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July, 1995

WHEN GLOBAL VISION IS BLIND

Will there be enough food to feed the world in 2020?

By Naresh Singh

Washington, DC - Attendance at stellar gatherings on international food security should not leave the world hungering for leadership. But a recent meeting in Washington left many observers feeling queasy about the real agenda of international agencies charged with safeguarding the global food supply.

International leaders and development experts from around the world gathered in Washington, D.C. this month as the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) unveiled its vision for 2020: More of the same old policies that haven't worked in the past. Observers had hoped for a clean break, in preparation for the upcoming fiftieth anniversary festivities of the much-criticized UN Food and Agricultural Organization in Quebec City this September.

Calls for action are a familiar refrain at such meetings. But the dominant vision was more about continuing funding for traditional agricultural research - based as always on increasing food production using new-fangled technologies - than about trying to bridge the gap between the world's well-fed and nearly dead.

Despite brilliant speeches and dazzling analyses, influential research institutions like IFPRI and development agencies like the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization seemed to promise business as usual is enough to deliver the planet from ever-worsening hunger problems. The discussion treated food security as primarily a production problem - to be dealt with by agricultural experts - rather than as a larger problem requiring new political, international and educational solutions.

Biotechnology was bandied around as the latest craze for boosting food production in the face of a burgeoning world population. But the problem with biotechnology - apart from the fact that it remains perenially full of potential - is that there is no evidence that increased food production is the answer.

Global trends simply do not support the idea that more food translates into less hunger. Over recent decades, food production has grown faster than population everywhere but Sub-Saharan Africa. Starvation and malnutrition continue unabated in many regions. And the gap between the world's richest and poorest has been expanding in spite of decades of international development programs.

Missing was an in-depth analysis of the failures of the much-touted 'Green Revolution'of the 1970s, when high-yielding crops like rice and corn were developed through special breeding programs. Yields increased impressively. But the crops brought economic and environmental problems of their own. Dependence on expensive, often imported fertilizers caused new pollution and balance of payments problems. More importantly, the increased production rarely ever saw its way to feeding the hungriest souls. The lessons learnt must profoundly affect any new vision.

Now there is talk of a new 'Double Green' Revolution, in which high-yielding varieties are seen as okay as long as more ecologically-sound production methods are used, like zero-tillage or extended fallowing. This is all very well and good. Now production can increase and the environment can be saved while the hungriest are left to starve on a green altar. So much for the international consensus on people-centred development.

Issues that should be included in a wider vision for food security in 2020 include:

• The need for reform of a fundamentally unfair international trading system, that currently makes it difficult if not impossible for Southern producers to compete on a level playing field with those of the North.
• The need for participatory democracy in countries with the worst food shortages, so those afflicted by hunger can have a say in redesigning the policies that now threaten their livelihoods.
• The potential of current communications technology to provide people, in new and powerful ways, with the information they need to make knowledgeable decisions about their personal food security.
• The link between food security and collective human security.
• The need for better systems of governance, both locally and internationally.
• Policy shifts required to move from a pre-occupation with jobs to a framework for sustainable livelihoods.

Continuing on the same path could turn Quebec City's September celebrations into another cause for mourning.