Growth and Poverty Mailing List Archive

["Andy Bullock" <<address removed>>]

Let me contribute on some distinctions between food and agriculture, as this
may help to structure some future interventions. I see three important
distinctions, though there is often overlap in the poverty-exit strategies
of many poor households.

First, under-nutrition in its own right is a manifestation of poverty. It is
addressed internationally by the 'right to food' and by the
internationally-accepted target from the Rome Food Summit. Improving
nutritional intake will not only redress this specific MDG, but it wll also
make a contribution to several other MDGs, including infant and maternal
mortality. Securing household food intake is self-justified - it does not
have to be seen as making a contribution to economic growth. It is important
that DFID and others recognise the extent of self-provisioning of food.
Allied to this is the major industry of emergency food relief, when
self-provisioning fails, on which I will comment elsewhere.

I will jump to the third, before returning to the second. The other extreme
is agriculture in a developing country that has nothing to do with food, and
there is also crop agriculture that has only an indirect connection to food
within that country (wages earned producing export crops enable the purchase
of local foodstuffs).  Agriculture in this case has most to do with economic
growth, but depends upon the 'benefits' returned by those controlling or
regulating production.

In between there is the case in which self-provisioning and local production
are intertwined (stimulating local economic growth eg by growth in off-farm
services) and the commodities that serve export markets and local food
demand (eg sugar), whilst also addressing houshold poverty. Here, for
example, it has been argued in the case of Africa that interventions in food
security would yield better returns to economic growth than interventions in
any other economic sector.

Outside of this framework, we must acknowledge the food needs of urban-based
poor, and their means for accessing food (reliably and affordably).

DFID has objectives in assistance across a raft of development objectives.
In an MDG context, agriculture is not an end in itself, it is a means
towards other development objectives. Understanding the way in which
agriculture is (and could be) servicing those (jointly and severally) seems
to me to be key to best targeting development assistance into, for example,
community (eg reduction in malnourishment) or global (eg trade) - focused
interventions. In some countries, there may be arguments towards one
particular strand or another, or for more wide ranging multiple-goal
interventions.

Andy Bullock


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