As experts in agriculture, the ministers no doubt know what extensive research confirms: Investing in agriculture and rural development, with a focus on smallholder farmers, is the best bet for achieving global food security, alleviating poverty, and improving human wellbeing in developing countries. During their upcoming meeting, the G20 ministers should seize the opportunity to call attention to this essential fact and propose a corresponding plan of action.

Shenggen Fan, Director General of IFPRI

Three years after the 2008 food crisis, expanding biofuel production, rising oil prices, U.S. dollar depreciation, extreme weather, and export restrictions have once again led to high and volatile food prices, threatening the wellbeing of the world’s poorest consumers, who spend up to 70 percent of their incomes on food. Any plan to curb volatility and protect the poor will require decisive action on a number of fronts, including measures to control speculation on agricultural commodities, promote open trade and export bans, establish emergency food reserves, curtail biofuels subsidies, and strengthen social safety nets, especially for women and young children.

In addition to these critical steps, achieving food security requires long-term investments to increase the productivity, sustainability, and resiliency of agriculture, especially among smallholder farmers, many of whom live in absolute poverty and are malnourished. Millions of poor, smallholder farmers struggle to raise output on tiny plots of degraded land, far from the nearest market. Lacking access to decent tools, quality seeds, credit, and agricultural extension, and being highly susceptible to the vagaries of weather, they work hard but reap little.

These challenges, however, are not insurmountable, and many actually present opportunities. Successes during the Green Revolution in Asia and more recent accomplishments in Africa show that rapid increases in crop productivity among smallholder farmers can be achieved, helping to feed millions of people. When smallholder farmers have equal access to agricultural services, inputs, and technologies, including high-yielding seeds, affordable fertilizer, and irrigation, they have often proven to be at least as efficient as larger farms.

Exploiting the vast potential of small-scale agriculture would increase productivity and incomes where they are most needed—Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The two regions are not only home to the majority of smallholder farmers and people suffering from extreme poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, but they also have rapidly growing populations. Improving smallholder agriculture could take pressure off global food and agricultural markets and cushion the negative impact on poor people who are most vulnerable to volatile markets.

Harnessing the promise of smallholder farmers, however, will require concerted action in a number of areas. First, investments that improve farmers’ productivity—such as better access to high-quality seeds, fertilizer, and extension and financial services—should be increased along with spending on roads and other rural infrastructure to improve farmers’ access to markets. Investments in agricultural research should focus on new agricultural technologies that are well suited for smallholder farmers, as well as other innovations, including insurance schemes that can reduce the risk small-scale farmers face due to extreme weather and high price volatility.

Second, while increasing productivity and incomes is crucial, it is not sufficient. Agricultural development among smallholders should also improve nutrition and health. Growing more nutritious varieties of staple crops that have higher levels of micronutrients like vitamin A, iron, and zinc can potentially reduce death and disease, especially of women and children. Producing more diverse crops, especially fruits and vegetables, can also help to combat malnutrition, and selling more nutritious food could increase incomes and provide additional employment.

Third, since smallholder farmers are extremely vulnerable to weather shocks, including escalating threats from global warming, promoting climate change adaptation and mitigation is important to protect against risks and potential crop loss. With the right incentives and technologies, smallholder farmers can invest in mitigation efforts, including managing their land to increase carbon storage. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, has 17 percent of the world’s potential for climate change mitigation through sustainable agricultural practices.

Finally, policies and programs need to narrow the gender gap in agriculture and address the specific constraints faced by women. Although female farmers do much of the work to produce, process, and sell food in many countries, they frequently have less access than men to land, seeds, fertilizer, credit, and training. When women obtain the same levels of education and have equal access to extension and farm inputs, they produce significantly higher yields.

When the G20 Ministers of Agriculture develop an action plan to address food price volatility and its impact on the poor, they should focus on both urgent actions and the vital role of smallholder farmers. But before the international community issues any new recommendations, they first need to make good on previous commitments, including the G8’s L’Aquila pledge in 2009 to invest $22 billion in agriculture, which must be targeted to small-scale farmers. When it comes to achieving food security and reducing poverty, poor farmers in developing countries might be part of the challenge, but they are definitely indispensable to the solution.

by Shenggen Fan, Director General, IFPRI

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It calls upon G20 leaders to:

(1) integrate the value of biodiversity into national accounts, and to encourage the disclosure of environmental and social impact through environmental, social and governance reporting systems.

(2) reform all subsidies which encourage overproduction or wasteful consumption of resources. Given the G20 commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, we urge you to report on your transition strategies and to announce when and how you intend to phase these subsidies out.

(3) spare no effort to move the G20 group forwards to support a post-2012 global climate policy framework which is ambitious, fair and legally binding.

The coalition is a unique alliance of environmental, business, labour and other organisations that have come together to advocate for a just transition to a green and inclusive global economy.

The letter has been signed by the heads of the International Institute for Environment and Development, WWF-International, Consumers International, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Global Reporting Initiative, among others.

For more details and to read the full letter see the attached PDF. The letter can be reproduced.

For interviews, please contact the Green Economy Coalition’s programme director, Dr Sally Jeanrenaud at:
sally.jeanrenaud@iucn.org
Tel: ++41 22 999 0203 Mobile: ++41 (0)79 302 5913
http://www.greeneconomycoalition.org

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The International Food Policy Research Institute in a new policy report released on Wednesday said a new approach is needed to achieve the first Millennium development Goal of halving global poverty and hunger.

The cover of the IFPRI report

The IFPRI report, Halving Hunger: Meeting the First Millennium Development Goal through “Business as Unusual” says the new ‘business as unusual’ approach should lead to more political will and commitment to achieving the set target of halving the percentage of hungry people by 2015 that world leaders set in 1990.

The report is being released ahead of the G20 meeting in Canada this weekend. The meeting will bring together leaders of the 20 richest countries to discuss Global banking regulation, the European credit crisis, and sovereign debt burdens among other development issues. The IFPRI report says ending global hunger and poverty should be a top priority on the G20 meeting.

Shenggen Fan, the Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says ending global hunger and poverty will not be ended by business as usual and world leaders should develop new approaches.

Fan told journalists during a press conference on Wednesday that the number of hungry people in the world is increasing despite promises by the G20 and G8 to increase funding for agriculture and efforts to achieve food security over the past 20 years.

Shenggen Fan, Director General of IFPRI

“The objective of cutting hunger in half can still be achieved, but business as usual will not be enough. What is needed is “business as unusual,” Fanning said, adding that the new approach should see more focus on investing in agriculture and social protection, bringing in new players especially China, Brazil and India; adopting country led bottom-up approach; designing policies using evidence and experiments and creating a mutual accountability system for achieving food security.

See Shenggen Fan’s full statement to G8 and G20 leaders

Fan says apart from increasing investment agriculture and political will to improve agriculture productivity, the new approach should give more protection for the poor. He says investments to achieve food security and development like the recent rush by Asian and European companies to buy agriculture land in Africa should not hurt the poor.

“There is need for more investment in infrastructure and agriculture research, as well as helping improve poor countries’ ability to improve their agriculture,” Fan said.

He said smallholder farmers should be put top on the development agenda to end global hunger through helping them improve agriculture productivity, linking them to markets, putting in place agriculture price stabilization mechanisms, and involving the smallholder farmers in decision making, especially those decisions relating to agriculture and development.

Fan applauded regional initiatives like the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme through which African countries plan together on how to improve agriculture productivity and increase incomes of their citizens, more than 70percent of whom are employed in the agriculture sector. He said African countries have set good targets of investing more than 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture in order to achieve annual growth rate of 6 percent in agriculture, but they need more support from rich countries.

The full IFPRI report, Halving Hunger: Meeting the First Millennium Development Goal through “Business as Unusual” or direct PDF

By Gerald Businge, Ultimate Media

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Shenggen Fan, Director General of IFPRI

By Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

To Meet the First Millennium Development Goal of Halving Hunger

Halving Hunger
IFPRI Food Policy Report

Statement to Policymakers

Global banking regulation, the European credit crisis, and sovereign debt burdens are likely to dominate the G8 and G20 meetings in Canada this weekend. Yet, five years after G8 leaders promised at Gleneagles to increase development assistance and one year after they promised to advance global food security at their summit in L’Aquila, the number of poor and hungry people is increasing. We are moving further away from the world community’s first Millennium Development Goal of halving the percentage of hungry people between 1990 and 2015.

In 2009, when the number of hungry people in the world stood at 1.02 billion, we were confronted with the need to reduce that number by 73 million people a year by 2015. It is now 2010 and the goal appears to be slipping away. Yet it is a modest one that would still leave some 600 million people deprived of food.

The objective of cutting hunger in half can still be achieved, but business as usual will not be enough. What is needed is “business as unusual.” The elements of such an approach to tackling world hunger are as follows:

Invest in Two Core Pillars: Agriculture and Social Protection

The first step in reducing poverty and hunger in developing countries is to invest in agriculture and rural development. Scaled-up investments in social protection that focus on nutrition and health are also crucial. More importantly, policymakers should increase investments in productive safety net programs that support the poorest and hungriest households and increase their productive capacity.

Bring in New Players

New actors in global development—the private sector, philanthropic organizations, and, more importantly, emerging economies—have important roles to play in reducing hunger in developing countries. The private sector can provide effective and sustainable investment and innovation to help in the fight against hunger. Private companies should be given the right incentives and a favorable operating environment. Emerging economies are playing a growing role in trade and investment, and in providing development assistance. They need to be fully integrated into the global food security agenda.

Adopt a Country-Led, Bottom-Up Approach

Effective, efficient, and sustainable policies that are well adapted to the local context can help countries maximize the impact of the global agenda and tap external development assistance. Successful reforms also need to be local in nature, with poor people acting as a driving force in the development process. At the same time, some issues—like climate change, trade, and control of disease—must be addressed at the global level. The task for individual countries is to digest and integrate these issues in developing their own strategies at the country level.

Design Policies Using Evidence and Experiments

Pilot projects and experiments have the potential to improve policymaking by giving decisionmakers information about what works before policies are implemented across the board. Experimentation can improve the success rate of reforms as successful pilot projects are scaled up and unsuccessful policy options are eliminated. To succeed with this approach, policymakers need to allow impartial monitoring of experiments and rapidly transform the lessons learned into large-scale reforms.

Walk the Walk

Decisionmakers at the global, regional, and national levels have made commitments to policies and investments for enhancing food security, but they have often failed to meet those commitments. To effectively enhance food security, financial commitments must be supported with strong institutions and governance at all levels and monitored in a timely and transparent fashion.

Scaling Up “Business as Unusual”

Some aspects of this “business as unusual” approach have already been applied successfully. They need to be scaled up and extended to new countries in order to have a real impact on global hunger. On a larger scale, the global food governance system itself needs to be reformed to work better. Also, although global and national actors have distinct roles to play, it is important that they work together, combining their efforts to fight poverty and hunger. A stronger system of mutual accountability between the two groups would help keep progress on track.

Contact Information:

Michele Pietrowski, m.pietrowski@cgiar.org, +1 202-862-4630

The full IFPRI report, Halving Hunger: Meeting the First Millennium Development Goal through “Business as Unusual” or direct PDF

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