How to Achieve Global Food Security

Posted by: Steve Hamm on October 30

By Guest Blogger Bruce McNamer
CEO of TechnoServe

World hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 with more than one billion people — one out of every six people on the planet; one out of three Africans - going hungry every day. From rural African communities to private high-tech research labs, many parties are working towards lasting solutions.

A global lack of food is not culpable for increasing food insecurity and hunger. The projected 2009 global cereal harvest is a mere three percent below the record world harvest of 2008 and will be the second highest ever. And globally, the use of maize and other foodstuffs for biofuels (i.e., non-food uses) is marginally significant.

Then, what’s causing the increase in world hunger?

Part of the answer is the worldwide economic downturn. The global recession has affected poor individuals and communities in developing countries by starkly reducing their employment opportunities, incomes (including domestic and international remittances), and their ability to buy food. These hardships are exacerbated and complicated by ongoing challenges like weak business policy and regulatory frameworks (and enforcement capacities), lack of investment and business growth, declining soil fertility and infrastructure, and minimal access to information and technology.

In 2008, the World Bank’s World Development Report assembled overwhelming evidence that broad-based agricultural growth is the most powerful way to reduce rural poverty and also improve food security. To increase local agricultural productivity and spur agriculture-based growth, a variety of organizations, from governments and regulatory agencies to financial institutions, agribusinesses and nonprofits, must collaborate on five key pursuits:

First and foremost, we need to develop human capital by teaching local farmers and entrepreneurs the skills they need to thrive. By mastering agronomic and business best practices farmers can maximize the productivity and profitability of their crops, participate in crop sectors on a more competitive footing and gain access to new markets and sources of finance. Other entrepreneurs across agriculture-based industries, from input suppliers to processors to end-product distributors, need to improve their capacity to identify and develop opportunities and profit by providing goods and services that boost productivity and add value.

Second, social capital is required, in the form of effective producer groups and supporting institutions. Through these organizations, transaction costs can be minimized and the rural poor can negotiate with markets more equitably.

Third, financial capital is needed to enable local entrepreneurs to operate and invest for growth in their businesses. This requires intermediation focused on steering affordable capital flows to investments that will generate productivity improvements and poverty reduction.

Fourth, physical capital, such as road networks, grain storage, power grids, irrigation and sanitation systems, hospitals, and schools, is critical to stimulating economic activity and increasing incomes. Until local tax bases improve, outside assistance is needed.

Finally, we must ensure effective markets exist. Markets are the basis for buyers and sellers to interact, by generating mechanisms for distribution, establishing prices and effecting transactions. Open transparent markets weave these different forms of capital together and optimize value.

Only when we integrate these efforts, can impoverished communities take significant strides towards lasting improved welfare. Communities will be able to feed themselves, the incomes of small farmers and agricultural workers will increase, and new jobs will be created. Also, as more food becomes available, prices will drop in growing urban markets, resulting in broad increases in disposable income for education, healthcare, housing and other needs, all of which improve communities and their broader society.

In order to achieve global food security and end the hunger crisis farmers, investors, agri-businesses and governments are starting to come together at the local level to build more open and efficient agricultural markets. Global leaders also need to agree to deploy their development assistance commitments according to the following principles: 1) apply lessons from prior experiences of boosting productivity in food crops; 2) focus on holistic programs in crop sectors with the greatest economic opportunities, and 3) plan for sustainability — economic, social and environmental.

Sustainable global food security is possible. Many are ready to do their part. Our leaders need to do theirs.

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Bruce McNamer is President and CEO of TechnoServe, a global non-profit organization that empowers people in the developing world to build businesses that break the cycle of poverty.

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