OTTAWA — The world’s developed countries are condemning millions of Third World citizens to hunger and poverty by giving less money to agricultural research.
In a report prepared for the World Bank by a ‘blue-ribbon’ group of American experts, western governments are criticized for cutting funding to research centres sponsored by the United Nations.
Last year, Canada cut its support for the program to $20.3 million from $24.2 million. In the name of deficit control, the U.S. and most other countries did the same.
“Without stronger support for international agricultural research, a growing number of developing countries and a growing number of poor within those countries could face serious food shortages as early as the first decades of the next century,” said the report published last week.
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It said Third World farmers must have access to improved seed, technology and management techniques developed through research if hunger and an environmental disaster are to be avoided.
Yet prospects are for more cuts, not fewer.
“If funding declines continue, centres will have to be eliminated, programs dropped or both,” said the report, written by a committee that includes former World Bank president and U.S. defence secretary Robert McNamara.
Programs undermined
“Whatever path is suggested, already-diminished research programs would be seriously undermined.”
At stake is a network of 17 research centres operated by the 22-year-old Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. The centres are supported by international agencies and donors. One centre in Mexico studies wheat and triticale. Others try to adapt production methods for arid or tropical agriculture.
The network was created in part to provide research results to countries too poor to set up their own elaborate programs.
In the past two years, commitments have fallen by 20 percent, from $369 million to an estimated $297 million this year.
This comes at a time when the World Bank is projecting food production must increase sharply to feed the 90 million people added to the world’s population each year.
Meanwhile, arable land is decreasing because of natural and man-made soil degradation.
And the numbers of researchers at the international centres has fallen by one-third in the past five years.
“Achieving and maintaining food security in the developing world is a larger and more urgent task, requiring stronger emphasis on agricultural development and better management of natural resources,” the report concluded.
Cuts from countries like Canada are making that goal all the more elusive.
