D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 6, November/December 2001, p. 27 - 28)

Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020. This was the topic of a three-day international conference organised at the Bonn International Congress Centre from September 4-6 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and its 2020 Vision Initiative. Co-organiser were the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation (BMZ) through the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) and co-sponsors from civil society and the public and private sectors.

Over 800 participants from many governments, research institutions, UN bodies, international organizations, NGOs and farmers from developing countries exchanged information in order to reach a consensus on how to effectively address the problem of food insecurity, mainly in the light of globalisation, technological advances, environmental degradation and population growth.

In his opening address, German President Johannes Rau noted the huge expenditure for space and other high technology research while little attention was given to solve the chronic hunger problem in the world. While at the time of the World Food Summit in 1974 experts had believed that the problem of hunger could be overcome within ten years, today 800 million people were still malnourished and 24000 were dying from starvation every day. The goal of the 1996 World Food Summit of halving the number of hungry people by 2015 would require enormous efforts, including increasing food production, development aid, changing trade rules and supporting debt relief and the recently developed New African Initiative, Rau said.

No deliberate food policy in many
developing countries

Uganda’s Prime Minister Professor Apolo Nsibambi emphasised the internal and external factors preventing developing countries from achieving food security. He criticized that Uganda - like many other developing countries - has no deliberate food policy and only two per cent of its national budget goes into the promotion of agriculture. As external factors contributing to food insecurity he identified agricultural subsidies in developed countries which gave their farmers an advantage in the global marketplace against illiterate farmers from the developing world. He added that food dumping by developed countries was destroying incentives for local farmers and called for a concrete timetable to phase out subsidies and create a level playing field among farmers worldwide.

Germany’s Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul identified a number of other areas of concern. Referring to the problems of globalisation, she advocated an equitable world trade system involving restructuring of tariffs and participatory decision-making. Other issues with a bearing on food security were development finance, land tenure, elimination of trade barriers, export subsidies and sovereignty over plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. She also stressed the need for a fundamental reform of the agricultural policy of the EU which is due to be implemented by 2003.

Uganda’s position was supported by Sartaj Aziz, former Pakistan Minister of Agriculture, who called the current macroeconomic framework unbalanced and ineffective in tackling food insecurity. He reminded the audience of the fact that industrialised countries still provide US$ 350 billion for agricultural subsidies annually and expressed the hope that the European Union would take a leading role in the fight against global hunger as it had recently done on climate change.

IFPRI Director General Per Pinstrup-Andersen, who was recently awarded the World Food Prize 2001, concluded that progress achieved during the past 20 years has been modest. One area of concern was that Sub-Saharan Africa was the only region of the world where per capita food production had remained stagnant over the past 40 years. Under business-as-usual scenarios and without a new policy agenda the 2020 goal of Food for All would definitely not be met, and he asked the conference to set clear priorities in favour of the poor and develop a plan of action.

Changing profiles in health and
nutrition

Rapid population growth has a major influence on food needs and food security. World population almost doubled since 1960 and now stands at more than 6.1 billion. Another 3 billion may be added by 2050. This increase, most of which takes place in developing countries only, is the principal cause for the growing demand for food, water and other resources. Millions of people are moving from rural to urban areas and from one country to another in search of a better life. Urbanisation in the Third World is proceeding at a very rapid pace, and creates new poverty.

To reduce population pressure on the world’s resources John Bongaarts of the UN Population Council suggested a) to strengthen family planning programmes to provide women with the knowledge and means to regulate their fertility, b) to emphasize “human development”, in particular in regard to education, gender equality and child health, and c) to encourage delays in childbearing.

Serious problems for food production and health are also caused by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which killed 7 million farmers during the past 20 years, mostly in Africa, and is a growing threat to social stability.

Sharply divided were the views on the dangers and chances of globalisation for agricultural policy and development cooperation. There was a general concern that when there was unlimited competition in a globalised world, the poorest in this competition would be the losers. Keynote speaker Supachai Panitchpakdi, designate Director General of the WTO, admitted that globalisation could also bring risks. He supported changes at the WTO and said the next trade round should address issues important to developing countries like anti-dumping measures, agriculture and the reduction of subsidies and protectionism. The latest wave of globalisation had helped create enormous wealth at world level, he said, but too many are still not sharing in it. Poverty and hunger amidst affluence was avoidable and a drag on the world economy.

Not all speakers saw globalisation and the world trade regime as the main culprits for poverty in the world. Some appealed to developing countries to also put their own houses in order, to promote domestic reforms and to focus more on rural development and the promotion of small farmers. This included the need for establishing farmer networks and expanding cooperatives and social safety nets to improve the farmers’ position within their own countries.

Weak structure of African
farming systems

Agriculture in most of Africa is dominated by small farms of less than 5, often less than one hectare, which account for over 90 per cent of agricultural production. However, the majority of these small-scale, food-insecure households are family economies with weak linkages to markets and hardly any external inputs or credits. They often farm on degraded land, far from roads and, consequently, from extension programmes.

To correct the situation and make the small farmer improve production and livelyhood, Dunstan Spencer from Sierra Leone suggested to form a strong coalition between national governments, the private sector, NGOs and the international donor community. This coalition should promote good governance, take steps to make HIV/AIDS drugs cheaply available, invest in people-centred development, like education, health and rural infrastructure, make more appropriate, sustainable technologies available and provide access to fertilizer, credit and market.

Describing the conditions of South Asian farmers, Ashok Gulati of IFPRI spoke of the lack of efficiency of extremely small landholdings, the challenges of population growth, globalisation, rapid economic growth and serious water scarcity particularly for small farmers. He urged the reform of rules governing land selling and purchasing, water pricing, credit provision, investment in research and infrastructure and local trade liberalisation. Small farms could still survive if the right policy environment prevailed.

Africa most valuerable to
climate change

Another important theme affecting agriculture discussed by panelists was global climate change which is becoming a major development issue. They emphasized that Africa is predicted to become the most vulnerable region to adverse climate change effects. Increased drought risk would reduce crop yields and agricultural output and increase hunger. Both mitigation and adaptation, with emphasis on additional investments in Africa and the Indian subcontinent, were recommended.

Not sufficiently covered during the Bonn conference was the need to fight against the continuing man-made soil erosion and degradation which is reducing the arable area in the world by millions of hectares every year and is a serious long-term threat to agricultural production.

A variety of other subjects discussed centred on complementary approaches to sustainable food production such as integration of organic and high-technology farming. On biotechnological approaches, Jennifer Thomson of Capetown, urged a “double Green Revolution” and advocated the use of gene technology to develop crops which are virus resistant, drought tolerant as well as fungi and insect resistant.

Empowering low-income women who produce almost 80 per cent of all food in developing countries was a subject covered by several speakers, among them Kisamba-Mugerwa, Minister of Agriculture of Uganda. Their empowerment would increase food security and lead to improvements in education, child health and household income. He also stressed the need for women to get access to land, credit and technology.

During the final afternoon of the three-day conference in Bonn participants extensively discussed setting clear priorities for action to achieve the vision of sustainable food security for all. They then concluded by identifying who is responsible for achieving food security.

Rajul Pandya-Lorch, head of IFPRI’s 2020 Vision Initiative, presented a draft paper recommending high priority policy action in seven broad areas which emerged from the presentations made: Investing in human resources, improving access to productive resources and remunerative employment, improving markets, infrastructure and institutions, expanding appropriate research, knowledge and technology, improving natural resource management, promoting good governance, and finally supporting sound national and international trade and macroeconomic policies. In the subsequent discussion participants urged a revision of this list to better reflect links to the hungry and poor, including debt relief and building farmers’ collective capacity for action.

Using a digital voting system, it was quite interesting to see how the participants indicated which of the above 7 seven action areas they attached the greatest importance to. The poll showed a preference for prioritizing investment in human resources, followed closely by the promotion of good governance.

Conclusion

Summing up the discussions and presentations, Joachim von Braun, Director of the Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Bonn, stated that the countries should mobilize national networks and lobby to fight poverty and hunger. Empowerment would require strengthening democracy and public policy reforms such as decentralization.

In his concluding speech IFPRI Director General Per Pinstrup-Andersen recalled the conference’s three objectives of knowledge exchange, breaking complacency and catalyzing action, and stated that this had been an extremely productive meeting. Achieving the 1996 World Food Summit goal for 2020 depended on three prerequisites: Pro-poor economic growth, empowerment of the poor, and the effective provision of public goods. Participants must now take the food security message to high-level decision makers who can transmit it to other fora and take appropriate action. He finally drew attention to the creation of a multi-stakeholder “Bonn Food Policy Circle” to convey this message to a wider audience.