Global food prices have roughly doubled in three years. At the World Food Summit in Rome in early June, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon recalled that on a trip to Liberia he encountered people who had once bought rice by the bag and whose cash now suffices for a meager cupful. The current crisis means that another 100 million hungry may join the 854 million who already lack sufficient daily nourishment.

An immediate response should include policies that discourage grain hoarding, that reapportion the way food aid is delivered and that ensure that subsidies for food purchases are carefully targeted to reach the truly poor. Just shipping more grain to Africa, by far the most vulnerable region, will not suffice. Over the long haul, science and technology have a big role to play. Finding nonfood substitutes for ethanol produced from corn or sugarcane would help. But the only lasting solution to hunger in Africa and elsewhere must focus on poor agricultural productivity.

U.S. secretary of agriculture Ed Schafer called on participants at the summit to consider the use of biotechnology to grow crops with higher yields that are capable of resisting assaults from inclement weather, disease or pests. Some activists, invoking fears about genetic manipulation of food crops, have jumped on the administration’s stance as pandering to agribusiness and overhyping benefits from genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

That criticism is unfounded. Nongovernmental organizations that advocate exporting the organic food movement to Africa are at best misguided. Much of Africa practices what political scientist Robert Paarlberg calls “de facto organic farming,” and overall productivity has plummeted. African small farmers achieve crop yields only one third of those obtained by farmers in developing countries in Asia. GMOs have the potential to increase productivity by incorporating beneficial traits that would, for one, allow crops to thrive even when rain is a rare event.

The Bush administration, never a beacon of enlightened social policymaking, would have come across more convincingly if it had incorporated biotechnology into a well-defined framework of research and development assistance. At the moment, genetically modifying cassava or cowpeas against viruses or insects is akin to producing hydrogen fuel cells in the energy arena. Both hold tremendous promise, and both are not ready for wide commercial dissemination.

The best hope for improving African crop yields today would be to borrow technology from the decades-old green revolution that transformed agriculture in Asia and Latin America. Using conventionally bred hybrid seeds, farmers in certain fertile areas of Ethiopia have witnessed their fields turn into a breadbasket that is rivaled in the sub-Saharan region of the continent only by South Africa. Eventually these same farmers will likely demand still better yields that will leave an opening for acceptance of genetically modified crops.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (a partnership of the Rockefeller and Gates foundations) signed an agreement with three U.N. food agencies at the June summit meeting to bolster the lot of African small farmers. The Bush administration had asked in May that part of a recent aid package to address the food crisis go to agricultural development, including the planting of GMOs. More is needed, though. As the world’s largest food aid donor, the U.S. channels most of its dollars to pay for acute emergencies, a response that, by law, requires shipping crops grown in Iowa or Kansas to needy countries—largely on U.S. ships. Meanwhile the U.S. Agency for International Development’s funding for agricultural science in Africa dropped by 75 percent after inflation from the mid-1980s to 2004.

To avoid a crisis without end, we should back a program that not only delivers better seeds to African farmers but also devotes still more assistance to support improvements in soil, irrigation, roads and farmer education. Then, when necessary, we should use remaining aid money to buy either hybrid or genetically modified crops grown in African soil for local distribution. The U.S. farm lobby will howl in protest, but this action will be the best way to work toward putting African bread on African tables.

4 Comments

1. 1. Assegai 11:23 PM 7/21/08

   "Over the long haul, science and technology have a big role to play" and "The best hope for improving African crop yields today would be to borrow technology from the decades-old green revolution that transformed agriculture in Asia and Latin America. Using conventionally bred hybrid seeds, farmers in certain fertile areas of Ethiopia have witnessed their fields turn into a breadbasket that is rivaled in the sub-Saharan region of the continent only by South Africa. Eventually these same farmers will likely demand still better yields that will leave an opening for acceptance of genetically modified crops."
   
   Simple things, knowledge is not a complex issue, every solution people come up with seems to have to do with knowledge, simple concepts like this, but the African leader seems to enjoy a starving Africa, these solutions do not require hundreds of billions, fix the agricultural sector, but then again not only Africans benefit, but those same consultants who change what is needed once, following theadvise written means you only need the advise once then no more need for advisors if followed, truthful article, but such politics, its frightening the politics when it is not about care but power and interests.
   
   

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2. 2. Tan Boon Tee 02:31 AM 7/26/08

   The Green Revolution that has been mushrooming and thriving in the greater part of Asia does not seem to happen widely in Africa. Indeed, Africa needs the state-of-the-art biotechnology to boost its agricultural produce, never mind if it is genetic manipulated or organic.
   
   The unequal distribution of wealth is a serious yet extremely disturbing global problem, and food is no exception. While in some nations where the abject poor are crying for more food, others are hoarding crops in large quantities for some not so obvious and dubious reasons (more political than economic).
   
   No matter what the circumstances may be, African farmers ought to learn how best to use and cultivate their land and become self-reliance, with the proviso that international funds go to the deserving ones. Has anyone not noticed that giving people fish everyday cannot be a sustainable measure, but teaching them how to catch fish would be the only way to enable them to have fish everyday? (Tan Boon Tee)
   

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3. 3. emil47 06:14 AM 8/6/08

   Africa's leaders could learn a lot from China's experience, which began its spectacular development by increasing little farms' productivity!

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4. 4. david_burress 03:45 PM 9/17/08

   The editors endorsement of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) as a solution to Africas food problem is economically and politically naive. As Nobelist Amartya Sen famously pointed out, hunger is hardly ever an agricultural problem or a transportation problem, but almost always an income problem. As long as there is enough food in the world as a whole to feed everyonewhich has generally been the case for some centuries nowand as long as local and international food markets are working at least minimallyas in the absence of war they generally and increasingly have beenthen almost all of those with enough money will eat. Therefore your proposed GMO solution must be analyzed in terms of its impact on the income of poor people, not its impact on food production.
   
   Using that standard and assuming the existing economic order will continue, your proposal flunks. Since the poorest people in world are highly disproportionately engaged in farming, poverty impacts of shifting to GMO-intensive production are likely to be substantial. On the positive side of the ledger, GMOs would likely improve production predictabilitybut that has little to do with the high world food prices you propose to address. GMOs would also improve output per hectarebut thats the wrong objective function for poor farmers, who need increased income per farmer. GMOs are generally patented by profit-seeking corporations, which are expected by their stockholders to maximize profits. To accomplish that they must set GMO prices at levels that milk as much as possible of the economic surplus generated by the GMOs, meaning that poor people and poor countries will gain surprisingly little income on net by adopting GMOs. Moreover, because using patented GMOs requires increased capitalization, the poorest farmers will tend to be shut out of the market production system. Moreover, high capitalization is a financial risk amplifier, because the loan has to be repaid whether or not the crop succeeds. Moreover, to the extent that GMOs do in fact increase world output, they will drive down prices for agricultural commodities. While that will make food more affordable, much more importantly it will also reduce the income of poor farmers.
   
   Hard problems often require hard solutions, not technological magic bullets. If you want to feed poor farmers, give them roads, education, land redistribution, stable property rights, and microfinanceand remove or buy out the patents on the GMOs.
   
   David Burress
   President, Ad Astra Institute of Kansas
   Lawrence KS
   

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