Feeding the world, the ultimate First-World conceit

The problem of world hunger should be addressed where it lies - by increasing small-scale food production, particularly among women.

by Timothy A. Wise

Since the food price spikes of 2007-8, global hands have been wringing over the question, how will we feed the world? Population keeps growing, food-producing resources like land and water become more scarce, climate change introduces a dramatic uncertainty.

The images are downright Malthusian. The urgent recommendation is to produce more food, quickly. It is the theme of this year's World Food Prize.

The question is fundamentally flawed, as is the Malthusian panic. There is no "we" who feed the world. There are, mostly, hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers. And there is no abstract "world" out there needing to be fed. There are about one billion hungry people, nearly all in developing countries. The majority are some of those same small-scale farmers. The rest are poor because they are unemployed or underemployed.

Increasing the industrial production of agricultural commodities does almost nothing for these people. Oddly enough, it can even make them hungrier.

Who feeds whom?

In practice, "we" all know whom "we" mean when we ask how "we" will feed the world. We mean industrialized societies, with their high-yield industrialised agriculture. But industrialized farms produce only 30 percent of the food consumed in the world today. Seventy percent is produced by small-scale farmers. And it's mostly not traded across borders; only 15 percent of food is traded internationally.

Eighty-five percent is consumed by the farming household, traded locally, or sold in domestic markets.

Conceit

The conceit that first-world farmers feed the hungry is just that: conceited.

What industrialised agriculture produces are agricultural commodities that serve as raw materials - occasionally as food, often as animal feed. It produces a lot of those raw materials, and the output has a lot to do with international prices for food commodities.

But the volume of that production has very little to do with whether the hungry are fed.

By some estimates, we currently grow enough food today to feed ten billion people, more than the projected global population in 2050.

The hungry are hungry not because there isn't enough food but because they don't have the incomes to buy it. Or to grow it. An estimated 70 percent of the hungry in the world today live in rural areas.

They can end up hungrier because of higher production of agricultural commodities. Cheap, industrialized rice or corn comes as a double-edged sword. If the farmers have any cash, lower prices mean they can afford more food.

But if they grow these same crops, the prices they can get for their own rice or corn are lower thanks to the international competition. So they have less cash.

Studies have shown that high crop prices are better for the rural poor, even if they drive up the cost of food. Why? Money flows to the domestic agricultural economy, spurring investment, creating jobs, and raising wages.

There are two ways to better feed the hungry: increase the amount of food they can produce or create decent work for them. Industrialized agriculture does neither of these things well.

Environments

Its technologies are poorly suited to the needs and environments of small-scale developing-country farmers. Hybrid seeds and chemical inputs all cost money; few small-scale producers can afford them without government subsidies, and even then they often lack the credit they need to sustain the cash demands of industrial production.

In Malawi, few farmers could afford the recommended second application of fertiliser, leaving their hybrid maize yields little better than if they had used traditional seeds.

What about creating jobs? Industrialised agriculture is capital-intensive, not labour-intensive. By definition, it increases productivity by substituting technology - tractors, irrigation, chemical inputs, seeds - for labour. Each kilo of rice might be a little cheaper as a result, but the number of people who get an income from that production is often dramatically reduced. If the high-yield rice displaces small-scale rice producers, the net impact on jobs and livelihoods can be negative.

But can't societies just jump-start development by bringing in foreign capital and expertise? That is the premise of the US Administration's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which seeks to infuse private capital into African agriculture through the magic of "public-private partnerships."

At best, such investments will develop only land, not societies.

- Third World Network Features.