1st Brussels High Level Lecture on Food security and Development
21.11.2011, African Museum, Tervuren.
1. Introduction by Dr Guido Gryseels, Director General, Royal Museum for Central
Africa:
Africa is the poorest region in the world so we need to closely monitor the evolution of food
insecurity and poverty to target our research efforts accordingly. Within this context, this first “High
Level Lecture on Food Security and Development” has emerged from a joint effort with LICOS. This
should be the first edition of a series of annual lectures on global issues of food security,
development, hunger and poverty reduction, etc.
2. First keynote speaker, Dr Shenggen Fan, Director General of International Food
Policy Research Institute (IFPRI):
His presentation was aimed at giving an overview of global food security.
The title of his presentation – Reducing price volatility and improving nutrition – revealed its two
main points. In the face of 925 million hungry people, his key messages were that: undernutrition
and micronutrient deficiencies remain pervasive and with high and volatile food prices, we are
witnessing a fast-changing global landscape with challenges, but also opportunities. Urgent actions
and innovative approaches are needed to go beyond business as usual. .
On the actual measurement of food insecurity and global hunger, there is a need for more reliable
data and a credible methodology (he provided the example of the somewhat contradictory data from
the FAO and the Gallup Survey). To measure the multidimensional nature of food insecurity, IFPRI
has developed (in a joint effort with the FAO) the Global Hunger Index (GHI) based on 3 indicators:
(1) the proportion of undernourished, (2) the prevalence of underweight in children and (3) the
under-five mortality rate. While highlighting the most food insecure regions of the world, Dr. Fan
underlined the Indian paradox, where hunger and poverty levels are still alarming despite an
economic growth of 8-9% per year. He also pointed out that “hidden hunger” remains pervasive and
that when evaluating food security one should not only focus on the calorie-intake, which is only one
side of the story. The lack of micronutrients – Iodine, Iron, Zinc, Vitamins – also represents a real
threat to populations, even when their calorie intake is relatively high. So there is an urgent need to
go beyond the traditional story of hunger. Over 2 billion people are said to suffer from
micronutrients deficiencies.
The situation in the Horn of Africa is particularly alarming in this respect where poor rainy seasons
combined with conflicts and poor governance have undermined efforts to ensure food security. In
China and India, the story is quite different. The % of food insecure people has actually declined. In
China this can be partly explained by two factors: the rapid economic growth and imposed export
bans which maintained food prices stable. However, Dr. Fan highlighted that food export bans are
not an optimal policy instrument to ensure food security as e.g. in East Africa where there is enough
food to feed the entire regional population, but export bans from Tanzania cause severe food
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shortages in Kenya. Dr. Fan mentioned that strategic (regional) food reserves could provide a
solution.
Away from malnutrition, Dr Fan also underlined the critical role played by price volatility, which he
argues has increased in the last years (2 price spikes in the last 3 years). This increased price
variability, he said, will hurt the poor, whether consumers or producers. He also highlighted the
increased price transmission from world markets to local markets, as well as the debatable influence
of financial speculation on price volatility. This is an ongoing debate: has price volatility on
agricultural markets attracted speculators or has the speculation itself caused high volatility? We
currently lack the data to answer this question with a high level of certainty. Amongst the other
causes of price volatility, he also identified the strong correlation between food and oil prices and the
rapid expansion of biofuels which intensified the competition over land.
One of his main conclusions on high and volatile prices is that they hurt poor consumers, but he also
raised the question of whether or not they also hurt poor producers. His answer was that food
producers will only benefit from high prices if they are net sellers of food and if input costs do not
rise in parallel. According to Dr. Fan, the smallholders have not been able to benefit from high food
prices because of high transaction costs.
Overall the causes of food security are very diverse: demographic changes, biofuels expansion, price
volatility, natural constraints, poor governance, conflicts, rising energy prices, underinvestment in
agriculture etc. Climate change and foreign land acquisition (called “land grabbing” in certain
contexts) also represent threats to food security. However, they offer opportunities as well;
agriculture can play a major role in climate change adaptation and mitigation and foreign land
acquisition can provide jobs and economic growth to the region provided that the actors involved
obey a good code of conduct, that there is sound regulations in place and that there is transparent
information on land deals. Finally, we also need to make sure that investments are based on solid
evidence.
Food security is thus increasingly influenced by non-agricultural factors. One striking illustration of
this evolution is the EU and US economic crises which will have broad implications (by jeopardizing
economic growth around the world). The current challenging context offers opportunities for
emerging countries which will see their role in the global economy increasing. The private sector has
also seen its role evolving over the last years: today, major companies all have a Social Corporate
Responsibility (SCR) plan and are increasingly making sure that their business practices are “socially
responsible”. Another notable evolution of recent years is the transformation of supply chains where
smallholders’ production goes through retailers and processors.
In the face of these challenges and opportunities, urgent policy actions are needed to move
towards business as “unusual”. This means:
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Promoting smallholder productivity (invest in R&D and infrastructure, promote climate-smart
agriculture, link smallholders to value chains and markets)
Improving smallholder resilience (strengthen reach of productive social safety nets, increase
access to risk management tools)
Investing in productive social protection programs (better-targeted and more productive
social protection to secure basic livelihoods, protect poor people from risk and vulnerability
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Reforming global food architecture (support transparent and free global trade, create global
and regional grain reserves, minimize food-fuel competition, monitor global food prices and
speculation, support global information systems)
In this context, Dr. Fan emphasized the crucial role played by country-led programs. As research
institutions, we should therefore contribute to local and regional capacity building.
His main conclusions were:
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The state of food security in the world is still very precarious
A changing global landscape presents challenges, but also opportunities
Urgent actions are needed to promote an agenda with greater support for food security
Innovative approaches are needed to go beyond business as usual
3. Transition from first to second keynote speaker by Jo Swinnen, Director LICOS and
Senior Research Fellow CEPS:
Prof. Swinnen highlighted the intriguing paradox that most food insecure people in the world are
food producers themselves and when prices go up, food security for those producers should
increase. The second keynote speaker is EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development,
Dacian Ciolos. He is the symbol of Europe’s tremendous evolution over the years; the fact that the
current Commissioner is from Romania, the most “agricultural” country in the EU-27 clearly signals
this EU evolution.
4. Commissioner Dacian Ciolos on the links between the EU Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) and global food security:
Commissioner Ciolos started his speech by underlining that the food security issue was not only a
problem of the developing countries. It is also a high political issue within Europe and therefore
needs to be dealt with in a coherent and coordinated manner at the international level. He also
underlined the recent interest of China and Middle-Eastern countries in acquiring land in Bulgaria for
example, thereby signaling a somewhat “offensive” approach to food security.
In this global context, the European Commission has proposed to maintain a strong budget for the
CAP. Some calls had been heard to limit the national contributions to the CAP budget, thereby
attempting to “renationalize” it; this would have been in complete contradiction with the calls being
heard to reinforce the economic (and political) integration of the EU to overcome the current crises.
The Commission has also attached three core priorities to this budget: (1) ensuring food security, (2)
managing natural resources in a sustainable way and (3) maintaining territorial cohesion. The main
idea is thus to maintain agricultural support in Europe but in a more consistent and sustainable
manner, e.g. by dealing with agricultural and environmental issues within the same policy (rather
than having an administrative and unrealistic distinction between them). Farmers today should
therefore be seen as food producers AND public goods providers (rather than one OR the other). The
goal of the Commission is to make sure that European agriculture becomes economically but also
ecologically competitive.
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On the impacts of direct payments on developing countries, Commissioner Ciolos insisted that the
CAP was not a dumping policy anymore, as support had been decoupled from production and as
export subsidies had been almost completely abolished (representing only 1% of the current CAP
budget). He also underlined that the EU is now focusing on exports of high quality products, which do
not undermine the production of basic commodities in developing countries. The EU is also the
region of the world which is making the biggest effort in terms of importing products from
developing countries (it imports more from developing countries than the US, Canada, Australia, NZ,
Japan together). To ensure food security at the global level, Commissioner Ciolos believes in the
development of well-designed agricultural policies at the regional level. The idea here would not be
for the EU to impose its model to other regions of the world but rather to help Africa for example to
develop its own agricultural policy. This idea of “regional management” is crucial today, in the age or
resource scarcity and environmental constraints. The EU should also make sure that its agricultural
policy is coherent with its trade and development policies and he reminded that Europe had made a
great effort to try and reach the Doha Agreement, favourable to developing countries.
He also emphasized the new role played by research and innovation in meeting future challenges.
The Commission would like to develop specific instruments aimed at reducing the distance between
the production of knowledge and its application on the ground. Finally, regarding the impact of price
volatility, Commissioner Ciolos highlighted the crucial role played by market transparency.
As a conclusion, he called the FAO to go beyond its current mandate and endorse a more important
role to ensure a better coordination of agricultural policies around the world. A reformed FAO could
make a significant contribution to the food security effort, while at the same time ensuring more
transparency on agricultural markets (which would reduce price volatility).
5. Q/A
The following questions/issues were raised:
Dr. Fan mentioned that strategic (regional) food reserves could provide a solution to food insecurity,
but examples from the past have shown that strategic food reserves (as e.g. in China) were extremely
expensive and inefficient.
Dr. Fan explained that it is very important to take into account factors as the local population (and
population growth), the local needs, optimal location etc. in setting up efficient and cost-effective
strategic (regional) food reserves that could serve as a short-term solution to food insecurity.
Which policy measures could transform net consumers into net producers? In other worlds, which are
the optimal policies which would benefit both the consumers and the producers?
Dr Fan emphasized that stable prices benefit both groups, but that volatility also affects both groups.
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