Millennium Development Goals and Hunger

Girls waiting for food in Burundi © International Committee of the Red Cross

Food security is the condition in which everyone has access to sufficient and affordable food; it can relate to a single household or to the global population. The first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) falls short of food security aspirations in seeking only to reduce by half the proportion of the world’s population experiencing hunger. Furthermore, governments signing the Millennium Declaration were overriding a commitment made just 4 years earlier at the World Food Summit of 1996 which applied the same target to the number of people. Rising population figures mean that 170 million fewer will be targeted by the MDG programme than would otherwise have been the case.

Red Cross volunteer weighs a young girl to check for malnutrition © John Haskew / International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

The first of two benchmarks for measuring progress is the “minimum dietary energy requirement” for each person as stipulated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This naturally varies by age and sex so that a weighted average is calculated for each country based on its population profile; typically this average is just below 2,000 kilocalories per day. Despite the promises of the MDGs, over 50 million people have been added to the 800 million falling below this benchmark in 2000. Malnutrition impairs the ability to learn or to work and reduces resistance to disease, these problems increasing in severity with the shortfall from the minimum dietary requirement. Hunger is therefore a cause as well as a consequence of poverty.

Children’s health and cognitive development is especially sensitive, to the extent that the majority of child mortality is attributed to malnutrition. The second MDG indicator is therefore the proportion of children under age 5 who are underweight in relation to their age. This figure has reduced only from 32% to 27% in the period 1990-2006. Unicef says that 51 countries are unlikely to reach this MDG target by 2015. Moreover, these progress assessments predate the explosion in world food prices that has rocked global development agencies in 2008. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has warned that “high food prices threaten to undo the gains achieved so far in fighting hunger and malnutrition”.

Climate Change and Food Security

Oxfam relief workers distribute food in Ethiopia © Crispin Hughes / Oxfam Great Britain

As recently as 2006, progress reports on malnutrition published by UN agencies made no reference to climate change. Yet it was no surprise when, in preparation for the Bali Climate Change Conference in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) painted an almost cataclysmic picture for Africa in which “for even small temperature increases of 1-2 degrees….. yields for rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020”. In addition, the predicted increase in drought and floods will aggravate what is already a serious short term cause of food insecurity. In South and East Asia climate change threatens to upset the stable monsoon pattern around which rice production in particular has evolved.

The UN supports the 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in preparation of National Adaptation Programmes of Actions (NAPAs) and the Bali Conference launched an Adaptation Fund which may in time support these programmes. Recognising that funding is likely to be scarce, NAPAs limit their scope to community-based low-cost options for dealing with climate variability. Adaptation of agriculture will include the use of alternative seed varieties, improved soil management, maintenance of water management systems and reforestation. These NAPA reports convey universal concern for the sensitivity of food security to a less predictable climate and for the very limited capacity of poor communities to respond. Seed scientists acknowledge the extreme difficulty of climate adaptation even where research funding is available.
Biofuels and Food Security

Corn, the raw material used to produce ethanol © Network for New Energy Choices

Under pressure to take action on climate change in the run up to the Bali Conference, politicians resorted to knee-jerk policymaking, seduced by the claims of the biofuel industry. Petrol additives such as ethanol and biodiesel are manufactured from plant crops as a means of reducing dependence on fossil fuels and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. Apparently oblivious to the mathematics that one tank of ethanol for a Sports Utility Vehicle consumes corn that could feed a man for a year, the EU announced that these biofuels will contribute 10% of transport fuels by 2020 whilst the US plans to quadruple output in that period.

Quite apart from the flawed assumption that these products create a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the use of land and food crops to cater for rich motorists at a time of global food insecurity has provoked outrage amongst groups campaigning for poverty reduction. Oxfam predicts that biofuel targets could create 600 million additional hungry people by 2025. In 2008, one third of the US maize crop will be diverted to biofuel production, showering corn farmers with subsidies of far greater value than US food aid. As these realities sink in, there are initial signs of back-pedalling on biofuel targets and subsidies amongst EU and US officials.
The Right to Food

Promotion of biofuels has been cited as a breach of the right to sufficient food enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international treaty commitments. The UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, has urged the UN to respond to the food crisis as a human rights emergency and called for a freeze on new investment in converting food into fuel.

In contrast to the half-speed MDG vision, a human rights approach to food security places immediate and inclusive obligations on governments to create capacity for their people to feed themselves. Ideally the right to food should take its place in national laws or constitutions, with guarantees of non-discriminatory and non-political strategies. Many of the world’s food security problems stem from the absence of an overriding goal to honour the right to food. A set of world trade rules might look very different if governed by such an objective rather than the focus on absolute volumes of trade.
Causes of Food Insecurity

© Oxfam America

The aftermath of the Second World War saw strategies which did indeed award priority to food security. The European Common Agricultural Policy and the US Farm Bill combined subsidies and tariffs to support the pattern of small family farms which were dominant at that time. These policies proved successful, generating colossal internal food surpluses.

Not surprisingly, the poorer countries of the modern world are keen to copy this successful protectionist model, not least because of their similar profile of agriculture - there are 500 million farms of less than 2 hectares in developing countries. Such ambitions remain unfulfilled largely because in 1995 the richer countries were successful in their efforts to include agriculture in the system of open market rules governed by the World Trade Organisation, whilst simultaneously refusing to unravel their own protectionist model. Attempts by developing countries to build their agriculture sectors have been undermined, both in domestic markets undercut by cheap imports from rich countries and in exports which encounter trade barriers erected in Europe and US.

Countries in Africa and South Asia are also to blame for their prolonged lack of investment in rural economies which account for about 75% of world hunger. For example, African governments are yet to meet their 2003 Maputo Declaration commitment which called for 10% of national budgets to be dedicated to agriculture by 2008. Rural economies have therefore failed to grow. Poor farmers, often holding uncertain land tenure and lacking capital, plant for a mix of subsistence and surplus for market, a model chronically vulnerable to fluctuating prices or unfavourable weather. The majority of developing countries have food deficits, a serious problem for those lacking foreign currency to purchase expensive imports.

UNICEF feeding centre, Bakol Region, Somalia © Derk Segaar/IRIN

Whilst overall population growth creates pressure on food security, it is a relatively minor factor. Since 1961 world production of food has trebled whilst the population has doubled. Feeding more than half of the world’s grain production to animals is the more significant indicator. As 7kg of grain is required to produce 1kg of beef, there is an argument that meat production on this scale impedes the goal of global food security. Another human weakness - for violent conflict - invariably leads to extreme food insecurity. The 2007 Global Hunger Index reports that “almost all” of its worst ranking countries have been involved in violent conflict in the last decade. Collapsed economies such as North Korea and Zimbabwe also generate food crises.
The Search for Solutions to Food Insecurity

grains of hope? © Greenpeace UK

Disagreement over trade rules reflects the two longstanding and opposing philosophies for addressing structural weaknesses that lead to food insecurity. The neo-liberal model advocates that food should be subject to the same market forces as manufactured goods with minimum state involvement It denies any value to “romantic peasant farming” which should be consolidated, with alternative livelihoods found for surplus labour. Larger farms can then raise capital and compete in export markets. Foreign aid would have a role to play in developing transport and storage infrastructure, creating efficient local markets and improving standards of governance – advocates of this model put a price of $8-$10 billion per annum on doubling farm output in Africa.

The alternative philosophy of “food sovereignty” restores the priority for food security over trade volume. This model favours local ownership and control of the full chain of resources accepting small farms for what they are and encouraging their sustainability through subsidised inputs and credit – as has been followed successfully in Malawi’s recent transformation from shortage to surplus. New communications technologies can also play an innovative role in supporting small farmers.
World Food Prices and Food Security

These competing philosophies are undergoing intense scrutiny in reaction to recent dramatic increases in world food prices - the FAO Cereal Index doubled in the year to April 2008. As the world’s poorest households already spend 60%-100% of their incomes on food, they have no mechanism to cope with rising prices other than to reduce the volume or nutritional quality of their consumption. The World Food Programme (WFP) says that 100 million people will be added to those below the hunger threshold, taking the global total to almost one billion and creating a new class of urban poor unable to afford sufficient food.

There is little consensus as to the underlying cause of such sudden price adjustments. Each of the most favoured explanations is open to challenge: global production of grain increased by 4% in 2007, casting doubt on claims of poor harvests; biofuel production does not involve rice or wheat and therefore should not impact those prices; and the increasing demand for meat is neither new nor confined to China. The parallel doubling of the price of oil does have a significant impact on the cost of farm inputs and transportation and is a reminder that the last serious world food crisis of the early 1970s coincided with the oil price shocks of that period. The finger of suspicion is also being pointed at speculative rich country traders in commodities. The increasingly complex and opaque world of derivative financial products has been exposed as rotten to the core in the context of the global credit crisis. Governments in India and Ethiopia have banned futures trading in their agricultural commodities markets.

Although the UN has set up a task force and world leaders promise discussions, national interests have so far dominated the response to a crisis which requires coordinated global action. Many countries have resorted to stockpiling food and blocking exports in order to keep down domestic prices. The US Farm Bill currently under discussion ignores the golden opportunity presented by high prices to abolish farm subsidies. Without global food security today, adaptation to future climate change will have no foundation on which to build.
Food Aid

Emergency food in Western Kenya © Peter Armstrong

Rising prices create a pincer movement on food aid programmes by increasing the numbers in need whilst reducing the amount of food that can be purchased with fixed budgets. Although food aid alone is not a sustainable solution to hunger, it has a vital humanitarian role to play in the most critical circumstances. Monitoring the balance of food supply and demand throughout the world is the core mandate of the FAO, delivered by its Global Information and Early Warning System. Based on this information the World Food Programme (WFP) draws up its programmes, giving priority to regions where the depth of hunger is most serious – currently the agency supports 70-100 million people and about the same number is assisted by international aid agencies. This leaves over 750 million dependent on highly variable or non-existent domestic safety net arrangements such as the Indian Public Distribution Scheme.

Despite the diversion of surplus maize to biofuels, the US remains the largest food donor country. However it insists not only in donating surplus grain from US stocks rather than cash, but also that the chain of delivery to the recipient country must be handled entirely by US contractors. The result is often months of delay for a service which is time critical. Development agencies prefer donors to purchase food direct from the beneficiary country – high prices typically being the deterrent to the poor rather than availability. This scenario has created the unusual circumstance of countries such as Zambia and Malawi granting food aid to their own people via the WFP.
Biotechnology and GM Crops

Indian farmers burn genetically modified crop © Intercontinental Caravan (ICC)

The current crisis in food security will strengthen the hand of those who believe that biotechnology is the way forward. The great advances in crop yields since the 1970s, symbolised by the “green revolution”, have to be weighed against their ecological and structural consequences. The FAO says that 75% of food biodiversity was lost in the 20th century whilst 80% of the world’s dietary energy is now supplied by just 12 industrial crops, such is the dominance of a small number of very large international “agribusiness” corporations. The green revolution has also been responsible for significant degradation of soil quality and severe depletion of water resources, a worrying loss of environmental capital with which to satisfy the projected doubling of demand for world food production in the next 25-50 years.

Genetically modified soya bean? © Centre for Science and Environment

Genetically-modified (GM) crops, in which a gene of desired characteristic is transposed from one plant to another, are the most extreme and controversial output of the biotechnology companies. Offering higher yields, lower chemical inputs and higher nutritional value, GM crops sound like the panacea to food insecurity. Led by Brazil, South Africa, China and India, many developing countries have adopted GM crops. However, there are doubts as to whether the poorer have the capacity to establish regulatory frameworks to manage inevitable conflicts of interests between the local stakeholders (farmers, consumers, and governments) and global shareholders who control the intellectual property rights.

Help us to complete OneWorld Guides
Some important development issues are missing from our range of Topic Guides. OneWorld wants to fill these gaps but we need financial help. If there is a topic that you would especially like to see included, then you could make it happen...... find out more