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More R & D needed to feed a growing population

Nearly one-thousand farmers, scientists, ag ministers, civil society group members, World Food Prize Laureates and others will meet in France next week for the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD). The group has been charged by the G8 to come up with ways to structure agriculture to meet the growing world food need.

In preparation for the conference, a report funded by the World Bank, the European Commission and a range of international organizations and development agencies has been prepared by a team of global food and agriculture experts for presentation at the meeting.

The report cites a World Bank estimate that 1.4 billion people were living in poverty in 2005, since the economic crash of 2008 estimates are another 100 million people have joined that list. The group says a steady decline in policy attention to agriculture and rural development has been a major cause for the increase. It charges that while short-term emergency food aid has increased, little has been done to address hunger long-term in developing and developed countries. Except for China, India and Brazil, “capacity of most developing countries in agricultural research and development has been winding down.” Just four countries, the United States, Japan, France and Germany, accounted for 66 percent of all global agricultural public research and development in 2000. Meanwhile, 80 countries with a combined population of 625 million people conducted only 6.3 percent of total agricultural R & D.

Estimates are the world population will likely reach 9 billion people around the year 2050, most the increase will be in developing countries and urban populations are expected to grow by some 3 billion. The report states with higher incomes, the diets in developing countries will shift from low to high-value cereals, poultry, meat, fruits and vegetables. “While this will constitute an improvement for many,” the group says, it is “also likely to be accompanied by hunger and poverty in the countries with the poorest populations.” To meet the backlog of underinvestment, the report says developing countries need to put at least 1.5 percent of their GDP into agricultural research and development, that would be double or triple their current investment.

It is also noted the options used to increase food productivity over the past five decades will not work in the future. For starters, increasing farmland is no longer viable, “We need to produce food for a growing population on the same piece of land.” The authors contend it will be more important than ever for everyone involved in food production from seed-to-table to communicate with each other in the development of products and technologies specific to certain areas. Agriculture needs to move away from expectations that research advances can be applied and will be effective anywhere.

The authors contend there should be enough knowledge and resources available to tackle the problems of hunger and poverty but the knowledge and resources are not distributed evenly around the world. The conference will “seek to ensure that agricultural research for development will be more inclusive of both women and the needs of small farmers.”

The GCARD conference opens Sunday and runs through Wednesday in Montpellier, France.

Read the “Transforming Agricultural Research for Development” report