Food Facts at a Glance

#1:  Undernourishment
In developing nations alone over 834 million do not have access to enough food in 2005. Day in and day out, no headlines, just silent suffering and dying.

(According to FAO… defined as access to less than the minimum calories needed per day - avg. 1873/person)

#2:  Worsening malnourishment
Food security in Africa has become much worse since 1970. The number of malnourished people has grown from 88 million in 1970 to over 200 million by 2001.

(Source: Rosegrant, M.W., S. Cline, W. Li, T. Sulser and R.A. Valmonte-Santos. 2005. Looking Ahead: Long-Term Prospects for Africa’s Agricultural Development and Food Security. 2020 Discussion Paper No. 41. International Food Policy Research Institute: Washington DC, USA)

#3:  Will it be feasible to ever end hunger?
We can end hunger. Right now we have the financial and technical resources necessary to do it but not the political will.

#4:  Living on marginal agriculture
Of the world’s 1.09 billion extremely poor people, about 74 % or 810 million live in
marginal areas and rely on small-scale agriculture for their livelihood.

(Source: Lennart Båge (IFAD president) in statement delivered on the Launch of the MDG 2005 Report http://www.ifad.org/events/mdg/ifad.htm)

#5:  Growth in food crop productivity
Small scale farming is critical to many people’s livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa, yet there has been little or no growth in food crop productivity over the past 30 years.

(Source: ‘Agricultural Liberalisation in sub-Saharan Africa’. European Commission’s Poverty Reduction Effectiveness Programme (EC-PREP) Report, Imperial College London, by Andrew Dorward, Jonathan Kydd, Colin Poulton et al., November 2004)

#6:  Hunger is not simply about more production
Food supplies have increased by about 25% per person in the last 4 decades and real prices are about 40% lower. Just measuring commonly traded food products, the world produces and sells enough food to comfortably provide everyone on the planet with more than enough to eat (~3,000 calories per day whereas about 2000 per day is sufficient). Yet in 2006, about 860 million people are significantly undernourished. Clearly, the core issue is about access and not about more production.

Fully 70-80% of the hungry live in rural areas and the UN Task Force on Hunger notes that most of them are smallholder farmers. Eroding natural resources and reduced productive capacity combined with inadequate purchasing power and little access to markets coalesce to keep hundreds of millions of people hungry and malnourished. Conflict, discrimination against females, and policies such as agro-industrial country subsidies contribute as well*.

(*For example, a west African farmer can produce a pound of cotton for about US$0.45 while a US cotton farmer can produce it for about US$0.70 (most of the US cotton production is large-scale farming) but protection and subsidies prevent African farmers from accessing the US market except rarely through special programs. The EU similarly subsidizes and protects its agriculture.)

(Numbers supplied by: Task Force on Hunger, 2004: Halving hunger by 2015: A framework for action. Interim Report, Millennium Project. United Nations, New York.)


#7:  Hunger is complex
Increasing national incomes or production are not enough. Hunger and even famines occur in countries that produce surpluses and consider themselves food secure. Free trade and liberalization have helped to reduce food costs but are not enough to make a difference to most of the poorest who live on less than a dollar per day and often lack access to markets. In some cases, unmanaged trade allows heavily subsidized products to temporarily flood developing country markets and damage the livelihoods of local farmers. While urban consumers temporarily benefit from the subsequent low prices, rural people are eventually forced to abandon their livelihoods and sometimes migrate to crowded urban areas seeking hard-to-find employment.

How can development address these issues? We ought to be asking ourselves what approaches can serve to both secure local food needs and also contribute to market competitiveness? How can we reduce environmental degradation and ensure enough food in areas where remoteness, poverty, and resource degradation actually exacerbate risk and render conventional agricultural approaches useless? The answers are not simple yet they are being practised in some places already.

#8:  Trade liberalization and hunger
Trade liberalization in order to achieve a more efficient allocation of resources in agri-food products has been prescribed as a remedy to eliminate hunger. It is clear that “trade liberalization itself has often undermined national food production by allowing imports of cheap food; these will benefit low-income consumers, but they can also threaten the livelihoods of poor farmers and fishing communities.

The most striking evidence of rural neglect has been a serious deterioration in the balance of agricultural trade. In the early 1960s, the developing countries had an overall annual agricultural trade surplus of almost $7 billion, but since the beginning of the 1990s they have generally been net importers of agricultural products, with a deficit in 2001, for example, of $11 billion.

More worrying, however, is that a number of countries are not just exporting less. They, and particularly China, are likely to become major importers. As a result, global food supplies could become much tighter. This raises questions of food security. Food is not like any other tradable commodity, and most countries prefer something closer to national self-sufficiency. This will mean, therefore, putting more emphasis on local production and giving greater protection for farmers who find it difficult to compete at world prices, especially when these are distorted by subsidies in the US and the EU that have enabled them to export below the cost of production.

(Source quoted: ASIA-PACIFIC HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2006)

#9:  Water and livestock
Water is a critical resource in many rural areas. With the growth of livestock production in even the poorest countries, it is worth noting the relationship between livestock and water. The majority of pastoralists graze their livestock on available forage and often (though certainly not always) efficiently and sustainably convert grasses and plants to meat. This provides an important balance to cropping systems and permits livelihoods in otherwise marginal areas that are unsuitable for crops i.e. the Sahel or Mongolian plains.
Intensive livestock operations are quite a different story. According to a leading US trade association, producing 1 pound of beef requires at least 5 pounds of grain and between 2,500 to 5,000 gallons of water. That figure may be lower in developing countries but is still likely to be considerable. Although the per person consumption of most meats has plateaued or declined in many Western countries, consumption is increasing along with incomes in many developing countries.


A Brief Understanding of Hunger and its Resolution
Many of us have gone beyond relating to food as a primal need yet we do not know the facts of hunger. For example, famine is only the tip of the iceberg, and not only do aid and charity make only a modest impact but we actually produce enough food on the planet. One of the keys is local self-subsistence ... read more: PDF 47KB

 
Agriculture Trade Facts at a Glance

#1:  Steady Decline in Commodities

Agriculture represents nearly half of world exports of primary products. Many developing nations export primarily raw commodities and the steady decline in their value is causing hardship as governments and their people struggle with progressively less income. A new strategy is urgently needed that facilitates adding value to their exports by processing, packaging, unique products, new growing processes, i.e., organics, and more.




#2:  New Implications of agri-food trade for developing nations

Macro level
Today the US, Europe and Japan account for ¾ of global food imports and about 85% of these are generated by trade among themselves. In the coming decades the fastest growth by far in world food trade will occur in the emerging markets. However, many of the competitive requirements for supply chain efficiencies, financing, and standards will be similar to those of the industrialized markets. It is expected that today’s nearly US$4 trillion global food trade will increasingly shift toward other parts of Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, reaching about US$ 4.4 trillion by 2010 and US$6.4 trillion by 2020 *. To what extent will the industrialized nations and a few powerhouse developing nations continue to dominate this trade? What are the implications for local economies in developing and emerging markets and for food security in rural areas?

New Requirements
Competitive advantage based on traditional factors of production especially low costs is necessary but not sufficient. To be competitive now requires achieving considerable quality & safety levels. This applies not only to the final product but also of the processes used to create it (HACCP, EUREP-GAP, Organic, Social Accountability, etc.).

Trade is more dynamic than ever in history and market channels, their requirements and the opportunities are changing rapidly. Two of the critical questions that emerge are: How do producers acquire the necessary intelligence, business skills, and the investment capital to adapt? and How can supply chains serve both business and development needs?

Public role
Inadequate market infrastructure and the near total absence of public support systems (extension service, R&D, marketing, etc.) typically leave developing country producers to their own resources. There is a growing need for the public sector to establish new roles to help the private sector develop more equitable participation. Similarly, there are new opportunities for local institutions to be relevant.

Producer groups doing business
Given the challenges, single farmers are unlikely to have much market success without sufficient size, capitalization, management skills, and market intelligence. Private organizations or associations must take on more roles and need to be structured and fostered so as to be viable in the long run both in terms of serving their constituents and being agile in the market.

(* Estimate includes internal trade as well as inter-country trade.)


#3:  Geographical Indications (GIs) — even for small farmers and enterprises — are a unique and powerful form of competitive advantage. They foster high-quality traditions and are an expression local agro-ecological and cultural characteristics that often have considerable value.

Sometimes known as appelations, most are in developed nations: Scotch, Roquefort, Champagne, Parmigiano, Cognac, Feta, Kona, Vidalia, Port, Bourbon, etc. …Yet some of the greatest potential lies in developing nations. Already we have Ceylon tea, Pampas beef, Tequila, Basmati, Darjeeling, Blue Mountain, Tellicherry, Café de Colombia, and more…

GIs are not easy to achieve, take years and require partners and resources. Yet viable GIs are essentially building a brand and a reputation.

Distribution of Geographic Indicators
♦ Nearly 10,000 protected GIs globally ♦ Developing countries all together, have less than 10% of these ♦ EU = 5,250 protected GIs ♦ US = 950 protected GIs

#4:  Agriculture and added value

Agriculture is an important part of the total value produced in poorer nations. In many, especially as they grow, the added value of processing and marketing represents an increasingly greater share.



Sources for graph data: compiled from Jaffee for SSA; Quedraogo, Newman, Hyson for Morocco; Pryor and Holt for others. Because data compilation methodologies vary, the figures represented are not exact in their correlation across countries but are useful to indicate the relative orders of magnitude.


#5:  Adding value to agri-food trade

In the late 1990s UNCTAD estimated that developing country industries on the whole add $40 of value to each ton of agricultural raw material compared to $184 per ton added value in developed countries.