ONE billion people - almost 20 per cent of the world's population - are hungry, and it's more than that they miss a meal a day, but that they are chronically malnourished.
At the same time, the greatest growth period in the history of the world is underway, and 3 billion more people will be born in the next 40 years, increasing the world's population to 9 billion people. Most of them will be born in the hungry parts of the world.
Accordingly, the pressure on the world's economic and natural resources for food will become intense, and the private and public sectors must provide the leadership required to develop modern agricultural production systems for farmers in those parts of the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
That's the view of the United States-based Humboldt Forum for Food & Agriculture, as explained by Dr. Philip Pardey, an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota and a member of the forum.
It's critical for private/public partnerships to create opportunities for commercial farming in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia and to provide farmers there with modern technologies to jump-start productivity, he said during an interview with Feedstuffs at his office in St. Paul, Minn.
The consequences of not doing so "are unacceptable", he said.
Pardey was asked to join the Humboldt Forum for his work as co-director of HarvestChoice, a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop frameworks to make farming more productive and profitable primarily in Africa but also in Southeast Asia. The project is oriented toward grain production, but the Gates Foundation has indicated that phase two should also focus on livestock production, he said.
Pardey noted that he has "a long-running concern" in international agricultural development, having spent 20 years with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which has 15 international research centers around the world involved in food policy and production.
At the University of Minnesota's applied economics department, he is a professor of science and technology and director of the International Science & Technology Practice & Policy Institute.
The Humboldt Forum is housed at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.
Best skills
HarvestChoice has demonstrated that African farmers are determined and entrepreneurial, Pardey said, noting that a farmer will ride a bicycle for miles to buy a bag of seed that he believes will give him a good crop.
However, farmers lack the expertise and technology to be productive, he said.
"We need to get technology into their hands ... to help them become commercial producers," he said.
The Humboldt Forum, which initially met in Davos, Switzerland, in February and launched in Berlin in April, intends "to pull together the best science" to make this happen, he said.
Pardey acknowledged that there have been other African "work groups" that have tried, but he said he senses that the Humboldt Forum is different as it has brought together diverse interests with like views - people he said can bring together "the best economics, the best research, the best science, the best commercial application" and can target decision-makers in government and industry.
These are interests "who have never gotten around the table before" and "have senior status" that will give them access to decision-makers, he said. "I think they will get attention."
They have to, Pardey said, pointing to the hunger crisis now and the potential for it to worsen over the next 40 years.
It can be done and has been done, Pardey said. He recalled the extent to which CGIAR responded to the great increase in India's population in the 1960s and '70s to turn its primitive agricultural sector into a thriving industry that not only produces abundant and affordable food for Indians but even exports wheat and other agricultural products.
The boon also stimulated the development of a significant economy and, therefore, a significant market, he said, and the same scenario is playing out in China.
This experience is repeatable in Africa and Southeast Asia, he said.
Pardey explained that as food production increases, people spend less of their money on food and invest more in other parts of the economy, creating additional income, including income to buy goods and services from other countries.
"As a country ramps up food production, this does not crowd out food producers in North America or elsewhere from exporting to that country but, instead, opens up a large market for them," he said.
"Everything says getting technology in the hands of farmers jump-starts productivity," the benefits of which spread across a country and across countries, Pardey said.
Best technology
Pardey also acknowledged the corruption and war that are rampant in many African countries, but he said companies and institutions are learning to work with non-governmental organisations to build infrastructures that can succeed and realise long-term growth.
One area of focus for such a partnership is productivity research, Pardey said, and while Africa and the U.S. have nearly the same amount of arable land, research spending in Africa is far less in terms of expenditure and in terms of effectiveness than in the U.S. (Table).
For instance, he said Africa actually has more scientists working in agriculture than the U.S., but few of them have doctorate-level skills, so their efforts are less effective.
Furthermore, scientists lack basic needs - money to keep lights on or refrigerators running or to buy gasoline for trucks to drive into the field to collect data, he said.
In any country, including developed nations, "there are long productivity lags from development (of technology) to commercial use," Pardey said. "It can take decades," and the situation is even more complicated in countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, he said.
"So, if we need to increase food production as much as we do to feed 3 billion more people, and we know we won't have more land on which to do that, then we are going to have to increase productivity and do so substantially," he said.
Best choices
Pardey said increasing productivity will require that the world develop and use technology, which will require a better understanding of and support for technology, including bioscience and life science.
"I'm a technology optimist," he said, "but I also know that every technology carries some risk, no matter how benign. The way we use technology carries risk."
Science should be used to assess the benefits of technology and quantify risks so that "we can manage technology" in a responsible and safe way, he said.
However, there are groups and people who disregard the benefits of technology and see it as all risk, Pardey said.
"If that's to be our threshold, then we wouldn't be using electricity," which is invisible and, if managed wrongly, can kill, he said.
The debate over genetically modified seeds, for instance, that "we're tinkering with nature goes back 50 years and is the same argument that surrounded the adoption of hybrid seeds", he said.
If cereal crop yields had not increased through hybrid vigor, achieving the cereal crop production that was produced in 2000 would have required the world to plough up an area the size of Western Europe, Pardey said. That would have had "a devastating impact" on global biodiversity and natural resources, he noted.
"We need to make real-world choices" that are driven by science rather than emotions, he said.
Some interests oppose technology because of their perception that technology is what's driving population growth and, in doing so, pressuring the Earth's sustainability, Pardey said, but that's not true.
"If we stop improving yields, it's not going to turn off population growth. It's going to do the opposite. Population grows fastest in those areas of the world where people are hungry and poor," he said, and couples produce children so there will be a better chance that some of their kids will survive and be able to take care of them.
If food increases and people can spend less money on food and more on other needs or wants, the quality of their lives improves and their thinking turns away from needing children to survive, he explained.
Genetic selection in seeds has been occurring since the beginning of time, and tens of thousands of genes have been bred into or out of plants, Pardey said.
"By definition, agriculture is man affecting the natural order" to produce better and more food, and "the bucolic view" people have of farming is not in sync with reality, he said.
Copyright © 2009 The Miller Publishing Co.
