Global Food for Thought

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "Historic Moment"

HISTORIC MOMENT

Bread for the World’s new Hunger Report raises the stakes right from its very first sentence:

“2011 is a time of opportunity to achieve lasting progress against global hunger and malnutrition.”

Then it raises them further:

“Feed the Future, a bold new U.S. initiative, may be the best opportunity to come along in decades for the United States to contribute to lasting progress against hunger and malnutrition.”

The message implied in these two sentences:  We’ve arrived at an historic moment, let’s not squander it.

The Bread report seeks to raise the clamor among a vast audience and motivate a wide and deep constituency that can hammer home this message to one particular group of Americans: all members of the incoming Congress, both old and new.  They have the opportunity to join with the administration and all the other gathering forces – foundations, humanitarian organizations, private sector companies, universities, international institutions, foreign governments – working to end global hunger and malnutrition through agriculture development in the poorest countries.  Congress can do its part by fully approving the president’s funding request for Feed the Future -- $3.5 billion over 3 years -- and declaring this work to be a vital and permanent pillar of American foreign policy.

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Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "Watching the Numbers"

 

WATCHING THE NUMBERS

There’s plenty of numbers-watching going on in Washington D.C. and other world capitals these days.  Mainly, the numbers with currency symbols in front of them, the numbers in government budgets.  Holding the line on spending is a top priority while the world continues to be mired in a global economic mess.  The new Congress in Washington promises to be particularly vigilant, with a keen eye on shrinking some of those numbers.

Here’s some other numbers that emerged this week that governments need to be watching very closely:

• $1.026 trillion.  That’s the global cost of importing food in 2010, according to estimates of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization highlighted by various news reports.
• 15%.  That’s the increase of this food import bill, which is up from $893 billion last year.
• $1.031 trillion.  That was the global cost of importing food in 2008, when soaring prices and sudden shortages triggered rioting in dozens of countries, from Haiti to Egypt and beyond, and added 100 million people to the desperate ranks of the chronically hungry.  Notice that we’re getting close to that cost again.
• $921 billion.  That was the FAO’s estimate for the global food import bill in June this year.  Then prices started rising globally, making it more expensive for countries to import food.

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Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "Hidden Hunger Exposed"

   

HIDDEN HUNGER EXPOSED

Hidden hunger was brought out into the open in a big way this week – and so was a promising solution.

As we have often noted, nearly one billion people suffer from a chronic lack of food – this is a visible hunger all too familiar to us from scenes of famine and food shortages.  But more than two billion people suffer from what is called hidden hunger – a chronic lack of micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron and zinc.  This under-nutrition isn’t as visible because the sufferers may be consuming enough calories; they may appear to be reasonably well fed.  But a lack of access to more nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables and animal products leaves them deprived of vital nutrients that makes them vulnerable to blindness, increased risk of disease and premature death, and leaves countless children stunted mentally and physically.

But critical help appears to be right around the corner.  At a conference hosted by HarvestPlus this week in Washington DC, crop breeders, nutritionists and economists gathered to examine the potential benefits of biofortification, or boosting the nutritional aspects of staple crops.

At the vanguard of these efforts is the orange-fleshed sweet potato, high in provitamin A, which is already being planted by farmers and available in rural markets in Mozambique and Uganda.  In the next couple of years, crop breeders say, a multitude of other fortified crops will be ready to be deployed: beans with iron in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); pearl millet with iron in India; cassava with vitamin A in Nigeria and the DRC; maize with vitamin A in Zambia; rice with zinc in Bangladesh and India; wheat with zinc in India and Pakistan.

Join the Live Economist Debate on Biotechnology

 
 
Biotechnology is not a system of farming. It reflects no specific philosophy nor is it guided by a set of principles or performance criteria. It is a bag of tools than can be used for good or evil, and lots in between. 

This house believes that biotechnology and sustainable agriculture are complementary, not contradictory.  Do you agree with the motion?

JOIN THIS LIVE DEBATE

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Roger Thurow's Essay in Foreign Affairs

“The Fertile Continent:  Africa, Agriculture’s Final Frontier”

November/December 2010 Issue of Foreign Affairs

Reprinted by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, November/December 2010. Copyright (2010) by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.

Throughout this past summer, in the long-suffering hills of western Rwanda, legions of farmers toiled at their sloped plots. With hoes and axes, they crafted flat, wide terraces and a simple water-management system that would keep valuable topsoil in place. Their efforts were part of a $800 million investment program supported by the United States and other international donors that is meant to boost Rwanda's agricultural production and reduce its dependence on food aid. The farmers were reshaping their land in the hope that a new watershed, along with better-quality seeds and fertilizer, would double or triple their harvests of corn, potatoes, beans, and rice by the next season.

As he patrolled the hillsides one day last June, Innocent Musabyimana, the project's manager in the Ministry of Agriculture, expressed a kind of desperate optimism. "To make our agriculture sustainable, we have to do this," he said. "Ninety percent of the country is like this, all hills. If we don't do anything, in 40 years, with the erosion, the farms will be gone." Musabyimana opened his arms wide. "This," he said, taking in the sweeping panorama, "is our future."

He meant the future of Rwanda and the future of Africa. But he might as well have been talking about the future of the world, too. For what is happening on the hills near Lake Kivu is at the vanguard of an effort to reverse years of neglect in agricultural development, tackle widespread chronic hunger, and satisfy the world's ever-expanding appetite.