[Promoted by DHinMI: When the candidates aren't fending off questions of vital importance to the survival of the planet like why they don't wear a flag pin on their lapel, they've occasionally discussed huge issues such as energy and global warming. What hasn't been discussed much is a related and often neglected question: agriculture policy. In fact, because of the importance of Iowa, candidates have to pledge their fealty to our policy of subsidizing the production of ethanol produced with corn. Our ethanol policies are having unintended consequences, contributing to the kinds of problems that led to the "tortilla riots" in Mexico, and the worldwide move toward biofuels is contributing to the worldwide spike in food prices. Let's hope that when the media is done with flag pins, they try to pin down the candidates on their plans for agriculture, in the US and around the world.]
It took more than 400 scientists and three years of haggling, wrangling and heated arguments to come up with the report by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) as dire warnings from the World Bank, the IMF and the UN's World Food Programme splashed the front pages of the world press in the last few weeks (the Executive summary, the Global summary and all its regional summaries are here in both pdf & HTML forms, a great trove of information for those who are interested). I have read all summaries and will endeavor to read the regional pieces as well in the next few weeks.
The 2,500 pages report concluded that while advances over the last fifty years had resulted in the world's food production increasing at a much faster rate than its population, the present system of production and trade meant the benefits were spread unevenly, and as we know, at intolerable price paid by the small farmers, workers and rural communities and of course, the environment.
"Malnutrition and food insecurity threaten millions", the authors of the report wrote, "rising populations and incomes will intensify food demand, especially for meat and milk which compete for land with crops, as will biofuels."
The report, commissioned by the UN and the World Bank, prescribed a fundamental rethink of agriculture knowledge, science and technology to develop a sustainable global food system. This report, launched by IAASTD's Professor Robert Watson, fingered the hikes in food prices on the (now known) usual suspects: increased demand, poor weather (read Global warming), export restrictions, more land used to produce biofuels such as corn-derived ethanol, commodity market speculations, and good old fashioned panic buying and hoarding. Outlining some of the challenges facing world farming in the next decades, Professor Watson said: "We need to enhance rural livelihoods where most of the poor live on one or two dollars a day. At the same time we need to meet food safety standards, all of which must be done in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner." Reading through one of the summaries, IAASTD's co-chairman, Hans Herren, rightly notes that contentious political and economic stances are hampering attempts to address some of the imbalance, naming the OECD countries who are deeply opposed to any changes in trade regimes or even subsidy systems. A cursory look at who's who on the naysayers list does not surprise me: USA, Australia, Canada, Britain are among them.
However, in this report there are two salient points that are of considerable importance IMO, and long overdue, particularly gender equality: it strongly urges action to implement gender and social equity in policies and practices. Such actions include strengthening the capacity of public institutions and NGOs to improve the knowledge of women’s changing forms of involvement in farm and other rural activities. It also requires giving priority to women’s access to education, information, science and technology, and extension services to enable improving women’s access, ownership and control of economic and natural resources. Secondly, it questions the role of GM technology. The report's authors are not convinced that GM technology as it is currently practiced could help in the battle against hunger. I quote: "Assessment of the technology lags behind its development, information is anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty about possible benefits and damage is unavoidable." Good call. The response from Roger Beachy, president of the US based Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and a strong advocate of GM technology was swift and unequivocal: "the over-precaution on the issue of GM in the face of strong scientific evidence to the contrary was partly to blame for the current world food crisis." Naturellement, Monsieur Beachy, you have billions riding on this, do you not? Adding fuel to the fire, another executive, Tom Arnold of the European Food Security Group, maintained that GM may indeed form part of the future strategies to combat hunger. He says: "There has to be a potential in some of this gene technology to breed shorter cycle or drought resistant plants, for example." This GM debate will of course go on and intensify as time goes on. It's worth noting that this week's BioVision conference in Alexandria, a gathering where scientists, academics and representatives from the development sector discussed the role of life sciences in tackling problems in developing coutries, the GM issue reared its ugly head in several meetings.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said:
"Agriculture is increasingly reaching limits in terms of arable land and water availability, reduction in soil fertility and increasing environmental impacts. Modern industrial agriculture considers these impacts as extraneous even though the loss of ecosystem services undermines the very basis of what sustains agriculture. If our modern agricultural systems continue to focus only on maximising production at the lowest cost, agriculture will face a major crisis in 20 to 30 years time. There is a collective ignorance about how agriculture interacts with natural systems and this must change."
Up until now, agriculture has been the domain of professional agriculturalists with a narrow focus on increasing productivity. IAASTD has brought in many other voices to create a broad vision that includes production, social and environmental dimensions. Food insecurity is not a result of lack of production but of the inadequacy of agricultural capacity to deliver food such as trade issues (and) the 40 percent loss of food, post-harvest, of which little is said about. Some 33 countries are presently in danger of political instability and domestic unrest because of rising costs. And with the advent of the biofuels, many countries are seeing this as fuel and food being priced at equivalent levels, effectively stealing from the poor to subsidize the rich car drivers in developed states. Expect more anger in the near future from this inequality.
Above all, political will and commitment is needed to tackle these problems with the radicalism and imagination they need. It is high time the debate on agriculture was conducted on a more informed plane. I haven't heard much from the candidates on these issues.
Over-population is another reason, but that's for another diary.