UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he is deeply concerned about the sharp rise in global food prices.
Mr Ban said the trend would hinder progress towards the millennium development goals (MDGs), which aim to halve extreme poverty by 2015. The UN World Food Program (WFP) and other agencies may be forced to ration food aid, he said in a BBC interview.
He said shortages might be eased by a "green revolution" to transform farming methods in Africa. Global food prices have risen by 40% in nine months and food reserves are at their lowest for 30 years. The WFP is facing a $500m (£248m) shortfall in its attempts to feed 73 million people this year.
'Political challenge'
Mr Ban said that "many countries in particular in Africa they now have to pay double or triple the price for their bread," and warned that this would lead to increased malnutrition.
"This will all affect our MDG programmes - I am very much seriously concerned about this," he said.
The change has been blamed on poor harvests, population growth, rising energy and grain prices, the effects of climate change, and a shift to biofuel crops.
Although one UN official has called the increasing use of crops for fuel rather than food a crime against humanity, Mr Ban said there was a need to balance the positive and negative aspects of biofuels.
Among possible solutions, he said that "there is broad consensus that more resources should be provided to help an African green revolution".
But he cautioned that transforming commitments into action would be a "huge political challenge".
"We need to rededicate and commit ourselves by galvanising political will, by mobilising necessary recourses."
AGRA - Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
ReplyDeletehttp://www.agra-alliance.org/
Africa’s Turn for a Green Revolution
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/534375/
Is a Green Revolution in the Works for Sub-Saharan Africa?
http://newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com/2008/02/is-green-revolution-in-works-for-sub.html
A cautionary note is struck by contributor Allison Williams:
Great post, Rachel. I completely agree with your commentary. Zachary's failure to note the many recent (and not so recent) efforts to bring the Green Revolution to Africa seems like a fairly large oversight. Similarly, most neo-Green Revolutionaries don’t know (or tune out) the cautionary words of Norman Borlaug, the father of the original movement, who thinks Africa is not up to the task—not because of lack of technology and education or poor governance (although those may well be factors), but largely because of a critical lack of infrastructure, primarily roads. How can you expect to change anything if you can’t get inputs in or outputs out?
But beyond infrastructure, what troubles me is the development community’s failure (at least so far) to do a little retrospective analysis. What is the state of India and South Asia's agriculture several decades after the first Green wave? Well, it’s not so good. Complete crop failure is not uncommon in Northern India, due in large part to excessive pesticide use that resulted in widespread pest resistance. And studies are linking the shockingly high rates of cancer in the area to water supplies tainted by years of excessive synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The list of troubles is far too long to fully name here.
Zachary’s article shows there is great potential—and demand—for expanding agriculture in Africa. Accomplishing this expansion, though, will require some creativity and a departure from the status quo—a position where many seem all to comfortable to stay. Rather than blindly assigning old solutions like chemical fertilizer and seed-hybrids I would love to see some new ideas—better matching crops to landscapes and soil types, rather than trying to grow cotton and rice in water-strapped areas. Or maybe promoting the use of organic fertilizers rather than synthetic ones—a plan that is entirely possible if small farmers keep managing small plots, and which would avoid all the environmental and health damage. The original Green Revolution resulted in some wonderful outcomes, and prevented some awful ones. But past policies should always be reviewed and can always be improved. In this case, there are many lessons to be learned. Let’s hope Gates and others are spending some money on research and planning before jumping straight to implementation.
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I would completely agree. The only sustainable agriculture is organic agriculture, and the reliance in India on chemical fertilizer and pesticides should be learned from and not be repeated.
I would love to be involved in setting up hundreds of commercial scale organic farms.
Government should help in opening up agricultural lands by building roads to the farms, while farmers and local people could build and maintain farm roads. Also, a lot has to be done in water management, farms are not dependent on rainfall, and downstream areas do not suffer from floods.
There is an enormous amount of money to be made from agriculture, second only the mining sector. And, there is the potential to distribute that wealth equally across the population.
The government and parliament must also step in and legally ensure security of tenure for individual land owners, so when they make improvements to the land, it cannot simply be confiscated or sold off.
But when every farmer has a commercial size (100 hectare) farm, using organic methods, that land can stay in the family and stay productive forever.