Strong markets for agricultural production can help drive rural development. Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2015 (IPS)

Despite a minimal reduction in global production, the world food import bill is about to reach a five-year low in 2015, pushing international prices for agricultural commodities down even further, the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) forecast on May 7.

According to FAO’s biannual Food Outlook report released on Thursday, given large supplies, low freight rates, a strong U.S. dollar, and changes in the volume of food import commodities, international food prices continued declining during April, and are likely to stay as such for the next season.

The report estimated that cereal production for 2015, which is five percent above the average of the past five years, may decline by 1.5 percent from last year’s recorded production –  around 2,500 billion tonnes. Nonetheless, negative effects on food consumption will be balanced by the presence of large quantities of cereal stockpiles.

Broadly speaking, the decline of food prices should benefit food importing countries, and likely lower income ones, but it may have impacts on certain sectors, such as commodity farmers, said an FAO spokesperson.

“Farmers engaged in producing those commodities, such as palm oil and rice, stand to earn less. FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva has several times emphasised that strong markets for agricultural production can help drive rural development, but also that prices remain fairly high by historical standards today.”

Food prices are declining from historical high levels, especially since the severe price rises of the 2007-2012 period.

FAO’s Food Price Index, a trade-weighted monthly index which tracks prices of cereals, meat, dairy products, vegetable oils and sugar on international markets, has registered a 1.2 percent decline from March, the lowest level since June 2010 (reaching 171 points), and 19.2 percent less than in 2014.

The FAO spokesperson added, “While [lower food prices] could improve poorer people’s access to food, much depends on local food and distribution systems. Wholesale prices measured by the food price index do not necessarily correlate to retail prices in individual countries or regions.”

International prices have declined mostly for dairy products, due to the abolition of the European Union milk quota system (about 6.7 percent), but also for sugar, cereals and vegetable oils. Only meat values rose in April, the first increase since August 2014.

Fish is gaining wide popularity, said the report. Fishery production, supported by a fast growing aquaculture sector, is expected to rise by five percent in the year ahead.

Finally, the report highlighted how some currencies have weakened against the U.S. dollar, “So the benefit from lower international food prices may be reduced,” concluded the spokesperson.

The strategy for defeating global hunger, said FAO, is “to shift the focus from food growth – enough to supply all food needs – to reduce loss and waste of food at all levels, from the farmer to the final consumer.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

In the Pacific Islands, transportation, including cargo boats that ply the waters between islands, is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, May 6 2015 (IPS)

The recent dramatic fall in world oil prices, with Brent crude plummeting from a high of 115 dollars per barrel in June last year to around 47 dollars in January 2015, is beginning to benefit Pacific Islanders who are seeing lower prices for fuel and energy.

Although the global price per barrel inched up to 68 dollars in early May, regional experts continue to anticipate fiscal gains as the trend eases costs of government operations and service delivery.

“How and to what extent [Pacific Island governments] will be able to derive benefits from the dramatic oil price drop depends on how quickly they [...] channel public spending on infrastructure and other development programmes.” -- Dr. Dibyendu Maiti, associate professor at the School of Economics at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji
“There is evidence to suggest that reduced fuel costs are having some impact in all Pacific Island markets, at least through lower prices charged for fuel, but the impact on secondary markets, like food and transport, may take longer to be realised,” Alan Bartmanovich, Petroleum Adviser to the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) in Fiji, told IPS.

It will take time for the oil price drop to fully impact island governments and all economic sectors due to the length of supply chains and other factors, such as price fuel regulation within countries, he added.

A global oversupply of oil, due to a surge in United States production and decline in consumption driven by reduced growth in Europe and Asia, have been the main causes of the downward price trend.

The decision of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), including Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, which produces 40 percent of the world’s crude oil, to maintain its level of output has diminished the likelihood of prices soaring again quickly.

The Pacific Islands region is home to 10 million people living in 22 countries and territories totalling thousands of islands spread across 180 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean.

According to the World Bank, more than 20 percent of Pacific Islanders are unable to afford basic needs, while employment relative to population is a low 30-50 percent in Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu.

Capitalising on lower oil prices will be vital to improving the lives and development outcomes of millions of people in this region, where the vast majority live in rural areas with little access to basic facilities and global job markets.

Many countries have embarked on plans to transition to renewable energy, but the region still depends heavily on fossil fuels, especially for power and transportation.

Fossil fuel imports amount to 10 percent of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP) and in five countries – the Cook Islands, Guam, Nauru, Niue and Tuvalu – diesel is still used for nearly all power generation.

Transporting oil long distances to small Pacific islands scattered across vast sea distances entails complex and costly supply chains. Further shipment to outer lying island provinces within countries can result in an additional 20-40 percent on the price of fuel for local consumers.

In Fiji, Maureen Penjueli, coordinator of the Pacific Network on Globalisation, a regional civil society organisation, said, “Only a month ago the people of Fiji started to enjoy the real benefits of the fall in oil prices, particularly at the gas pumps, but also for basic energy needs, such as kerosene.”

Since 2014, the price of diesel in Fiji, commonly used to fuel power generators, has dropped from 1.17 dollars to 0.82 dollars per litre in April this year.

Over the same period, the cost of kerosene has fallen from 1.09 dollars to 0.62 dollars per litre.

“The cost of kerosene coming down is significant as this benefit trickles right down to rural and urban areas where most people are dependent on it as a source of energy for cooking,” Penjueli continued.

The trend is welcomed in the region after soaring oil prices from 2002-2008 and the global financial crisis intensified fiscal pressures, costing many Pacific Island countries about 10 percent of their gross national incomes.

Rising inflation and worsening trade deficits impeded the capacity of governments to reduce poverty and deliver development programmes and public services.

Rural communities in the Solomon Islands use fossil fuels for transportation, such as motorized canoes. Catherine Wilson/IPS

At this time ordinary Pacific Islanders witnessed escalating food, electricity and transport costs. Between 2009 and 2010 some staple food prices increased by 50-100 percent in at least six Pacific Island countries.

In Vanuatu, the price of taro rose from 1.95 to 3.91 dollars and yams from 6.85 to 14.68 dollars. The purchasing power of family incomes shrunk, with the poorest often the worst hit.

But, according to Penjueli, food prices remain largely unaffected so far by fuel price reductions.

“The rationale is that there should be a drop in prices of both imported foods and local produce because transportation costs will come down, however, we really haven’t seen that benefit yet. Retail stores have not brought their prices down,” she said.

The World Bank claims that a decline of 10 percent in world oil prices is likely to boost economic growth in oil importing countries about 0.1-0.5 percentage points.

But while prices declined about 30-40 percent in 2014-15, current growth forecasts for the region remain modest. GDP growth in the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu is predicted to remain the same from 2015-2016 at 3.5 percent, 2.5 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.

Global oil prices are forecasted to remain low during the course of this year and increase marginally in 2016.

Dr. Dibyendu Maiti, associate professor at the School of Economics at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, emphasised it was important for Pacific Island governments to respond to the price shift.

“How and to what extent they [governments] will be able to derive benefits from the dramatic oil price drop depends on how quickly they adjust the inflation target and channel public spending on infrastructure and other development programmes.”

Some priorities include investing more in higher education and skills development and “encouraging the private sector to participate with more investment. This would have a long term spill-over effect […] such as raising employment,” Maiti told IPS.

Beyond the oil market, reducing the vulnerability of the Pacific Islands to economic shocks and alleviating the financial burden of fossil fuel imports demands that countries remain on course with plans to convert to locally generated renewable energy.

Three years ago, Tokelau, a tiny Polynesian territory in the central Pacific, led the way by converting to 100 percent renewable energy with a large off-grid solar system providing power to its population of 1,411.

It was a critical move toward sustainable development given Tokelau’s GDP is about 1.5 million dollars, while its annual fuel importation bill was around 754,000 dollars.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

In Bangladesh, dramatic reductions in open defecation contributed to large declines in the number of stunted children. Credit: Mahmuddun Rashed Manik/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2015 (IPS)

Nearly half of the world’s hungry, amounting to about 363 million people, live in some of the rising middle income countries, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

The 2014–2015 Global Food Policy Report (GFPR) calls on these developing nations, described as “rising economic powerhouses,” to reshape their food systems to focus on nutrition and health, close the gender gap in agriculture, and improve rural infrastructure to ensure food security for all.“It has become clear that the factors that influence people’s nutrition go well beyond food and agriculture to include drinking water and sanitation, the role of women, the quality of caregiving, among others.” -- Shenggen Fan

“It may seem counterintuitive, but these growing economies play a key role in our ability to adequately and nutritiously feed the world,” said Shenggen Fan, director general of IFPRI.

The report traces the link between sanitation and nutrition, with findings in Bangladesh that show “dramatic reductions in open defecation contributed to large declines in the number of stunted children.”

The research also found that “Bangladeshi children living in places where open defecation had been reduced were taller than children in neighboring West Bengal, India, where open defecation is still common, even at the same levels of economic wealth.”

“It has become clear that the factors that influence people’s nutrition go well beyond food and agriculture to include drinking water and sanitation, the role of women, the qual­ity of caregiving, among others,” Fan said.

The study also finds strong evidence that food insecurity was a contributing factor to instability in the Middle East.

Additionally, it draws attention to the pressing need to regulate food production to prevent food-borne diseases, help small family farmers move up by increasing their incomes or move out to non-farm employment, improve social protection for the rural poor, and support the role of small-scale fishers in satisfying the global demand for fish.

Asked specifically about the impact of Middle East conflicts on food security, Clemens Breisinger, a senior research fellow in the Development Strategy and Governance division at IFPRI, told IPS food insecurity is quite obviously often a consequence of political instability and conflict.

As such, he said, the number of food insecure people has risen in many Arab countries since 2011, especially in Syria, Iraq and Yemen (three countries ravaged by political turmoil).

“But new research shows that food insecurity can also fuel conflicts, particularly in countries that are net food importing countries and thus vulnerable to global food price shocks,” Breisinger said.

He pointed out Arab countries import about 50 percent of their food and were thus hard hit by the global food price spikes in 2008 and 2011.

Meanwhile, Imed Drine, a senior economist at the Islamic Development Bank, says the slump in oil prices continues to upend the global economy and experts believe this is likely to last for several years.

Oil prices dropped by about 50 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014 to the first month of 2015, the second largest annual decline ever where the falling oil prices have helped to push food prices down, according to the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Of the regions affected by these declining oil prices, said Drine in a blog post, the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) is affected the most.

That is due to the fact that the majority of its countries depend on oil revenues for growth and because it is the most food imports-dependent region where food dependency ratios exceed 50 percent on average.

Drine says the strong relationship between oil and food prices may be explained by a key fact: “Our modern global food system is highly oil-dependent.”

Oil is the key fuel for production and for transporting food from field to market, and fuel costs, he said, make up as much as 50 to 60 per cent of total shipping costs.

In addition, energy related costs such as fertilisers, chemicals, lubricants and fuel account for close to 50 percent of the production costs for crops such as corn and wheat in some developed countries.

“As a result, declining oil prices will have a direct influence on production costs,” he added.

Furthermore, grain prices have become increasingly linked to the movement of oil markets since more corn is being diverted to biofuel production.

Generally, as demand for these alternative fuels decreases, crop prices are forced down, making food more affordable, Drine added.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Soldiers patrol an oil field in Paloug, in South Sudan's Upper Nile state. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 23 2014 (IPS)

The sharp decline in world petroleum prices – hailed as a bonanza to millions of motorists in the United States – is threatening to undermine the fragile economies of several African countries dependent on oil for their sustained growth.

The most vulnerable in the world’s poorest continent include Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Sudan – as well as developing nations such as Algeria, Libya and Egypt in North Africa."In the long run, governments in these oil-exporting countries should use oil revenues to support productive sectors, employment generation, and also build financial reserves when oil prices are high." -- Dr. Shenggen Fan of IFPRI

Dr. Kwame Akonor, associate professor of political science at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, who has written extensively on the politics and economics of the continent, told IPS recent trends and developments such as the outbreak of Ebola and the fall of global oil prices “shows how tepid and volatile African economies are.”

In 2012, for instance, Sierra Leone and Liberia (two of the hardest hit countries with Ebola) were cited by the World Bank as the fastest growing sub-Saharan African countries, he pointed out.

In a similar vein, countries such as Algeria, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are considered top performing economies due to the large concentration of their oil and gas reserves.

“But the ramifications of any economic crisis will undoubtedly negatively impact the fortunes of these countries,” said Akonor, who is also director of the University’s Centre for African Studies and the African Development Institute, a New York-based think tank.

The world price for crude oil has declined from 107 dollars per barrel last June to less than 70 dollars last week.

There are multiple reasons for the decline, including an increase in oil production, specifically in the United States; a fall in the global demand for oil due to a slow down of the world economy; and a positive fallout from conservation efforts.

As the New York Times pointed out: “We simply don’t burn as much energy as we did a few years ago to achieve the same amount of mileage, heat or manufacturing production.”

There are also geopolitical reasons for the continued decline in oil prices because Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s largest producers, has refused to take any action to stop the fall.

Despite the crisis, the Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi was quoted as saying, “Why should I cut production?”

This has led to the conspiracy theory it is working in collusion with the United States to undermine the oil-dependent economies of three major adversaries: Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

Besides Saudi Arabia, the fall in prices is also affecting Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Oman.

But they are expected to overcome the crisis because of a collective estimated foreign exchange reserve amounting to over 1.5 trillion dollars.

The drop in oil prices, however, will have the most damaging effects on Africa which has been battling poverty, food shortages, HIV/AIDS, and more recently, the outbreak of Ebola.

The heaviest toll will be on Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa which depends on crude oil for about 80 percent of its revenues, according to the Wall Street Journal. The country’s currency, the naira, has declined about 15 percent since the beginning of the fall in oil prices.

Dr. Shenggen Fan, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), sees both a positive and negative side to the current oil crisis. He told IPS the recent decline in oil prices will help reduce food prices.

Since oil prices are highly co-related to food prices, high oil prices make agricultural production more expensive and thus cause food prices to increase, he added.

“Now that oil prices are on a downward trend, this is, by and large, good for global food security and nutrition,” he said.

Dr. Fan said poor producers and consumers in developing countries should be able to benefit from this – as long as their purchasing power increases.

However, he cautioned, oil exporting countries may lose government revenues from low oil prices.

Indeed, crude oil producing nations in Africa have felt the pinch of declining oil prices given the dependence of their economies on crude oil, he noted. In the short run, he said, poor people may suffer, if their governments reduce food subsidies.

“In the long run, governments in these oil-exporting countries should use oil revenues to support productive sectors, employment generation, and also build financial reserves when oil prices are high.”

When oil prices are low, these governments should use reserves to ensure that poor people are protected through social safety net programmes, he added.

Dr. Akonor told IPS as impressive as the current and long-term economic projections for Africa might seem, it does not change the precarious and fragile nature of the continent’s economic foundations.

“The high debt overhang and the heavy reliance on raw materials (such as oil) and minerals for exports, makes African economies susceptible to shock and systemic risks,” he noted.

Moreover, he said, the underlying human capital formation, especially amongst the burgeoning unemployed youth population, lacks the requisite skills that could lead to real sustainable growth and transformation.

“What is needed then is the effective implementation of development strategies and policies that would lead to long-term structural transformation and durable human development,” he argued.

One way to achieve this is through closer regional cooperation, given the small size of domestic markets and poor continental infrastructure. Transformative and human needs development must, amongst other things, address Africa’s poor infrastructure, said Dr. Akonor.

According to the African Development Bank, the road access rate in Africa is only 34 percent, compared with 50 percent in other developing regions. Only 30 percent of Africans have access to electricity, compared to 70-90 percent in other developing countries.

“What makes Africa’s development challenges vexing is that there has not been a shortage of autonomous development-related ideas between African leaders and interested publics,” Dr. Akonor said.

One can argue that Africa has debated and produced too many blueprints and programmes for over half a century without any tangible results or follow through, he said.

“Thus the major obstacle to durable economic performance in Africa has not been the ambitious nature of the development targets, but rather the absence of political will by African governments and the lack of consistency, coordination, and coherence at the sub regional, regional and even global levels to implement structural change,” Dr. Akonor declared.

“Transformational development will require that Africa add value to, and diversify, its export commodities. Building a solid industrial base and infrastructural capacity are also necessary prerequisites toward autonomous structural change.”

Dr. Fan told IPS that on the broader issue of the factors that influence food prices, it is important to realise the right price of food is not easy to determine.

What is important is that the prices of food (including the natural resources that are used for food production) fully reflect their economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits in order to send the right signals to all actors along the food supply chain.

“If this causes food prices to increase, social safety nets should be provided to protect poor people in the short term and also to help them move on to more productive activities in the long term,” Dr. Fan said.

In so doing, their food security and nutrition is not compromised, he declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Courtesy of Howarth Bouis

By Howarth Bouis
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 2014 (IPS)

“We are especially distressed by the high prevalence and increasing numbers of malnourished children under five years of age in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. Moreover, more than 2000 million people, mostly women and children, are deficient in one or more micronutrients…”

These words are from the Final Report of the International Conference on Nutrition that took place in December 1992 in Rome.The distress is felt most by the poor, whose response is to cut down on the more expensive micronutrient-rich foods while making sure the household gets by on stomach-filling staples.

Twenty-two years later, government representatives from around the world will again gather in Rome for the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) and will have to contend with the reality that despite reducing the percentage of people suffering from micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) deficiencies, about the same absolute number of people – two billion – are still not getting the micronutrients that are essential for good health.

This is still too high a number; being deprived of essential micronutrients in the first thousand days from conception to a child’s second birthday can result in stunting, lowered IQ, and repeated bouts of illness that reduce lifelong productivity and keep generations in poverty and poor health.

So, today, we still face many of the same challenges as we did more than two decades ago. These have been further exacerbated by population growth, food price volatility and climate change, among other issues. Here are a few trends or factors that stand out today, and must be accounted for as we look to end hunger and malnutrition.

While population has grown, per capita incomes have increased in many countries. Staple food prices have fallen over the long run due to increased productivity from the Green Revolution, but non-staple food prices have risen. Thus, calories have become cheaper, but minerals and vitamins have become more expensive.

The distress is felt most by the poor, whose response is to cut down on the more expensive micronutrient-rich foods while making sure the household gets by on stomach-filling staples. To make matters worse, in recent years we’ve seen a disturbing trend where even the prices of key staple foods such as rice, wheat and maize that provide most of the global calories, have shot up.

Climate-induced changes and natural disasters will lead to more volatility in food production and, thus, price variability. The poorest households are least able to absorb shocks. As such, building resilience has emerged as a critical priority that requires greater alignment and collaboration with diverse partners to protect those who are most vulnerable from shocks.

One way to increase nutritional resilience is to make our food systems more nutrition-smart. Our food systems have to be calibrated to provide the greatest amount of nutrients per square foot of scarce land that can be produced sustainably, especially in the face of climate change.

This means growing more nutritious foods that include staple foods with enhanced micronutrient content that are proving efficacious in reducing micronutrient deficiencies. We have to build agricultural, and therefore dietary, diversity back into the system so that there is a ‘rebalancing’ of calories with micronutrients.

Being nutrition-smart means we also pay attention to growth in obesity, which today exists side by side with undernutrition.

The lessons learned in the past two decades show that there is no silver bullet. Integrated nutrition and public health interventions, and poverty alleviation social reforms are necessary to achieve good nutrition for all.

We have to more efficiently break down the silos between agriculture, nutrition and health food and health systems in order to improve people’s lives. The good news is that we have made significant strides. Twenty-two years ago, agricultural and nutrition scientists did not talk to each other very much. Now they do, and even more of that collaborative conversation and action are needed.

It pleases me greatly that global awareness has been building up over the past five years about how crucial nutrition is. The Copenhagen Consensus, a gathering every four years of top economists in the world, has twice put the reduction of micronutrient deficiencies at the top of their lists as the best use of public money, and have conservatively estimated a 59:1 dollar benefit-cost ratio.

I am heartened by global movements like Scaling Up Nutrition that are galvanising communities around the world to expand nutrition interventions that work, and by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Zero Hunger Challenge to eliminate hunger in our lifetime. As a global society, we cannot afford to let this momentum wane as other crises or trends command attention.

Achieving better nutrition is a multi-faceted endeavour. I have emphasised here the importance of making our food systems more nutrition-smart. And as the tagline for ICN2 states: better nutrition means better lives. There are of course complementary themes deserving of similar attention.

But this is what the delegates in Rome will have to tackle next week when, as the materials for the upcoming ICN2 suggest, coherence and collaboration must be built into any new frameworks and plans to improve nutrition. I look forward to being there, and to learning from the experience, the expertise and the insights of delegates from around the world.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

German aircraft arrives in Ghana to help deliver U.N. supplies for emergency Ebola response. Credit: UN Photo/UNMEER

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2014 (IPS)

The widespread outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, which has resulted in over 4,500 deaths so far, is also threatening to trigger a food crisis in the three countries already plagued by poverty and hunger.

Dr. Shenggen Fen, director-general of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), told IPS the crisis is expected to be confined mostly to the countries directly affected by the spreading disease: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Asked whether the food shortages will also reach countries outside West Africa, he said Ebola is triggering a food crisis through a series of interrelated factors, including farmer deaths, labour shortages, rising transportation costs, and rising food prices.

“Within these countries, where undernourishment has long been a problem, the food crisis may persist for decades,” he warned.

And because Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia are all net food-importing countries, the Ebola-triggered food crisis is unlikely to spread to other countries in the region or beyond, Dr. Fan added.

Global food prices tend to have transmission effects on regional or national food prices, but for small markets (on a global scale) such as these three countries, the transmission effect of food prices is unlikely to pass beyond their own boundaries – so long as the disease itself is not transmitted, he said.

According to the latest figures released by the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are over 9,000 cases of Ebola, including 4,262 cases in Liberia, 3,410 in Sierra Leone and 1,519 in Guinea.

The death toll is highest in Liberia (2,484), followed by Sierra Leone (1,200) and Guinea (862).

U.N. Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters Monday the WHO has officially declared Nigeria free of Ebola virus transmission, after 42 days without a single case.

WHO called it “a spectacular success story that shows that Ebola can be contained”.

“Such a story can help the many other developing countries that are deeply worried by the prospect of an imported Ebola case and are eager to improve their preparedness plans,” he said.

Dujarric said the announcement comes only a few days after Senegal was also declared Ebola-free.

He said the trust fund set up by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to battle the deadly disease now has about 8.8 million dollars in deposits and 5.0 million dollars in commitments.

In total, 43.5 million dollars have been pledged and the secretary-general continues to urge countries to turn these pledges into action as soon as possible.

He expressed regrets over the Ebola-related death of a UN-Women staff member in Sierra Leone. His spouse is currently receiving treatment.

“All measures to protect staff at the duty station in Sierra Leone are being taken as best as possible under the current circumstances,” Dujarric said.

This includes decontamination of the U.N. clinic, disposal of the isolation facility and contact tracing, he added.

In a statement released Tuesday, IFPRI painted a grim picture of the situation facing all three countries.

Schools in Sierra Leone have closed, shutting down critical feeding programmes for children. And restrictions on the consumption of bush meat, the suspected source of Ebola, have eliminated a traditional source of protein and nutrition from local diets.

“In addition, the costs of staple foods including rice and cassava are rising precipitously in the affected areas as crops are abandoned and as labor shortages grow,” the statement added.

Food that would be imported from these areas is not making its way to other regions, either.

“So, as we weigh the dangers of this dreaded disease, we must not forget the very real threats it poses to food security,” the group warned.

“The global community must come together to ensure that there are safety nets to protect not only those infected with the disease, but also those whose access to food is severely affected,” IFPRI added.

Asked to identify these safety nets, Dr. Fan told IPS social safety nets are needed to protect not only those infected with Ebola, but also those whose access to food is severely affected.

These safety nets, which could be in the form of cash or in-kind transfers (context-specificity is important here), should be accompanied with nutrition and health interventions.

For example, a conditional cash transfer programme linked to health can help improve access to nutritious foods, particularly when prices are high, while promoting health service use, he added. “This is important, because investing in the nutrition and health of vulnerable populations could lower the mortality rate of diseases like Ebola, as nutritional status and infection are intricately linked.”

In the post-Ebola era, Dr. Fan said, combined social protection and agricultural support interventions will be crucial to build resilience to future livelihood shocks.

Asked how many people will be affected by this impending food crisis, he said with Ebola claiming lives of thousands of people in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, the mounting food crisis is impacting thousands more still.

Recent efforts by the World Food Programme (WFP) to provide food assistance to around 1.3 million people in these three countries indicate an idea of the scope of the current crisis.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is also providing food assistance to nearly 90,000 farming households to abate the food security crisis, he pointed out.

As the harvest season is beginning, labour shortages are putting the food security of tens of thousands of people at risk in particularly affected areas, he declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

By Anuradha Mittal
OAKLAND, United States, Aug 4 2014 (IPS)

The first years of the twenty-first century will be remembered for a global land rush of nearly unprecedented scale.

An estimated 500 million acres, an area eight times the size of Britain, was reported bought or leased across the developing world between 2000 and 2011, often at the expense of local food security and land rights.

When the price of food spiked in 2008, pushing the number of hungry people in the world to over one billion, it spiked the interest of investors as well, and within a year foreign land deals in the developing world rose by a staggering 200 percent.

Anuradha Mittal

Today, enthusiasm for agriculture borders on speculative mania. Driven by everything from rising food prices to growing demand for biofuel, the financial sector is taking an interest in farmland as never before.

The Oakland Institute has reported since 2011 how a new generation of institutional investors – including hedge funds, private equity, pension funds, and university endowments – is eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class.

But the thing most consistently missed about this global land rush is that it is precisely that – global. Although media coverage tends to focus on land grabs in low-income countries, the opposite side of the same coin is a new rush for U.S. farmland, manifesting itself in rising interest from investors and surging land prices, as giants like the pension fund TIAA-CREF commit billions to buy agricultural land.

One industry leader estimates that 10 billion dollars in institutional capital is looking for access to U.S. farmland, but that figure could easily rise as investors seek to ride out uncertain financial times by placing their money in the perceived safety of agriculture.

In the next 20 years, as the U.S. experiences an unprecedented crisis of retiring farmers, there will be ample opportunity for these actors to expand their holdings as an estimated 400 million acres changes generational hands. And yet, the domestic face of this still unfolding land rush remains largely unseen.

For all their size and ambition, virtually nothing is known about these new investors and their business practices. Who do they buy land from? What do they grow? How do they manage their properties? In an industry not known for its transparency, none of these questions have a satisfactory answer.

For more than six years the Oakland Institute has been at the forefront of exposing the murky nature of land deals in the developing world. The challenge today is to begin a more holistic discussion that places transfer of land in both the developed and developing worlds along the same continuous spectrum.

Driven by the same structural factors and perpetrated by many of the same investors, the corporate consolidation of agriculture is being felt just as strongly in Iowa and California as it is in the Philippines and Mozambique.

Down on the Farm, a new report from the Oakland Institute, aims to increase awareness of the overlapping global and national factors enabling the new American land rush, while at the same time introduces the motives and practices of some of the most powerful players involved in it: UBS Agrivest, a subsidiary of the biggest bank in Switzerland; the Hancock Agricultural Investment Group (HAIG), a subsidiary of the biggest insurance company in Canada; and the Teacher Annuity Insurance Association College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), one of the largest pension funds in the world.

Only by studying the motives and practices of these actors today does it become possible to begin building policies and institutions that help ensure farmers, and not absentee investors, are the future of our food system.

Nothing is more crucial than beginning this discussion today. The issue may seem small for a variety of reasons – because institutional investors only own an apparently tiny one percent of all U.S. farmland, or because farmers are still the biggest buyers of farmland across the country.

But to take either of these views is to become dangerously blind to the long-term trends threatening our agricultural heritage.

Consider the fact that investors believe that there is roughly 1.8 trillion dollars’ worth of farmland across the United States. Of this, between 300 and 500 billion dollars is considered to be of “institutional quality,” a combination of factors relating to size, water access, soil quality, and location that determine the investment appeal of a property.

This makes domestic farmland a huge and largely untapped asset class. Some of the biggest actors in the financial sector have already sought to exploit this opportunity by making equity investments in farmland. Frequently, these buyers enter the market with so much capital that their funds are practically limitless compared with the resources of most farmers.

Although they have made an impressive foothold, this is the beginning, not the end, of a land rush that could literally change who owns the country and our food and agricultural systems. Not only is there space in the market for institutional investors to expand, but there are also major financial incentives for them to do so.

If action is not taken, then a perfect storm of global and national trends could converge to permanently shift farm ownership from family businesses to institutional investors and other consolidated corporate operations. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

Food price rises as far back as 2008 are believed to be the partial culprits behind the instability plaguing Arab countries and they have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing food needs through an international strategy of land grabs which are often detrimental to local populations.

Between 2007 and 2008, rises in food prices caused protest movements in Egypt and Morocco. “This has become an important concern for countries in the Arab region which want to meet the growing demands of their populations,” notes Devlin Kuyek, a researcher at GRAIN, a non-profit organisation supporting small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.Arab countries ... have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing food needs through an international strategy of land grabs which are often detrimental to local populations

Arab countries, which appear to have started losing confidence in normal food supply chains, are now relying on acquisitions of farmland around the world. Globally, land deals by foreign countries were estimated at about 80 million ha in 2011, according to figures provided by the World Bank.

The 2008 international food price crisis caused alarm among policy-makers and the public in general about the vulnerability of Arab countries to potential future food supply shocks (such as, for example, in the event of closure of the Straits of Hormuz) as well as the perceived continued sharp increase in international food prices in the long term, explains Sarwat Hussain, Senior Communications Officer at the World Bank.

Increasing food prices are caused by entrenched trends that include population growth combined with high urbanisation rates, depleting freshwater sources, increased demand for raw commodities and biofuels, as well as speculation over farmland.

To face such threats, Arab countries have worked on buying or leasing farm land in foreign countries. “Investment in land often takes the form of long-term leases, as opposed to outright purchases, of land. These leases often range between 25 and 99 years,” says Hussain.

Currently, the United Arab Emirates accounts for around 12 percent of all land deals, followed by Egypt (6 percent) and Saudi Arabia (4 percent), according to GRAIN.

“It is however very difficult to estimate the total value of land grabbed today because most deals remain in the negotiations phase and are, for the most, very obscure ,” adds Hussain.

Land acquisitions are becoming institutionalised as clear strategies are developed by governments, which also rely on the private sector and international organisations, explains Kuyek.

Some governments of member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have adopted explicit policies to encourage their citizens to invest in food production overseas as part of their long-term national food security strategies.

Such policies cover a variety of instruments, including investment subsidies and guarantees, as well as the establishment of sovereign funds focusing exclusively on investments in agriculture overseas.

Countries falling victims of the land acquisition mania range from Western countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Romania to countries in Latin America, Asia or Africa.

Globally, the largest targeted countries are Brazil with 11 percent by land area; Sudan with 10 percent; Madagascar, the Philippines and Ethiopia with 8 percent each; Mozambique with 7 percent; and Indonesia with 6 percent, according to the World Bank.

“The main driving force seems to be biofuels expansion, with exceptions in Sudan and Ethiopia, which are seeing a trend towards growth of food from Middle Eastern and Indian investors,” Hussain points out.

Governments, often through sovereign wealth funds, are negotiating the acquisition or lease of farming land. According to GRAIN, the Ethiopian government has made deals with investors from Saudi Arabia, as well as India and China among others, giving foreign investors control of half of the arable land in its Gambela region.

Powerful Saudi businessmen are pursuing deals in Senegal, Mali and other countries that would give them control over several hundred thousand hectares of the most productive farmlands. -“The [Saudi Arabian] al-Amoudi company has acquired ten thousand hectares in south western Ethiopia to export rice,” notes Kuyek.

Besides food security concerns, it appears that such acquisitions are increasingly perceived by international companies as a useful investment tool allowing for diversification. A number of investment companies and private funds have been acquiring farmland around the globe.  These include Western heavyweights such Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, but also Arab players such as Citadel Capital, an Egyptian private equity fund.

Kuyek explains that large land acquisitions are triggering debates in developing countries and can become electoral issues.  Land grabs can have adverse repercussions on indigenous populations which find themselves evicted from the land they have used over generations for cultivation and irrigation.

“People are concerned by the sale of their local resources,” adds Kuyek.

This has translated into the creation of local groups that are challenging large land sale deals negotiated by their governments. As an example, farmers in Serbia have made formal complaints about the purchase of farmland by an Abu Dhabi company, Al Rawafed Agriculture, according to The National newspaper.

Small opposition groups will nonetheless face increasing difficulty in fighting-off governments and institutions, for which food security has become a matter of political survival.

Syrian mother and child near Ma'arat Al-Numan, rebel-held Syria, in autumn 2013. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Jul 19 2014 (IPS)

Gaunt, haggard Syrian children begging and selling gum have become a fixture in streets of the Lebanese capital; having fled the ongoing conflict, they continue to be stalked by its effects.

Most who make it across the Syria-Lebanon border live in informal settlements in extremely poor hygienic conditions, which for many means diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, and – for the most vulnerable – sometimes death.

By the end of January, almost 40,000 Syrian children had been born as refugees, while the total number of minors who had fled abroad quadrupled to over 1.2 million between March 2013 and March 2014.Most who make it across the Syria-Lebanon border live in informal settlements in extremely poor hygienic conditions, which for many means diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, and – for the most vulnerable – sometimes death.

Lack of proper healthcare, food and clean water has resulted in countless loss of life during the Syrian conflict, now well into its fourth year. These deaths are left out of the daily tallies of ‘war casualties’, even as stunted bodies and emaciated faces peer out of photos from areas under siege.

The case of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp on the outskirts of Damascus momentarily grabbed the international community’s attention earlier this year, when Amnesty International released a report detailing the deaths of nearly 200 people under a government siege. Many other areas have experienced and continue to suffer the same fate, out of the public spotlight.

A Palestinian-Syrian originally from Yarmouk who has escaped abroad told IPS that some of her family are still in Hajar Al-Aswad, an area near Damascus with a population of roughly 600,000 prior to the conflict. She said that those trapped in the area were suffering ‘’as badly if not worse than in Yarmouk’’ and had been subjected to equally brutal starvation tactics. The area has, however, failed to garner similar attention.

The city of Homs, one of the first to rise up against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, was also kept under regime siege for three years until May of this year, when Syrian troops and foreign Hezbollah fighters took control.

With the Syria conflict well into its fourth year, the U.N. Security Council decided for the first time on July 14 to authorize cross-border aid without the Assad government’s approval via four border crossings in neighbouring states. The resolution established a monitoring mechanism for a 180-day period for loading aid convoys in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.

The first supplies will include water sanitation tablets and hygiene kits, essential to preventing the water-borne diseases responsible for diarrhoea – which, in turn, produces severe states of malnutrition.

Miram Azar, from UNICEF’s Beirut office, told IPS that  ‘’prior to the Syria crisis, malnutrition was not common in Lebanon or Syria, so UNICEF and other actors have had to educate public health providers on the detection, monitoring and treatment’’ even before beginning to deal with the issue itself.

However, it was already on the rise: ‘’malnutrition was a challenge to Syria even before the conflict’’, said a UNICEF report released this year. ‘’The number of stunted children – those too short for their age and whose brain may not properly develop – rose from 23 to 29 per cent between 2009 and 2011.’’

Malnutrition experienced in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life (from pregnancy to two years old) results in lifelong consequences, including greater susceptibility to illness, obesity, reduced cognitive abilities and lower development potential of the nation they live in.

Azar noted that ‘’malnutrition is a concern due to the deteriorating food security faced by refugees before they left Syria’’ as well as ‘’the increase in food prices during winter.’’

The Syrian economy has been crippled by the conflict and crop production has fallen drastically. Violence has destroyed farms, razed fields and displaced farmers.

The price of basic foodstuffs has become prohibitive in many areas. On a visit to rebel-held areas in the northern Idlib province autumn of 2013, residents told IPS that the cost of staples such as rice and bread had risen by more than ten times their cost prior to the conflict, and in other areas inflation was worse.

Jihad Yazigi , an expert on the Syrian economy, argued in a European Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFR) policy brief published earlier this year that the war economy, which ‘’both feeds directly off the violence and incentivises continued fighting’’, was becoming ever more entrenched.

Meanwhile, political prisoners who have been released as a result of amnesties tell stories of severe water and food deprivation within jails. Many were detained on the basis of peaceful activities, including exercising their right to freedom of expression and providing humanitarian aid, on the basis of a counterterrorism law adopted by the government in July 2012.

There are no accurate figures available for Syria’s prison population. However, the monitoring group, Violations Documentation Centre, reports that 40,853 people detained since the start of the uprising in March 2011 remain in jail.

Maher Esber, a former political prisoner who was in one of Syria’s most notorious jails between 2006 and 2011 and is now an activist living in the Lebanese capital, told IPS that it was normal for taps to be turned on for only 10 minutes per day for drinking and hygiene purposes in the detention facilities.

Much of the country’s water supply has also been damaged or destroyed over the past years, with knock-on effects on infectious diseases and malnutrition. A major pumping station in Aleppo was damaged on May 10, leaving roughly half what was previously Syria’s most populated city without running water. Relentless regime barrel bombing has made it impossible to fix the mains, and experts have warned of a potential humanitarian catastrophe for those still inside the city.

The U.N. decision earlier this month was made subsequent to refusal by the Syrian regime to comply with a February resolution demanding rapid, safe, and unhindered access, and the Syrian regime had warned that it considered non-authorised aid deliveries into rebel-held areas as an attack.

By Andrew MacMillan
ROME, Jun 25 2014 (IPS)

The choice of foods displayed on supermarket shelves can be quite bewildering. This abundance encourages us to take it for granted that we will always be able to buy the food we want at affordable prices.

Any customers who give thought to how and where all the different foods are produced and end up in their shopping trolleys will start to uncover a rather disturbing situation.

They will find that in most countries, people working at all levels in the food system – in supermarkets, in meat processing and packing plants, as fruit harvesters or farm labourers, or as waitresses in fast-food restaurants – are among the worst paid of all workers.

Andrew MacMillan

They will discover that many of the skilled families that run the small-scale farms that produce most of the world’s food live precariously  They are exposed to multiple risks caused by fluctuating markets, pests and diseases and extreme weather problems, whether frosts, hailstorms, floods, typhoons or droughts.

They will also learn that in most developing countries hunger is heavily concentrated in rural areas, where some 70 percent of the world’s 842 million chronically hungry people live, largely dependent on farming, fishing and forestry. Much urban poverty results from people fleeing rural deprivation. And many of the conflicts that threaten global stability have their origins in areas of extreme poverty.

It seems dreadfully wrong that the very people who produce so much of our food should be those who suffer most from deep poverty and food shortages.

One reason for this apparently unjust situation is what economists call asymmetrical relationships in the food chain. For instance, supermarkets engage in cut-throat competition for customers by lowering their prices, reducing what they pay to their suppliers who, in turn, cut back on their workers’ pay.

Most governments like to keep food prices “affordable”, claiming that it makes food accessible to poor families, thereby preventing hunger and malnutrition. The main policy instruments used by rich and emerging nations include tax-funded subsidies that compensate their farmers for low-priced food sales. They also set low taxes on most foods.“It seems dreadfully wrong that the very people who produce so much of our food should be those who suffer most from deep poverty and food shortages”

The idea that low food prices will reduce the scale of the hunger problem is flawed since the main reason for people being hungry is that they cannot afford the food they need, even when prices are low.

Rather than, as now, shielding all consumers from paying a full and fair price for food, it seems to make more sense to let prices rise and increase the food buying power of the poor. As Fair Trade customers have discovered, higher retail prices can be passed back to all those involved in the food production chain, especially farm labourers. They probably offer the best market-driven option for cutting rural poverty and hunger.

But to eliminate hunger quickly, income transfers, targeted on poor families and with their value indexed to food prices, are also needed, at least until countries begin to manage their economies more equitably.

Policies that support low food prices, apart from exacerbating rural hunger, also add momentum to the other big food-related problems now facing the world, including:

• The serious mismatch between healthy diets and what people choose to eat as their incomes rise. This is most visible in the rapid rise in over-consumption of food, leading to more than 1.5 billion people being overweight or obese, creating a massive future health burden and huge losses in human productivity. It also shows up in the fast growth in demand for foods with high environmental footprints;

• The horrendous wastage of food at retail and household level, amounting to about 30% of output in industrialised countries (or more than the total annual net food production of Africa!);

• The rapid expansion of non-sustainable intensive farming systems. These are placing huge stresses on the increasingly scarce natural resources needed by future generations to meet their food needs – soils, fresh water, forests, marine fish stocks and biodiversity. They are also stoking the processes of climate change by generating large green-house gas emissions.

Many people think that the big food challenge for the future will be to produce enough to feed the hungry. Closing the hunger gap for over 800 million fellow humans, however, can be done today if we are willing to take direct measures to improve food access.

When I calculated what this would take, I was surprised to find that enabling all the world’s hungry to rise above the hunger threshold would raise demand by under 2 percent of present global food production.

Others see population growth as the main concern. Birth rates are dropping fast, but obviously further reductions will make the task of feeding the world easier. Interestingly, much of the growth in the number of mouths to feed – from 7 billion now to 9 billion in 2050 – will come from people living longer, the positive result of better hygiene, health and education.

The reality is that we who already have more than enough to eat and those who expect to emulate our unhealthy diets as their incomes rise are the main culprits, accounting for about half of the 60 percent increase in food demand forecast by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for 2050!

What seems to be needed now is to mainstream the concepts of fairness, healthy eating and sustainability throughout the food management system. We could usefully adopt the aspiration of the Slow Food movement that “all people can access and enjoy food that is good for them, good for those who grow it and good for the planet.”

Already many developing countries, inspired by the success of Brazil’s Zero Hunger programme, are starting to move in these directions. They are linking expanded social protection for poor families and the buying of food for school lunches to the promotion of small-scale sustainable farm development.

But industrialised countries must also deliver on their responsibilities for cutting their negative impacts on food management which hurt not only their people but also the rest of the world. A first move could be to redirect existing farm subsidies towards promoting healthy eating, cutting food wastage, and accelerating the necessary shift to farming systems that are truly sustainable from technical, environmental and social perspectives.

Rises in retail food prices would be part of the adjustment process, with consumers meeting a progressively rising share of “full and fair” production costs. Though they may complain, this should be readily affordable for the hundreds of millions of people who typically spend less than 20 percent of their disposable income on food. It will also be accessible for poorer families when they are served, as we propose, by expanded social protection.

If you think about it, it is a small price to pay for a healthier and safer world for us and our children! (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Jun 3 2014 (IPS)

Modern biofuels have become a fact of life, part of a quest for more cost-effective and environmentally sustainable businesses and lifestyles. But to be truly sustainable, biofuel production must strike a balance between its benefits and its potential hidden costs, between energy security and food security.

With the right policies, it does not have to be an either-or situation. It can be a win-win scenario. And that is what we should strive for.

Jose Graziano da Silva. Credit: Courtesy of FAO

Concerns about higher fossil fuel prices, rising energy import bills, geopolitical changes and environmental issues like climate change are not likely to go away anytime soon, if at all. One of the major challenges that policymakers will continue to face in addressing these issues is fostering biofuel production while protecting food supplies and pricing, especially in developing and emerging economies.

Like the opposing forces that work against each other in nature to create a state of equilibrium, policies can be more effective if they are flexible enough to counteract varying market conditions and respond to changing human needs.

A number of countries have already developed and implemented policies to make their national biofuel markets more flexible to accommodate changes in agricultural feedstock and fossil fuel markets. There is much room to improve on these options and extend them to other markets.

More than 60 countries have mandates specifying the percentage of fuel content that should come from renewable sources.“Biofuel policies could be used to generate funds that allow food consumers in poor countries to cope with the possible adverse impacts of price hikes” – José Graziano da Silva

Where there are mandates in place, allowing additional flexibility would be one way to minimise pressure on food prices. For instance, annual mandates for renewable fuel content could be stretched to cover longer periods of time – meeting mandates over five or 10 years, instead of every year.

Better coordination of policies among governments is also important. Coordination among the United States, the European Union and Brazil policies could avoid large trade flows in ethanol. It could also reduce additional demand on certain feedstock, when the prices are already high.

Greater flexibility could also be built in “at the pump”, through a broader promotion of flex fuel technology. This approach would allow both fuel blenders and consumers to respond to changes in relative prices by switching between fossil fuels and biofuels, as appropriate.

Not only could existing schemes be made more flexible, but also, biofuel policies could be used to generate funds that allow food consumers in poor countries to cope with the possible adverse impacts of price hikes. One such option could be to implement a variable fee on blending requirements.

And there are even more straightforward measures that could be used to help the food insecure cope in high and volatile food-price environments.

This is where social provisioning schemes can make a difference. They can help to level the playing field for people whose capacity to buy food or make investments in income-generating activities may be out-of-sync with rising prices.

In some countries, cash transfers and other schemes have provided important safeguards for families and smallholder agricultural producers in vulnerable communities.

In addition to making existing policies more flexible, the second major challenge is to fully harness the potential of biofuels for food security. In many developing countries, a lack of access to affordable and continuous energy supply is the single most important factor that limits agricultural productivity, and in turn, sustainable food security.

In many landlocked parts of sub-Saharan Africa, farmers may pay twice or three times the price of fossil fuels seen on world markets. Electricity is often completely absent or dependent on generators that are run on expensive fossil fuels.

Unstable and costly supplies of fossil fuel-powered energy do not allow farmers to mechanise production and step up food output, and may even increase wastage and spoilage. Providing farmers with jatropha or palm oil-based diesel could be an effective solution. Supporting investment and training in the production and use of biofuels could yield benefits, year after year.

Biofuel production and food security need not be mutually exclusive, but the intrinsic link between the two does need to be acknowledged in the policymaking process, in order to maintain a consistent balance between energy security and the right of all people to adequate, nutritious and affordable food.

No doubt, reconciling food and energy security in so many different environments is a tall order. But introducing greater flexibility in implementing existing policies and doing more to harness the potential of biofuels for farmers in food and energy-poor environments are opportunities which should not be missed. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

A sense of urgency brought on in recent years by food price volatility inspired collective action to reduce the likelihood of further price spikes and food supply shocks.

Now that international food prices are declining and food commodity markets are calmer, it is time for countries to harness this heightened resolve to work together, using it to tackle the root causes of volatility.

Food price problems are far from over, and some regions, countries and communities are feeling the pressure more than others. The high and excessively volatile food prices of the last few years have caused disruptions to the global food system and undermined the efforts of developing countries to reduce hunger and poverty in a lasting and sustainable way.

Two recent international meetings pointed to the continued threat of volatility ­ the September meeting in St Petersburg of leaders from the G20 group of nations and the October meeting of agriculture ministers at the Rome headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which also drew representatives of up to 130 countries.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

Participants in both meetings acknowledged the need to keep a close and continued watch over the agricultural commodity markets.

Improved global governance has already paid off, playing an important role in preventing the food price spike of July 2012 from developing into another potential crisis. The Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) created by the G20 in 2011 proved effective, providing reliable information and increased transparency that helped to calm international food markets.

Still, there are a number of outstanding issues that require further examination, including food price speculation and its regulation, policies on biofuels, trade policies, and the potential role of public food stocks in managing price risks.

At the October meeting, ministers underlined the need for better regulation and transparency in commodity futures markets in order to limit excessive speculation and its effect on price volatility.

They also agreed that concrete and consistent steps are needed to improve sustainability in the use of natural resources, the production and consumption of food and the role that both can play in dealing with climate change.

A recurring theme in all these discussions was the need for policies and action to yield more inclusive, across-the-board access to economic, social, and policy-related benefits that reach the most vulnerable groups.

Protection of the most vulnerable groups from the adverse effects of sudden spikes in food prices should be a policy priority. In many poor countries, safety nets and social protection programmes need to be strengthened. This, however, should not overshadow the longer-term objective of increasing productivity in a sustainable manner and strengthening the resilience of production systems, especially in poor countries.

Decision-makers can actively support this process by keeping sustainable development ­ a necessary condition for lasting food security – squarely on the table in the discussion and design of policies and programmes related to production, trade and energy.

One such opportunity is the upcoming Ninth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Participants at the Dec. 3-6 meeting will look at, among other issues, compatibility between WTO rules and domestic support measures aimed at food security, such as food aid and food stockholding programmes.

On the sidelines of the conference, a FAO-organised session at the Bali Trade and
Development Symposium will engage non-governmental thought leaders in a discussion of trade and market policy interventions in support of food security, and lessons learned from such measures.

Whenever decision-makers gather at the international level, they open the door to an exchange of ideas and a chance to build consensus on crucial issues. Turning that opportunity into concrete, long-term improvements in productivity, sustainability and food security will ultimately hinge on how far they are willing to take the conversation and how successfully they can translate that talk into action at home.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

The growing consensus, momentum and commitment to eradicate world hunger may seem overly ambitious in view of the slow progress in reducing the number of hungry people in the world in recent decades.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant-Director General for Economic and Social Development, FAO. Credit: ©FAO/Alessia Pierdomenico

After all, declining food prices in the second half of the 20th century, thanks to increasing production, were not enough to eliminate poverty and hunger in the world.

In the 1960s and 1970s, many governments invested a great deal to increase agricultural, especially food production. In the second half of the 20th century, agricultural productivity rose rapidly. But intense price competition reduced food prices, with consumers benefitting more from productivity gains – thus helping to reduce poverty.

Meanwhile, transnational agri-business has profited greatly from innovations in agricultural production, credit, processing and marketing value chains in recent decades.

More recently, food prices have gone up again as productivity and production have risen more slowly than before, partly due to reduced public investments in recent decades, slower productivity increases in the last decade, as well as recent increases in demand for food crops.

Recent food price increases have been associated not only with significant supply and demand changes, but also with biofuel mandates and subsidies as well as much greater commodity speculation.

In the unlikely event that food prices go down again after the recent increases since 2006, food would become more affordable, while reducing farmer incomes and the incentive to produce more food, which could eventually cause food prices to rise once again.

Fiscal redistribution?

Poor countries are doubly handicapped by their limited tax capacities, resulting in low tax rates on low incomes. While there is little excessive taxation of small farmers these days, there are also modest urban-to-rural resource transfers through the fiscal system or other transfer arrangements.

Government spending to raise agricultural output, productivity and incomes has also been shaped by political considerations, especially the desire to secure rural political support. However, with a few notable exceptions, government spending on agriculture is rarely biased to the poor.

While agricultural taxation is generally proportional to land owned or to output, such public expenditure tends to benefit the relatively better-off in agriculture with much rural spending benefiting plantations and larger farmers more than smaller smallholders, tenants or sharecroppers.

This is generally also true of improved rural infrastructure or social services, including health and schooling, as well as agricultural support in the form of subsidised fertiliser or other inputs – typically distributed according to the amount of land owned. Nevertheless, the poor may have benefited in so far as the rising tide of greater output lifts all boats.

Social protection necessary

There is currently enough food being produced to feed everyone in the world. The problem is that most of the hungry cannot afford to adequately feed themselves, lacking the means to do so. Hence, the only way to reduce hunger in the near term is to enhance the incomes of the poor.

More than three quarters of the over 1.2 billion “dollar a day” poor in the world live in the countryside. Reducing poverty will therefore require significantly higher rural incomes, especially for the poor. Since most rural incomes are related to agriculture, raising agricultural productivity can help raise rural incomes all round.

However, to realise the commitment to “no one left behind” in the face of the likely protracted global economic slowdown as well as higher underemployment and unemployment for years to come, the only way to eradicate hunger soon will be by establishing the social protection floor. The 2011 U.N. General Assembly endorsement of the recommendation to establish a social protection floor implies that the means to do so are available.

Historically, social protection has developed in relation to urban formal sector wage employment. But in developing countries, rural social provisioning has often involved “workfare” rather than state welfare as with India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

FAO’s distinctive approach to cash transfers — which accelerates the transition ‘from protection to production’ — helps ensure more sustainable means to overcome hunger and poverty, thus pointing the way forward to achieving the Zero Hunger Challenge.

*Jomo Kwame Sundaram is Assistant Director-General, Economic and Social Development Department, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.  

Women farmers in Bangladesh are opting for climate-proof crop varieties. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 8 2013 (IPS)

The World Bank will be placing stronger emphasis on issues of land tenure and socially and environmentally sustainable agricultural investing, it announced Monday.

The bank, one of the world’s largest development lenders, also formally reiterated its concern over the large-scale corporate “land grabbing” that has affected vast swathes of Africa in recent years.Without these guidelines, we’d be left with anarchy.

“The World Bank Group shares these concerns about the risks associated with large-scale land acquisitions,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement from the bank’s Washington headquarters Monday.

“Securing access to land is critical for millions of poor people. Modern, efficient, and transparent policies on land rights are vital to reducing poverty and promoting growth, agriculture production, better nutrition and sustainable development.”

Following on decades in which agricultural sectors were almost completely bypassed by international investors – including bilateral donors and multilateral lenders such as the World Bank – recent years have seen a surge of interest across all types of investors and development institutions.

On Monday, Kim noted that the World Bank, too, had stepped up its agriculture-related investments, but warned that “additional efforts must be made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights – and to empower civil society to hold governments accountable.”

Ahead of a four-day annual World Bank conference on land and poverty here this week, the institution stated that it expected the global population to grow by two billion by 2050, requiring an expansion of global agricultural production of 70 percent.

While the institution is reiterating longstanding calls for significant new public and private investment in both small-scale and large agricultural operations, it has warned that “investment alone will not be enough” to attain these levels.

Rather, citing spiking food and fuel prices coupled with the looming uncertainties of climate change, the bank is urging the adoption of stronger national and international standards on investments and land rights as a way of helping farmers across the globe raise yields.

“Usable land is in short supply, and there are too many instances of speculators and unscrupulous investors exploiting smallholder farmers, herders and others who lack the power to stand up for their rights,” the bank notes. “This is particularly true in countries with weak land governance systems.”

As such, the bank will now be strengthening efforts aimed at improving land governance, protecting the rights of landowners, and promoting policies “that recognise all forms of land tenure and help women achieve equal treatment in obtaining land rights”.

Growing global discussion

Particularly following the rise in both global food-price volatility and demand for biofuels over the past half-decade, agricultural land has become a lucrative commodity for international investors, who have focused particularly on Africa.

According to 2011 research by the bank, some 60 million hectares of land in developing countries were purchased or leased by private sector investors in 2009 alone, a process that has continued. In many cases, local civil society organisations have warned that these transactions are being carried out with government complicity and without following international standards on stakeholder inclusion.

“There’s been a tendency recently towards governments giving large plots of land to international investors for free or at concessional rates, thinking that doing so will fast-track development,” Nicholas Minot, a senior research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told IPS recently.

“To some degree there’s logic to that, but there is a huge question as to whether that land was owned by the government or whether it was previously occupied by small-scale farmers without titles. Establishing secure land rights for people in rural areas is a massive but critical issue.”

Organisers say that this week’s World Bank conference on land and poverty – the 14th – is the largest they’ve ever put on, and includes participation by government officials from several countries. Bank officials also say that the conference’s focus, titled “Moving towards transparent land governance”, is indicative of a new global discussion on the issue.

“This year we have dozens of sessions on issues of land governance, transparency and implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines, which wouldn’t have been as prominent four years ago,” Jorge Munoz, a land tenure adviser for the World Bank, told IPS.

“This is not a new subject for the bank, but it has become much more prominent globally – though clearly some countries are much more interested in increasing transparency for improving land governance than others.”

As part of the bank’s scaling-up on the issue, Munoz points to the institution’s rollout of a new tool with which governments are able to get a snapshot analysis of their current land tenure and related laws. Called the Land Governance Assessment Framework, Munoz says 33 countries have now started to use it.

In addition, the bank is now assisting in implementing new international guidance, approved in May under the auspices of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), called the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.

According to USAID, the Untied States’ central foreign assistance agency, at least 22 countries have now requested technical assistance on implementing the Voluntary Guidelines. Although the project is still in a pilot phase, a “zero draft” of the guidelines is to be released within the coming month.

“Voluntary regulations don’t always work, of course, but in this case these guidelines may be the only way to solve the problem of ensuring that small-scale farmers don’t get abused and are able to access lands they may have used for generations,” Danielle Nierenberg, co-founder of Food Tank, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“Without these guidelines, we’d be left with anarchy. Still, governments and consumers now need to take the initiative to push corporations to take this seriously.”

The bank is also involved with another FAO process to develop an international set of Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment, aimed at offering global guidelines on socially and environmentally sustainable investments in agriculture.

In recent years, some civil society groups have questioned the bank’s own part in facilitating large-scale land acquisitions (including here and here), particularly that of its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Yet Munoz says much of this criticism has overstated the institution’s role, which he suggests has focused less on financing than on offering technical assistance on reforms.

“There is a major global problem with land-grabbing,” says Munoz. “The bank’s role is, essentially, to be leaders in assisting countries in improving land governance and improving the behaviour of private investors.”

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

By Lester R. Brown
WASHINGTON, Feb 7 2013 (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). Or read more here.

Rice remains the most popular staple in Guinea, but the high price of imported rice is pushing many consumers in this West African country to change their diet. Farmers have responded by rapidly expanding the land area planted with an alternative food crop: cassava.

According to statistics from the country’s National Agency for Food Security (SNSA), the cultivated area more than doubled, from 58,424 hectares in 2004 to 122,550 hectares in 2011. Some 775,500 tonnes of the crop was harvested last year as it became the second most commonly eaten food in the country.

Guinea produces only limited quantities of rice domestically, and imports 200 to 300 thousand tonnes of rice from Asia each year to meet the needs of its 10.6 million-strong population, according to the ministry of agriculture. The rising cost of these imports in recent years has pushed strong growth in demand for cassava as an affordable alternative.

“Cassava is truly a vital crop for food security because it provides both its leaves and a starchy tuber to low-income consumers,” explained Kandia Traoré, an agricultural advisor, who also pointed out to IPS that cassava leaves are rich in vitamins A and C.

El-Sanoussy Bah, head of the cassava programme at the Guinean Institute for Agronomic Research, welcomes increased interest in the improved varieties of the crop his institute provides to smallholder farmers.

“Cassava is both a staple and an accompaniment for our people. It is also a source of income for farmers,” he told IPS.

Roughly 10 percent of the country’s cassava crop – 73,000 tonnes – is harvested in the Kouroussa prefecture. At the beginning of October, IPS visited farmer Mamadi Condé on his family plot in the Babila district. The 54-year-old is growing cassava on one hectare.

“I harvested nearly six tonnes of cassava last August,” Condé said. He told IPS that his family ate some of the crop and sold the rest, earning the equivalent of 700 dollars to cover household needs.

“The cassava trade is flourishing in this region,” Makoura Camara, a cassava vendor in the Kouroussa market, told IPS,” and we created a cooperative in 2010 to sell our produce in Conakry, the capital, to benefit even more.”

But she complained about the dilapidated state of the roads which isolate many villages with strong agricultural potential. This isolation makes processing and preserving the crop essential.

On Condé’s farm, freshly harvested cassava is peeled, then soaked in water for at least 24 hours before being dried in the sun for several days. This traditional method of processing allows the cassava to be stored for nearly a year without spoilage.

The cassava can then be further processed before reaching consumers – for example, by pounding dried slices into a fine flour used to make “too”, a cassava fufu commonly served with a sauce made of okra. Kouroussa farmers have also begun making attiéké, a pungent, tasty dish with origins in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire made by peeling, boiling and fermenting cassava.

“We are using manual methods to process dried cassava tubers into flour,” said Saran Camara, one of Condé’s two wives, whose only tools are an old mortar and pestles.

Condé and his fellow farmers dream of having a factory to process cassava like the one that once operated in the region, at Faranah. According to officials at the Programme to Support Food Security (PASAL), from 1978 and 1984, this industrial unit processed up to 50 tonnes of fresh cassava per day, producing six to 10 tonnes of gari – a coarse, lightly fermented cassava.

But, they say, the factory failed because its promoters didn’t understand their market. At the time, gari was an unfamiliar food to most Guinean households, and there was no demand.

“Guineans would benefit if investors or donors financed a project for industrial processing of cassava in the region. A factory could contribute to creating added-value and strengthening food security,” Karamo Sidibé, from the Sabougnouma association in Kouroussa, told IPS.

Rising corn prices in the United States brought about by biofuel mandates have cost developing countries 6.6 billion dollars over the past six years, according to new research released here on Wednesday.

The subsequent increase in food costs has drastically affected levels of world hunger and, in some countries, political stability, according to the report, published by the global watchdog ActionAid. The report also warned of the consequences of current U.S. policies.

“What this report really highlights is our inability to keep up with the current demands of corn for food and fuel – and most certainly future demands,” Kristen Sundell, a policy analyst at ActionAid USA, told journalists Wednesday.

Rising corn prices in the United States have triggered global hunger and political turmoil. Credit: Natural Resources Conservation Service Soil Health Campaign/ CC by 2.0

Timothy Wise, director of the Research and Policy Program at Tufts University and the study’s lead author, noted, “Increased food prices triggered the Arab Spring, and U.S. ethanol production contributed to those food spikes.”

Corn prices in the United States have steadily increased since 2007, when new legislation known as the Renewable Fuel Standard began requiring the use of a percentage of corn in the production of a biofuel called ethanol. Today, ethanol is added to petrol across the country.

According to the report, 40 percent of all U.S.-grown corn is now being used to fulfil these ethanol mandates – up from just five percent a decade ago. And because 40 percent of all U.S.-grown corn translates to 15 percent of global corn production, corn prices have increased by 21 percent over the past six years. That increase has cost the global economy 11.6 billion dollars, 6.6 billion of which fell on developing countries.

This year, the situation in the United States has been exacerbated by the worst drought in fifty years, which resulted in a harvest about 20 percent smaller than expected. Even so, the Renewable Fuel Standard requirements have not changed.

Unfortunate weather circumstances in the United States will only add to the burden felt by developing countries importing U.S.-grown food, Sundell said. “Our ethanol policy cannot be based on a prayer for good weather,” she warned.

Mexico and Egypt have reportedly suffered the highest costs. Over the past six years, the Mexican government has paid an extra 1.1 billion dollars to import corn, and Egypt, 727 million dollars.

Guatemala, which is particularly dependent on corn imports, paid 28 million dollars in 2010 alone, or more than 10 percent of the Guatemalan government’s annual expenditures on agricultural development. That was also six times the amount of U.S. agriculture aid received and almost equalled the amount of food aid that Washington gave to Guatemala.

Nearly half of children under five in Guatemala reportedly suffer from malnutrition.

Even developing countries that grow enough corn to export it are feeling the effects of the U.S. biofuel mandates. Uganda, for instance, has seen a small net gain in its corn exports, but the majority of its population is still seeing a spike in corn prices due to global demand.

“To the extent international prices transmit to Ugandan markets, U.S. ethanol expansion is contributing quite directly to food insecurity among the urban poor, even in a net corn exporting country,” the ActionAid report concluded.

Grain and fuel are not the only staples affected by these biofuel mandates. The U.S. meat industry is suffering from steep feed prices as well. American farmers have been forced to slaughter cattle and poultry they cannot afford to feed. Analysts warn that these actions will affect prices for eggs, dairy products and meat well into next year at least.

“In the last two years, we have seen a one-billion-dollar increase in the two major feed ingredients in the turkey industry,” Damon Wells, with the U.S. National Turkey Federation, said Wednesday. “The U.S. is world’s largest poultry exporter, and any price increase of this level is going to be felt around the world.” Government forecasters have predicted up to a 4.5 percent increase in poultry prices next year.

Still, ActionAid’s researchers stress that such staggering increases to U.S. corn prices should be preventable in the future. In November, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the governing body over these biofuel mandates, will rule on whether or not to grant a waiver for the Renewable Fuel Standards. Such a waiver would decrease the amount of corn being used to make ethanol and lead to lower corn prices.

“Putting a shock into the system will reduce the food costs here in the U.S.,” Wise said. “The ripple of such a shock will be felt around the world – everyone feels the impact of American prices.”

The World Bank has rejected a call to suspend its involvement in large scale agricultural land acquisition following the release of a major report by the international aid agency Oxfam on the negative impact of international land speculation in developing countries.

“We share the concerns Oxfam raised in their report,” the bank stated in an unusually lengthy public rebuttal to the Oxfam Report. “However, we disagree with Oxfam’s call for a moratorium on World Bank Group…investments in land intensive large-scale agricultural enterprises, especially during a time of rapidly rising global food prices.”

“A moratorium focused on the Bank Group targets precisely those stakeholders doing the most to improve practices – progressive governments, investors, and us. Taking such a step would do nothing to help reduce the instances of abusive practices and would likely deter responsible investors willing to apply our high standards,” the rebuttal said.

In 2011, Sylvia Meltina’s family could no longer afford regular meals because of rising food and fuel costs. Credit: Peter Kahare/IPS

Over the past year, aid agencies, local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development watchdogs have warned that international investors are increasingly engaging in massive and sometimes predatory land deals in the developing world, particularly in Africa. These acquisitions are partly to blame for rising food insecurity.

Food prices are once again nearing record highs. In late August, the World Bank warned that due to adverse weather in parts of Europe and the United States, the global cost of certain staple crops was approaching levels last seen in 2008.

Ironically, multinational companies interested in growing food crops to address this need have been doing much of the recent investing. According to Oxfam, however, two-thirds of the investments made between 2000 and 2010 were exclusively for export-oriented crops, while other lands are being used to meet the increasing international demand for biofuels.

“Already an area of land the size of London is being sold to foreign investors every six days in poor countries,” Oxfam stated, noting that in Liberia, land deals have “swallowed up” 30 percent of the country over the past five years.

The report did not reject what good can potentially result from private investment but warned that food-price spikes from 2008 to 2009 led to the tripling of land deals, as “land was increasingly viewed as a profitable investment” even though it largely failed to benefit local communities.

Slow the speculation

“The world is facing an unbridled land rush that is exposing poor people to hunger, violence and the threat of a lifetime in poverty. The World Bank is in a unique position to stop this,” Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam’s executive director, said Thursday, noting that the bank both invests in land and advises developing countries.

Oxfam is calling on the World Bank to temporarily halt its investments in agricultural land to give it time to review the advice it offers developing countries, and to put in place stronger policies to slow or stop the speculation and “land-grabbing” projects in which it is said to be involved.

World Bank investment in agriculture has reportedly tripled in the past decade. Since 2008, however, local communities have also brought 21 formal complaints against bank-funded projects that they say have violated their rights.

In a way, the bank’s response to the call for a moratorium demonstrated outright denial: “The Bank Group does not support speculative land investments or acquisitions which take advantage of weak institutions in developing countries or which disregard principles of responsible agricultural investment.”

The bank also noted that 90 percent of its agricultural investment is focused on smallholders, and that the agricultural work of its private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has provided 37,000 jobs. By 2050, it warned, the global population is set to grow by two billion people, requiring a 70 percent increase in global food production.

Still, the bank recognised that its massive systems are imperfect and highlighted an upcoming overhaul of related guidelines that would “review and update its environmental and social safeguards policies”.

“We agree that instances of abuse do exist, particularly in countries where governance is weak, and we share Oxfam’s belief that in many cases, practices need to ensure more transparent and inclusive participation in cases of land transfers,” the rebuttal stated.

Impetus from below

The degree to which these safeguards are followed nevertheless remains voluntary, said Anuradha Mittal, the executive director of the Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based think tank that has been at the forefront of recent civil society warnings about the effects of land speculation in the developing world.

“Back in 2009 and 2010, we were clearly identifying the role that the World Bank Group has been playing in promoting and facilitating these large-scale investments, completely ignoring the social and economic impact,” she told IPS, referring to two reports (available here and here) that the new Oxfam work builds upon.

“Oxfam is reiterating that this kind of investment is misinvestment in communities, in agriculture, and unfortunately the bank is choosing to ignore the clear evidence that has been brought forward.” Bank officials did not respond to requests for additional comment.

Mittal said that the development discussion needs to focus less on prescriptions handed down from multilaterals and more on the national implementation of internationally agreed rights including the rights to food and to free and prior informed consent.

“We’re not interested in voluntary guidelines coming from Washington or Geneva, but rather in strengthening local and national capacities that help communities work best themselves,” she said. “Each country in Africa, for instance, is in a unique situation. So what we need are real consultations at the local level to see what kind of development actually works for the local populations.”

While Oxfam had called on the World Bank to move to halt its involvement in land deals before the annual meetings between the bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in Tokyo next week, the bank’s new president is now suggesting that he will use the meetings to begin pushing substantial reforms aimed at holding the bank’s anti-poverty approaches more to account.

“If we are going to be really serious about ending poverty earlier than currently projected…there are going to have to be some changes in the way we run the institution,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, preparing to attend his first annual meetings, told journalists on Thursday.

Kim said he would be pushing for a model “where our board and our governors focus much more on holding us accountable for results on the ground in countries, rather than focusing so much on approval of large loans”.

Food prices are on the rise again. Above, an irrigated field in Kakamas, South Africa. Africa is particularly vulnerable to the effects of rising prices. Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 30 2012 (IPS)

After decreasing somewhat in recent months, international food prices have again risen dramatically, according to figures published on Thursday by the World Bank. Statistics for July indicate a 10 percent rise over just the previous month, and a six percent increase over already high prices from the same time frame a year ago.

“Food prices rose again sharply, threatening the health and well-being of millions of people,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement on Thursday from the bank’s Washington headquarters. “Africa and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable, but so are people in other countries where the prices of grains have gone up abruptly.”

That list includes countries around the world. According to the World Bank’s new Food Price Watch, between June and July prices for both maize and wheat increased by 25 percent, while soybeans went up by 17 percent. That leaves prices one percent higher than the previous price peak in February 2011.

Kim noted that the World Bank has already brought its agriculture support to its highest level in the past two decades.

“We cannot allow these historic price hikes to turn into a lifetime of perils as families take their children out of school and eat less nutritious food to compensate for the high prices,” he said. “Countries must strengthen their targeted programmes to ease the pressure on the most vulnerable population.”

In recent months, watchdog groups around the world have expressed frustration with a perceived lack of both urgency and creativity on the part of national and multilateral policymakers in dealing with the return of food prices to near-crisis levels.

“Today’s World Bank report is yet another alarm bell for governments that action on food price volatility is urgently required, but it’s still not clear whether they are listening,” Colin Roche, a spokesperson with the aid agency Oxfam, said on Thursday.

Roche said that Oxfam has already started to see “the devastating impact of food price volatility in developing countries that rely on food imports”.

On Monday, the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jose Graziano Da Silva, called on the Group of 20 (G20), a multilateral grouping, to engage in “coordinated action” on spiking food prices. But that same day, the G20 decided that it would wait for September’s U.S. crop report before deciding how to proceed, a move decried by Oxfam.

“The G20 must act now before prices spiral out of control and push more people into hunger,” Roche warned. “This ‘wait and see’ attitude is unacceptable, especially when the World Bank report has warned that prices are expected to remain high and volatile.”

Remembering sustainability

Much of the concern today is over the ongoing drought in the United States and in parts of Europe. The situation in the U.S. alone could have a devastating effect on food stocks and prices internationally, as the country is the world’s primary supplier of both maize and soybeans.

As of mid-August, the United States government had classified nearly 1,800 counties throughout the country as disaster areas, mostly due to a grinding drought that, even if it were to end soon, has already gutted this year’s harvest for many grain crops.

By late July, nearly three-quarters of the U.S. maize crop was officially rated very poor to fair. That’s a stark turnaround from forecasts made earlier this year of a record maize harvest in the U.S., which many were hoping could help shore up depleted foodstores in other countries.

Although more extreme than what has been seen in recent months, the new World Bank numbers extended a trend of volatility that has held over the past year as well as a trend of high food prices that dates back to 2008, when a confluence of issues created a sudden crisis in foodstores and prices that strained local communities globally and took many policymakers by surprise.

The 2008 experience helped to reverse a two-decade international decline in investment in agriculture.

“What we saw in 2008 – those high prices never really went away, especially for the developing world,” Danielle Nierenberg, director of the Nourishing the Planet programme at the Worldwatch Institute, an environment-focused think tank based here in Washington, told IPS.

“While the renewed investment in agriculture since 2008 has been much needed, it has been mostly focused on long-term, technology-focused research. We need a 180-degree turn in thinking in how we approach agriculture.”

Overlooked in today’s renewed agriculture policy, Nierenberg said, are “those things we already know work”, such as a spectrum of sustainable practices, rainwater harvesting and the use of natural fertilisers. She also highlights a need to return to national policies of storing grains and other foodstuffs, a practise that has faded in recent years.

“The silver lining of the current drought is that the West can perhaps take a new look at the sustainable practices that have been helping many African farmers combat drought,” she said. “This is an opportunity for the Western world to look to the developing world – they have a lot to teach us.”

A changing agriculture

Nierenberg suggested it will be at least a year or more before the full ramifications of the current situation are fully understood. Others suggest that the situation today is probably the new normal.

“My sense is that we are in a transition from an age of abundance to one of scarcity,” Lester Brown, a longtime sustainability advocate with the Earth Policy Institute here in Washington, told IPS.

In this, Brown notes not only a fast-growing global population but, more importantly, the inevitable effects of rising affluence. Over the past decade alone, he said, world grain demand has doubled, from 21 million tonnes per year to 41 million.

While the impact of demand for biofuels has also been widely felt on grain stocks in recent years, particularly leading to the economic collapse in 2008, Brown suggested that this demand is already starting to decline.

“Once we’ve set aside the issue of ethanol” – a common biofuel – “the big thing now is the fact that three billion people in the world are trying to move up the food chain and are clamouring to consume more meat, especially in China,” he explained.

Meanwhile, for years it has been apparent that arable land is becoming increasingly scarce. Now the same can also be said of irrigation water, including in the world’s three most important grain producers, China, India and the United States.

“We need to recognise that agriculture as we know it evolved over 11,000 years of remarkable climate stability – the system is designed to maximise production within that system,” Brown said.

“But that is now changing; today, we have constant flux. And with each passing year, the systems of climate and agriculture are becoming a bit more out of sync with one another.”