Starting to think through the long term food agenda Alex Evans

May 14, 2008 | More on Climate and resource scarcity | One comment

Just back from ten gorgeous days on holiday in Cornwall – hence radio silence on the blogging front, and a much-needed break from frenetic activity on the food prices research front.

(As I found, Cornwall is actually about the best place you could go to get some fresh perspective on food. The Lost Gardens of Heligan have the most impressive kitchen gardens I’ve ever seen; the Eden Project fizzes with thoughts about how we’ll feed ourselves through this century; and Tim Smit - who led the construction of Eden and the restoration of Heligan - and Tony Kendle, director of the Eden Foundation, were both full of ideas about the future of food. Plus, just over the Devon border is Totnes, home of the transition towns movement - which John Robb admires as an exemplar of the idea of the resilient community.)

So with last month’s briefing paper on food prices out of the way, I’m starting to think in earnest about the content of the main pamphlet that I’ll be writing over the summer.

Although we’re not out of the woods yet on gearing up the humanitarian response to immediate term food price impacts, the issue is firmly on the agenda; by the time of the G8 at the start of July, most governments should have made their initial pledges of increased assistance. Meanwhile, the UN’s new task force on food prices met for the first time on Monday, and will pull together a framework for action over the next few months.

But what about the longer term? What are the big questions we need to think through between now and the Italian G8 in 2009, by which time we’ll need to have thought through a global plan for the longer term challenge of meeting 50 per cent higher demand by 2030 – and a population of nearly ten billion by 2050?

I’m tentatively organising my thoughts into three main clusters: questions about the future of agriculture; questions about the future of trade; and questions about the future of demand for food among wealthier consumers.

First, then, there’s the biggie: what’s the story for 21st century agriculture? We know we have to grow supply; we know the old ‘productivist’ paradigm that brought us the first green revolution has been running out of steam in many parts of the world; and we know that some of people we need to worry about in particular are poor people in rural areas (three quarter’s of the world’s impoverished), so whatever plan we come up with has to work for them.

One open question in this area is how we can move towards a green revolution that really is green in places like Africa, where there’s great scope for productivity improvements. The Asian green revolution of the 20th century achieved extraordinary things – trebling rice yields per hectare in India between the 1960s and the 1990s, for instance – but relied heavily on intensive inputs like fertiliser and water. As water gets scarcer (above all because of climate change) and fertilisers get more expensive in line with rising energy costs, it’s clear that we’ll need a more resource-efficient approach – as well as one that can adapt as far as possible to the effects of climate change.

There’s also the question of what kind of labour 21st century agriculture will need. There’s an unresolved debate here between enthusiasts for smaller, more labour intensive approaches – who argue that smaller farms tend to be more pro-poor and more sustainable – and advocates of much larger scale operations, who argue that rural to urban migration is just part of the process of development, and that in any case smallholder agriculture just can’t deliver the yields needed to feed the ten billion.

On a related note, there’s an important set of questions here about fisheries and aquaculture. Fish is a much more grain-efficient form of protein than meat (especially red meat), and demand for it has been rising sharply in recent years thanks to health-conscious consumers eating their Omega-3s. But with demand for fish and seafood forecast to double by 2030 while wild catches remain level, it’s clear that it will need to be aquaculture that picks up the slack. That raises the same questions that will apply to agriculture on land: how to make it sustainable and resource-efficienct, and how to ensure poor people benefit rather than losing out.

And there are some interesting geographical questions here too. Given the state of agriculture today and the prospect of increasing climate change over time – with very diverse impacts in different parts of the world – where will be the breadbaskets of tomorrow? Which countries will benefit most from changes in agriculture over the course of the century? If new acreage has to be brought into production, where will it be?

Second big question: where next on trade? As I noted in the Chatham House briefing paper, we can already start to see three very different trade paradigms contesting food as a key battleground. One storyline emphasises liberalisation and reliance on world markets: think of recent statements by Bob Zoellick. A second approach suggests greater national self sufficiency or reliance on import substitution: think of some of FAO’s recent statements, or the Philippines’ aim of rice self-sufficiency within three years. A third approach – being pioneered by China – emphasises long term bilateral contracts, of the kind Beijing is already making increasing use of to try to ensure energy supplies.

My hunch is that the correct answer here is “none of the above”. Long term contracts pose obvious risks for poor countries with limited clout who may find themselves with no chairs when the music stops: the effects of recent export suspensions may be just a taste of what’s to come. Self-sufficiency is much easier said than done, and in any case there are some countries who are simply going to have to rely on international markets: hands up who thinks Saudi Arabia has the wherewithal to feed 27 million people from domestic resources?

As to liberalisation: I’ve noted here before that cutting US and EU export subsidies now could lead to higher food prices in the short term. But more fundamentally, I can’t help raising an eyebrow that the trade policy medicine recommended for a long term buyer’s market (i.e. the multi-year commodity prices slump that lasted until around 2005) is, as if by magic, also just the ticket for a seller’s market in which poor consumers find staple foods out of reach.

In reality, of course, it partly depends on which consumers you’re most worried about. If it’s people in rural areas who work in agriculture, then higher prices = good. If it’s urban slums that are prone to riot if bread gets too pricey, then low prices = good. The tightrope act that many developing country governments now face is the need to keep both constituencies happy. It’s going to a need a sophisticated approach to trade policy that will take diverse forms in different countries – as ever, I’m a bit suspicious of any one-size-fits-all recommendation, most of all where trade is concerned. So we need a new story on trade: one that’s different again from all three of the storylines identified above.

Finally, there’s the question of richer consumers, in both OECD economies and emerging economies like China and India. Where do they fit in to all this, given that it’s their changing diet patterns – and especially their taste for a western diet rich in meat and dairy products – that’s the single biggest driver of rising prices?

One question that I keep coming back to is: how much meat and dairy food can I eat without exceeding my ‘fair share’ – given that I’m not especially keen to become a vegetarian? There’s an obvious analogy here to climate change, where under the principle of convergence to equal per capita shares of the atmosphere within a framework for stabilising the climate, each of us would have a personal carbon budget of perhaps a tonne or two of CO2 to play with (c.f. David’s post on climate earlier this week). So by extension, how much grain are we each allowed to consume a year – whether directly (as bread, rice etc.) or indirectly in meat and dairy products? Will food labelling in 2010 show a food’s grain footprint (you heard it here first) next to its carbon footprint? Will development NGOs start to campaign on fair shares in food?

Finally, there’s the cheerful factor that what’s good for consumers in health terms (less red meat, more fish; less saturated fat, more fruit and veg) is also – if we get the framework right – what’s good for environmental sustainability, and good for the world’s poor. It’s rare to find a genuine win-win-win in life; but looks like one of them – and that will form part of my retort to the next neo-Malthusian I come across proclaiming that we’re all finished.

So that’s where I’ve got to so far. For the next month or two I’ll be spending a lot of time immersed in books and papers, and talking to everyone I can. (And weeding the allotment. May – June: it’s a jungle out there…)