THE UNITED Nations Food and Agriculture Organization summit in Rome last week put the state of the world’s food supply at the top of the global political agenda
Despite squabbling about trade barriers and geopolitics, the governments represented at the meeting committed themselves to “eliminating hunger and to securing food for all, today and tomorrow.”
Such grand statements must now be followed with concrete action.
The Rome summit was heartening because many leaders spoke against the ineffective measures some countries have used to counter rising food prices.
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These include artificially lowering food prices by banning or taxing exports, like in Argentina, or limiting the prices paid to farmers. Such restrictions discourage needed production increases and can backfire, increasing food prices.
Effective solutions lie in ensuring that farming is profitable around the world, agricultural technology is available and affordable, infrastructure is in place to store and transport food efficiently and markets are accessible and not distorted by rich country subsidies.
The role of the market must be also recognized. It reacted to tight food supplies by driving up prices, which sparked a desired result: increased planting.
World grain production, including wheat, coarse grains and rice, is expected to rise by almost three percent this year, led by an eight percent increase in wheat. Oilseed production is also forecast to rise by eight percent.
The prospect of larger crops has moderated the price of wheat, soybeans and canola.
But prices are still high and so the first priority for international action is to increase humanitarian support to ensure that emergency food aid programs can maintain operations. Aid is also needed for poor farmers to buy seed and fertilizer so that high input costs do not interfere with the production of the next crop.
Longer term measures must also focus on farmers. It is a cruel irony that those suffering the most from high food costs are farmers. According to the World Bank, 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas and most are involved in farming.
Yet only four percent of official development assistance goes to farming and in sub-Saharan Africa, only four percent of government spending goes to agriculture.
This is an error in priorities when you consider that agricultural growth is four times more effective in raising the income of the poorest than growth in other sectors of the economy, according to the World Bank.
Development agencies and developing countries themselves must spend more on rural and agricultural programs.
Globally, farmers have never been more important to society.
The United Nations forecasts that food supply will have to rise by 50 percent by 2030. To meet the challenge, systems must be created to ensure farmers fully benefit from rising food prices to give them the revenue they need to increase production and pay for rising input costs.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
