MALNUTRITION: A roundup on the launch of "Grow"

June 01, 2011

OXFAM launches a new targeted campaign today that focuses on growing more food and removing the barriers that contribute to starvation. The campaign called "Grow" is being compared to previous high profile efforts such as "Make Poverty History"
OXFAM says that the system that controls the food growing process is broken and unfair. They say that examples of the broken system show up in the problems of climate change, land grabs, food price hikes and intensive farming. "Grow" hopes to get people involved to speak up against the vested interests that are behind these problems.
OXFAM hopes that "Grow" will spur change in three areas; sustainable production, equality and resilience of the food system. A sustainable food system has to be created to meet the growing demand for food and with less farm land and water to meet that demand. They also hope to make the system more equitable as the rich world throws away too much food. Finally, OXFAM hopes to improve the resilience of farming as a single flood can lead an entire nation to starvation.
Here is some commentary from a few bloggers about the launch of Grow. First, the pro side from OXFAM consultant Alex Evans who blogs at Global Dashboard.
For one thing, the campaign marks a major break with traditional single issue campaigning. This isn’t just a campaign about biofuels, or landgrabs, or making agricultural trade fair, or climate change, or competition for land and water, or women’s rights. It’s about all these things, united beneath the overall banner of ‘food justice in a resource constrained world’. I’ve felt for ages that NGOs need to move on from single issue campaigning towards ways of pushing for whole system change – and Oxfam are going for it in a big way.

For the con side, Ranil Dissanayake from Aid Thoughts has the following critique.
This wouldn’t be Aid Thoughts if I didn’t have some gripes, though. There are two big areas where I’m doubtful. The first relates to one of the good things about the report: it recognizes that there are really powerful vested interests aligned against the changes the report calls for. The problem is that I don’t see a clear strategy for dealing with these interests beyond ‘naming and shaming’ and advocacy for better practices. I suspect this will only make private vested interests (normally corporations) change just enough to buy breathing space. Real success in the sphere depends on changing the incentives at work for these vested interests, by changing their risk/reward/cost ratios. This is the hardest thing to do, but ultimately it’s the one with the biggest potential. How do we go about it? I’m not sure, but I’d like to see an attempt at a strategy.
The other major concern I have with the report is the high regard it has for smallholder farming.
It is true that some countries have made amazing advances in smallholder agriculture, and a couple have even developed or gone very far down that road on the back of smallholdings. These are outliers, and Vietnam is one of them, though in part attributable to the fact that there are over 2000 rivers in the country over 10km long – that’s a lot of available water. Grow goes so far as to smash some myths about smallholder farming, that they are unproductive and averse to risk, markets and technology. They are correct to do so. However, one thing they don’t address is that smallholder farms have a far, far tougher job colluding to take advantage of the massive economies of scale available to large farms. Irrigation, mechanization, crop rotation, research and development, fertilizer purchase, agri-processing: all are far easier for a larger agricultural unit.
Finally, a detailed account of the launch and why OXFAM thinks the campagn is important from their press release.
A broken food system and environmental crises are now reversing decades of progress against hunger according to new Oxfam analysis. Spiralling food prices and endless cycles of regional food crises will create millions more hungry people unless we transform the way we grow and share food. Tomorrow, Oxfam launches a new global campaign to ensure everyone has enough to eat always.

Oxfam’s GROW campaign is backed by high profile supporters including former President Lula of Brazil, Archbishop Emeritus Tutu and actress Scarlett Johansson.
A new report, ‘Growing a Better Future’, catalogues the symptoms of today’s broken food system: growing hunger, flat-lining yields, a scramble for fertile land and water and rising food prices. It warns we have entered a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth’s natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people.
New research predicts that the price of staple foods such as maize, already at an all time high, will more than double in the next 20 years. Up to half of this increase will be due to climate change. The world’s poorest people who spend up to 80 percent of their income on food will be hardest hit.
Eight million people face chronic food shortages in East Africa today. Increasing numbers of regional and local crises could see demand for food aid double in the next 10 years.
By 2050 demand for food will rise 70 per cent yet our capacity to increase food production is declining. The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of one percent in the next decade.


Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam said, “Our world is capable of feeding all of humanity yet one in seven of us are hungry today. In this new age of crisis, as climate change impacts become increasingly severe and fertile land and fresh water supplies become increasingly scarce, feeding the world will get harder still. Millions more men, women and children will go hungry unless we transform our broken food system.”
Oxfam’s GROW campaign will expose the governments whose failed policies are propping up the broken food system and the clique of 300 – 500 powerful companies who benefit from and lobby hard to maintain it. For example:
India: Despite doubling the size of it economy between 1990 and 2005 the number of hungry people in India increased by 65 million - more than the population of France - because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them. Today one in four of the world’s hungry people live in India.
United States: US policy ensures 15 percent of the world’s maize is diverted to engines, even at times of severe food crisis. The grain required to fill the petrol tank of an SUV with biofuels is sufficient to feed one person for a year.
Traders: Four global companies control the movement of most of the world’s food. Three companies - Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill – control an estimated 90 per cent of the world’s grain trade. Their activities help drive volatile food prices and they profit from them. In the first quarter of 2008, at the height of a global food price crisis, Cargill’s profits were up 86 percent and the company is now heading for its most profitable year yet on the back of further disruptions to global food supplies.
Oxfam has been responding to food crises for 70 years. Now it is calling on governments - especially the powerful G20 - to lead the transformation to a fairer more sustainable food system by investing in agriculture, valuing the world’s natural resources, managing the food system better and delivering equality for women who produce much of the world's food. It is calling on the private sector to shift to a business model where profit does not come at the expense of poor producers, consumers and the environment.
Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam said: “For too long governments have put the interests of big business and powerful elites above the interests of the seven billion of us who produce and consume food. G20 Governments meeting in France this year must now kick start the transformation of our global food system.
"The G20 must invest in the 500 million small scale farms in developing countries which offer the greatest potential for increasing global yields – and they must help them adapt to a changing climate. They must regulate commodity markets and reform flawed biofuels policies to keep food prices in check.
“Governments must also ensure that women, who produce much of the world’s food, have the same rights to land, resources and opportunities as men – with equal rights women producers could feed themselves, their families, and up to 150 million additional people,” said Hobbs.
Former President Lula of Brazil said: "We can't wait anymore. Political leaders and global companies must act now to ensure that all people can put food on their table. There are no excuses. We have the capacity to feed everyone on the planet now and in the future. If the political will is there no one will be denied their fundamental human right to be free from hunger."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: "Many governments and companies will be resistant to change through habit, ideology or the pursuit of profit. It is up to us – you and me – to persuade them by choosing food that’s produced fairly and sustainably, by cutting our carbon footprints and by joining with Oxfam and others to demand change.”
Oxfam global ambassador Scarlett Johansson said, “Sharing food is one of life’s pleasures. On a global scale, we don’t share fairly. Close to a billion people go to bed hungry every night. The fact is: the global food system is a broken one. All of us, from Kentucky to Kenya, deserve enough to eat. That’s why I’m joining Oxfam’s GROW Campaign.”
http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/roundup-on-launch-of-grow.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FEOch+%28Poverty+News+Blog%29

POVERTY: Soaring Food Prices Hit Poor Countries, Spur Farmers

John Ydstie : February 27, 2011

 Seth Perlman/AP
A farmer harvests a corn crop near Monticello, Ill., last September. The price of wheat and corn jumped 70 percent in the second half of 2010.


Sharp increases in food prices helped spark the political upheaval gripping northern Africa and the Middle East. Bad weather in key growing regions was among a confluence of factors driving prices to record levels, a U.N. analyst says. But the price spikes are giving U.S. farmers an incentive to boost production.
Underlying the food inflation is a more than 70 percent increase in the price of wheat and corn in the second half of last year.
Elevated food prices are hitting hardest in poor countries such as Haiti, Bolivia and Mozambique, where people spend more than half their income on food.
"People who are already undernourished may have to forgo a meal. It does add to the number of hungry people," says Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist for the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.
He says the situation is alarming, but not yet a food crisis like the one the world faced three years ago.

Demand, Diversion And Drought
He says many factors have contributed to the upward pressure on food prices. There's demand for more varied diets in emerging economies such as China. And crops are being diverted for use in biofuels such as ethanol.
But the primary cause of the big spike in fuel prices is last year's bad weather: Russia's drought; rains in Pakistan, norther Europe and the U.S.; rains and floods in Australia; and dry conditions in Latin America.
"It looked like Mother Nature picked up the worst months to behave very bad," Abbassian says.
Russia's wheat-growing region was hit by the worst drought in 100 years. The huge wheat exporter halted shipments to foreign customers, including Egypt. Last week, Russian officials said they may extend the ban.
U.N. Food And Agriculture Organization's Food Price Index Hits Record Level

Annual, adjusted for inflation



Source: U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization: Credit: NPR
The ruined harvest left global wheat stocks very low and pushed prices up sharply.

Investment Lags
A decade ago, that might not have happened because government crop subsidies in the U.S. and Europe produced huge stockpiles. But a change in world trade rules ended those subsidies and the stockpiles disappeared. It was hoped investment in Third World farmers would take up the slack. But Abbassian says governments, including the U.S., have invested just a fraction of what was pledged.
"In spite of the declarations and statements made, really the investment in agriculture is lagging behind," he says.
Smaller stockpiles have led to more volatile prices. That volatility has attracted speculators who profit from rapid price changes. But, so far, there's little evidence that speculators are significantly boosting overall prices.
Bad weather may have set the stage for this spike in grain prices, but Greg Page, president of the global food giant Cargill, says that while supplies are tight, prices have risen more than was necessary. He says that's partly because of instantaneous global communication.

A Hoarding Instinct
"People read stories about food prices going up and/or food being short and there's a natural hoarding instinct, I think, wired into all of us and people buy that extra 5-pound bag of flour or 2-liter bottle of vegetable oil," Page says.
OrganizationMultiply that by 100 million households, he says, and concern about a food shortage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Governments got into the hoarding act, too, he says.
"The Saudis have made a public announcement about their intention to double their strategic reserve," he says. "The Algerians have made a similar statement in the last several weeks."
Other nations are buying up grain stocks, too. All of this has pushed prices higher. Luckily, Page says, those high prices are a signal for farmers.

An Incentive To Boost Production
Greg Westland produces hard red spring wheat and soybeans on about 5,600 acres in Cando, N.D. The snow is still deep in North Dakota, but Westland is preparing for planting, spending days in his shop with his sons, prepping equipment. The high prices have convinced him to try to boost the number of bushels he produces per acre.
"We're adding more fertilizer, shooting for a 60-bushel hard red spring wheat crop up here and a 42-to-45-bushel soybean crop," Westland says.
Those yields would be about 20 percent above average. Cargill's Page says brisk fertilizer and seed sales indicate that farmers are responding.
"If nature gives them any collaboration at all I think we are clearly in a position to feed the world handsomely and actually to build some stocks this year based on the number of acres we would predict will be planted," he says.
As long as the weather cooperates. The U.N.'s Abbassian agrees. Both also acknowledge that climate change adds another level of uncertainty. Another wild card: the recent run up in the price of oil, which, if it persists, could boost already high food prices.

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/27/134069431/soaring-food-prices-hit-poor-countries-spur-farmers