U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security Dr. Cary Fowler speaks on food crisis, climate change and other issues. Excerpts:
Causes of global food crisis
Well, one thing that we learned last year is that there are multiple food systems in the world. We talk about the global food system, but in fact food systems are also local and they’re different; there’s a diversity of those. And we learned that in some ways, all of them are precarious. So what happens in the Ukraine, for example, has ripple effects throughout the world, but those ripple effects can be quite different.
Last year we spoke about the chief drivers of the global food crisis as being climate change, COVID, and conflict. We have to recognize that today, in 2023, we still have climate change, COVID, and conflict, but we also have low stockpiles of grain, we have market disruptions, we have the issues that are being caused by Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine which is of course limiting the grain exports of that country, which is one of the top five exporters.
So as much as I wish I could bring the hopeful message that the food crisis will be over this year, we have to recognize that the chief drivers of the food crisis are still with us. And it behooves us, therefore, to be looking at solutions for all of those, or adaptive measures. That’s the situation as I see it today.
Our visit in Zambia and Malawi, however, I think has – even though both of these countries have huge challenges, the situation still in some ways is hopeful. We’ve seen some amazing – we’ve met some amazing people here struggling very hard to overcome the challenges that they face, and that’s been quite invigorating to us.
Helping farmers
The U.S. Government does recognize that the majority of food in Africa is produced by smallholders, and the United States is focused on helping those farmers improve their livelihoods and their production.
I’m going to give you one example. We’ve recently supported a new project which will be operating in a number of countries, including Zambia and Malawi, that will be coordinated by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, and by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. They’ll be establishing innovation hubs where they’ll bring together the best and most appropriate technologies and information to help small-scale farmers with a whole variety of issues that they confront. This will give the farmers access, for example in Zambia, to drought-tolerant maize, which they’re really clamoring for. This is maize which, on a year-in and year-out basis, on average will yield about 30 percent more, rotated with legumes, which provide protein and also enrich the soil and reduce the need for fertilizer. But also other technologies and assistance in establishing markets for those products and lengthening out the value chain so that farmers are not just – and small businesses are not just dealing with raw commodities but are taking those commodities and making something more valuable and more useful to a broader population.
Maybe I could also say a few words about what we’re doing in the fertilizer and soil fertility area, because one of the things that you hear a lot these days is that Africa needs fertilizers. And that’s certainly true. Africa only consumes about three to four percent of the fertilizer in the world. But the context is very complicated, and one has to realize that probably the highest-priced fertilizers in the world are in Africa. Why is that the case? Well, it’s the case because they’re farthest away from some of the manufacturing, and certainly for the mineral fertilizers there’s a transportation cost, and because fuel prices are so high these days, the transportation costs are great, and because nitrogen fertilizer is based primarily on natural gas, those – that cost is also great.
But if you can’t overcome that problem, which – immediately or in the short term, which is a difficult one to overcome, because the fertilizer price is high, and yet the price that the farmer is going to receive in the marketplace is low, and therefore it’s not always cost-effective, what do you do? I think long term, you start with some soil mapping work to understand what soils you’re really dealing with and what fertilizers and how much are really needed. But you also begin to rotate your crops and enrich the soil.
We saw just this afternoon a young farmer – I think she was 23 years old, quite an amazing, determined young woman – who was rotating her maize crop with a crop of soybeans. And she had planted soybeans before, but with a variety that wasn’t so great, save seed, I have to say. And she mentioned that in the past she had gotten a harvest of about two bags for her – the area she was farming, and each bag was about 50 kilos. We asked her what she expected with this harvest, and I think she said 14 or 16 bags; in other words, just a dramatic improvement. And I thought to myself as I left that field that, wow, that is not just a dramatic income in this young woman’s income, but it will also benefit the maize crop that she plants next year because the soybeans are going to leave behind nitrogen and they’re going to enrich the soil and begin to change the soil structure, so this becomes a virtuous cycle. When we ask her what her hope was and what she would do with this extra money, she said “business.” In other words, she’s seen that she really wants to create a life for herself on this farm, and it involves using the best and most appropriate technologies for her.
So one of the things that this project that USAID is supporting here will be to offer those technologies as options, where the – not to force farmers into any straightjacket, but to offer options that the farmers can see and choose from to improve their farming practices and their livelihoods.
Africa and climate change
The situation in a number of countries in that area is very, very difficult. I guess I would begin by saying that we have to realize that climate change is affecting countries in Africa perhaps more than any other place in the world, and certainly in the Sahel/Sub-Sahara Africa, this is the case.
It’s also the case that conflict is a major issue. There are – 60 percent or so of the people that are food-insecure in the world are living in countries with serious armed conflict going on, and that’s the case in the region that you referred to. So specifically, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, they all face high food insecurity situations. We see a lot of very dire food insecurity, stunting and wasting among the children.
I think what we can try to do in this case as the U.S. Government – and I hasten to add that we alone cannot solve these problems. It’s going to take partnerships and it’s going to take efforts by governments themselves and good governance along the way. In other words, in some cases, dealing with creating an enabling environment so that the private sector can come in and add to the solution, also, to battle corruption in some of these countries, which we’ve been engaging with countries about that.
But we’re also trying to partner with these countries on a variety of issues through the Feed the Future program, and that’s – we think that this is our long-term approach, and it’s going to take a long-term commitment working in some of these countries.
Food insecurity in the Horn of Africa
That grain from Ukraine has historically gone to that region, and we’re seeing a real slowdown in the shipments of grain out of Ukraine due to the, I would say, intransigence of Russia in inspecting the incoming ships and delaying the outgoing ships there. When we first were able to secure the Russian – the – I’m sorry – the Black Sea agreement, we were seeing about ten ships go out a day. Now, it’s down to two or three. And we have something like 80 ships waiting to get into Ukraine to be loaded up with grain to go out. This adds to the problem, doesn’t help it at all, and is one of the issues that we’re going to be dealing with.
Comments are closed.