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	A New Deal for Poor Farmers by Jeffrey Sachs Project Syndicate   June 6, 2008   Many poor, food-importing countries around the world have become desperate in recent months, as global prices of rice, wheat, and maize have doubled. Hundreds of millions of poor people, who already spend a large share of their daily budget on food, are being pushed to the edge. Food riots are mounting.   But many poor countries can grow more food themselves, because their farmers are producing far below what is technologically possible. In some cases, with appropriate government action, they could double or even triple food production in just a few years.   The idea is basic and well known. Traditional farming uses few inputs and gets poor yields. Poor peasants use their own seeds from the preceding season, lack fertilizer, depend on rain rather than irrigation, and have little if any mechanization beyond a traditional hoe. Their farms are small, perhaps one hectare (2.5 acres) or less.   Under traditional agricultural conditions, the yields of grain – rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, or millet – are usually around one ton per hectare, for one planting season per year. For a farm family of five or six living on one hectare, this means extreme poverty, and for their country, it means reliance on expensive food imports, including food aid.   The solution is to increase grain yields to at least two tons – and in some places to three or more tons – per hectare. If water can be managed through irrigation, this could be combined with multi-cropping (multiple harvests per year) to produce a crop during the dry season. Higher and more frequent yields mean less poverty in farm families, and lower food prices for cities.   The key to increasing yields is to ensure that even the poorest farmers have access to improved seed varieties (usually “hybrid” seeds created by scientific selection of seed varieties), chemical fertilizers, organic matter to replenish soil nutrients, and, where possible, small-scale irrigation methods, such as a pump to lift water from a nearby well. There is nothing magic about this combination of high-yield seeds, fertilizer, and small-scale irrigation. It is the key to the worldwide increase in food production since the 1960’s.   The problem is that these improved inputs have bypassed the poorest farmers and the poorest countries. When peasants lack their own saving accounts and collateral, they are unable to borrow from banks to buy seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation. As a result, they grow food the traditional way, often earning little or nothing from their harvest, because it’s not even enough to keep their families alive.   History has shown that government action is required to help the poorest farmers escape the low-yield poverty trap. If farmers can be helped to obtain simple technologies, income can rise, and they can accumulate bank balances and collateral. With a bit of temporary help, perhaps lasting around five years, farmers can build up enough wealth to obtain inputs on a market basis, either through direct purchases from savings or through bank loans.   Around the world, government-run agricultural banks in poor countries once not only financed inputs, but also provided agricultural advice and spread new seed technologies. Of course, there were abuses, such as the allocation of public credits to richer farmers rather than to needy ones, or the prolonged subsidization of inputs even after farmers became creditworthy. And in many cases, government agricultural banks went bankrupt. Still, the financing of inputs played a huge and positive role in helping the poorest farmers to escape poverty and dependency on food aid.   During the debt crisis of the 1980’s and 1990’s, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank forced dozens of poor food-importing countries to dismantle these state systems. Poor farmers were told to fend for themselves, to let “market forces” provide for inputs. This was a profound mistake: there were no such market forces.   Poor farmers lost access to fertilizers and improved seed varieties. They could not obtain bank financing. To its credit, the World Bank recognized this mistake in a scathing internal evaluation of its long-standing agricultural policies last year.   The time has come to re-establish public financing systems that enable small farmers in the poorest countries, notably those farming on two hectares or less, to gain access to needed inputs of high-yield seeds, fertilizer, and small-scale irrigation. Malawi has done this for the past three seasons, and has doubled its food production as a result. Other low-income countries should follow suit.   Importantly, the World Bank, has now stepped forward to help finance this new approach. If the Bank provides grants to poor countries to help small peasant farmers gain access to improved inputs, then it will be possible for those countries to increase their food production in a short period of time.   Donor governments, including the oil-rich countries of the Middle East, should help finance the World Bank’s new efforts. The world should set as a practical goal of doubling grain yields in low-income Africa and similar regions (such as Haiti) during the next five years. That’s achievable if the World Bank, donor governments, and poor countries direct their attention to the urgent needs of the world’s poorest farmers.   * Jeffrey Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.   The Food Crisis is a Global Emergency. (Earth Institute)   It has been called the "silent tsunami." In the past 24 months, grain prices have doubled. Prices of fertilizers and fuels have tripled. Thirty countries from Bangladesh to Haiti have seen food riots, and there is sticker shock at supermarkets even in rich nations. "This is the world''s big story," says Earth Institute director Jeffrey Sachs. "We''re really in the perfect storm."   The storm includes rising demand from growing populations; stagnation in the growth of crop production; increasing diversion of food crops into biofuels; and droughts from Australia to Italy, which may be the cutting edge of ongoing climate change.   According to Sachs and other Earth Institute leaders, the world must adapt to climate and other challenges using both technology and common sense, in order to produce more food, and ensure that the poor, as well as the rich, have access to it.   * Visit the link below to access this special feature from The Earth Institute. Visit the related web page
	Food Scarcity "Creating New World Order" by Antoaneta Bezlova Inter Press Service (IPS) China   Beijing, June 4, 2008   Unprecedented food scarcity is beginning to dictate the rules of a new political order where individual countries are scrambling to secure their own food supplies with little concern for the rest of the world, says the founder of the Earth Policy Institute.   Recent manifestations of national food insecurity like export restrictions imposed by some grain-producing countries are the troublesome portents of an "entirely new chapter in the book of food security," Lester Brown told foreign correspondents in Beijing on Tuesday.   "We are in the midst of the most severe food crisis in the world"s history," Brown said. "This is not your mother"s food shortage...but a chronically tight food situation, a serious and long-term problem."   Politicians have been meeting in Rome to find global solutions to soaring food prices and civil unrest caused by food shortages, but in reality many countries are already acting unilaterally to secure supplies for the future.   From Africa to Asia, countries are scrambling to buy or lease land overseas to grow crops and feed their people. China, which has to feed the world"s largest population, has taken the lead by contracting land in Tanzania, Laos, Kazakhstan, Brazil, and others.   India has set its eyes on Uruguay and Paraguay, while South Korea is looking for farming deals in Sudan and Siberia. Libya and Egypt for their part have been negotiating deals to lease land in Ukraine.   The worry here, according to Brown, is that "the more influential countries would be able to secure food supplies, leaving a number of low-income, less influential countries with no food to import."   "This could create a lot of desperate countries," he says. The United Nations says soaring prices of basic foods such as rice and other cereals could affect around 100 million of the world"s poorest people. In Asia, rice prices have almost tripled this year alone, leading many governments to fear the consequences if the poor cannot afford to buy their staple food.   To protect their domestic consumers, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and China have all taken steps to restrict exports. This year has seen China"s first grain trade deficit in decades. It has scrapped export rebates for wheat, rice, paddy, maize and soybeans, and it will start imposing export duties of 5 to 25 percent.   World worries as China begins to Import Grain   As the current food crisis unfolded, China"s role as the world"s largest grain producer and consumer has come in for increasing scrutiny. Politicians around the globe are looking at China, which has to feed 1.3 billion people, with apprehension, worrying that any change in the country"s long-held policy of self-sufficiency could have a tremendous effect on the global grain markets.   Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said China"s main priority is to feed its own population and that this would be the country"s "biggest contribution to the world." Beijing contends it has large grain reserves to weather the current food crisis. However, the size of the country"s state and private reserves is uncertain.   "It is mostly rice," says Zhao Jinhou, a grain analyst with Shenyin Securities. Chinese planners subsidize grain production and this has led to discrepancies between international and domestic prices of rice. While global prices of rice have soared, China"s domestic prices have remained stable. "There has been no incentive to sell the rice stocks," Zhao says.   In 2007, China produced more than 501.5 million tons of grain, almost level with the nation"s annual consumption of 510 million tons, according to official statistics. Chinese officials have vowed to keep the nation"s grain output stable and above 500 million tons to cope with rising global grain prices. But analysts say even a stable grain output in China could do little to slow down global price surges as the country is already a net grain importer.   Last year, China imported 31 million tons of grain, or 22 million tons more than what it exported. The bulk of the total imports were soybeans.   "The Chinese have sacrificed their self-sufficiency in soybeans in order to preserve land and water for other crops," says Brown, predicting it is only a matter of time before Beijing moves to the world markets for grain as it has done with soybeans. "China only needs to import 10 percent of its grain consumption to influence markets greatly," he reckons.   The devastation caused by the grade-8 Sichuan earthquake on May 12 has also heightened speculations that Beijing may take further steps to restrict its exports to rein in inflation and ensure domestic supplies.   "More restrictions on grain exports would hurt China"s ability to assume its leading role of a big country in the current crisis," cautions Mei Xinyu, researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, under the ministry of commerce. "The side effects of further tightening of exports would be significant and there will be more harm than benefit."   The impact of Asia"s export curbs has already provoked riots in Africa and Haiti, places that depend on cheap food imports. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that high prices and export restrictions will cut the volume of rice traded internationally by 9 percent in 2008, which will drive prices even higher.   At the food summit in Rome, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pressed nations around the world to ease a wide range of export bans and import tariffs to help millions of poor cope with the highest food prices in 30 years. Visit the related web page
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