Is increased agricultural production the only path forward to feed our planet's growing masses?
Credit: Wikipedia
ON 25 AUGUST 2011, the Waite Research Institute in Adelaide hosted a debate on food security and what is needed to feed our rapidly growing population.
The motion in question was this: Increasing agricultural production is the only sure way to feed 9 billion people by 2050. Here are the cases that were presented:
Affirmative argument #1 by Andrew Jacobs
TO FEED 9 BILLION PEOPLE BY 2050 we will need 60 to 70% more food, and for grain and forage crops we are going to need to double production. Farm productivity relates to all farming processes right up until the produce leaves the farm gate for market and so includes issues such as on-farm storage of seed.
Although there are a number of challenges to agriculture, more food can be grown where it's needed in the hunger hot-spots. Although a large amount of food is wasted in the developed world, estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to be between 95 and 115kg per year per person, in developing nations only 6 to 11kg per year of food is wasted per person.
So whilst decreasing waste is clearly important, we argue that it won't provide enough food for the increased population and it won't be where it is needed in the developing world. Addressing value chain inefficiencies will not provide a step change in supply.
Increasing productivity provides a livelihood for people, allowing them the opportunity to stay in their communities. This leads to local economic growth, better education, health, political stability and food stability. Implicit with increases in agricultural productivity is the more efficient use and distribution of scarce resources such as fuel and fertiliser.
Critically, today per capita food production in rich countries is twice that of the poor nations. In our view this is the key to increasing productivity to feed the estimated 9 billion people.
Andrew Jacobs is a genetic engineer at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, inside the University of Adelaide.
Negative argument #1 by Andrew Stoler
IT'S NOT CLEAR WE NEED MORE FOOD, but it's clear that government trade policies are preventing available food from reaching those who need it.
While people starve, trade policies interfere with food availability and inflate prices. Of 81 developing countries surveyed by the FAO, 25 applied export controls on food production during the 2007-2008 food price surge. While hunger is real, food scarcity is not.
Trade can be an excellent buffer for localised price fluctuations originating in a domestic market. Year-to-year variations in domestic food production can be more effectively and much less expensively buffered by adjustments in the quantities exported and imported.
But to do this trade has to be able to flow between nations; and the tendency which has emerged - in recent crises - for countries to try to insulate themselves from international markets, needs to be reversed.
Bad policies undermine food security by stimulating or conserving production in areas where it would not otherwise occur and by confounding the transmission of price signals to competitive producers elsewhere.
Government support still accounts for 22% of the total receipts of agricultural producers in OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development) countries and more than half of that support is delivered in ways that are highly distorting of trade and competition.
If we do not change the bad trade policies of today, producing more food in 40 years' time will not ensure that we actually feed 9 billion people.
Andrew Stoler is the executive director of the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide.
