign exchange is spent on oil for thermal power generation, this does not augur well for a currency that has been under pressure. So far this year, the Sri Lankan currency has lost 17 percent against the dollar.

“If hydropower generation was up, then the sums spent on thermal could have been saved, at least partially; now there is no option but to spend,” Siyambalapitiya said. Sri Lanka subsidises thermal power by around 20 percent even though it is at least four times more expensive than hydropower.

The government has also set aside around 27 million dollars to assist affected farmers. The assistance will come in the form of drought relief, cash for work programmes, fertiliser and seeds.

For farmers who are at a quandary as to what to do, the announcement of relief is a godsend. “I really have no idea what to do, whether to plant or not to,” said G Somadasa, a vegetable farmer from Sri Lanka’s southeastern Tanamallvilla region.

He is among the tens of thousands of Sri Lankan farmers who depend on irrigation water, released by government officials for their crops. “We have to wait till the water is released or at least a date is announced for the release, to start the planting,” Somadasa told IPS. One big fear he has is that if he waits too long, he will miss the normal planting dates and crop cycle, and will not have a good harvest.

There are thousands of farmers like Somadasa in Sri Lanka who are critically dependent on water but have virtually no knowledge of weather patterns or water conservation.

The Central Bank’s last annual report warned that the livelihoods of 1.8 million people depend on agriculture, which means that between eight and nine percent of the population of 20 million stand to be affected by extreme weather events.

Experts in weather and water conservation urge authorities and ordinary people to take a much more serious look at water conservation arguing. that changing weather patterns are here to stay.

“This is the reality of climate change: heavy rains followed by drought. We have to plan for such extremes in the future,” said Kusum Athukorala who heads the non-governmental bodies the Network of Women Water Professionals, Sri Lanka (NetWwater) and the Women for Water Partnership that advocate water conservation and efficient use.

Her words were echoed by W L Sumpthipala, the former head of the Environment Ministry’s climate change unit. “Water or lack of it will be the biggest manifestation of changing climate patterns,” he said.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Asia, Environment, Report Tagged With: , , ,

Feed Europe, Feed the World

August 28, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Claudia Ciobanu

WARSAW, Aug 28 (IPS) – A huge moment for reform of the industrial farming system in Europe has many stakeholders on edge. Farmers who are feeling the crunch of rising input costs – from fertilisers to fuel – believe they can benefit greatly from a transition to more traditional and sustainable farming methods.

But opponents of the European Commission-sponsored reform package – which aims to places tough conditionalities upon subsidies to local farmers in an effort to overhaul an ineffective system of food production – say it could stifle productivity.

In times of global crisis, ensuring food supplies is as daunting a task as ever. But advocates of reform say that the answer does not lie in industrial food production.

“We are already producing a lot in Europe,” Trees Robijns, EU agriculture policy officer at BirdLife, one of the NGOs pushing for reform at the local level in Brussels, told IPS.

“But we have to ask ourselves at what cost and for how long we can go on this way. If we do not set our farming on a sound agro-environmental basis, we will lose out in the long-term. We are destroying our water, soils, our biodiversity, and this will lead to decreased productivity.”

Several studies have shown that sustainable smaller-scale farming has more productive capacity than industrial farming.

The latest International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report, authored by a large international group of scientists and endorsed by governments around the world, shows that sustainable family farming is the best way to address the food and environmental challenges facing the world.

La Via Campesina, a global farmers’ network comprised of over 20 million peasants, also published a report concluding that smaller-scale agriculture can feed the world.

According to the European Network for Rural Development, a body working under the remit of the European Commission, current EU policies could be having a detrimental effect on subsistence agriculture by regarding small farms as "an unwanted feature that hinders the competitiveness of a nation’s agriculture."

In Eastern European states like Romania, up to two thirds of farms in the country can be subsistence or semi-subsistence. And they are slowly disappearing.

"Most of the people have given up farming in our village, they now go to the city to work and use their salaries to buy food from supermarkets," Marcel Has, a Romanian farmer who works on a two-hectare farm – most of it on rented land – in Firiteaz village in Western Romania, told IPS.

"I was also about to give up two years ago, but then I read in a farmers’ magazine about the possibility of connecting directly with consumers who are interested in the kind of clean, local food I can provide. Now I can support my family, fix my house. I think there is a future in ecological farming – food in the supermarkets is of poor quality and people want to eat better,” he said.

The CAP reform proposed by the Commission is a step in the direction of strengthening smaller farms, by recognising their role in protecting the environment and biodiversity, and compensating them for it.

The Commission is also a proponent of more organic farming– which now accounts for roughly five percent of farming in the EU – and of encouraging young farmers to stay on their land.

Certainly, food security is more of an issue outside of Europe. But there, too, it could hardly be argued that European-style industrial farming is the solution.

Export subsidies for European agri-products, an answer to overproduction by local farmers, resulted in the ’dumping’ of items like grain, sugar and animal products on international markets at prices so low that local farmers in developing countries were thrown out of business in huge droves.

Numerous studies document the negative impacts of dumping by the EU in developing countries, among them an a recent analysis of effects of EU milk exports on Jamaican farmers and an assessment of impacts of EU sugar trade in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Responding to strong international criticism, the EU has been addressing this issue.

”The days when export refunds were needed to clear surpluses are a thing of the past – in 2011 export refunds were only at 0.5 percent of CAP expenditure, as compared to 11 percent in 1999,” wrote the European Commission in a statement sent to IPS.

”In fact, export refunds are only used very occasionally, in times of crisis, when world prices are already very low – so their impact is limited.”

But the global farmers’ organisation, La Via Campesina (LVC), is of a different opinion: according to the network of 20 million peasants, the EU, like the United States and other rich countries, are excluding several agricultural sectors (such as poultry and pork in the case of the EU) from subsidies reductions negotiated within the World Trade Organisation.

LVC also claims that between 1992 and 2008, the EU has included more and more subsidies into the so-called "green box" category of permitted financial aid to domestic farmers.

The EU is today the biggest exporter of agri-products in the world, with 100 billion euros worth of products exported in 2011.

Europe is also the leading importer of agricultural goods, largely animal foodstuffs whose production comes with very high environmental and social costs in exporting countries, according to the Transnational Institute.

Gerard Choplin, policy officer at European Coordination La Via Campesina, told IPS that the way forward to ensuring food security is the relocalisation of agriculture and strengthening of local farmers everywhere.

He said this could be encouraged through the following measures: banning exports at prices below production costs in the exporting country; allowing tarrifs on imported products at below production costs in the importing country; avoiding structural surpluses (overproduction leading to dumping, which has marred the CAP in the past), and, when it comes to CAP, awarding direct payments not based on the area of the farm, but rather per capita, thus rewarding sustainable small farms, ecological production methods, and difficult farming conditions.

When compared to the main debates over CAP in Brussels, capital of the European Union, these are radical proposals.

But the Commission is at least recognising the damaging impacts of export subsidies and has more recently started making efforts to connect its work on development and agriculture, by putting more focus on offering EU financial support for strengthening local food production capacities in developing countries, beginning with Eastern Europe and North Africa.

These steps could be a small start, if they are not hampered by further political manoeuvring.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Development, Europe, Featured, Politics Tagged With:

Europe Thinks Again About Food

August 20, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Claudia Ciobanu

WARSAW, Aug 19 (IPS) – Present day European farming is based on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which was created over six decades ago by countries emerging from severe food shortages that swept the continent during and after the Second World War.But at a time of widespread famine, lingering droughts, and looming resource wars, experts warn that the logic behind the CAP’s theory of producing huge quantities of food, using largely industrial farming methods, needs reassessment.

For one thing, Europeans are no longer hungry. In fact, they eat twice as much meat as the world average. Over 170 kilogrammes of food per capita are wasted yearly in the European Union, according to the European Environmental Bureau.

Secondly, the kind of industrial farming promoted for decades in the Union comes at a huge cost to the environment: agriculture accounts for one quarter of total water use in Europe; yearly, 100,000 hectares of land are lost to farming because of deterioration; and biodiversity is shrinking at an unprecedented pace.

Finally, support offered by the Union to its farmers to export products at prices well below production costs has played a role in the destruction of livelihoods of small farmers in developing countries.

While such subsidies have been significantly reduced over the years, Europe finds itself today the world’s leading importer and exporter of agri-products. Its imports of animal foodstuff are linked to the promotion of monocultures, deforestation and even land grabbing in developing countries.

Clearly, the model needs to change: for the sake of developing countries, the global climate crisis, and the health and wellbeing of Europeans themselves.

Proposal for reform

Many Europeans are already aware of the need for such a change. The CAP is currently undergoing structural reforms, that will likely result in a revamped policy after 2014.

Last year the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, put forward a proposal of reform that, while not necessarily addressing all the ills of the CAP – such as its broad focus on increased productivity based on industrial farming or its impact on food sovereignty around the world – nevertheless made determined steps to green farming methods throughout the block.

Over 350 billion euros worth of public money go towards financing EU farms over each seven-year cycle. The Commission proposed that, starting from 2014, 30 percent of direct payments typically made to farmers be conditioned upon the adoption of environmental standards.

It also said that a ceiling of 300,000 euros should be placed on the amount of subsidies each farm can receive.

The Commission further called for crop diversification, asking that farmers plant at least three types of crops on their lands, in an effort to move away from destructive monocultures.

It asked that farmers maintain pastureland permanently, rather than plough it up, which will enable carbon sequestration, biodiversity and water management. And it demanded that seven percent of the land on each farm be kept uncultivated, to allow wildlife to develop freely.

The proposal represents an attempt to restore European farming to more natural practices. For many of the region’s 15 million farmers, the recommendations are not difficult to implement, and numerous small farms thriving across the continent are evidence that such measures are not only practical but also hugely beneficial.

But industrial farmers, interested in using every bit of land for profit-making production, will not let the old farming regime go down without a fight.

The Commission’s proposal came under fire both from industrial farmers’ groups and national governments. A UK parliamentary report argued that it would add huge new bureaucratic burdens on farmers and possibly stifle already existing green farming practices implemented in member states.

The Commission is for the moment trying to hold its ground.

“I know that some farmers are already doing more; we definitely do not want to penalise the champions,” EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Dacian Ciolos, told IPS. “That’s why the Commission is ready to consider a system of equivalency in those member states or regions that have already done a lot in this direction. We are providing this flexibility because it is important we take into account the progress made so far.

“But, beyond this flexibility, the principle stays the same,” added the Commissioner. “The key point with these (green) agricultural practices linked to direct payments is to have a real impact at the European level. And we can only have it if we ask every single farmer in the EU to employ these practices.

“Therefore, these measures cannot be voluntary. We cannot talk about sustainability of agriculture without assuming responsibility for the protection of environment and the management of natural resources,” he stressed.

With roughly one more year to go on CAP negotiations, the Commission is now struggling to ensure that its initial proposals are not weakened too much, while simultaneously gaining the approval of reluctant member states.

At this point, green NGOs that initially gave a tepid welcome to the Commission’s proposal – arguing that it could have gone much further – are now advocates of the reforms, using their grassroots base to push member states to implement the recommendations.

“The Commission’s proposal is an attempt to shift thinking about CAP, to orient it towards the safeguarding of public goods,” Trees Robijns, EU agriculture policy officer at BirdLife, one of the NGOs working on CAP in Brussels, told IPS. “But we will see whether it turns out to be a greening of CAP or rather greenwashing.”

“Beneficiaries of CAP have to understand that this public money is not their god given right, but rather a privilege, which they have to defend and justify,” added Robijns.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Development, Europe, Health, Report Tagged With: , ,

SUDAN: Starting from Scratch

July 8, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Danielle Batist*

JUBA, Jul 7, 2011 (IPS/Street News Service) – In their hundreds of thousands they have crossed the border, arriving by boat, bus or on foot. After decades of civil war with the north, South Sudanese have come back home to witness the birth of their new nation on Jul. 9. The fight for independence has come to an end, but for many returnees, the struggle is far from over.

On the western outskirts of the South Sudanese capital of Juba some two dozen people have gathered in the local chief’s compound. It is a very hot day, the sun is unforgiving and people crowd around the one big tree in the yard to get some shade. Plastic chairs are brought in for the men, while most of the women and children sit down on a large, woven mat on the floor.

They come together regularly, to support each other and discuss their future. Some came back months ago, others have just arrived. Wherever they have come from, one thing is the same for all of them: they have to rebuild their lives.

Even before the referendum in January, in which 99.7 percent of Christian and animist southerners voted for separation from the Islamic north, hundreds of families came back to the south each day. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 by the Khartoum government and the southern forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) had convinced many that freedom was near.

Decades of bloody civil war cost two million lives and left millions more displaced. With the signing of the CPA, the desire to go back to the land they fled became too strong to ignore for many.

Recognising the huge logistical task ahead, the U.N. refugee agency set up a support system for South Sudanese wishing to return home. Registration offices were opened and ships, trucks and buses put in place to move people and luggage.

At the receiving end, in Juba and other towns across the south, a massive emergency programme was rolled out by the World Food Programme and other non-government organisations to supply returnees with basic items like food, cooking utensils and soap.

Many of the early returnees belonged to families who had been away for decades. Like Richard Luka, 32, who came back in 2006. His father had left Juba in the 1970s as a bachelor, to find work in the northern capital Khartoum. He got married and had children, whom he managed to send to school with money he earned as a tailor. When the second civil war broke out in 1983 he lost hope that his offspring would ever be able to see their homeland.

For young Richard, life in the north was marked by the desire for a place he had never seen. Growing up in Khartoum, he lived between two worlds. In school, he spoke Arabic like the other children and tried to blend in. At home, the family spoke their mother tongue, Bari, to keep their southern spirit alive.

"My parents used to tell us all about Juba," says Luka. "Whenever they saw it on television, they would call us over. It looked so beautiful to me. My dream was always to go back there. I knew it was my home."

In 1995, there was intense fighting in the area around Juba. Images of soldiers in battle were shown on the military programme the family always watched on TV. Seeing his home town being attacked sparked a form of patriotism inside Luka that he had not felt so strongly before. "Me and my brother said to my father: Dad, can we go fight? But he refused to let us go. He said: Finish school first. Then you can go and fight for your country."

When SPLM leader John Garang died in a helicopter crash in 2005 – just months after the peace agreement – the mood in the Luka household became tense. "We were worried. We had a chief who looked after us, but who would protect the south now that he was dead?"

In the following months, Luka’s father prepared his family to return to their home land. After a three-week wait in the harbour town of Kosti, they were allowed to board a U.N.-chartered steamship that would take them to Juba. Luka remembers the departure vividly: "As soon as we got on board and left the harbour, all of us went on deck and waved. We sang: ‘Bye, bye, Arabs, we leave you now’. We were so happy it was finally happening."

The journey took one month. The ship was crowded and mosquitoes pestered the passengers on board. The U.N. had put people from different tribes together, which caused unrest at first. But soon, they started to interact. "We all had the same experiences, so we shared them," Luka recalls. "By the time we arrived in Juba, we were like a big family."

Life back in the south has not been easy for the Lukas. After three decades away, the family has had to start all over again and help to pick up the pieces of their destroyed country. Luka’s father struggles to make ends meet as a tailor and Luka’s work as a small farmer barely brings in enough to feed his family. He met his wife Nora Joan in Juba and married her soon after. She is nine months pregnant and about to deliver the couple’s first child.

"It gives me sleepless nights thinking about how we will cope when the baby is born. How will I feed three if I already struggle to feed two? It worries me a lot." Luka’s dream is to finish his university degree, which he started in Khartoum but abandoned because of financial constraints. He knows he is capable of doing it, but the costs and the responsibility for his new family hold him back.

With independence now around the corner, Luka’s views on the future of his country are clear. "Our politicians need to make their promises a reality. We need quick development on all fronts- education, food supply and jobs for the poor, so that my child won’t have to struggle like I have struggled."

Luka’s baby will be one of the first children of the new Republic of South Sudan. When asked how he feels about the fact that his first child will be born on South Sudanese ground, his eyes light up: "It is very special. I will be the proudest father in the world." He has already decided on the baby’s name. He or she will be called Hora – the Juba-Arabic for Freedom.

Following the ‘yes’ vote for independence in January, the government of Southern Sudan called upon its remaining exiled citizens to come home and help rebuild their nation. As an incentive, it promised each returning family a piece of land.

Although plans are being put in place to deal with the assignment of allotments, most returnees are still officially homeless. Some have tried to get back to their family farms, but after years or even decades away, most land is now occupied by others and claiming ancestry without paperwork often proves difficult, if not impossible.

The number of returnees continues to grow, with many more expected to come back after Jul. 9, the date set for South Sudan to become an independent state.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), over 300,000 people have returned to the south in the past seven months alone. From November 2010 to June 2011, just over 140,000 returnees came back with support from the southern government and the U.N. The other half made the journey back themselves.

Despite support from the international community, the influx of returnees is putting enormous pressure on the nation-to-be. In a country where nine out of 10 people live on less than a dollar a day, according to U.N. statistics, shortages of food, drinking water, sanitation and health care are already huge.

The infrastructure to meet the increasing demands is fragile. The new Republic of South Sudan covers 650,000 square kilometres – bigger than the United Kingdom and Germany combined – yet there are only 30 miles of paved roads.

In Western Juba, Agnes Wosuk from the Catholic international aid collective Caritas updates her list of new arrivals. Together with local charities Sudanaid and Catholic Relief Services, she works to provide humanitarian assistance to 100,000 people in most urgent need of shelter, food and sanitation.

Not all people she speaks to today are returnees from the north. Many have also fled to Juba as a result of the ongoing tribal conflicts within the south. IOM estimates that from January 2007 to July 2010, more than half of four million people displaced from or within Sudan have returned to their places of origin. Despite this, Sudan is still the country with the highest number of internally displaced people in the world.

Sabia Leot, 21, is one of these people. Orphaned at age seven, she grew up with an aunt in a small village near the southern town of Yei. The family arranged her marriage to an SPLA soldier when she was fourteen years old. He was based in Juba, where Leot gave birth to their first baby, a boy, in 2005. Two years later she had her second child, this time a girl, followed by another girl in 2008.

Soon after that, Leot’s husband was transferred to an army base in the town of Bantu and the family moved with him. Life was peaceful for a while, until violence broke out at the end of last year. An ongoing dispute between two local tribes had escalated and armed conflict caused chaos in the area. Leot was three months pregnant with her fourth child.

On Dec. 18 Leot’s husband decided that it was time for his wife and children to flee the area. By now, the army was involved in the conflict and fighting had intensified. He gave her some money and a cell phone and told her to take the children to Juba.

"As soon as I rented a small room for me and the children to live in, I rang him," recalls Leot. "He said not to worry and that he would send us money every month, until it was safe for us to come back. He told me to look after the children and phone him if there were any problems. I thought we were going to be fine."

Trouble started after the first month, when Leot did not receive any money. She tried to phone her husband, but the phone number she had used earlier did not work any more. She asked her landlord to be patient, as she believed the money would arrive any day. After two weeks, the house owner had had enough and told the family to leave.

Pregnant and with three small children, Leot was sent onto the streets, carrying nothing but the few belongings she brought. With no family to go back to and no money to feed her children, she has been wondering around the plots of land in Western Juba ever since.

She has found a few old relatives, who sometimes offer her shelter and food for a few nights. When she feels like she has outstayed her welcome, she takes the children by the hand and moves on. "The eldest ones keep asking me why we can’t go back to our rented room. I tell them: ‘That room is not our home. Our home is with Daddy.’ It is hard for them to understand."

Leot has been homeless for five months now, and the situation is getting more pressing each day. The start of the rainy season has made matters worse.

"When it is dry, we sleep under a tree. But when the rains come, we have to run and hope someone will give us shelter for the night. During the day, I go around to people’s houses and ask if I can do small jobs for them. It is getting harder because my belly has grown so much. Sometimes they give me some food or a few (Sudanese) pounds. But often, we go hungry. I say to the little ones: ‘Don’t worry, let us sleep. Tomorrow, we will eat."

Since that one phone call upon her arrival in Juba, Leot has not heard from her husband. She says it is unlike him not to contact her. "I pray every day that no one will come and bring me bad news."

Some nights, when the children are asleep, Leot thinks about taking her own life. With the pregnancy coming to an end, she worries about the health of her family and unborn baby. In a country were one in seven pregnant women die of complications, the dangers are horribly real.

She holds her baby bump as she speaks: "I can’t think about what is happening to me. I don’t know where I will deliver my child and how we will cope. I try not to think at all. Every night, I thank God that another day has passed."

* Published under an agreement with Street News Service.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Development, Featured, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

ZIMBABWE: Harvesting Water for Food Security

June 28, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Busani Bafana

GWANDA, Zimbabwe, Jun 28, 2011 (IPS) – Earth mounds running across her field hold back the water that Caroline Ndlovu uses to grow maize, pumpkins, beans and watermelons long after the short rainy season in this arid part of Zimbabwe.

Ndlovu, a mother of three who trains other farmers, is one of over 100 smallholder farmers practising the water harvesting technique of using earth dams. The water collected in the field allows farmers to increase their crop yields, which ordinarily are poor in this region.

Almost four years ago Ndlovu harvested one 50-kilogram bag of maize from her 1.5 hectare piece of land, which sits on an undulating slope. Thanks to harvesting water, Ndlovu’s maize yield has quadrupled and her neighbours wonder what she is doing they are not.

"For a long time I was worried about poor harvest because of low rainfall until I heard about water harvesting," Ndlovu, told IPS pointing to full granary of maize. "The poor rainfall limitsed me to grow shorghum and millet but that was not for me because I am not able to (protect) the crops from the birds. I grow maize and have realised good harvests because of implementing water harvesting."

The secret to water harvesting is hard work and a passion for farming, Ndlovu revealed. "I work hard and put to practise the skills I have learnt on pegging and digging the contours in the most suitable location to ensure that they hold the water after the rains," said Ndlovu.

"I have encouraged other farmers to try water harvesting and some of them wonder if I am using a tractor when they see my harvest yet it all about learning the technique and applying it correctly."

Dead level contours are a useful technology for farmers farming on sloping fields to harvest rainwater. The trenches, around 50 centimetres deep and 1 metre wide, are dug across the slope. During rainfall, they capture run off, which is then slowly released to the field below over the next few weeks, giving crops moisture during dry spells.

Farmers have faced the challenge of not having the tools to dig the contours as well as not having the labour involved in making the contours. So communities in Sizhulube village work together to dig the contours. While older or disabled members look after the children and help prepare food.

Gwanda, 180 kilometres north of Bulawayo, is tucked away in the southern part of the country and is classified as a natural region suitable for semi extensive farming as it receives up to 400 millimetres rainfall annually. Farmers have learnt and practise rainwater harvesting to survive the long dry spells.

Village head and ward coordinator for the water harvesting project in Sizhubane village, Phineas Maphosa, said the project has empowered farmers in the area. Following a training workshop in 2006, 15 economic groups were identified in the six villages that make up the ward, which prioritised food security using water harvesting.

"Our rainfall is really pathetic and each year farmers get nothing from their fields. But now we see a difference in the harvests," said Maphosa. "I practise water harvesting and train other farmers on using it because I have improved my harvest as a result."

Maphosa said at first some farmers were sceptical and lazy to adopt the technique. But ‘look and learn’ tours were used to encourage them and some now grow pumpkins and beans.

International non-governmental organisation Practical Action has trained farmers to use water harvesting techniques.

Rockwell Matengarufu, the district facilitator for Practical Action’s ‘Enhancing Livelihoods and Food Security in Vulnerable Semi-Arid Areas of Matabeleland South’ programme, told IPS that water harvesting techniques are an insurance against the uncertainty of rain-fed agriculture in a changing climate. Practical Action has trained farmers to use improved farming methods and extension services they can share at village level in Gwanda.

According to the Southern and Eastern Africa Rainwater Network (SearNet) hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre in Kenya, most sub-Saharan African countries are currently using at most five percent of their rainwater potential. By recognising and incorporating the greenwater — the water ignored in hydrological planning — it may be possible to improve the food insecurity situation while also protecting the environment.

"There is an overdependence on rain-fed agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and not enough ways to deal with the effects of dry spells and droughts," said Maimbo Malesu, the World Agroforestry Centre’s water-management programme coordinator for Eastern Africa writing on the SearNet website. "As a result, grain yields are below one tonne per hectare in most of the region. This has mistakenly been blamed on physical water scarcity. But it is not physical as much as it is economic. There is simply a lack of investments to both capture and boost water storage."

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Development, Environment, Report Tagged With: , ,

Ban Proposed on Export Restrictions that Undermine Food Security

June 26, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Isolda Agazzi

GENEVA, Jun 24, 2011 (IPS) – Egypt has initiated a proposal in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to ban export restrictions on farm products to poor countries that are net food importers. The Group of 20 has also exhorted the upcoming WTO ministerial conference to adopt a specific resolution on export restrictions.

After Egypt’s democratic uprising earlier this year, food security has become a main aim in its quest to achieve social justice. Therefore, Cairo has initiated a proposal at the WTO to ban export restrictions of agricultural products to net food importing developing countries (NFIDC).

Some 77 WTO members are regarded as NFIDCs. They comprise all least developed countries (LDCs) plus another 26 developing countries that rely primarily on the import of agricultural products for food security. The proposal was introduced by the NFIDCs, with the support of the African group and the LDCs group.

A recent meeting on food price volatility, organised by the Geneva-based global think tank the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), discussed the proposal of banning export restrictions on food to countries with vulnerable populations.

Food producers sometimes limit their food exports in favour of serving domestic consumption needs and to keep local prices low.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), global prices of wheat surged by 60 to 80 percent from Jul. to Sep. 2010 following the export ban by Russia, which is not a WTO member but should become one by the end of 2011.

Export restrictions on foodstuffs were one of the key drivers of the food crisis and price spikes during 2007 – 2011. At the beginning of 2011, 21 countries had imposed export control measures. Recently, Ukraine, Macedonia, Moldova and the Kyrgyz Republic, for example, placed export restrictions on different types of grains.

The WTO does not prohibit such measures, but it tries to curb them. "You cannot deprive very vulnerable countries of sustenance by banning exports of food to them," Hisham Badr, ambassador of Egypt to the WTO, argued in an interview with IPS – especially, he said, "given the international food crisis, the energy crisis, the economic and financial crisis and the fact that the Doha Round seems to be in intensive care".

Since Jun. 2010, as a result of price increases, the number of extreme poor people has increased by 44 million in low and middle-income countries.

Concretely, Egypt’s proposal foresees exempting NFIDCs from export restrictions on foodstuffs by both developing and industrialised countries. NFIDCs, however, would still be allowed to use such restrictions for their own food security.

The proposal also foresees the ban of export restrictions on food destined for humanitarian assistance delivered by the World Food Programme (WFP).

Egypt and the African group would like to see this initiative become part and parcel of the proposed "early harvest" of the Doha Round that could be adopted by the WTO ministerial conference in Dec. 2011.

On Jun. 23, the G20 also agreed to remove export restrictions on food destined for non-commercial humanitarian purposes. It also recommended that WTO members adopt a specific resolution on export restrictions at this year’s ministerial conference.

But, given the difficulties of the Doha negotiations, what are the chances of adding export restrictions to the controversial early harvest that some countries contest even for LDCs?

"Many countries sympathise with this initiative from different angles," Badr replied.

However, according to Bridges Weekly, an ICTSD publication, major agricultural exporters like the U.S., Australia and Brazil would like export restrictions to be seen in the context of other trade distortions in agriculture. They don’t see why it should be singled out while there are large aspects of the Doha Round that are meant to redress those imbalances.

Developed countries like Switzerland and Japan, net food importers themselves, expressed support for the proposal. The Philippines, which doesn’t belong to the NFIDC but whose population has been affected by export restrictions, suggested that the proposal should include non-NFIDC too.

"Our endeavour is part of a greater strategy," Badr continued. "The Dominican Republic and Egypt will propose another initiative at the WTO General Assembly in Sep. 2011 on food price speculation. And we work closely with FAO on an agriculture market information system to exchange information and effectively address price volatility."

But he acknowledged that, given the state of the Doha Round, some members are not giving due consideration to the initiative. "We have not had yet countries that are against it. They have rather adopted a position of ‘wait and see’."

Jonathan Hepburn, agriculture programme manager at ICTSD, told IPS that, "it is an interesting initiative, We have to see where it goes, but clearly export restrictions imposed in the last few years have had an impact on markets and price volatility.

"When markets are already tight, such measures risk worsening supply, especially when the country that adopts it is a major exporter."

He indicated that WTO members are trying to address export restrictions in different ways. It could be in an "early harvest" of the Doha Round or, alternatively, be a separate decision outside the Doha package.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Diplomacy, Report, Trade Tagged With: , ,

Focus on Smallholder Farmers Vital

June 19, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Ramesh Jaura

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis     
    
BERLIN (IDN) – Leaders of three eminent international institutions have underlined the critical role of smallholder farmers in achieving much-needed global food security and preventing food price volatility. The clarion call comes in run-up to the first-ever official meeting of agriculture ministers from the world’s 20 major industrial and emerging economies, and ahead of Rio+20.

Agriculture ministers of what is known as the group of 20 (G20) countries meet in Paris on June 22-23, 2011 and the international community commemorates Rio+20 in Brazil in 2012 to follow up on and review progress since the Earth Summit in June 1992.

G20 collectively comprise 85 percent of global gross national product, 80 percent of world trade and two-thirds of the world population. They include the G8 and countries from Africa (South Africa), Latin America (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico), East Asia (China and South Korea), South Asia (India), Southeast Asia (Indonesia), Southwest Asia (Saudi Arabia), Europe (Turkey), Oceania (Australia), and the 27-nation European Union.

G8 is an acronym for the world’s eight major industrial economies: the United States, Canada, Russia, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Germany.

In Paris, G20 agriculture ministers are tasked with developing an action plan to address price volatility in food and agricultural markets and its impact on the poor. Shenggen Fan, Director General of International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), says they are "uniquely positioned to not only tackle the immediate price volatility problems, but also to take on a more fundamental and long-term challenge – extreme poverty and hunger."

But before they come up with any new recommendations, the international community "first needs to make good on previous commitments, including the G8′s L’Aquila pledge in 2009 to invest $22 billion in agriculture, which must be targeted to small-scale farmers," he says and adds: "When it comes to achieving food security and reducing poverty, poor farmers in developing countries might be part of the challenge, but they are definitely indispensable to the solution."

Such remarks are significant indeed. Because more than one and a half billion people in the world belong to households that farm on holdings sized two hectares or less – equivalent to less than two football fields. Many other practice family farming on holdings sized up to 5 or 10 hectares.

Besides, smallholder agriculture – including farming but also livestock production, artisanal fishing, and forestry – is the basis for the livelihoods of most rural households living in extreme poverty in the developing world. Poor rural households are in turn two-thirds of the global population living below USD 1.25 a day per capita.

Shenggen, who took over as head of Washington-based IFPRI from Germany’s Joachim von Braun in December 2009, is known for his work on transition economies and rural development in China. His research has focused on the analysis of the role of public and private investments in agriculture and public infrastructure in the fight against chronic poverty and hunger. In addition to his work on his home country (China), he has also worked extensively in other Asian countries, and East Africa.

"As experts in agriculture, the ministers no doubt know what extensive research confirms: Investing in agriculture and rural development, with a focus on smallholder farmers, is the best bet for achieving global food security, alleviating poverty, and improving human wellbeing in developing countries," Shenggen says in a statement forwarded to IDN-InDepthNews on June 15.

During the Paris meeting, the first of its kind, the G20 ministers should therefore seize the opportunity to call attention to that essential fact and propose a corresponding plan of action.

Shenggen argues: Three years after the 2008 food crisis, expanding biofuel production, rising oil prices, U.S. dollar depreciation, extreme weather, and export restrictions have once again led to high and volatile food prices, threatening the wellbeing of the world’s poorest consumers, who spend up to 70 percent of their incomes on food.

Any plan to curb volatility and protect the poor, he adds, will require decisive action on a number of fronts, including measures to control speculation on agricultural commodities, promote open trade, establish emergency food reserves, curtail biofuels subsidies, and strengthen social safety nets, especially for women and young children.

INVESTMENTS AND MORE

While those critical steps are vital, achieving food security requires long-term investments to increase productivity, sustainability, and resiliency of agriculture, especially among smallholder farmers, many of whom live in absolute poverty and are malnourished, Shenggen points out.

He adds: "Millions of poor, smallholder farmers struggle to raise output on tiny plots of degraded land, far from the nearest market. Lacking access to decent tools, quality seeds, credit, and agricultural extension, and being highly susceptible to the vagaries of weather, they work hard but reap little."

The IFPRI head is of the view that these challenges "are not insurmountable, and many actually present opportunities." He refers to successes during the Green Revolution in Asia and more recent accomplishments in Africa, which underline that "rapid increases in crop productivity among smallholder farmers can be achieved, helping to feed millions of people".

Shenggen’s upbeat message reads: "When smallholder farmers have equal access to agricultural services, inputs, and technologies, including high-yielding seeds, affordable fertilizer, and irrigation, they have often proven to be at least as efficient as larger farms."

Yet another significant reason to focus on smallholder farmers, says Shenggen, is that exploiting the vast potential of small-scale agriculture would increase productivity and incomes where they are most needed – Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The two regions are not only home to the majority of smallholder farmers and people suffering from extreme poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, but they also have rapidly growing populations. Improving smallholder agriculture could take pressure off global food and agricultural markets and cushion the negative impact on poor people who are most vulnerable to volatile markets, he says.

Harnessing the promise of smallholder farmers, however, will require increase in investments that improve farmers’ productivity and rise in spending on roads and other rural infrastructure to improve farmers’ access to markets.

While increasing productivity and incomes is crucial, it is not sufficient. Agricultural development among smallholders should also improve nutrition and health. Growing more nutritious varieties of staple crops that have higher levels of micronutrients like vitamin A, iron, and zinc can potentially reduce death and disease, especially of women and children, explains Shenggen.

Producing more diverse crops, especially fruits and vegetables, will also help to combat malnutrition, and selling more nutritious food could increase incomes and provide additional employment.

Since smallholder farmers are extremely vulnerable to weather shocks, including escalating threats from global warming, promoting climate change adaptation and mitigation is important to protect against risks and potential crop loss.

"With the right incentives and technologies, smallholder farmers can invest in mitigation efforts, including managing their land to increase carbon storage. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, has 17 percent of the world’s potential for climate change mitigation through sustainable agricultural practices," says the IFPRI head.

He also pleads for policies and programmes to narrow the gender gap in agriculture and address the specific constraints faced by women. Although female farmers do much of the work to produce, process, and sell food in many countries, they frequently have less access than men to land, seeds, fertilizer, credit, and training. When women obtain the same levels of education and have equal access to extension and farm inputs, they produce significantly higher yields, he argues.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

IFPRI chief’s views are backed by Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations rural poverty agency. A Nigerian national, and the first African to head IFAD, Nwanze brings to the job nearly 30 years of experience across three continents in poverty reduction through agriculture, rural development and research.

Smallholder farms, Nwanze said, are often very efficient in terms of production per hectare, and they have tremendous potential for growth. Experience shows that helping smallholder farmers can contribute to a country’s economic growth and food security.

"We believe that the voice of smallholder farmer must be heard because we have empirical evidence how agriculture, how economies have been transformed in China, in India, in Brazil, in Vietnam and today even in Ghana,” he said in an extensive interview with IDN-InDepthNews.

"Smallholders in developing countries – the majority of them women – manage to feed 2 billion people despite working on ecologically and climatically precarious land, with difficult or no access to infrastructure and institutional services, and often lacking land tenure rights that farmers in developed countries take for granted," he said in a joint statement with Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), based in Nairobi.

Nwanze added: "Right now, we are squandering the potential of rural poor people to contribute to global prosperity. Investing in sustainable smallholder agriculture is a smart way to right this wrong."

The joint statement on June 1, 2011 called for a dramatic increase in support for sustainable agriculture, including smallholder farmers, as a way to drive green growth and reduce poverty. The challenge of feeding more than 9 billion people by 2050, compounded by climate change, maintaining healthy and productive land and sufficient water resources, requires a more intelligent pathway in terms of managing the world’s agricultural systems.

"Agriculture is at the centre of a transition to a resource-efficient, low-carbon Green Economy. The challenge is to feed a growing global population without pushing humanity’s footprint beyond planetary boundaries," said UNEP chief Steiner.

"Investments through official development assistance (ODA) is one way of catalyzing supports for smallholder farmers. But government policies also need to scale-up and accelerate smart market mechanisms for unleashing investment flows from the private sector," he added.

"Well managed, sustainable agriculture can not only overcome hunger and poverty, but can address other challenges from climate change to the loss of biodiversity. Its value and its contribution to multiple economic, environmental and societal goals needs to be recognized in the income and employment prospects for the half a million smallholdings across the globe,” Steiner said.

He pointed out that Rio+20 in Brazil will be a major opportunity for the international community to recognize the role of farmers in informing the sustainable development agenda and to provide the kind of supporting policies and financial flows able to unlock this potential. (IDN-InDepthNews/16.06.2011)

2011 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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