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IDL-51567 - agriculture and food security
Geography Honours
Creighton University
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Agriculture and Food Security
Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, Rajul Pandya-Lorch, and Sivan Yosef
Abstract
The discourse about agriculture and its link to food security evolved greatly over the past century. Early thinking focused solely on the ability to increase production of staple foods to meet a real or assumed growth in population. Modern discourse looks at agriculture as a way to meet food security in all its facets, including availability of and access to food and nutrition diets among individuals and households, as well as the health of producers, consumers, and the environment. Furthermore, agriculture has a role in economic growth, at the national level as well in the livelihoods of rural populations. Yet this more holistic view of agriculture and food security is often challenging to put into practice, as evidenced by case studies of countries in
Asia and Africa. Recent food price crises put agriculture and food security back on the global agenda, giving the sector a chance to reinvent itself.
Keywords: agriculture, agricultural development, food security, nutrition security
people (Hazell 2009). Agriculture was a key driver of growth and development for many of the world’s poorest countries and helped countless people improve their incomes and thus their access to food. The proportion of the world’s population going hungry declined dramatically, from about one-third in the late 1950s to about one-eighth in the late 2000s.
As world food supplies burgeoned and food prices fell, policy-makers became complacent and began to neglect agriculture. Investments in agriculture did not keep pace with other investments and agriculture’s profile on the global agenda slowly diminished. Yet the number of people going hungry remains stubbornly at just below one billion. In 2006–08, 850 million people in the world were undernourished, a number virtually unchanged from 1990–92. Of course, while the total number may have remained unchanged, large numbers of people have moved in and out of hunger over this period: in approximate terms, for every person who moved out of hunger in China after 1990, another one moved into it in Africa or South Asia. In 2011, the hot spots of hunger were South Asia (home to 40 percent of the world’s hungry people) and sub-Saharan Africa (25 percent) (FAO 2011). Going beyond calorie deficiency, about 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient malnutrition, also known as “hidden hunger,” caused by a lack of critical dietary micronutrients such as Vitamin A, zinc, and iron (WHO and FAO 2006).
The world food price crisis of 2007–08—wherein weather-related shocks such as droughts and floods were compounded by escalating demand for agricultural products from emerging economies, high oil prices, the expansion of biofuels, and panic-induced protectionist policies— sharply raised food prices, ignited food riots around the world, and threw many millions of people into hunger and poverty. The factors that pushed up prices then were again at play a few years later, making it evident that a fundamental transformation of the world food system was underway. Agriculture is no longer about food production only; the purpose of agriculture has broadened to development outcomes such as nutrition and health, sustainability of natural resources, and remunerative employment. An Evergreen Revolution—increases in agricultural productivity without associated ecological harm—is needed.
This chapter reviews the evolution of food security and agricultural development; assesses how agriculture has contributed to improving food security; highlights the experiences of India, China, and Ethiopia; and looks forward to opportunities for leveraging agriculture to improve food and nutrition security.
Today the internationally accepted definition of food security is that emerging from the World Food Summit of 1996: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” This definition reinforces the multidimensionality of food security—availability, access, and absorption/utilization of food:
Availability refers to the physical availability of food in desired quantities as determined by production net of feed, seed, and wastage plus net imports and draw- down of stocks. As noted in the World Food Summit definition, food security also depends upon the ability to obtain food at all times, including through economic or climatic shocks or non-harvest seasons, as well as the availability of locally acceptable foods, as compared to taboo foods which may be proscribed on the basis of culture, religion, health, or economic value.
Access is determined by the bundle of entitlements related to people’s initial endowments and what they can acquire, especially in terms of physical and economic access to food.
Absorption is the ability to biologically utilize the food consumed, which is turn is related to the availability of safe drinking water, sanitation, hygienic environment, primary health care, and nutritional knowledge. This broadening of food security toward nutrition security is a recent evolution.
Food security and agricultural development
Agriculture and food security have been intertwined throughout human history. Agricultural growth is critical for improving food security, most immediately by increasing food production and availability. Agriculture grows crops and livestock for food and raw materials and is the main source of calories for the world’s population. The availability of food is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to assure food security. The rural poor are often net consumers of food, and poor households can spend over half of their income on food (Headey 2011). Agriculture, as the employer of 60 to 80 percent of people in low-income countries, raises the incomes of the poorest and most food-insecure people. Non-farm employment that is linked to agriculture, such as food processing, manufacturing, and transportation, also employs many rural people. By
management practices that protect farmers from excessive pesticides and consumers from toxins can ensure that the relationship between agriculture and ecology is a positive one. At the same time, though, improving the safety of food cannot raise food prices to the point where poor households can no longer afford to purchase food, threatening their food security (Pinstrup-Andersen 2012).
Agricultural growth is a catalyst for broad-based economic growth and development in most low-income countries. Very few countries have experienced rapid economic growth without agricultural growth either preceding or accompanying it (Pinstrup-Andersen and Pandya-Lorch 1995). Agriculture’s linkages to the non-farm economy generate considerable employment, income, and growth in the rest of the economy. Economic growth raises incomes, increases the asset base, and creates wealth; it enables governments and communities to better provide the enabling environment, infrastructure, and services essential for improving food and nutrition security.
Barrett, Carter, and Timmer (2010) review how the discourse on agricultural development has evolved. They note that the critical role of agriculture in the broader development process was first documented by W. Arthur Lewis, who pointed out that “economies in which agriculture is
stagnant do not show industrial development” (Lewis 1954). Johnston and others (1961, 1975, and 1982) and Mellor (1966, 1976, and 1986) all saw higher productivity on small farms as the key to rapid poverty reduction and structural transformation. Schultz (1964) made the case for technical change in agriculture as a key driver for higher productivity. As Barrett, Carter, and Timmer (2010) note, “If W. Arthur Lewis built the intellectual framework supporting the ‘why’ of agriculture’s role in economic development, T. W. Schultz built the framework for understanding the ‘how’ of stimulating agriculture to play that role.” Eicher and Staatz (1998) observed that in the 1950s and 1960s many development economists focused on analyzing how the agricultural and nonagricultural sectors interacted during the process of economic growth. During the 1970s and 1980s attention shifted to understanding the rural economy, and in the 1990s to how the rural economy was linked to a broader world market and the role of institutions.
Barrett, Carter, and Timmer (2010) highlight a few salient points. First, they find general consensus that structural transformation is the only sustainable pathway out of poverty. This realization hones in on the role of institutions in both defining a country’s pattern of economic growth and distributing the benefits of that growth equally to its citizenry. Second, the rural non-farm sector often facilitates linkages between agriculture and the larger economy, linkages
innovation in industry occurred independently of agriculture (Diao et al. 2007). In response to this boom in population, the discourse placed agriculture in a more active role characterized by innovation. Farmers, scientists, and engineers developed technological advances such as tractors and harvesters, and pushed improvements in animal breeding and animal health. Agricultural research and extension was carried out by land grant universities, which first appeared in the 1860s and focused on teaching practical agriculture, science, and engineering. Commercial agriculture also began to emerge during this time period with the advent of the commercial fertilizer industry. When the 1930s brought on the Dust Bowl, a decade of drought and dust storms in the Great Plains of the United States, the federal government undertook conservation projects to prevent soil erosion and subsidized farmers so that they could afford to reduce agricultural intensification.
The ideas of Thomas Malthus, who espoused the nineteenth-century theory that population growth will inevitably outstrip the availability of food and other natural resources, were for a long time influential in framing the discourse on agriculture and food security. The experience of the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s and 1850s, for example, was explained away as the problem of overreliance on a single crop, the supply of which was wiped out so as not to be able to feed a booming peasant population. In reality, applying Sen’s approach to the famine would have
revealed the failings of a larger agricultural political system that reduced Irish farmers’ landholdings to subsistence levels and pushed them into famine.
Malthusian sentiments continued into the 1950s and 1960s, when agriculture focused solely on intensifying staple food production, primarily the staple cereals of maize, wheat, and rice. As developing countries emerged from war and conflict, and were buffeted by pests and droughts, agriculture was challenged to address widespread hunger. The Rockefeller Foundation responded to the challenge by leading the formation of a global agricultural research system based in Mexico with the aim of increasing the output (greater production) and yields (greater production from a given area of land) of mainly wheat, but also beans, maize, potatoes, and other staple crops. Research, science, and technology were put to work for agriculture—to fight wheat rusts, to develop improved crop and livestock varieties, to improve resistance to pests and diseases, to better use fertilizers and other chemical inputs, and so forth. The eventual success of the Mexico program in developing semi-dwarf, high-yield varieties of wheat mirrored agricultural research successes in other parts of the world, such as rice in the Philippines and tropical agriculture in Colombia and Nigeria. In the 1960s, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation helped formally establish research centers in these four countries. A series of policy consultations with other key actors such as the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the
massive extent that cereal yields and outputs doubled between 1965 and 1990, not only pulling India and other Asian countries back from the brink of famine but also generating food surpluses. An estimated 1 billion people benefited from the Green Revolution in terms of improved access to food and increased earnings from agriculture (Hazell 2009). The Green Revolution also worked to confirm the view of agriculture as a growth sector on its own.
In the 1970s, agriculture evolved to include environmental and equity considerations. Sustainable development issues came to the forefront, partly in response to concerns associated with the Green Revolution such as the overuse of agricultural chemicals, the depletion of scarce water resources, and the neglect of farmers and communities in policy making processes. These concerns encouraged a shift away from a narrow focus on increasing staple food productivity to a more complex perspective on agriculture and rural development. This latter approach coupled intensive agricultural practices with integrated pest management practices, improved water management practices, precision farming, and other tools and techniques that facilitated stewardship of natural resources. Efforts were accelerated to make the Green Revolution not only more sustainable but more pro-poor. New policies, programs, and investments were specifically designed to integrate rural communities into decision making processes about their own agricultural and rural development as a way of addressing sustainability along with equity issues.
There was growing attention to land reform, especially equitable distribution of land with secure property rights, access to credit and financial services, and programs more geared toward small- scale farmers.
During the 1970s and 1980s, agriculture diversified out of major cereals. As a means of improving food security and increasing farm incomes, investments were scaled up in raising the productivity, cultivating, and marketing of non-staple and high-value crops such as legumes, fruits, and vegetables as well as dairy, livestock, and fish. This period was marked by a few widespread successes. Many countries in Asia, for example, benefited from the diffusion of improved mung beans, with traits such as higher yields and shorter maturity times, that reached an estimated 1 million farmers. The global initiative to eradicate rinderpest, a livestock disease capable of killing more than 95 percent of infected animals, was yet another success that helped avoid enormous losses of milk, meat, and vital income to pastoralists. The initiative represents the first time an infectious disease has been eliminated since the eradication of smallpox in humans in 1977. In India, Operation Flood created a national dairy grid and accompanying infrastructure that transformed the country from being a net importer of dairy products to being a major player in world dairy markets (Spielman and Pandya-Lorch 2010).
improve the incentives of farmers to increase production and consequently improve the food security of both producers and consumers.
As the thinking about the role of agriculture in the wider economy evolved, it became clear that agricultural development could be stimulated by policies and developments outside the agricultural sector. Economic reforms could change the traditional urban biases that historically discriminate against farmers, by reducing distortionary effects of exchange rate and lending policies on the agricultural sector, and opening new market opportunities and leverage trade and aid.
China provides the most compelling example. Between 1978 and 1984, China undertook a series of reforms that transformed the country’s food and agricultural sector and reduced hunger on a scale unrivaled in history (Bruce and Li 2009). The reforms effectively reintroduced household farming after more than thirty years of collective agriculture. More than 95 percent of China’s farmland was returned to some 160 million farm households. The reforms contributed to enormous increases in rural incomes and grain production, and dramatic reduction in rural poverty. In Vietnam, similar reforms between 1987 and 1993 led to the decollectivization of agricultural production and improvement of land tenure security, liberalizing of markets, and
promotion of new economic incentives; the reforms transformed the agricultural sector and dramatically increased food security (Kirk and Do Anh Tuan 2009).
In recent years, the development community has begun to pay more attention to the linkages between agriculture, nutrition, and health. There is increasing recognition that agriculture plays a central role in the production, access, and use of nutritious and safe food. It also influences other determinants of nutrition, such as access to clean water and sanitation. Health is now considered a major goal of food systems, in part because of the triple burden of malnutrition: hunger, nutrient deficiencies, and excess calorie intake that leads to overweight and obesity in many countries. In the 2010s, many donors and governments redesigned their programs to increasingly focus on nutrition alongside hunger. The United Nations launched the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) began looking at nutrition security, and the CGIAR launched a major new program on nutrition and health. These developments reflect a change in thinking about agriculture as a tool that can bring disparate sectors together to create a healthy and safe food system that can meet the food security needs of many.
A few major factors have enabled agricultural development to substantially improve food security and feed billions of people. First, sustained investment in agricultural research and
IDL-51567 - agriculture and food security
Course: Geography Honours
University: Creighton University
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