Calling attention to the 'silent hunger crisis'

Dr Gavin Lindsay Wall serves as FAO India Representative of Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. In past, he has held several responsible positions including that of the Chief of the Agricultural and Food Engineering Technologies Service and led the engineering component of initiatives to add value to food and agricultural produce through product innovation, improved processing and post-harvest handling.

Here are the excerpts from an online interview:

OneWorld South Asia: There has been a phenomenal increase in the number of hungry people across the world. Many countries have witnessed food riots. There are indications that the food crisis the world is facing today is only going to deepen. What do you think should be done to avert this at the national, regional and international levels?

Dr Gavin Wall: The global food insecurity situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat for humanity. With food prices remaining stubbornly high in developing countries, the number of people suffering from hunger has been growing relentlessly in recent years.

The global economic crisis is aggravating the situation by affecting jobs and deepening poverty. FAO estimates that the number of hungry people has passed the one billion mark in 2009.

FAO is organising a World Summit on Food Security in Rome from November 16-18 to agree key actions to tackle this crisis.

Director-General Jacques Diouf comments: “The silent hunger crisis – affecting one-sixth of all of humanity – poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world.”

Poor countries need the development, economic and policy tools required to boost their agricultural production and productivity. Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome hunger and poverty and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth. The gravity of the current food crisis is the result of 20 years of under-investment in agriculture and neglect of the sector. Directly or indirectly, agriculture provides the livelihood for 70% of the world's poor.

OWSA: What are the efforts that the FAO is making in South Asia to ensure food security in the region?

GW: FAO has country offices in each of the countries of South Asia and these country offices work together with their host government to provide specialised technical assistance to improve food security.

[For more information on specific programmes, please click here.]

In addition the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (in Bangkok) works with the SAARC Secretariat to support SAARC efforts on food security.

OWSA: There has been an increasing trend of using agricultural land for producing bio-fuels, land is being diverted to set up industrial projects (like under Special Economic Zones in India), and corporate groups are buying up lands the world over for food production. Where are we headed towards?

GW: FAO has begun widespread consultations over the first ever international guidelines on governance of tenure to land and other natural resources such as water supplies, fisheries and forests.

The consultations and negotiations, responding to requests from the international community and from governments, will take more than a year to complete. They will involve governments, the private sector, poor farmers, indigenous groups, local authorities, academia and independent experts and will be led by a secretariat based at FAO headquarters.

FAO is taking the lead in this exercise because secure land access is the best safety-net for the poor, and because good governance of land is a necessary condition for secure land access and land tenure rights.

Although most FAO member nations have rules to protect farmers and forest dwellers, as well as domestic and foreign investors, from being thrown off their land or having their land seized arbitrarily, laws are often ignored or badly enforced.

Competition for land and other natural resources is increasing due to population and economic growth, foreign direct investment for large scale food production, demands for biofuels and urban and industrial expansion.

A shrinking natural resource base increases competition as land is abandoned because of degradation, climate change and violent conflicts and without responsible governance, growing demands for land threatens to foster social exclusion as the rich and powerful are able to acquire land and other natural resources at the expense of the poor and vulnerable.

Weak governance is a cause of many tenure-related problems and hinders economic growth because of a reluctance to invest, from both large and small players. It also affects the sustainable use of natural resources, causing environmental degradation and condemning people to a life of hunger and in the worst scenarios can cause conflict and war.

OWSA: Indian Prime Minister sometime back talked of agricultural revival in the country akin to the Green Revolution? How supportive are you of this idea, knowing that the Norman Borlaug-inspired first such revolution might have helped the country attain self sufficiency in food production, but it also gave rise to whole lot of problems for the farmers (higher input costs, dependence on pesticides, soil infertility – all of them leading to indebtedness and resulting in suicides) the price of which they are still paying. What then should be done?

GW: FAO recently convened a three-day meeting of experts in Rome to consider how to feed the world in 2050. In the first half of this century, global demand for food, feed and fibre is projected to increase by some 70% while, increasingly, crops may also be used for bioenergy and other industrial purposes. New and traditional demand for agricultural produce will thus put growing pressure on already scarce agricultural resources.

And while agriculture will be forced to compete for land and water with sprawling urban settlements, it will also be required to serve on other major fronts: adapting to and contributing to the mitigation of climate change, helping preserve natural habitats, and maintaining biodiversity. At the same time, fewer people will be living in rural areas and even fewer will be farmers. They will need new technologies to grow more from less land, with fewer hands.

The meeting agreed that action is required in six areas:

1. Investment

All participants agreed on the need for significant new and increased investment to secure the needed agricultural development, and in particular growth in yields, in productivity and production. The established correlation between spending on Research and Development and yield growth meant that R&D was an important focus of investment, particularly in developing countries.

The CGIAR system needed revitalising. There was also a need for investment in improving market access both upstream and downstream, in rural infrastructure, in extension services, in risk management and rural finance, and in institutions and capacity development. Countries need to create an investment climate that would attract the private sector to participate. There was general agreement on the need for a code of conduct to manage the trend towards large international investments in farming in developing countries.

2. Access

The question of access to food was as important as supply, so that simply producing enough food on aggregate was not a solution to feeding the world’s expanded population in 2050. There were other ingredients to resolving problems of undernourishment such as clean water, sanitation and education, particularly of women. It was recognized that while this meeting had focused on supply-side issues and broad global developments, the gender dimension was critical to the issue of increasing agricultural production and productivity and improving access to food.

3. Trade

There was agreement that the world commodity trading scene was likely to remain volatile and that price spikes could become more frequent. There was a problem of loss of confidence in the market by some importers to be addressed. Proposals were made for a clearing house system and a financing mechanism for poor countries. There was agreement that trade liberalisation and completion of the Doha Round were vital, and that efforts should be made to reduce the distortionary effects of farm support policies in OECD countries. Participants supported the proposal for a link between farm support in the OECD and a fund to assist developing countries farmers. Many agreed that efforts should be made to dissuade countries from imposing export bans, perhaps by bringing such moves under the WTO rules.

4. Africa

While some participants debated the traditional smallholder model for African agricultural development, with proposals for removing barriers to larger commercial farming and improving opportunities for the poorest subsistence farmers outside agriculture as well as within it, others maintained that smallholders, if given the adequate conducive socio-economic environment, would still have an important role in Africa’s future.

5. Climate Change, bioenergy and technology

The new challenges of climate change and the demand for bioenergy feedstock meant new solutions should be considered. Since the exact effect of climate change could not be known, the important thing was to enhance the capacity of countries to respond. There was agreement that the suite of tools needed to meet the challenge would include the use of GMOs. In developing countries the argument for using GMOs was that by increasing and stabilizing yields they could be life-saving, rather than simply cost-cutting, which was the driver in developed countries. There was a need to help developing countries put in place regulatory processes that would facilitate the roll-out of GM crops.

6. Institutions

Many participants called for an institutional revolution to ensure that farmers and others receive the support and incentives they need at all stages in the value chain. Historical fiscal discrimination against agriculture should be ended.

OWSA: How would you like the forthcoming climate change summit in Copenhagen to address the problems that the agricultural sector is facing?

GW: Firstly, we need to acknowledge that the time for skepticism of the reality of climate is over and the only rationale way forward to prevent a catastrophe is to reduce carbon emissions. The “how” and “by whom” questions are at the centre of the debate leading up to Copenhagen and will fundamentally determine the economic and political viability of any deal reached at Copenhagen.

It is reasonably obvious that carbon intensive products and services such as energy, transportation and products which consume large volumes of these in their production will become markedly more expensive. These changes will impact directly on agriculture as we saw during the recent global food price crisis and agriculture, like all other sectors of the global economy, will have to change.

I doubt that a special case can be made for food and agriculture; the sector will have to develop systems for measuring the carbon intensity of different products and production systems so that consumers can make informed choices and appreciate price differences. The much flawed ‘food miles’ approach of some UK supermarkets of several years ago was a first attempt, but a much more sophisticated methodology is required.

The greatest advantage to food and agriculture of an agreement at Copenhagen would be the expected benefits to the natural resources on which the food and agriculture sector is based. Protecting these natural resources from climate change induced degradation is fundamental to the ability of countries like India to increase food production to feed a growing population.

OWSA: Do you think there is enough sincerity among the governments in South Asia to achieve the Millennium Development Goals with regard to hunger and poverty?

GW: I see no evidence of insincerity; but, there is no doubt that challenges to achieving Millennium Development Goal One are significant and they are growing. The way forward is unlikely to be helped by doubting sincerity; rather it will be by building coalitions of the willing to address the root causes that underlie hunger and poverty.

Prior to joining FAO, Dr Gavin Lindsay Wall was the Head of the Institute of Technology and Engineering at Massey University in New Zealand.

He is an agricultural engineer by profession and has consulted for a variety of organisations in Asia and the Pacific Islands. His design experience has included development of agricultural machines as well as the design of farm waters systems. He has published a range of research outputs usually linking management of engineering systems to their design.