There have been few reports noting the growing food security issue that has arisen over the last few months in the West Africa Region. We all need to pay more attention to this so that it doesn’t turn into a regional crisis.

Affected countries in West Africa are doing their best to manage the ever-growing food security issues related to staple commodities, particularly grains. The US Agency for International Development has called this the “Hunger Gap” as many of the regions poor have already exhausted not only available food stores but are also not having access to affordable and adequate food (nutritional food). See the FEEEDS™ blog-itrrs page, defining the elements of food security.

The next harvest is still months away. For many countries in the West Africa region that is October. The affected countries in West Africa that are potentially affected by this “Hunger Gap” are Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and parts of Chad.

Although for many of the Sahel countries food security is always a challenge, the rains have come late and not in abundance (or too erratic) in many places, exacerbating the already difficult food situation for many of the regions’ populations. The erratic nature of the rains have produced drought in some areas, negatively impacted planting seasons, and delaying the replenishment of water sources.

In Nigeria, the drought and food shortages are affecting the northern area of the country in states that are on the front lines of the Sahel such as Sokoto, Borno, Yobe, Katsina, Zamfara, Katsina, Jigawa and Kano. The Government of Nigeria has not only responded to the needs of its people by releasing key stables from its National Strategic Food Reserve (NSFR) of some 80,000 metric tons of assorted food survival grains (sorghum, maize, millet, cow peas, etc.) to help its people, but it is also assisting neighboring states such as Chad and Niger Republic.

All commodities from the NSFR are to be sold at 30 per cent subsidy – but these subsidized commodities still may not reach those most in need, particularly already malnourished children. Thus the potential effect of this “Hunger Gap” in Nigeria could be close to 15 million people. In recent weeks planting has been accomplished in the Sokoto, Zamfara and Kebbi states, but other states are still challenged by the erratic rainfall affecting both planting and harvest seasons.

The US Government is very much focused on food security world-wide, but particularly in Africa through its $48M “Feed the Future Initiative” for the region. The “Feed the Future Initiative” also includes non-Africa countries such as Haiti, Bangladesh, and Cambodia. It is projected that Nigeria will get approximately $51M to address the fundamentals of food security including developing markets and hybrid seeds.

I have seen first-hand the success of the US Government-funded MARKETS program in these areas, but the international donor community needs to keep the food security situation of the affected West Africa countries front and centre on its radar screen over the next few months so that all vulnerable people (particularly children) have in their reach the fundamentals of food security: accessibility, availability, affordability, and adequate (nutritional) commodities in order to avoid a crisis later in 2010.

Outlook: Let’s Pay Attention! Current early warning assessments note that things have improved somewhat for replenishing some water sources and the physical condition of some livestock. Watch the food security situation in northern Nigeria and the other affected West African States. The next couple of months will give us a better idea of the food security challenges for the remainder of 2010.

This article is based on a blog post originally published on The Africa Post. For more on the West Africa food crisis, see the post by Kirsty Hughes of Oxfam GB.

About Dr. Robin Renée Sanders, U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria

Robin Renée Sanders, a career member of the senior Foreign Service, arrived in Nigeria in December, 2007. Most recently, she served as International Advisor and Deputy Commandant at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C. Prior to this position, she served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Congo (2002-2005) and as Director for Public Diplomacy for Africa for the State Department (2000-2002).She served twice as the Director for Africa at the National Security Council at the White House; and was the Special Assistant for Latin America, Africa, and International Crime for the Undersecretary for Political Affairs at the State Department (1996-1997). Ambassador Sanders holds a Doctor of Science Degree in Information Science and Communication from Robert Morris University, Masters of Art degree in International Relations and Africa Studies, and a Masters of Science degree in Communications and Journalism from Ohio University. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from Hampton University.

Dr. Sanders is the recipient of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Civilian Honor Award; three State Department Superior Honor Awards; four State Department Meritorious Honor Awards; the “President Merit of Honor Award” from the Republic of Congo, and several citations in Who’s Who of America. She is a national board member of Operation Hope – a non-profit organization focused on empowerment of at-risk communities.

Next week, over 200 farmers, policymakers, agricultural researchers, agrodealers and non-governmental organisations from across Africa and around the world will be gathering in Namibia for the annual FANRPAN Policy Dialogue to discuss the state of food security in sub-Saharan Africa and future priorities for continuing progress.

Food security on the continent is still only a goal; the reality is that agricultural growth has been erratic, leaving one third of the African population chronically malnourished.

But with the right agricultural policies and programmes in place to support farmers, an economically productive and stable food supply is a viable future for Africa.  In fact, one estimate is that agricultural output in Africa could increase from $280Bn today to $880Bn by 2030.

To achieve this growth, farmers need access to quality inputs that help them to increase agricultural productivity, including improved seed, fertiliser and crop protection products as well as secure access to land and water resources. They need to be trained on crop and natural resources management, in particular climate change adaptation strategies, and given the means to changes the techniques they use in their fields.

Finally, farmers need to be supported in accessing markets through better post-harvest storage facilities and stronger infrastructure links, as well as information technologies that provide weather, crop and market alerts. These can form the basis for an inclusive marketplace and a fairer trading environment.

At the core of agricultural development lies the need for increased funding. The World Bank has calculated (PDF) that agricultural growth is at least twice as effective at eliminating poverty as growth from any other sector. Without investment into the back end of the agricultural production chain, these economic gains remain untapped.

Africa has a history of underinvestment in agriculture, which is being addressed by the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP).  CAADP was set up by the African Union  as part of its New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in 2003 to help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development.  In adopting the CAADP goals, twenty African governments have agreed to increase public investment in agriculture to a minimum of 10 per cent of their national budgets – substantially more than the four to five per cent average they commit today – with the aim of raising agricultural productivity by at least six per cent on average each year

And there is more promise. FANRPAN’s research into Malawi’s agricultural input subsidy programme has shown that from 2005, when the initiative was launched, to 2008, average maize yields in Malawi increased from 0.8 tonnes per hectare to 2.9 tonnes per hectare. In the space of five years, Malawi has transformed itself from being a food deficit nation to a grain exporter.

My recent video interview with the Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika outlines how this transformation can occur across the continent.

But while Africa has one-quarter of the world’s arable land, it produces only 10 per cent of its total global output, whilst holding an estimated 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated, arable land. Better knowledge sharing, technology transfer and public-private collaboration are needed to help bridge this gap into the future.

The challenges for food security are multi-faceted.  Sectors such as livestock and fisheries, an area of focus at this year’s FANRPAN Policy Dialogue, are also important sources of livelihoods for many Africans. After many years of neglect, these sectors are also being recognised as means of entering new markets and generating wealth as well as being key social safety nets during lean times

However, livestock and fisheries are also amongst the most climate-sensitive agroeconomic sectors. Consequently, for the 200 million Africans who rely on livestock for their livelihoods, and the 10 million Africans employed in fisheries(not to mention the 70 per cent of Africa’s rural poor who keep livestock), climate change will have serious implications and must be addressed in the region’s climate adaptation strategies

Achieving food security in Africa will require a sustained effort from experts in every sector and from every discipline. Collaborative approaches and committed investments of time, technologies and research funding will guide the way to a more prosperous tomorrow

As a supporter of the Farming First coalition, we call on policy-makers and practitioners to develop locally sustainable value-chains fairly connected to global agricultural markets, and to continue creating knowledge networks and policies centred on helping subsistence farmers to become entrepreneurs.

About Lindiwe Majele Sibanda

Dr Lindiwe Majele Sibanda is the CEO of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) and is a spokesperson for the Farming First coalition

It’s more than two years since the peak of the last spike in world grain prices, back in mid-2008. Since then prices have been drifting back to the levels last seen in 2005, or earlier.

Then suddenly this July all hell breaks loose in the world wheat market with prices up more than 50% from late June and analysts predicting increasing food prices.

The cause? Reports from Canada that harvests will be low on account of too much rain early in the season; while in Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine drought has cut the forecasts for the harvest. These countries feature amongst the top eight wheat exporting countries, shifting around one third of wheat traded globally in the mid-2000s. Failing harvests in these countries hits world markets hard.

The grain trade is already reacting strongly. Prices are up by US$50 a tonne in a month and by US$70 a tonne for some export wheats. The Financial Times says these increases are the fastest seen since 1973. That year saw the largest spike in cereals prices since the Korean War, prompting apocalyptic predictions of future famine which, incidentally, added impetus to the ‘green revolution’ period that saw major increases in cereal yields.  

As if this was not bad enough, Thursday 5 August produced a bombshell as Russia announced suspension of wheat exports from mid-August to December. In three days of trading, the wheat futures market in Chicago saw a full US$55 a tonne added, an extraordinary addition to the rises seen in late July.

Are we facing the prospect of replay of the food prices spikes of 2007/08 or even – heaven forbid – 1973/74? Not quite.

This is not 2007 or 1973. First, world wheat production may fall – perhaps 26M tonnes down on the forecasts – but this is a 4% reduction on a 2010 harvest that was expected to the be the third largest in history. Probably 650M tonnes will be harvested in 2010/11; compare that to 597M tonnes in 2006/07 and 606M tonnes in 2007/08.

Second, stocks that had been driven to their lowest levels in more than 30 years by the 2007-08 food crisis have been rebuilt. As a ratio of annual use, end-of-season stocks of wheat that had slumped to 23% in 2007/08 were almost up to 30% by 2009/10.

Third, harvests for the other two major grains, maize and rice, are not likely to be affected and some consumers deterred by higher wheat prices will have the chance to switch to other grains. Whether there will be a knock on inflationary effect on other grain prices remains to be seen.

Fourth, forecasts of demand for feed wheat by livestock producers have been reduced because less meat than expected is consumed during an economic downturn.

Hence, the ‘market fundamentals’ of supply and demand suggest that while wheat prices will be pushed up by harvest failures, this will be at most a minor spike. But what may we expect from harvest failures on the scale currently contemplated?

Before 2007/08 the last minor spike followed the 1994 harvest that was 37M tonnes, 6.6% down on 1993 and over the next two years prices climbed from US$167 to US$222 a tonne, or by 33%. If that’s any guide to current events, then it may well be that spot price increases seen in July, at 29%, are the worst of it.

But policy can be as destructive as drought, as the rice market showed in 2007/08 when India’s rice export ban led other rice exporters following suit. Rice prices tripled in the ensuing panic, so the key question is whether other countries follow Russia’s lead and restrict wheat exports.

Amongst the top eight wheat exporters, there are two likely candidates: Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Both countries have been affected by the same drought, and both restricted exports in 2007/08. Their combined wheat exports were expected to be not far short of those from Russia, so were they to ban exports it would be another heavy blow to the market.

Another key question is whether markets are likely to take fright as they did for rice, with importers over-ordering in a tight market fearing that soon there will be no rice at all on offer?

To judge by last week’s reaction on the futures market in Chicago, traders have been shocked by Russia’s move – but not for long.

The last two days of trading have seen those same prices fall back, by US$50 a tonne, more or less to where they were before the surprise of the export ban.

Are there lessons to learn from this shock? Yes – things can always go wrong and so it is wise to have some resilience in the system, in this case adequate stocks. Trade also helps. Some harvests fail somewhere in the world pretty much every year and trade can prevent people in local economies taking the full force of localised mishaps. In this case, a wheat surplus in China and the US is having a significant braking effect on prices. 

However, abrupt and unexpected policy interventions, such as Russia’s export ban, can throw further spanners into the works.

Finally, it is intriguing to read reports of the impact of industrial animal feedlot decisions on grain markets. Why can’t we reduce their feeding activities when grain harvests fail? Most of us can live for a while without meat, but not without bread.

About Steve Wiggins and Sharada Keats

Steve Wiggins and Sharada Keats are agricultural economists working for the Overseas Development Institute who have strong interests in food security and nutrition. For the last two years they have studying causes, impacts and responses of the spike in grain prices on world markets of 2007/08.

I have just visited the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa where over ten million people are facing hunger with many, including hundreds of thousands of young children, badly malnourished.

This food crisis is not a new story.

Drought in October 2009 contributed to poor and failed harvests. Early warning indicators were flashing amber and red back then. Unicef warned last autumn that hundreds of thousands of small children could face acute malnutrition in Niger, Chad, Mali and other countries of the Sahel.

Some small scale non-governmental organisation (NGO) aid work started in January, but the overall international response has been too little, too late.

Women collect water and firewood in the Sahel, Niger. Image: Oxfam GB

Now it is early August 2010 and all the worst scenarios are unfolding in countless villages across the region. The Sahel is a region of chronic food insecurity. It’s a region where these chronic indicators of hunger and malnutrition would trigger an emergency reaction in many other countries around the world.

And as chronic tipped so predictably into acute by March and April this year, why were aid plans mostly so timid and underfunded? Why has media attention been so sporadic and occasional?

The UN’s top emergency coordinator, John Holmes, visited the region in April. At a UN event on the Sahel on 20 July he underlined the desperate urgency of a food crisis that is now being labelled worse than the region’s last acute crisis in 2005.

A Unicef survey of nutrition in Niger published at the end of June that showed 16.7% of under-fives faced global acute malnutrition has pushed the World Food Programme into an urgent last minute effort to reach almost eight million people in Niger by August – many more than the 2.3 million it had planned for.

NGOs such as Oxfam have been saying over seven million people are at risk for many months.

At the end of June, I witnessed the desperation of ordinary families in Niger firsthand. Travelling through the semi-arid desert from the capital Niamey, we came to a small dusty village and sat down with a group of village women. They showed us the leaves they pulled from bushes to cook to eat; the sour, acrid-tasting berries they walked miles in the desert to find as a last resort to stave off total starvation. They said this was not the normal lean season, but a desperate time.

Kirsty Hughes with villagers near Ouallam, Niger. Image: Oxfam GB

We were watched by their weak, famished-looking children. They told us their animals had all died and they feared they would too. “We are weak and dying like our cattle,” they told us. “God will decide who lives and who dies.”

Yet back in Niamey, just over two hours drive on a rough road from where people are starving, there is food in the market but people cannot afford it. With no funds left after a failed harvest last year, and their animals dying or too thin to get a decent price in the market this year, this is a crisis of poverty not of food availability.

How and why are we here again in such a food crisis? A multitude of reasons for sure, but some are obvious.

Donors have to ask themselves if they gave too little and/or too late. Any why? Most did one or both.

Donors and international agencies have to ask themselves why did they set up early warning systems only to ignore them?

Governments in the region have to face up to their failures to admit to crisis at all. In Niger, it was only after the coup in March this year that there was full recognition of the scale of the challenge the country faced.

The media are also culpable. Surely must ask themselves why they can’t make a story out of a looming crisis and feel they have to wait until the most pitiful pictures are to be had.

And lying behind all of these factors, we all have to ask why in some of the poorest countries in the world there is not more aid, and more effective aid, tackling the long-term chronic food insecurity that undermines these countries’ development.

With serious investment in agriculture and livestock, in social protection, in alternative livelihoods, in the host of things we know can make a difference and reduce chronic food insecurity.

If we tackle this long-term poverty, we create the resilience that means a drought does not mean disaster; a problem does not become a crisis.

Like 2005, 2010 is a year of crisis or Niger – donors, international agencies, international and national NGOs, and national governments all have it in their power to make sure this is the last such crisis in the Sahel.

But will they?

About Kirsty Hughes

Dr Kirsty Hughes is Head of the Public Policy and Advocacy team at Oxfam GB, which is comprised of four main groups focusing on humanitarian and conflict issues, financing for development, climate change, and private sector and development. She has worked in a number of European thinktanks (including as head of the European Programme at Chatham House, and Friends of Europe, Brussels) and as a journalist writing on European and international politics since the early 1990s. She has also worked at senior level in the European Commission.

Livestock is and has been intertwined with African societies for centuries. They provide nutrition, labour, transport and fulfil major socio-cultural roles. It is estimated that 70% of Africa’s rural poor keep livestock and some 200M people rely on these animals for their livelihoods. Indigenous livestock are not only adapted to diverse African agro-ecological production systems – they are also unique and responsive genotypes shaped by the needs of African farmers.

The demand for livestock products is expected to increase with population growth, urbanisation and changing consumer demands. This presents a unique opportunity, but also an increasing threat for indigenous breeds.

Indeed, African cattle represent the logical starting point for improving of the productivity of the livestock sector on the continent. In the same way that the diversity of locally adapted European breeds was the source of highly productive milk and beef breeds of the northern hemisphere, African livestock diversity represents a valuable genetic resources waiting to be tapped.

There is, however, an increasing perception that the solution behind productivity improvement of the livestock sector in sub-Saharan Africa is through crossbreeding of local breeds with exotic ones; for example through the importation of semen and production of crossbreeds. The solution is attractive as it may combine the advantages of both worlds, local adaptation with high productivity.

But the solution is also a short sighted one that relies on the availability of the pure, locally adapted genotypes, which may rapidly disappear if they are not conserved, or we may see their genetic make-up increasingly diluted.

What is the alternative solution? First, we need a paradigm shift in our perspective and accept that contrary to the traditional thinking, African chicken, cattle, goat and sheep represent an unique genetic resource for improvement of productivity; after all they have produced, survived and fed millions of people across history.

Second, we need to invest much more on the understanding of the genetic adaptive attributes of African livestock. In other words, we need to apply genomics revolution technologies to the indigenous breeds and in parallel embark on large scale phenotype recording programs. African livestock need and deserve much more in the way of long term research investments.

Third, we need to respond to immediate demands and recognise that there is no ‘quick fix’ solution. Yes, European-African crossbreeding can be utilised for short-term delivery but only if this is undertaken in parallel with well thought out breeding improvement programmes.

Finally, we need to realise that we are racing against time. African livestock diversity is shrinking. The world needs to wake up now and support the development of in vitro African livestock biobanks before it is too late for conservation, further utilisation and characterisation activities that will help Africa and the world for centuries to come.

About Olivier Hanotte

Olivier Hanotte, a molecular geneticist from Belgium, joined the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in 1995 after a post-doc at the University of Leicester, UK, in the field of livestock and wildlife genetic diversity, and led the Improving Animal Genetics Resource Characterization project. In January 2009 he joined the University of Nottingham as Professor of Population and Conservations Genetics. He is member of the editorial board of Animal Genetics and The Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics.

© The University of York

No one says to their children, “Go into the woods and eat anything you can find. It is all natural, so it must be good for you.” But for some reason when we walk into the supermarket ‘natural’ is a key selling point for all kinds of foods.

My favourite example is a sweetcorn you can buy that claims to be ‘naturally sweet’. This is an absurd idea. Naturally, seeds are tough and indigestible – they are not sweet. Seeds are a plant’s babies, and the last thing most plants want you to do is eat their babies.

Naturally, plants don’t want to be eaten at all. We know this. We know natural plants are potentially extremely dangerous and not at all generous in providing us with food, otherwise we would let our children eat whatever they find in the woods.

There are some interesting exceptions. Plants bribe animals to help them carry their pollen to another plant, or their seed to a new location, but for the most part, natural plants are bristling with defences. It is precisely this reason that 10,000 years ago people invented agriculture.

The crops that feed the world today are not remotely natural. It’s taken farmers 10,000 years of selection to breed out the defences and other features inconvenient for farming or consumption that natural selection spent millions of years putting in.

So if we know that plants were not put on the planet for our personal benefit, and indeed natural plants are dangerous, why are we beguiled by the supermarket sales pitch that natural food is good for us?

I think it comes from the very clear evidence that we are not living sustainably and we are not eating healthily. High input farming and highly processed foods are damaging to the environment and to us.

The easy-to-sell solution to these problems is that since the things we are doing now are bad and the things we used to do were good, everything would be better if we ‘went back to nature’.

But since nature, as everyone really knows, is red in tooth and claw, this argument makes no sense at all.

We should not do less things; we should do different things. We need science to help us work out how to do farming more sustainably and eat more healthily. We need to work hard at this, and it is going to be difficult and involve changes to our lifestyles that we will not like.

Buying products labelled ‘natural’ in a supermarket is not going to help. Trying to sell things on this basis merely exploits peoples’ desire to do the right thing when we need that energy and idealism to bring about genuinely positive changes.   

About Ottoline Leyser

Professor Ottoline Leyser CBE FRS from the University of York received the Royal Society’s Rosalind Franklin Award in 2007 for her work on plant hormones and how they control plant development, which led to the publication of the book Mothers in Science: 64 ways to have it all (PDF) to show how women can manage both science and family.

Put focused, transparent and accountable food security initiatives first for sustainable development, says Morgane Danielou of the Farming First coalition.

Last year in L’Aquila, Italy, G8 leaders pledged US$20Bn (since revised to $22Bn) to address global food security.

Since the food crisis erupted in 2008, a large number of global and regional food security initiatives have been launched or strengthened in response. The L’Aquila statement (PDF) and the subsequent launch in 2010 of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (GAFSP) (PDF) are important illustrations of the commitment to action of countries around the world. 

Ahead of this year’s G8 summit, the Farming First coalition has compiled a comprehensive Guide to Food Security Initiatives, which uses an interactive map to outline the key policy objectives that each initiative has identified and how these policies should be implemented.

Food security is a complex issue requiring concerted efforts over the long term. The increased attention and leadership around this issue is a very positive development.

However, while this renewed attention and action are welcomed and needed, the proliferation of so many separate initiatives running in parallel requires that the risk of overlapping, competing or disjointed activities be addressed.

As we move towards action on these food security policies, Farming First urges G8 leaders to:

1. Promote a clear focus on a common goal for food security at the global level through policy and operational coherence
2. Encourage increased transparency on how much pledged funding has been committed, and to what types of programmes
3. Engage a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that efforts are coordinated, clear, collaborative and ultimately successful

How the many current programmes are coordinated and contribute to food security is unclear.

In the UN system, the Secretary-General’s High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (HLTF) represents an effort at giving an overarching direction but how non-UN efforts relate, for instance, to the Comprehensive Framework for Action (CFA) (PDF) developed by the HLTF, is not articulated.

In addition, despite a great amount of funding pledged by many countries to support food security initiatives, we do not know how much and in what ways it has been delivered. For instance, the L’Aquila statement included targeted investments as well as support for innovation, research and technology as essential components of long-term food security. But what investments? How much, and where?

Finally, how the relevant stakeholders required for successful policy implementation interact with these programmes is also in many cases undefined. Farmers, scientists, civil society and the private sector need to be involved in order to ensure plans meet existing needs and are successfully implemented. For example, Farming First suggests that GAFSP create a dedicated seat for farmers and the private sector on its Steering Committee given the essential role that the Committee will play in supporting initiatives around the world that will affect farmers.

Farming First urges G8 leaders to renew their commitments to food security at this year’s summit, and we welcome the opportunity for further collective action in addressing the hunger and poverty concerns at the heart of sustainable development.

About Morgane Danielou

Morgane Danielou is Director of Communications for the International Fertilizer Industry Association, based in Paris.  She works on behalf of Farming First, a global coalition of 131 organisations, representing the world’s farmers, scientists, engineers and industry.  For more on Farming First’s position on food security, visit www.farmingfirst.org/foodsecurity

Tracking plant pathogens is a vital part of agro-economic development, says Maurizio Vurro.  

As with human and animal diseases, the emergence or re-emergence of plant diseases is often due to man’s activities – a consequence of mass tourism, global trade, or changes to farming practises or the environment. 

Although our ability to diagnose and control diseases is greater than in the past, emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are still able to cause tremendous crop losses. In developing countries in particular, the economic and social impact is often underestimated as I, with colleagues, recently discussed in the journal Food Security. 

Cassava Mosaic Virus Disease, for example, is capable of reducing yields by 80-90% and suspends cassava cultivation in many areas of East Africa. Striga hermonthica, a parasitic weed, affects cereal cultivation across at least 5 million hectares in sub-Saharan Africa. And the rust fungus Ug99, which has overcome resistant varieties, has spread from Uganda and threatens most of the wheat-growing countries in the world. 

Countries with limited resources are threatened when pandemics occur on important food crops, such as Xanthomonas Banana Wilt, a bacterial disease that affects the food security of 70M people in Uganda. This kind of low crop productivity contributes directly to malnutrition, and indirectly to the spread of human diseases and the collapse of the environment because poor rural areas are abandoned with a concomitant phenomenon of urban overcrowding. 

In developing countries there are clear links between food insecurity and institutional fragility. The 2008 food crisis highlighted the acute vulnerability of net food-importing developing countries in the sub-Saharan Africa. In the past two decades, those countries have reduced investment in rural areas, exacerbating migration to cities and increasing the demand for food imports. This vicious circle further undermines the capacity of agriculture to produce the required food and increases dependence on food imports. 

Hunger is further worsened by the lack of public interventions, institutional fragility, limited public investments in rural areas, political and administrative chaos, war and local guerrilla action, and climate change. In this context, the effectiveness of humanitarian aid, in the absence of appropriate conditions to start productive activities, is largely frustrated. 

Surveillance of EIDs is thus crucial for developing countries’ agricultural self-sufficiency and wider social economy, but these technologies are often expensive and require technical preparation, economic investment and personnel. Given the cost, many developing countries have limited control systems; nor can they acquire and update lists of emerging pathogens within their borders. 

The consequence is that many diseases in developing countries simply spread without being recognized and monitored. 

In Western countries surveillance systems are easier to deploy because of existing community networks, there are more economic opportunities, and greater availability of the necessary technologies at affordable prices. Furthermore, in developed countries there are social safety nets to support those most affected; food reserves that limit the risk of famine; research systems and technical support services that enable management of those diseases or diversification to alternative crops; and warning systems that allow the prompt application of control measures. 

Similar systems must be urgently established in developing countries to avert the socio-economic disasters that can be caused by plant diseases. The development of a large EID-monitoring organization on a territorial basis, with clear roles and accountabilities, is of utmost importance.

About Maurizio Vurro

Maurizio Vurro has been a senior researcher at the Institute of Sciences of Food Production, National Research Council, since 2001. His main scientific interests are the use of microbes and natural metabolites in biological control, in particular against weeds. He recently led the project ‘Enhancement and exploitation of soil-biocontrol agents for bio-constraint management in crops’ within the 6th EU Framework Programme and is the author of more than 70 articles in scientific journals, three books, and seven book chapters.

Better data on how and where aid is spent is needed to make real progress on tackling hunger, argue Gordon Conway and Laura Kelly.

Holding global leaders to account has never been easy. But when they come together in the Muskoka region of Canada 25-26 June, G8 leaders claim they will report on their own progress on tackling global hunger.

During the Italian G8 Presidency in 2009 the G8 announced the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative, pledging more than $20B of aid over three years to agriculture and food security. Leaders agreed core principles to tackle global hunger and said they were “determined to translate these principles into action and take all the necessary measures to achieve global food security”.

Now, and as then, we welcome these commitments and like many others we are keen to see what progress has been made. Nevertheless, while we look forward to G8 leaders’ own assessments on progress, we think it important that we, and other independent researchers, are given access to timely and detailed information to allow us to do our own analysis.

We believe that access to better aid data is vital on this issue. After 30 years of underinvestment in agricultural development, we now have the political and financial momentum to make real progress on tackling hunger. But if governments do not deliver these new investments in a strategic and coordinated way, we risk dissipating efforts and missing a unique opportunity to deliver impacts on the ground for the one billion undernourished people that governments are seeking to help.

When engaging in the complex, interdisciplinary world of agricultural development, we need a better detailed understanding of what works. By investing time and money in better aid data now, governments will be able to work with their advisers, researchers and recipient country partners to understand how their investments correlate with real progress for those that need it most. This will enable more effective and coherent partnerships in the future.

Our own work with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) DAC database (OECD-DAC), which provides comprehensive data on the volume, origin and types of aid and other resource flows, has shown that at present the measurement and analysis of agricultural development assistance is fraught with challenges. Different governments classify and measure their agricultural assistance in different ways. For instance, some bilateral assistance is given through budget support, making it difficult to measure what if any support goes to agriculture.

Support to multilateral agencies is also hard to attribute to specific sector activity. And OECD-DAC is very slow to release data – detailed data for 2008 was released in March 2010 – so timely independent analysis is very difficult.

The OECD-DAC database is an important resource, and we believe that it should remain the primary channel for governments to report their development assistance spending. But it needs to be further improved: non-OECD government actions should be included, as should several additional multilateral organisations. Furthermore, we are not always able to measure what we want – amounts of assistance to smallholders, or large versus small irrigation investments for example.

We look forward to hearing how global leaders meeting in Muskoka have performed on tackling hunger over the last year. But if they want their agriculture investments to have a lasting impact, they should also commit to urgent action to get the data systems in place to measure and monitor how and where their agricultural development assistance has been spent so we can all see if it is successful.

This blog post is based on an article originally published on the Global Food for Thought blog, the official blog of the Global Agricultural Development Initiative.

About Sir Gordon Conway

Sir Gordon Conway is Professor of International Development at Imperial College London. For more information about his work please go to: www.imperial.ac.uk/africanagriculturaldevelopment

About Laura Kelly

Laura Kelly is Director, Policy of ONE Europe: http://one.org/international

On 10th May 2010, Imperial College and ONE hosted a joint workshop to discuss the challenges of measuring agricultural development assistance. For more information about this work please go to: www.imperial.ac.uk/africanagriculturaldevelopment/resources/monitoring

The needs of food security require that food production be increased on a relatively fixed amount of land but in a sustainable way. How can this objective be achieved?

In particular how can we protect plants against pests and diseases in a sustainable way? Many consumer and environmentalists would like to see less use of chemical pesticides in the production of our food, but until recently the producers of more environmentally friendly alternatives, sometimes called ‘green pesticides’ or ‘biopesticides’, have faced regulatory barriers.

More opportunities need to be made available for biocontrol products, such as wasps that kill pest caterpillars for example, and for microbiological pesticides such as naturally occurring fungi, bacteria and viruses that were studied in a Rural Economy and Land Use project, Biological Alternatives to Chemical Pesticides in the Food Chain. Such products offer several advantages such as low impact on non-target organisms, compatibility with other natural insect enemies, and limited toxic residues.

Up to the recent past, however, not enough products have reached the market. Typically, these products are developed by small firms and the costs and complexity of the registration process can pose a formidable barrier given that the regulatory system was developed to suit chemical pesticides.

Progress was made in the UK with the introduction of a biopesticides scheme in 2006 by what is now the Chemicals Regulation Directorate. However, accessing wider markets which would make products viable proved difficult. The internal market did not really exist in the EU for these products but was split into twenty-seven distinct regulatory jurisdictions. This bureaucracy contrasts with the US where a large internal market, support from government, and a clear mission by the US Environmental Protection Agency is smoothing the path for biopesticides.

However, a new way forward is offered by a package of measures adopted by the European Union in 2009. These include revisions to the regulation (91/414) which had previously controlled the use of pesticides, and to a thematic strategy on pesticides and a new Sustainable Use Directive (SUD). Preparation of the thematic strategy highlighted the need for a SUD as several of the envisaged measures could not be integrated into existing legislation or policies.

This directive was passed in 2009 and will be implemented by 2011. It was centred around the creation of National Action Plans in each member state to identify areas of risk, reduce risk and use, minimise the impacts on human health and the environment, and encourage responsible perstcide use and integrated pest management (IPM) techniques. IPM involves the use of complementary control strategies in such a way as to minimise environmental impact.

It must be emphasised that IPM does not rule out the use of synthetic pesticides.  Many products that form part of the new generation of synthetics are more environmentally friendly than earlier products, many of which are no longer permitted to be used. However, even these new products should be treated as a precious resource to be used sparingly.

The new legislative framework in the EU offers a promising way forward. Eco-zones have been adopted in the EU so that a product registered in one country can also be sold in others with similar climatic conditions.

But as always, the devil is in detail and much work has to be done before these plans are put into practice, such as devising co-ordinated National Action Plans and regulations. Furthermore, the backdrop of under-sourced agencies in many EU member states may hinder progress but the hope of an economically and environmentally sustainable future is there to be grasped.

Finally, I think that supermarkets may yet play a useful role. Supermarket chains in the UK say they are under pressure from consumers to minimise pesticide residues. If retailers were to better support biopesticides at the food production level it would provide economic impetus to their manufacture and development.

About Wyn Grant

Wyn Grant is a graduate of the universities of Leicester, Strathclyde and Exeter. He joined Warwick University in 1971 and was chair of the Department of Politics and International Studies from 1990 to 1997. He is currently a member of the Population and Diseases Research Group in the Department of Biological Sciences at Warwick Horticultural Research International, Wellesbourne, and is Vice President of the International Political Science Association.

Contact details

Wyn Grant

W.P.Grant@warwick.ac.uk