D-8 Secretariat urges member states to implement food security program

Dhaka, Bangladesh | September 18, 2008 by D-8 Secretariat

The Rome summit of the FAO and the Tokyo summit of the G-8 on tackling the ongoing world-wide food crisis are signs of the desperation nations are faced with. Indeed, the world is gripped by a new face of catastrophe, with a Nargis-like storm of food scarcity, rocketing oil prices, and the population explosion, that is plunging humanity into the biggest crisis of the century owing to pushed-up food prices and throwing more and more people into poverty in developing countries. Food, fuel, hunger and poverty also featured high on the recent SAARC agenda in Colombo.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s belief that global food production must register a huge rise in order to cope with demand is in effect a broad hint of the problem on the world’s hands. Rice, a staple food for Bangladeshis, registers an increase in retail and wholesale outlets. For rural Bangladesh, 40 per cent of the households remain chronically poor; despite funding from various sources, the poor caught in the chronic poverty trap continue to be born into poverty and also die in poverty. They have no escape. We face a situation when poverty is also propelled by high prices. In Samuelsonian economics, the answer to high prices is high prices, meaning, only higher prices could contain demand and augment supply, the consequence being, prices could nosedive. However, demand for staple commodities is inelastic and high prices of such goods [rice, wheat, etcetera] pinch the poor. Besides this, the rice supply is not price-responsive as other non-rice commodities because staple foods are mostly grown for home consumption. Only about one-tenth of world production of rice [and roughly one-third of Bangladesh production] enters into the respective markets.

Growing energy costs also add to the adjustment burden. According to CAB estimate, commodity prices in general have increased by about 16 per cent but the price of rice, wheat and other food items have increased by about 45 per cent just within the last six months or so. The real story is that a melange of supply-side bottlenecks and arbitrary increase in transport fares due to oil price hike has fuelled a sustained rise in prices of primary goods. It is especially the poorer nations that have been at the receiving end with a medley of grave concerns, with all the rises in food prices in the past several months. The extent to which food has now assumed the shape of a serious problem can be gauged from the trebling of prices in the last three years. Prices are at a 30-year high, a terrible reality that warrants concerted efforts to be expended in handling the situation. Prices have risen because of a continuing drought in farming areas, growing world’s population at more than 90 million a year, reducing farming lands for human settlements and industry as population booms [farming lands are gradually being converted to grow bio-fuel and cash crops, instead of rice and wheat]. Furthermore, it takes about seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, which means land that could be used to grow food is being used to produce animal feed. Then again, a number of food exporting countries like India and Vietnam have imposed restrictions on their exports. Experts say, governments must now make policy options to increase food production even though they have to take painful decisions in macroeconomic policy to feed their people. Generally, resource or land tenure is defined as the customary rules that govern one’s relationship to the land and its resources. Land tenure and food security have been the subjects of extensive research in the past. Links between the two issues are now receiving increased attention. A framework needs to be in place to make explicit the trade-offs that poor households may face in bad or rainy days, between consumption and investment in non-labour assets. At the moment we seem to have no econometric tool at hand to trace the causal factors that propel poverty, which is a multidimensional concept having multi-faceted roots of origin. But one may like to correlate the rise in poverty with the rise in rice prices. The results are tentative but persuasive.

From an economic perspective, the question of land ownership together with agrarian reforms is linked to increased agricultural productivity, employment opportunity, and related development issues. One of the fundamentals in achieving such goals is to undertake comprehensive land reforms that eluded the national agenda of political roly-polies during the 37 years in Bangladesh. And the fact that 50 per cent of households are landless does not awaken us. But the critical person-to-land ration must be increased, breaking the age-old bondage of exploitation and poverty. The present economic model is premised on the centrality of markets. But the unstoppable market forces themselves are a non-hyperbolic function of economic clout and control. Bangladesh is wallowing with a skewed distribution of natural resources [land included] and market forces are marginalising an increasing proportion of people in the country. This being the case, land reform is vital to increase food production in Bangladesh. Empowerment of farm workers ownership of land has done miracles in West Bengal and Vietnam in terms of increased food production. Vietnam, a food-deficit country, is now a big exporter of rice and other food grains.

Plant mutation, a scientific technique that considerably improves crop productivity, could provide an answer to the current global food and energy crisis, according to UN researchers. At a time when the world is facing a food and energy crisis of unprecedented proportions, plant mutation breeding can be catalyst in developing improved, higher yield, saline-resistant, sturdier crop varieties, said Werner Burkart, Deputy DG of IAEA on August 12 in a conference. Increased rice prices also go to push up prices of other commodities. One thus reckons that a substantial rise in rice price pushed a larger segment of the populace below the poverty line as they spend half of their budget on rice and they are mostly $5 a day households. That also means, real income went substantially lower than before, thus fuelling a fall in food consumption, nutrition, productivity, and hence in income. This in essence is what you may call a price-led poverty. Most of the poor households tend to postpone expenses on productive pursuits to divert money to buy food. Income and non-income poverty grip these households. The emerging new situation of the increased global food crisis calls for policy actions in certain areas. For instance, for short and medium term solutions, social protection and food nutrition initiatives, and augmented ’supplies through investment in agriculture, particularly in agricultural sciences and technology and market penetration, and a revision of the developed countries’ bio-fuel and agricultural trade policies. For the first two, Bangladesh government may do well to see that positive steps are taken with commitment to implement them. More allocation of resources may not make any sense unless materialised through proper utilisation at the quickest possible time. Success comes not simply from solutions, but from specific solutions for specific cases and contexts. To sum up, there are, given the objective reality, two issues related to food today. The first is of course the phenomenal rise in rice price, a fact that has led to riots in a number of countries like the Philippines. And the second is the shortage of food, a malady that calls for effective and efficient handling. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has indicated a way out of the crisis, tentatively at least, by asking the developed nations to release their excess food stockpiles in order for people in poorer countries to be fed. But will the rich countries respond? Even so, much more needs to be done to help farmers in the underdeveloped regions of the world cope with their problems. The matter of subsidies being given to them merits serious consideration, especially against the backdrop of the significant help given to the farming community in the developed world. There is too the question of whether the use of bio-fuels by developed nations has contributed to the fantastic rise in food prices. Brazilian President Lula denied that it has, but that is certainly no conclusive answer. The fact is that bio-fuels have been instrumental in the making of the crisis. And then, of course, there are the other cogent reasons.

To conclude, the immediate future, unless handled in a mature way promises to be bleak. Two billion people worldwide are struggling against food price rises and a hundred million are in immediate danger of falling into poverty. It is an assessment from no other than the World Bank’s Robert Zoellick. And it is widely shared by others.

D-8 Secretariat has prepared ToR to initiate a set of programs and projects for food security, in order to better face the food crisis as in Bangladesh and other D-8 memberstates.

Newssource: The Daily Independent Bangladesh

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