Food Crisis – Opportunities for Positive Change
 |
|
A young girl cleans rice in the Philippines [Photo: IRIN]
|
Most farmers, especially the small-scale and poor, are not benefiting from higher food prices. Fertilizer and operating costs have increased as well, and a large proportion of small farmers are net buyers of food commodities, rather than sellers.
For food producers who have sufficient capacity, however, price hikes may stimulate increased production. This potential upside offers an opportunity to promote agricultural and rural development in many low-income food-deficit countries – if an enabling policy environment and support measures can be established quickly. Such measures will require a broad range of interventions, including “smart subsidies” for agricultural inputs, social protection schemes, and enhancement of supply responses.
African Green Revolution
Linked to these efforts, immediate action is needed to make agriculture a priority, particularly in Africa, where productivity has been falling over the last 40 years. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Steering Group has called on African governments to launch the African Green Revolution, whose goal is to help impoverished smallholder communities make the transformation from subsistence farming to a mixed rural economy of commercial farming and small-scale industry and services.
Among the objectives of this scheme are to raise incomes, thereby reducing poverty and hunger (MDG-1), and to unleash self-sustaining private-sector-led economic growth. In addition, higher agricultural productivity will directly support child survival (MDG-4), gender equity (MDG-3), school completion (MDG-2), and greater resilience to climate change and other natural hazards (MDG-7).
Not “Business as Usual”
The current challenges can also inspire innovation in the food aid system. Some donors and international agencies, such as WFP, are looking to shift from traditional food aid to “food assistance”. This means, for example, providing cash transfers and vouchers to enable people to buy their own food, as well as purchasing food commodities from local smallholders to improve incomes and support local economies.
Moreover, alternatives must be explored to help governments import food commodities and bolster production. Since the scalability of certain programs and the potential inflationary impact of some interventions (especially cash-based programmes) remains uncertain, immediate assessment is needed on the best combination of cash and in-kind transfers, and what type of targeting and conditionality works best.
Responsible Reform
Finally, donors and development advocates have the opportunity to develop renewed strategic stances on agricultural trade and to assess the most effective and least distortive trade measures for addressing price rises. High prices could lead to agricultural trade liberalization policies that benefit low-income countries, and also help reform high-income country agricultural subsidy programs.
____________
Global Food Crisis:
Global Food Trends - Confronting Challenges - Opportunities for Positive Change - Latest Updates