Robert Zoellick on the World's Challenges

Published by Newsweek on Sunday, January 23, 2011
By R. M. Schneiderman

In the lead-up to the World Economic Forum in Davos, NEWSWEEK's R. M. Schneiderman interviewed World Bank president Robert B. Zoellick about the future of the global economy.

What is the biggest challenge facing the developing world in 2011?

The biggest challenge facing most developing countries is the risk of a big boost in food prices. Food accounts for a large and increasingly volatile share of family budgets for poor and urban families. When prices of staple foods soar, poor countries and poor people bear the brunt. France's President Sarkozy, Chair of the G-8 and G-20 this year, has rightly identified this issue as a priority.

How can the globe assure food security in the face of rising prices?

There are two interrelated challenges. First, we need to increase food productivity and production in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and with small-holder farmers. To do so, we need to fix problems all along the "value chain": property rights; R&D for seeds and inputs; irrigation; fertilizer; agricultural extension; credit; rural infrastructure; storage; and connection to markets. The World Bank Group manages a Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, with contributions from six countries as of now and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to help promote investments in small-holder farmers. In 2011, I hope we can get more contributions. Separately, the World Bank Group is boosting investment in agriculture to about $6-8 billion a year through our lending and investment projects.

The second problem is the volatility of food prices, often because of events outside poor countries' control. An interconnected combination of steps could help ensure that the most vulnerable countries and people get the nutrition they need. For example, we can increase public information on the quality and quantity of grain stocks to reassure markets and calm panic-induced price spikes. We can improve long-range weather forecasting and monitoring, especially in Africa, to better prepare for dangers. Export bans exacerbate panic pricing, so we need a code of conduct that at least exempts humanitarian purchases from bans.

We can help small-holder farmers become a bigger part of the solution for food security through tenders from humanitarian purchasers such as the World Food Program. We need financial and other tools to help farmers and their governments manage risk, whether of rainfall, prices of inputs such as energy, or others. We may need small, regional humanitarian food reserves, too, in disaster-prone, infrastructure-poor areas. We should also ensure effective, targeted social safety nets so that we protect the most vulnerable populations, such as pregnant and lactating women and children under two. The bottom line: The G-20 should agree to "Put Food First."

What about the world economy?

For the world economy as a whole, the macro challenge is managing and enhancing a modest multispeed recovery that must steer clear of various shoals: for major emerging markets, avoiding overheating or bubbles in certain sectors; for the EU, navigating through sovereign debt icebergs that could puncture big holes in the financial sector; for the US, creating jobs today while breaking the wave of structural spending and debt increases; for all, setting course to make structural reforms suited to each economy to boost growth and a rebalanced international economy.

UK-commissioned Global Food and Farming Futures report released

A good resource from Joan Whelan of the TOPS Program:

 

The UK-government commissioned Global Food and Farming Futures project is a two-year study of food security, growing challenges, sustainability, volatility, malnutrition and other critical issues, along with recommendations for drastic change to the international food system to meet current and future needs.

 

The report of the project - the product of stakeholder input from 400 experts in 35 countries - is available here:  http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/current-projects/global-food-and-farming-futures/reports-and-publications

Weekend Reading: Jan 21

Below are some excellent links on articles, events and announcements in issues related to agriculture and food security. Also, starting next week, AGDES is moving to Nicaragua. I'll continue blogging about international agriculture with more emphasis on field work and the behind it. Enjoy the reading, 

• A comprehensive calendar of DC events and activities on food security an agriculture. Check it out from time to time and join the group
  
• Presentation and notes from the Driving Innovation: How Enterprise ICT Models are Changing Agricultural Extension event organized by USAID and Agrilinks 
• Another relevant DC event on Food Security organized by MicroLinks: Pathways Out of Poverty: Using Value Chains to Move Vulnerable Households Up the Economic Ladder
• UC Davis Receives $40 M to Lead Major Multistate Ag Research Programs in the development of climate-change-tolerant wheat and barley plants and the other at sequencing the genomes of loblolly pine and two other conifers
• Event Notification: 5th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture
  
• World Watch Institute: State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet
  
• NYT's Dot Earth Blogs "Varied Menus for Sustaining a Well-Fed World" about opposing views on how to feed 9 billion people and the need for an 'all of the above approach.
• BBSRC and DFID, both partners in the UK's Global Food Security program, announce a new initiative to improve food security in the developing worl
  

As always, send comments and suggestions to agdes.blog@gmail.com
Rafael

Administrator Shah’s Speech with CGD

USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah delivered a major speech entitled The Modern Development Enterprise at an event hosted by the Center for Global Development.

Food Security: Instead of merely providing food aid in times of emergency, we are helping countries develop their own agricultural sectors, so that they can feed themselves. We launched Feed the Future – bringing together resources across the federal government and engaging in deeper partnerships to extend the impact of our efforts. We are now leveraging more investment from countries themselves and from other donors. Firms ranging from General Mills to local African seed companies are all doing more. As a result, in just five of our twenty focus countries we will be able to help nearly 6.5 million poor farmers – most of them women – grow enough food to feed their families and break the grip of hunger and poverty for tens of millions of people.

"At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is create kind of commercially viable agriculture sectors in these countries to eliminate the fact that every time prices do spike a little bit, it creates a lot of unrest and a lot of human suffering".