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This note is in response to the third summary prepared by Felicity Proctor, dated May 12. In it, she asks us to reflect on two questions: (1) "what are the key big issues for the future and have these been adequately captured in the resource papers and contributions to date?", and (2) "what do you consider to be DFID's comparative advantage in carrying the agenda forward?" I am not well enough acquainted with DFID or the U.K. scene to comment on the second, but do have some comments to pass along on the first. In providing them, I must admit that I have not followed the other panels or the background documents, so I may have missed some things that are relevant to what I am going to report. My concerns are partly presaged in my first three notes. But let me carry them forward by saying that NOT NEARLY ENOUGH ATTENTION HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THE POSSIBLE FUTURE WORLD FOOD SITUATION and what it might portend for development assistance agencies and the developing nations. On October 29, 2003, Joachim von Braun, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) presented a sobering talk to the Annual General Meeting of the CGIAR in Nairobi titled "Overview of the World Food Situation. Food Security: New Risks and New Opportunities." It was based on refinements to IFPRI's International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) to project future global food scenarios. Some of their findings and his comments, for those who are not familiar with the statement, are are extracted below (taking some liberties with capitalization). "We have come to a major crossroads for the world food situation. On one hand, without significant changes in policies, public investments, and institutions, we simply will not achieve the 1996 World Food Summit goal - reaffirmed at the 2000 Millenium Summit and again at the World Food Summit: Five Years Later - of reducing the number of our fellow human bieings who are food insecure by at least half by no later than 20015." Moreover, "progress slowed considerably during the 1990s. And if China is excluded from consideration, the number of food-insecure people in the rest of the developing world increased by 50 million during the course of the decade. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the populations living in hunger jumped nearly 20%, with 30 million more food-insecure people by the end of the decade." "Today we must recognize that incremental improvement in the world food situation is a more challenging task than what we have faced in the past. Freeing the next 400 million people from hunger will require more complex investments, innovations, and policy actions than those needed to free the previous 400 million people. As a result the goal of cutting hunger and achieving a food-secure world poses an increasingly complex research agenda for the CGIAR and its partners." "Moreover, new evidence suggests that the task may be larger than previously thought. IFPRI is working on a new approach to measuring food security that goes beyond the current methodology based on national food security availability data." In 7 of 10 Sub-Saharan African countries, "the new method shows a significantly higher food-insecure population...." Furthermore, "Hidden hunger due to micronutrient deficiences poses a huge global health problem." "We must not just look at the food trends of today, but also at risks, which are less probable but not unlikely. There are a number of major risks to agriculture and uncertainties that have significant implications for food security and livelihoods. We focus here on three such sets of risks: (1) ADVERSE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT INTERACTIONS, including rapid climate change; mismanagement of water systems, soils, and forests; collapse of marine fisheries; and new plant and animal diseases; (2) HEALTH -RELATED FOOD CRISES, including further spread of HIV/AIDS, the onset of other epidemics that have significant or indirect implications for agriculture, and the expansion of unhealthy diets; (3) GOVERNANCE AND POLICY CRISES, including civil unrest and wars, a decline in the quality of governance related to food and agriculture, erratic changes in the world trade system, and the collapse of small farms." IFPRI has further developed IMPACT to "project future global food scenarios, and we have used these scenarios to selectively explore the potential implications of action and inaction..." Three scenarios are presented (with 1997 as the base year), to 2015, 2030, and 2050. (1) "In PROGRESSIVE POLICY ACTIONS SCENARIO, we assume a new focus on agricultural growth and rural development...The rate of agricultural technology improvement is also high owing to an increase investment in agricultural research and development." "Yield growth nearly doubles between 1997 and 2050...Global livestock production more than doubles during this period." "In this scenario gains in child nutrition in developing countries are steady and occur in all regions..." (2) "In a multidimensional POLICY FAILURE SCENARIO we have assumed trade and political conflicts...inverstments in social services and agricultural R&D are low..." "This scenario results in flat global cereal yields..." And "the number of malnourished children in developing countries rises between 1997 and 2015, after which there are modest declines." (3) "In a TECHNOLOGY AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FAILURE SCENARIO, there are averse technology and natural resource interations...Pest problems plague agriculture, and these problems are combined with water mismanagement, declining irrigation efficiency, and lack of adaptation to climate change." "Low agricultural investments lead to low levels of agricultural technology development as well as low levels of irrigation efficiency and low improvement in water use efficiency. Yield growth falls even more than in the preceeding scenario." "Developing-country per capita calorie availability is essentially unchanged over 1997-2050 and remains at a level of bare adequacy. Given unequal access to the food that is available, millions of people actually consume less than the minimum." Another scenario shows that "INSUFFICIENT ATTENTION TO WATER-RELATED INVESTMENTS AND POLICIES could produce a water crisis...." "In such a ...scenario, cereal production declines by 10%, a loss equivalent to the entire Indian cereal crop. This decline would cause rice prices to rise by 40%, wheat prices by 80%, and maize prices by 120%." "Conclusion. The world is NOT food secure. Although we know better that ever what needs to be done, the complex hunger equations are not even solved on paper. New and old food risks are looming in unholly alliances. So what needs to be done? An increasingly global food and agricultural system requires accelerated global investment in public goods, including agricultural research, broadly defined." "At this crossroads in the world food situation, we cannot afford to make wrong turns." I certainly hope that DFID would take, if they have not done so already, the IFPRI statement into account in formulating their future plans. It may also be of interest to the members of other panels.
Please visit dfid-agriculture-consultation.nri.org.