Global Food for Thought

Sustainable Intensification: Making Science the Solution for African Agriculture

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @globalagdev and #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21^st.

By Mr. Michael Hoevel

Michael Hoevel is the Deputy Director of Agriculture for Impact at Imperial College London.

As the expiration date of the Millennium Development Goals draws closer, our promise to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty remains largely unfulfilled. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 200 million people (nearly 23% of the population) are chronically hungry and 40% of children under the age of five are stunted due to malnutrition. As a global community, we urgently need to establish new models for addressing these challenges.

Science-based agriculture offers such a solution – not only tackling food insecurity but also overlapping with multiple, interacting global threats, from managing scarce supplies of land and water to minimizing carbon emissions and post-harvest losses. Whilst no silver bullet exists to eliminate these threats, scientific approaches can go a long way to manage them. Across the agricultural value chain from agricultural research laboratories to agronomists and extension workers in the field and processors and exporters, scientific interventions can help people at each step to make African agriculture a great deal more productive and resilient, as well as more viable as a livelihood and business for the continent’s farmers.

The Chicago Council’s Global Food Security Symposium and its upcoming report, Advancing Global Food Security: The Power of Science, Trade, and Business, will discuss this very question of how to capitalize on the power of science to end hunger.  Similarly, a recent report from the Montpellier Panel outlines a new paradigm for African smallholders focusing on ‘sustainable intensification’. The term refers to equipping farmers with the innovations required to navigate the joint goals of producing more nutritious food and boosting incomes whilst preserving the environment, adapting to climate change and reducing food waste.

Commentary - The Nexus between Science, Business & Collaboration

This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDev and use #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21.

By Dr. Margaret Zeigler

Margaret Zeigler is the executive director of the Global Harvest Initiative

On May 21, leaders from numerous sectors will participate in the Chicago Council Global Food Security Symposium to identify opportunities to alleviate hunger and poverty through agricultural development. In February of 2013, I visited the Philippines to conduct an in-depth look at how that nation’s government and civil society organizations are implementing new approaches to improve food and nutrition security. During meetings with policymakers, farmers, research institutions and the private sector, I witnessed a growing nexus among science, government and business as each sector begins to collaborate to advance the Philippine agricultural system, educate the next generation, and improve livelihoods of those in rural farming communities.

On the trip, I saw this nexus come to life through the CoCoPal Program. CoCoPal, named after the cocoa, coconut and Palayamanan concept of rice-based diversified farming, is implemented by ACDI/VOCA, one of GHI’s consultative partner organizations. In 2009, ACDI/VOCA was awarded a $6.6 million USDA Food for Progress grant. CoCoPal is improving the incomes and food security of 25,000 smallholder farmers and 125,000 indirect beneficiaries through value-chain growth and integration of diversified farming systems. The program also improves post-harvest processing facilities, and practices and standards for cultivation of cocoa, coconut and rice.

Let’s take a closer look at how the program is fostering science, business and collaboration.

Commentary - Freezing the Footprint of Food

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @globalagdev and #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21^st.

By Dr. Jason Clay

Jason Clay is World Wildlife Fund's senior vice president for market transformation.

By the year 2050, our planet will be home to another two billion people. How and where we will we feed everyone has become one of the most pressing conservation issues of the 21st century.

Farmers will need to produce twice as much food as they do now to meet population demands. Where will this food come from? Today, we use over a third of the planet’s surface to grow food. When you subtract deserts, mountains, likes, rivers, cities and highways, food production is spread over 58 percent of the land. Take out national parks and other protected areas and this figure rises to 70 percent of the planet’s available surface.

We need to freeze the footprint of food—find ways to double the productivity of farming, so that we can produce twice as much food and fiber on the same amount of land. This will require many actors working on several strategies simultaneously.

At WWF, we have identified eight steps, when taken together, could produce enough food for all and still maintain a living planet.

1. Eliminate Waste in the Food Chain

Today, we waste one out of every three calories produced. In developing countries, waste is a result of post-harvest loss, lack of infrastructure, and lack of storage. In countries like the United States and in the European Union, waste usually occurs in the home or in restaurants as unused food is thrown away.

If we eliminated waste in the food chain today—by recycling post-harvest loss, improving infrastructure and eliminating post-consumer waste—we could halve the amount of new food needed by 2050.

2. Harness Technology to Advance Plant Breeding

The study of genetics, combined with 21st Century technology, can help us scale up the amount of nutrients in different foods. At the same time, it will improve productivity, drought tolerance and disease resistance in an era of climate change.

WWF works with the African Orphan Crops consortium, including partners like the Beijing Genomics Institute, Mars, Incorporated and the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), to map the genomes of two dozen of the most important food crops in Africa. Once sequenced, this information will be put into the public domain so plant breeders can provide better planting materials for farmers.  

Commentary - InterAction’s Food Security Pledge: $1 Billion of Potential Leverage

This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDev and use #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21.

By Mr. Sam Worthington

Sam Worthington is the president and CEO of InterAction, an alliance of more than 180 U.S.-based NGOs.

Last fall InterAction pledged that its member NGOs would spend more than $1 billion in private resources on food security, agriculture and nutrition work over the next three years.  It may come as a surprise that U.S.-based NGOs have this amount of private resources to commit to ensuring more families worldwide have the food they need. Thanks to support from the individuals, foundations and corporations who believe in their cause and approach, they do. 

In fact, the U.S. NGO community is one of the largest donors in the world. Privately-funded international expenses for U.S. NGOs total $14 billion per year, according to the Hudson Institute. And in many countries, NGOs’ spending in the areas of food security, agriculture and nutrition exceeds that of the U.S. government.

Why highlight this with a pledge? Our hope is that the pledge will create opportunities for donors such as the U.S. government or corporations to partner with U.S. NGOs in new ways and, ultimately, to better leverage private dollars. By doing so, our goal is to increase the impact of food security, agriculture and nutrition efforts so that we are able to help more people lift themselves out of poverty.  In a world where one in eight people is malnourished, innovative and effective partnering is a must.

With programs in every country in the world, U.S. NGOs are at the forefront on the issues of food security, agriculture and nutrition. They work alongside local communities to help people become more self-sufficient, and their efforts complement U.S. government programs such as Feed the Future. But U.S. NGOs cannot build local capacity or solve local food security problems at scale by working alone.

There is enormous potential for governments, the private sector, and U.S. NGOs to work together and align our efforts in sectors such as food security and nutrition. Governments bring public dollars and the ability to change public policy, while the private sector offers access to markets, value chains and large distributive capacity. U.S. NGOs’ added value includes decades-long connections with communities and expertise working with and strengthening local civil society, including farmer cooperatives —critical assets given the need for development dollars to deliver lasting results.

Commentary - Lesson from a Famine: Markets Matter

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDevand use #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21. 

By Mr. Roger Thurow

Roger Thurow is senior fellow with Global Agricultural Development Initiative at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Roger Thurow’s reporting in Ethiopia was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Ten years after the Ethiopian famine of 2003, when international food aid rushed in to feed 14 million people, another World Food Program (WFP) tent has been erected on an open field.  But this isn’t a scene of food distribution.  It is a scene of food purchase.

The action happens on the grounds of the Sidama Elto Farmers’ Cooperative Union in Awassa, Ethiopia. Sidama Elto is one of 16 cooperative unions in Ethiopia that have signed forward contracts with the WFP for the purchase of more than 28,000 metric tons of maize grown by their smallholder farmer members.  The maize, which is part of 112,000 tons of food the WFP purchased in Ethiopia last year, will be used for WFP relief distributions in the country.  Ten years ago, many of those farmers and their families were receiving food aid from the WFP.

One of the major lessons in agricultural development over the past decade is this: Markets Matter.  The 2003 famine tragically, and incomprehensibly, followed two years of bumper harvests in Ethiopia.  The surplus production overwhelmed the country’s weak and inefficient markets.  There were no export channels; the domestic market’s ability to absorb the harvests was crippled by woeful infrastructure.  The food piled up on farms and prices collapsed, upwards of 80% in some areas.  Farmers lost incentive to plant the next year.  Then the drought hit, and feast turned to famine.  The markets had failed before the weather did.

That gobsmacking turnaround triggered a reversal of the neglect of agricultural development that had set in since the 1980s, as I noted in my TedxChange talk last month.  In the past decade, science and research geared toward improving the work of smallholder farmers (who produce the majority of the food grown in the developing world) have been reinvigorated; so too have trade and business efforts accelerated to provide greater market incentives and opportunities for the farmers.  Prior to 2003, boosting agricultural production – growing more food -- was the primary focus and developing markets was considered to be a “second-generation problem.”  Now, markets share top billing with production, as it should; markets provide incentive to produce more.

Commentary - Prioritizing Reduction of Food Losses and Waste for Food Security

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDev and use #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21.

By Betty Bugusu

Betty Bugusu is the Managing Director for the International Food Technology Center (IFTC) at Purdue University.

Food security is one of the most pressing challenges in the world today.  The challenge is particularly important as the world population is projected to reach over 9 billion people resulting in increased food demand by the year 2050.  Over the years, increasing agriculture production and productivity has been viewed and supported as the solution for fixing the problem.  Despite the great progress made in this arena, such as improved crop varieties and productive farming methods, many parts of the world are still food insecure.  Furthermore production agriculture is constrained by diminishing natural resources (land, water, and energy) and climate change.  Undoubtedly, food security is a complex issue that requires multiple solutions beyond production as well as beyond agriculture. 

Reduction of food losses and waste is one of the key solutions to improving food security.  According to the 2010 United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, about one third of the food produced worldwide is lost.  Food losses occur in developing countries, predominantly after harvest, due to poor post-harvest handling and storage as well as limited or lack of value addition activities and markets.  Waste is prevalent in industrialized nations, mainly at retail and consumer levels due to various reasons, such as large portion sizes, strict standards, and cosmetics issues.  Reducing the amount of food lost requires increased investment in research and development to develop technologies and innovations in the post-production segment of the value chain.  This is especially true in developing countries where reducing losses can have immediate and major positive impact on hunger, malnutrition, and poor health, affecting the population.  It would effectively compliment the current incremental advances in agriculture production as well as reducing the strain on the available natural resources. 

Until recently, limited attention was given to developing post-production programs to reduce these losses and waste.  However, there is now a renewed acknowledgement of the role of food loss reduction efforts in improving food availability amongst governments, industry, and international organizations worldwide. 

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Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - A Mother's Day Parable From Uganda

By Roger Thurow

A mother knows.

“This child is brilliant,” Harriet Okaka says about her one-year-old son, Abraham.  She isn’t bragging, just observing.  “I can tell, just by looking at him,” she says, “the way he plays, the way he is.”

Harriet, 33, is a smallholder farmer in the northern Uganda village of Okii, near the town of Lira.  Abraham is her sixth child.

“The other children started walking by the time they were two years old.  Abraham is walking at one,” she says.  The mother has noticed things.  When Abraham sees an animal, he motions for it to come, she notes.  When he hears music, he claps and dances.  “These are indications that his brain is developing well,” she says.

On a hot afternoon, Harriet and Abraham are sitting under a mango tree, savoring the shade with a dozen other women and their young children.  A mango falls from a branch and bounces in the middle of them.  Abraham is the first to react, quickly crawling a couple of feet to grab the fruit.  Abraham takes a bite.  All the adults laugh.  Harriet beams.

“You see,” she says.

It is no mere coincidence, Harriet believes, that Abraham was born on the day in April 2012 when she and other women farmers had completed their first training session in the art of planting orange-flesh sweet potatoes and a new variety of beans.  They are crops rich in micronutrients essential for the health of women and their children: Vitamin A in the sweet potatoes and iron in the beans.  The crops – particularly beneficial during the 1,000 Days period between when a woman becomes pregnant and the second birthday of the child -- were developed by an organization called HarvestPlus, pioneers in biofortifying staple foods with higher levels of micronutrients, and deployed by the humanitarian agency, World Vision.

Commentary - Failing to Address the Complexity of US International Food Aid Policy May Result in Perpetuating the Problem of World Hunger

By Hannah Laufer-Rottman

Hannah Laufer-Rottman is Executive Director of Palms for Life Fund, a not for profit that promotes a global alliance to end poverty and hunger. 

An encouraging new development from the Obama Administration intends to change the way the US distributes its international food aid. But will it succeed? While the goal of reducing hunger in the world continues to be a key strategic goal of this country, the effectiveness of the policy will hinge on the application of a global, regional and country-by-country understanding of how complexities can work for or against the issue.

The key elements of the policy will have to address these complexities: 1.) the hijacking of the right to food for all under an elaborate system of charity, 2.) the “weapon” element of food between nations, 3.) the necessity to distinguish between emergency and non-emergency food aid, 4.) the need to have a global, regional, and country-by-country comprehensive approach for determining  how to allocate US-grown food, local food or some combination of the two, 5.) the role of land investment in Africa as an impediment to local farming solutions, and 6.) the need to address the environmental and sustainable elements of food production.

Photo of the Week

The Karimi group of Tabalab, Kenya, receives top dress fertilizer, solar lights, maize bags, sukuma seeds, and cassava cuttings at top dress delivery in Teso. Photo courtesy of the One Acre Fund blog.