Nov. 7, 2013 Mann Library Chat in the Stacks Book Talk

Chris Barrett, Wendy Wolford, Sam Crowell and Joanna Upton

Food systems successes in 1940s-80s enabled dramatic poverty reduction and improved standards of living

Today >6(~5) bn people have adequate calories (macro- and micro-nutrients), up from only about 2 billion 50 years ago.

Successes enabled population growth, urbanization, income growth and poverty reduction over the “Long Peace” of the late 20th century

… and induced a dangerous complacency.

Background

Complacency led to underinvestment. Food output growth slowed relative to demand growth. Result: higher food prices and spikes.

OECD/IFPRI/FAO all forecast food prices 5-20% higher than 2012 levels for the next decade as demand growth continues to outpace supply expansion worldwide.

Background

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FAO Real Food Price Index

High Food Prices Associated w/ Social Unrest

High food prices associated w/ social unrest/ food riots

But omitted factors matter a lot in this association.

And most countries that suffer high food prices don’t experience any violence.

Social unrest

Source: Lagi et al. (2011)

Food Prices and Food Riots (Death Tolls)

Food security worries can spark public protest when mixed with a sense of broader injustices.

High Food Prices Also Spark Resource Grabs

High food prices also spur – and reflect – demand for land, water, genetic material, etc.

‘Land grabs’ can help sow domestic discontent Ex: Madagascar 2008/9

Resource grabs can feed other international tensions, too:- Marine fisheries- Water- ‘Gene grabs’/IP anti-

commons

Social unrest

The food security-sociopolitical stability relationship remains poorly understood and

oversimplified.Inferential challenge: Correlated common drivers (e.g., climate) make it difficult to tease out causal links.

Sociopolitical crisis is clearly a cause of food insecurity (e.g., Somalia, DRC)… but it increasingly seems a consequence as well.

Don’t really need more causes to seek peace. But do need extra push for food security investments.

Especially important b/c key food security stressors include gov’t, firm and donor policy responses intended to foster food security, but that also have important, adverse spillover effects.

An unclear relationship

There are 4 main pathways by which food security might impact sociopolitical stability:

1. Food price spikes and urban unrest: Spontaneous (largely-urban) sociopolitical instability due to food price shocks, with urban food consumers the primary agitators.

But price shocks largely proximate, not root, causes of sociopolitical unrest. Sources are pre-existing grievances and lack of adequate social safety nets or government policies to buffer the effects of market shocks.

High prices can unite/mobilize the already-angry vs. the state or ethnic minorities (e.g., food traders) perceived to hold/exercise power unjustly.

Food plays more a symbolic/subjective than a substantive role. Less about the economic impacts on the poor, than the psycho-social ones of disrupting trust among the middle class.

4 key pathways

2. Intensified competition for rural resources: Slower-evolving, structural pressures due to (largely rural) intra- and inter-state resource competition over land, water, fisheries, labor, capital and the byproducts of such competition (e.g., chaotic internal migration, outbreaks of zoonoses, etc).

Farmers/farm workers the main agitators, although international NGOs/ firms are important external agents (e.g., over GMOs, “land grabs”, etc.).

Typically unrest about distributional questions and power. More likely to mutate into social and/or guerilla movements than is urban unrest from price shocks. Exploitable by pre-existing opposition movements.

4 key pathways

There are 4 main pathways by which food security might impact sociopolitical stability:

3. Improving technologies and technical efficiency: Historically, technical change has permitted supply expansion without intensified competition for resources.

Growing disparities in rates of technical change in agriculture. Investment is least where yield gaps and anticipated demand growth are greatest.

Dramatic changes in the competitive landscape – especially as intellectual property regimes increasingly impede rather than foster progress.

Controversial (GM) technologies create new areas of contestation

Technological change is no panacea. But there seem few options for progress without re-acceleration of agricultural technological change, especially in Africa and Asia.

4 key pathways

There are 4 main pathways by which food security might impact sociopolitical stability:

4. Policy interventions to temporarily augment supply: States address pressures through policies that reallocate food across time (buffer stock releases), space (trade barriers), or people (social protection). These often have unintended, beggar-thy-neighbor consequences.

None of these policies increases food supply; they merely reallocate it.

Commonly exports the food security stress to other (sub)populations.

Breed dangerous complacency by suggesting that quick fixes can substitute for longer-term, structural investments to enable supply growth to keep pace with demand expansion.

Need social protection closely coupled with productivity growth.

4 key pathways

There are 4 main pathways by which food security might impact sociopolitical stability:

The reasonable hypothesis that food insecurity can spark sociopolitical unrest adds a key reason to redouble efforts to stimulate ag productivity growth coupled with effective social protection measures.

But must focus on Africa and Asia!

Food or consequences

Overview (Barrett)Global food economy (Rosegrant et al)Climate (Cane & Lee)

Thematic chapters: Land (Deininger)Freshwater resources (Lall)Marine resources (McClanahan et al.)Crop techs (McCouch & Crowell)Livestock techs (McDermott et al.)Labor migration (McLeman)Trade (Anderson)Humanitarian assistance (Maxwell)

Geographic chapters:Latin America (Wolford &

Nehring) Sub-Saharan Africa (Barrett & Upton)M.East / N.Africa (Lybbert&Morgan)W.Asia/EC Europe (Swinnen&Herck) South Asia (Agrawal)China (Christiaensen)East Asia (Timmer)

18 chapters by leading international experts

New Book on Topic

Crop technologies

What is a “crop technology” ?

Food Fiber

Feed Fuel

Agronomics

DNA

Computers

Imaging...etc!

+

In the context of food security…

Crop technologies

Agronomic technologiesManagement of soil, water, planting,

spacing, fertilization, weed management

Biological (genetic) technologiesClassical breeding, hybrid breeding, genomics-assisted breeding, genetic

engineering

**2.3 billion people depend on income derived from small farms (<2 ha)

Crop technologies that enhance small farm productivity—most likely to help

Crop technologies

Wild Landrace ~10,000 yrs

Very diverse Heterogeneous

Modern Variety~100 yrs

Uniform

Green Revolution

Crop technologies

Pardey et al., 2006

Post-Green Revolution

90% of global agricultural research is conducted in developed countries

Private sector accounts for >1/2 of these R&D

expenditures

Focus has shifted away from crops that are important in the developing world, towards proprietary technologies

Agronomic technologiesManagement of soil, water, planting, spacing,

fertilization, weed management

Genetic (biological) technologiesClassical breeding, hybrid breeding, genomics-

assisted breeding, genetic engineering

Intellectual Property (IP) ProtectionPlant Variety Protection (PVP), Utility Patents,

sui generis systems

Crop technologies

Crop technologies

Genetic engineering (biotechnology)

Introduces new traits quickly and efficiently.Genetic modification (GM) uses Agrobacterium

tumefaciens, a naturally occurring bacteria that randomly insert DNA (genes)

into plant chromosomes. Subject to utility patents without disclosure of the technology used to generate the variety.

Since 1996 global production increased 94-fold, from 1.7M to 160M ha. Fastest adoption of crop technology in history.

99% of GM crops are soybean, maize, cotton and canola with 2 traits:

Insect resistance (Bt) Herbicide resistance (Roundup Ready)

90% of farmers (16.7M) in developing world on < 2ha land.

7M farmers in China grow Bt cotton on ~0.5 ha7M farmers in India grow Bt cotton on ~1.5 ha

The 2007 – 2008 Price Increases hit Latin America hard

Latin America

Source: Cuesta and Jaramillo 2009: 7

Latin America

Haitian rioters block a street in downtown Port au Prince while Brazilian UN peacekeepers look on. Photo: Kena BetancurSource: The Guardian, April 9 2008

Protesters march through Port-au-Prince in April 2008 to demand the government to lower the price of basic commodities. Photo by Nick Whalen-IPSSource: http-//www.ipsnews.net/2009/01/haiti-new-peasant-alliance-demands-action-on-food-crisis/

Key Characteristics – The Context of the Crisis

Latin America

Strong agricultural sector but bi-modal with a highly productive agro-industrial sector geared towards export and a “peasant” sector on small plots producing for subsistence and local markets

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Source: World Bank's Data Bank: World Development Indicators and Global Development Finance, 2012. Source: Martinez et al 2009: 36

Key Arguments from Case Studies

Latin America

Disaggregate “conflict”

Spontaneous protests around consumption vs.

sustained mobilization around production

Food protests or “riots” are not just about

food: situate in longer, context-specific moral

economies

Social mobilization has improved food

security in Latin America: Mobilization, protest

and instability are often threats – particularly for

those who approve of the status quo

Social Mobilization and Food Security

Latin America

Brazil: Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)Ecuador: Pueblo Kayambi, Canasta Comunitaria, CONAIEMexico: Zapatista Movement, National Confederation of Indigenous Peoples, Bolivia: CocalerosPeru: CONACAMI

A host of national initiatives, including cash transfer programs, school food programs, nationalized grocery stores

Social Mobilization and Food Security

Latin America

Membership in La Via Campesina

Latin America

Source: www.viacampesina.org

The Movement of Rural Landless Workers - Brazil

Latin America

Fome Zero – State, Civil Society and Market - Brazil

Latin America

Features of the Brazilian Path

Latin America

• Extensive R&D geared towards private sector development of large-scale agribusiness chains

• Land distribution and promotion of small-holder welfare

• Implementation of the largest CCT in Latin America’s history

• Sustained social mobilization

Sub-Saharan Africa

Christopher B. Barrett and Joanna B. Upton

Source: Kaiba White (2011)Data sources: World Bank, World Health Organization, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UNICEF, UN Environment Programme/GRID-Europe, US Geological Survey, Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, World Meteorological Organization, Polity IV Project, KOF Index of Globalization, World Development Indicators, Demographic and Health Surveys, Landscan.

A composite vulnerability map of: Climate-related hazard exposure, Population density, Household and community resilience, and Governance and violence.

Motivation

Sub-Saharan Africa bears an unfortunate triple distinction among world regions, with the highest incidence of:

Undernourishment, ultra-poverty, and conflict-related deaths

Leads to challenges across dimensions of food insecurity

(i) Availability(ii) Access (20% < $0.62/day; 65% of world’s ultra-poor)

Extreme diversity (between regions & countries) => highly variable problems and no one-size-fits-all solution

Key opportunities are also key areas for risk and potential conflict

Sub-Saharan Africa

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Source: FAO food balance sheets

Sub-Saharan Africa’s characteristics create special challenges for all four pathways by which food security might impact sociopolitical stability:

1. Food price spikes and urban unrest- “Youth bulge” in the growing population (projected to reach

1.1 billion by 2020…average age of 20)- Urbanization- …largely jobless, young, increasingly educated and urban

population (paradox of the disaffected)

2. Intensified competition for rural resources- Opportunity in that SS Africa is land and water abundant (22%

of arable land in use; 13% of irrigable land irrigated)- However, demand pressures are on the rise, and- Increasing trends toward land investments (“land grabs”)…

which may strike neo-colonial chords and lead to unrest

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa’s characteristics create special challenges for all four pathways by which food security might impact sociopolitical stability:

3. Improving technologies and technical efficiencies- Low productivity (yield gap) and growing working age

population means huge opportunities- However, limited by technical capacity, extreme poverty

(problems with up-take), and political controversy

4. Policy intervention to temporarily augment supply- Common practice to regulate prices and/or distribute

resources (food), which always has distributional implications- Governing capacity weak vis-à-vis both social protection and

productivity growth

Sub-Saharan Africa

Looking forward…to fraught opportunities

Demand Side:- Incidence of poverty on the decline (—though still the largest

in the world, and uneven between countries and regions)- Population growth + rapid urbanization => increasing

reliance on poor infrastructure- Communication infrastructure improving . . .

Sub-Saharan Africa

Supply Side:- Land and water abundance

- Investments could be an opportunity…under certain (unlikely?) conditions

- Productivity gap - Four potential pathways: irrigation, soil fertility

management, livestock production, GMOs- Demographic trends =>increased labor and technical

innovation?

Looking forward…to fraught opportunities

Total Factor Productivity growth is key- Minimize the problem of the ‘food price dilemma’; help

producers and consumers simultaneously

Government capacity, particularly in:- Prioritizing productivity growth - Creating opportunities for the young working-aged

population- Managing foreign investment (transparency,

distributional concerns, production priorities)- Social protection and safety nets for the ultra-poor, in

particular the disaffected

Sub-Saharan Africa

Thank you for your time and interest