As the rich Group of 8 (G8) nations convene in L'Aquila, Italy this
week, world hunger will once again take center stage. The United
States will likely announce a "significant" increase in funding for
agricultural development aid, along with multi-year commitments from
other G8 countries. This follows the G8's admission of failure in
tackling hunger at its first-ever farm conference in Treviso, Italy in
As the rich Group of 8 (G8) nations convene in
L'Aquila, Italy this week, world hunger will once
again take center stage. The United States will
likely announce a "significant" increase in
funding for agricultural development aid, along
with multi-year commitments from other G8
countries. This follows the G8's admission of
failure in tackling hunger at its first-ever farm
conference in Treviso, Italy in April 2009.
Proposals to challenge hunger have become a
common feature of international conferences since
the 2008 food crisis. The 83% increase in food
prices between 2005 and 2008 led to a massive
surge in global hunger, as the number of hungry
in 2008 increased from 854 million to 963 million
in the space of a year. As warnings of political
instability and social unrest grew, heads of
state suddenly began to discuss food security.
The political intent to combat world hunger,
however, was short-lived. Perhaps the decline in
crop prices that started in the middle of 2008
made the problem appear less severe for
policymakers, while bank bailouts and automaker
bankruptcies captured all the attention and
resources.
The hunger crisis, however, is far from over. The
number of hungry reached a historic high in 2009,
with 1.02 billion people - one-sixth of humanity
- going hungry every day. Despite an improved
global cereal supply situation and a decline in
international prices of most cereals from their
highs in the first half of 2008, food prices
remain high in developing countries (FAO, 2009b).
Thirty-two countries face acute food crises. The
economic crisis has worsened the situation by
further shrinking the purchasing power of the
urban poor and subsistence farmers in poor
countries.
In the midst of this deeply entrenched epidemic
of poverty and hunger, the G8 will announce a new
initiative that seeks a more coordinated approach
to food aid and development. The G8's performance
on its past commitments, however, casts a shadow
on the sincerity of their intentions.
G8's Record
At the height of the 2008 food crisis, G8 leaders
highlighted food security at their summit in
Hokkaido, Japan. The summit alone cost over $600
million - the annual budget of the United
Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
is $400 million. The G8 spent half of this sum on
a massive security operation involving some
21,000 police officers, coast guards, and
soldiers. With much fanfare, the G8 communiqué on
global food security committed $10 billion for
food and other resources to increase agricultural
production in developing countries. Despite the
media glitz around the announcement, this was not
new money, but a mere adding up of aid already
pledged by the G8 countries. The G8 communiqué
also included a commitment to "reverse the
overall decline of aid and investment in the
agricultural sector." The commitment, however,
failed to list any specific dollar amounts with a
timeline.
Despite commitments, pledges, and grandiose
communiqués by rich donor nations to challenge
hunger at numerous international summits, world
hunger persists. The problem lies in the
fallacious explanations for the food crisis, and
in the promotion of market and technology-based
solutions to the problem.
With hunger framed as a crisis of demand and
supply, the proposed solutions have primarily
focused on boosting agricultural production
through technological solutions like genetic
engineering (GE) and chemical inputs. The G8 has
also focused on removing supply-side constraints
to ensure access to food through the
liberalization of agricultural trade. Yet these
very proposals contributed over the last several
decades to undermining food security in the
developing countries in the first place.
Free Trade = Freedom from Hunger?
While pledging commitment to fight hunger, the
2008 G8 communiqué reiterated its continued
support for "the development of open and
efficient agricultural and food markets."
Ministers at the G8 Farm Conference in 2009 also
recommended open markets, urging an "ambitious
conclusion of the Doha Round" of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) as the solution to the food
crisis.
A recent speech by Pascal Lamy, the director
general of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
also reflected this G8 logic that international
trade will help solve the global food crisis.
Lamy claimed that increased competition reduces
prices and thus enhances the purchasing power of
the consumers. Secondly, he argued, trade helps
transport food from places where it can be
produced efficiently to where there is demand.
This assertion that free trade will help solve
hunger, however, is based on amnesia.
Liberalization of agricultural markets has yet to
deliver on the promised or expected gains in
growth and stability in the developing world. In
a submission to the Commission of Sustainable
Development (CSD) in May 2009, the United
Nations' special rapporteur on the right to food,
Olivier De Schutter, pointed out that the
multilateral trading system is "heavily skewed in
favor of a small group of countries, and in
urgent need of reform." He was referring to how
rich countries have used their heavily subsidized
agriculture to help secure markets by flooding
developing countries with cheap farm imports,
making subsistence farming uncompetitive and
financially unstable.
The dumping of cheap, subsidized food has
converted developing countries that had once been
self-sufficient, and even net exporters of
agricultural products, into net importers. In the
1960s, developing countries had an overall
agricultural surplus of $7 billion. By the 1970s,
with the increase in imports, this surplus had
shrunk to $1 billion. Most of the 1990s and 2000s
saw developing countries turn into net food
importers. In 2001, the deficit grew to $11
billion.
The worst impact of the indiscriminate opening of
markets has been felt in the rural areas, where
agriculture is the main occupation for most of
the poor as well as a source of purchasing power.
Increased imports have not increased food
security in these areas. Also, the notion that
further liberalization of agricultural markets
increases access to food belies the fact that
most people in countries classified as having
"widespread lack of access" are unable to procure
food because they don't have enough money.
At the national level, the increased dependence
on food imports has made developing countries
more vulnerable to high prices. In 2008, for
instance, many developing countries experienced
shortages because the markets on which they have
come to depend underwent changes in national food
supply policies. The U.S. and European bio-fuel
policy is a case in point. Corn production
dedicated to bio-fuels, instead of food,
increased scarcity in terms of both its market
availability and food aid availability.
Also, measures previously available to
governments to soften the effects of price
volatility - such as controlling import and
export volumes, managing domestic stocks, using
price control and price support tools, consumer
subsidies, and rationing systems - have been
criticized or discouraged for distorting free
trade. Free-trade advocates have deemed export
bans of food, imposed by some 40 countries,
including India, Egypt, and Vietnam in 2008,
responsible for increasing prices. But these
measures sought to protect national populations,
especially the poor and vulnerable, against the
global agricultural price shocks by ensuring
national food availability below world prices
before allowing exports to other countries
Freedom From Hunger through Technology?
After nearly two decades of declining aid for
agricultural development, commitments to reverse
the trend have become common at international
summits. Olivier De Schutter, in his submission
to the CSD, cautioned that increased investments
in agriculture, while necessary, must be thought
through carefully. The issue isn't one of merely
increasing budget allocations to agriculture, but
rather "that of choosing from different models of
agricultural development which may have different
impacts and benefit various groups differently,"
he said.
The first element of the food security initiative
to be announced at the G8 meetings reportedly
will focus on improving agricultural productivity
and development. The G8 Farm Summit in April 2009
also promoted a technological agricultural
revolution, for instance in genetically modified
(GM) crops, to increase agricultural productivity
in response to hunger.
A big player promoting genetic engineering as the
panacea for global hunger has been the United
States. During the Summit, U.S. Secretary of
Agriculture Tom Vilsack warned that failure to
boost agricultural productivity would cause fresh
social unrest and urged the G8 to back the use of
science in agriculture, including genetically
modified organisms. On his return from Italy,
much to the delight of biotech companies such as
Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto, Vilsack pledged to
bring a "more comprehensive and integrated"
approach to promoting agricultural biotech
overseas.
Similarly, former executive director of the UN
World Food Program Catherine Bertini and former
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, have
written of the "great promise" of a new Green
Revolution that includes use of biotechnology.
They advocate prioritizing food and agriculture
in U.S. foreign aid. Recognizing that their plans
might generate resistance, the authors write,
"Although there is the potential for conflict
over a hunger initiative on the issue of
introducing more GM crops, this conflict is more
likely to be with Europeans than with Africans or
Asians, both of whom are increasingly inclined to
accept the technology."
Their thinking that developing countries can be
arm-twisted into accepting GM crops is reflected
in a new multi-billion dollar U.S. aid bill.
Global Food Security Act (SB 384), also known as
the Lugar-Casey Act, revises the 1961 Federal
Assistance Act to direct more money toward GM
research as part of U.S. foreign aid programs.
The bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in March 2009 on the basis of hastily
conducted, industry-friendly research funded by
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the
biggest forces behind plans for a new Green
Revolution in Africa.
But the promises of feeding the world with GM
crops have so far proven to be empty. A 2009
report from the Union of Concern Scientists,
which analyzed nearly two decades worth of
peer-reviewed research on the yield of GM
food/feed crops in the United States,
demonstrates that genetic engineering has failed
to significantly increase crop yields. Only one
major GM crop, Bt corn, has achieved a 3-4% yield
increase over the 13 years that it has been grown
commercially. Even this growth is much less than
what has been achieved over that time by other
methods, including conventional breeding. The
report contends that it makes little sense to
support genetic engineering at the expense of
technologies with better track records of
increasing yields.
Other studies also demonstrate that organic and
similar farming methods can more than double crop
yields. Organic Agriculture and Food Security in
Africa, a study by the UN Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Environment
Program (UNEP), found that organic or
near-organic agriculture practices in Africa
outperformed conventional production systems
based on chemical-intensive farming, provided
environmental benefits, and are more conducive to
food security in the region. This analysis of 114
farming projects in 24 African countries found
that organic practices resulted in a yield
increase of more than 100%.
The study confirmed the findings and
recommendations of the UN's first ever
evidence-based assessment of global agriculture
for reducing hunger and poverty, improving rural
livelihoods, and working toward environmentally,
socially, and economically sustainable
development. Known as the International
Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology
for Development, it called for a fundamental
paradigm shift in agricultural development and
concluded that genetic engineering is no solution
for soaring food prices and hunger. It instead
recommended low-input, low-cost agro-ecological
farming methods that reintegrate natural systems
into agriculture in order to maximize
sustainability, ecosystem services, and
biodiversity.
In the face of growing evidence, the G8's
continued focus on improving agricultural
productivity through technologies like genetic
engineering only serves the interests of biotech
corporations. Monsanto, for instance, is running
an advertising campaign in national newspapers
like The New York Times as well as on National
Public Radio claiming "its improved seeds help
farmers double yields," which is needed to feed
the world's growing population.
Building a Resilient Agricultural System
At the World Food Summit in 1996, heads of
governments made a commitment to reduce the
number of hungry people - 815 million then - in
half by 2015. The latest hunger figures reveal a
crisis spiraling out of control. The need to feed
the world in ways that are environmentally,
socially, and economically sustainable is even
more urgent.
The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia
and the Pacific (ESCAP) recently pointed out that
past reliance on technology jeopardized long-term
sustainability with the overuse of chemical
inputs. ESCAP's report highlights evidence from
hundreds of grassroots development projects that
increased agricultural productivity through
agro-ecological practices, while increasing food
supplies, incomes, food access, and improving the
livelihoods of the poor. ESCAP thus recommends
investment in sustainable agriculture that
prioritizes small-scale food production based on
ecologically viable systems.
In 2008, 60 governments approved the IAASTD
report's call for a radical shift in agricultural
policy and practice in order to address hunger
and poverty, social inequities, and environmental
sustainability. Recognizing that the past
emphasis on increasing yields and productivity
had negative consequences on environmental
sustainability, the IAASTD report also promoted
agriculture that is biodiversity-based, including
agro-ecology and organic farming, for being
resilient, productive, beneficial to poor
farmers, adaptive to climate change.
These recommendations have yet to make it to the
G8 agenda. If the G8 is indeed serious about its
commitment to confront hunger, the member
countries must stop the steady drumbeat of
proselytizing for free markets and technological
solutions to hunger. The Obama administration,
which provided leadership to the food security
initiative and injected purpose into the G8
meeting, could lead the way by recognizing the
need for developing countries to have policy
space to determine agricultural policies that
meet the needs of their populations. It should
encourage a genuine agrarian reform that will
ensure farmers' rights to land, water, seeds and
other resources. By making local products
competitive, such reform would sustain farmers'
livelihoods and incomes and assure national food
security. This would require United States to
cease making GMO crops and free trade a corner
stone of its development and foreign policy.
In short, instead of promoting their old failed
"development" formulas in new clothing, the G8
needs to take responsibility and support efforts
of governments in developing countries to put in
place or restore sustainable, equitable, and
resilient agricultural systems.
Anuradha Mittal is a contributor to Foreign
Policy In Focus and the executive director of the
Oakland Institute, an independent policy think
tank working to increase public participation and
to promote fair debate on critical social,
economic, and environmental issues.