Points of View
The extent, causes and remedies for world hunger
Why is continuing widespread hunger and poverty not just a shaming tragedy but a threat to the very stability of the world? Is it feasible to significantly reduce, let alone eliminate hunger? What is needed in terms of financial and political commitment? Can peoples and governments in developed countries come to recognise that existing inequities (dumping of food, subsidies to farmers in developed countries, tariffs to prevent poorer countries exporting value added products) must end if the world is to avoid instability caused by hunger, hopelessness and mass migrations?
The following points of view on these and other questions related to hunger and poverty are taken from papers presented and interviews recorded at the IFPRI "Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020" conference, held in Bonn, Germany September 4-6 2001.
The extent of world hunger
Millions of children die every year from nutrition-led illnesses and many millions more do not develop to their full potential because they are
malnourished. About 800 million people are food insecure, meaning that they either starve or they do not know from where their next meal will come.
In a world such as ours, such a situation is a disgrace, it is ethically and morally wrong, and it is bad economics.
Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Director General IFPRI
It has become clear that if present trends continue, the target of halving the number of undernourished people (by 2015) cannot be met.
William Meyers, Director, Agriculture and Economic Analysis Division, FAO
It is a win-win proposition to help poor people escape poverty. It is a
lose-lose proposition to leave so many people in poverty and hunger. The instability
it creates is tremendous. Nobody should believe we can have a world with a
small number of very rich people and a large number of poor people. Such a
world will not be stable. And that is what we are heading towards as we speak
Dr Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Director-General, IFPRI
Small farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa are efficient, usually making good use
of their resources and are certainly more efficient than many large farmers.
However, the vast majority are very poor. Trends towards globalization in
theory should give small farmers (like all others) access to lucrative world
markets, but is likely to spell the death for many small farmers, who will
lose much of the urban markets of their major cities to imported goods from
other continents. Unless concerted steps are taken, the small farmer in Sub-Saharan
Africa is doomed to a life of poverty.
Dunstan Spencer, Managing Director Dunstan Spencer and Associates, Sierra
Leone
Agriculture in South Asia still engages about two-thirds of the workforce and
contributes roughly one-fourth to the gross domestic product of the region.
Therefore what happens to small farmers in South Asia has significant ramifications,
both at regional and global levels. South Asia, after all, is home to 22 percent
of the world's population, about 44% of the world's poor, (living on less
than a dollar a day), and lives on less than 2 percent of the world's income.
Ashok Gulati, Director of the Markets and Structural Studies Division,
IFPRI
We can point out that if you stop global spending on military expenditures
for ten days you've got enough money to halve the world hunger by the year
2020. That's the kind of information that we can put on the table and make
sure that politicians don't have anything to hide behind.
Dr Lawrence Haddad, Director, Food Consumption & Nutrition Division,
IFPRI
The causes of world hunger
Why are we failing to realize sustainable food production and distribution? Many developing countries lack a deliberate food policy. It is
important for developing countries to accept our internal weaknesses before we blame external factors. Worse still, developed countries which produce
surplus food, readily supply their surplus food to these countries as a result of which the developing countries do not get adequate pressure to
adopt deliberate food policies.
Professor Apolo Nsibambi, Prime Minister of Uganda
The reason why progress against hunger has been slow is that the nations and peoples of the world have not devoted much effort to it. Let me cite
my own country, the United States, as an example. My government refused to participate in the World Food Summit of 1996 without assurances that the
Summit would call for no new financial commitments.
David Beckmann, Bread for the World, USA
In a poll among German project workers in food security projects, a majority indicated in their replies that corruption and cronyism existing in
the developing countries had been contributing to a significant deterioration of the food situation. Examples such as Zimbabwe show how, as a result
of ill-conceived policies, a country which has the potential not only to feed its own people but even help feed other countries ends up in need and
has to rely on considerable levels of cereal imports.
Uschi Eid, Parliamentary Secretary to Ministry of Economic Cooperation & Development, Germany
It is my submission that the policies of the rich OECD countries, which protect and subsidize domestic agriculture, are major culprits holding
back agricultural-led growth in many poor countries that are in the early stages of demographic transition and economic transformation. The anomaly
of domestic agriculture policy is that rich countries tend to subsidize heavily a declining agricultural sector which at maturity contributes less
than 5 percent to GDP, while poor countries, where agriculture is the dominant sector, tend to tax agriculture-directly or indirectly.
Alex F. McCalla, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Agricultural Resource Economics, University of California (Davis)
Subsidies: whereas the literate farmer of developed countries is subsidised,
the semi-illiterate farmer of developing countries is not. So there is a disparity
of treatment which must be cured by phasing out the subsidies. Dumping; when
food is dumped into for example Africa, again we lose the capacity to adopt
deliberate food policies and this a pity. So it is important to avoid dumping.
Professor Apolo Nsibambi, Prime Minister, Uganda
The developing countries are currently losing some US$40 billion a year in income as a result of the industrialized countries' agricultural
protectionism [1995 figure from World Bank report]. If you consider that the EU alone is spending an annual 40 billion euros on subsidies for less
than 7 million farms, while at the same time spending a mere 7 billion euros on development cooperation (spent by the Commission, not including
member states' development cooperation), you will realize the absurdity of it all: almost 5,800 euros from the EU budget go to every farmer, as
opposed to 1.4 euros to every person in the developing countries. To me these are unacceptable proportions.
Uschi Eid, Parliamentary Secretary to Ministry of Economic Cooperation & Development, Germany
The question of who within the household has property rights is also critical. In general, assets are unequally distributed between men and women.
Even where women are primarily responsible for food production (as in many African societies), land is owned or controlled by men.
Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
Food security for all will remain a dream as long as armed conflicts exist, unless governments, international institutions, and NGOs urgently
implement policies and initiatives aimed at preventing and mitigating conflicts. Food security can diffuse tensions and can be used as a tool to
bring peace. Improved food security will help to break the vicious cycle of poverty and conflict.
Philippe Guiton, Africa Relief Manager, World Vision
No famine in history has ever taken place in a functioning democracy.
Amartya Kumar Sen, 1998 Nobel Prize laureate, quoted by Poul Nielson, EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid
As we consider the causes of hunger, let us recall how complex it is to feed people. As well as planting, harvesting and distributing food
efficiently, all sorts of other factors also have to combine perfectly. It is difficult to prove that one factor is more important than another. What
matters is that every contribution to making food more widely available is part of the solution. Those factors that can be influenced by human
activity require very specific expertise.
Heinz Imhof, Chairman of the Board, Syngenta
The remedies for world hunger
There is no question that the primary responsibility to deal with poverty
actually belongs to developing countries themselves. And since the World Food
Conference of 1974 many countries have reordered their priorities, many countries
have increased investment in agriculture and changed their policies in favour
of rural people. The problem is that once these countries produce more food
and become self-sufficient and want to enter the export market the doors are
closed because of subsidised exports. The total subsidies (to agriculture
in developed countries) are 360 billion dollars a year, one billion dollars
a day, which is six times the amount of aid that the developed countries give
to the poor countries.
Sartaj Aziz, former Finance Minister and Foreign Minister, Pakistan (see
also this month's Perspective)
The ultimate responsibility for eradicating hunger falls on the farmer himself or herself. Other institutions and people can help. Those institutions or people who must help are the governments of the developing countries themselves. It is those governments which establish the policy framework. It is those governments which are in charge of our security. It's the governments which have got public resources and actually they are elected by the people to eradicate hunger and reduce poverty.
Dr Harris Mule, former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Kenya
Although the Green Revolution did much for agriculture in developing countries,
it was less successful in Sub-Saharan Africa and yields have not changed in
40 years. Indeed cereal production per capita has steadily declined. We therefore
need a Doubly Green Revolution, including biotechnology. See also Focus On - GM crops: part of the solution for soils.
Jennifer Thomson, Professor of Microbiology, University of Cape Town
As the global concern for food security increases and translates into more innovative strategies, the role of women in fighting the current food
crisis cannot be underestimated. Subsistence agriculture still dominates the working lives of more than half the world's women. In Africa, women
produce 78 percent of the continent's food, with very limited resources, land included. Their contribution to survival in most African countries is
key and cannot be underestimated.
Wilberforce Kisamba-Mugerwa, Minister of Agriculture, Uganda
After the (World Food) Summit, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) commissioned a study of what it would cost the industrialized
countries to do their part to cut world hunger in half by 2015. The study concluded that an additional $4 billion a year of poverty-focused
development assistance could achieve the goal. Four billion dollars is less than $5 for each person in the industrial countries. Four billion dollars
is also less than a third of what people in the industrial countries spend at McDonald's.
David Beckmann, Bread for the World, USA
Essential external financial contributions by donor governments
and intergovernmenal organizations (IGOs) will not succeed without parallel
actions by national governments. But wealthy outsiders will not be credible
in prodding local governments to act if they continue to fail in strengthening
their own tangible commitment to ending hunger, a project which should engage
us all.
Robert Paarlberg, Professor of Political Science, Harvard University
Relatively small changes in how governments behave could cut hunger in half
in the next couple of decades. In the industrialized countries we need to
urge our governments to increase, for example, poverty focused aid to Africa
or Asia. To open up trade opportunities for people in Africa and Asia. And
in the developing countries especially in democracies, people can push to
get improvements in rural roads, improvements in agriculture, health and education.
David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World, USA
But who is responsible for taking action? Dramatic changes in the roles of national governments, civil society, the private sector, and international institutions are creating confusion about who is responsible. Some use these changes as an excuse for not taking action. Imagine what we can do if we make sustainable food security for all our top priority and pull in the same direction. We can make a difference in the lives of millions.
Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Director General IFPRI
