Improving food security for the poor: Lessons from the green revolution

Improving food security for the poor - the alternatives

1 Food-insecure people neither consistently produce enough food for themselves nor have the purchasing power to buy food from other producers. During times of famine, food may simply not be available at any price. Given that concerns for the integrity of natural habitats will limit significant further areal expansion of agriculture, other strategies must be found to feed a global population that may exceed seven billion in 2010. A number of alternative scenarios have been put forward (McCalla, 1994). They fall into two distinct groups.
2 The first scenario, supported by some analysts and with reference to current economic growth in Southeast Asia, assumes a significant development of the post-General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) global economy. In this scenario, continued growth in world trade will allow food-deficit countries in the South to produce and export industrial goods and services that should enable them to purchase significant quantities of food from the food-surplus countries of the North. Many of these rich developed countries have considerable unused production potential, given their technological expertise and their marketing infrastructures. These intensive production methods are being adapted to meet modern requirements of sustainable development. For this food to reach the food-insecure in poor countries, the development of effective national food security policies will be required. These must ensure higher food entitlements for both the rural and urban poor through wider access to food made possible by income generation and employment. While North-South trade may improve national food security in developing countries, it does not directly follow that it will influence household food security for the poor in these countries as a group, or secure greater access to food in remote localities.
3 The second scenario, thought by many analysts to be more realistic, suggests that poor countries of the South must increase their own food production significantly and in such a way that it specifically alleviates food insecurity. Towards this end, a number of mechanisms may be invoked:

• increased agricultural research and development efforts aimed at increasing productivity per hectare of land and unit of labour;
• improved extension services, through governmental and non-governmental channels, that will enable all farmers to use the results of research and reap the benefits from technological advances; and
• improved infrastructural and socio-economic arrangements, including enabling policies (e.g. fiscal policies, land tenure policies, good governance, popular participation, suitable credit schemes and institution-building) that will allow all sections of the community to sustain the increased production.

4 There is ample experience now to show that farmers’ willingness to increase food production in many developing countries is closely linked to the existence of markets for their produce ¹. Similarly, the adoption by smallholders of improved management techniques on their farms seem to occur when there is ready access to input supplies and assured markets with fair and predictable prices for the produce (Crosson and Anderson, 1995).
5 The implementation of the agreements from the Uruguay Round within the World Trade Organization (WTO) is being watched closely in both developing and developed countries. In spite of considerable food purchases in the North by the developing countries, it is now much too early to say how far the first scenario (the reversed industrial and agricultural commodity flows) will materialize, and whether the North (including the countries of the former USSR) ultimately will have the capacity and political will to produce sustainably larger quantities of food for export. (Some will claim that agricultural production at present levels in the North is not wholly sustainable [Ehrlich, Ehrlich and Daily, 1993; Pimentel et al., 1994] but policy changes towards environmentally sustainable agriculture are increasingly being put into effect in the North.) It is also uncertain whether national developments in the South will enable the poor and, most likely, food-insecure to gain adequate access to the imported food (i.e. the dilemmas of national versus household food security). It will require a concerted effort from countries both in the North and the South in all sectors of their economies to facilitate this scenario. These considerations suggest that such a scenario cannot be the main thrust of global efforts to improve food security rapidly for the poor. Hence, food production must be increased also in the food-insecure countries themselves.
2.6 The experiences accumulated through general development studies and observations of the older green revolution strongly suggest that more general market forces and government market actions override technological packages. Technology alone cannot secure the production of food or access to it, nor can policies alone achieve this. The adoption of available technology largely depends on the incentives farmers perceive from them, and incentives are closely linked to markets; consequently, the essential tasks are:

• To understand, from farmers’ perspectives, their need for improved technologies and policies, capturing their local knowledge in the process.
• To demonstrate the existence of relevant economically and environmentally sustainable technologies for improving productivity in countries and regions with low food security, both in terms of productivity per unit area and productivity per unit input of labour.
• To promote changes in developing countries’ policies, markets, decision-making and institutions to enable the technological potential for increased production to be sustainably implemented with the aim of improving food security. Greater reliability within subsistence agriculture may be important for the most food-insecure sections of rural populations, but poor people worldwide have become part of monetary economies – every family has a need to enter the cash-based economy. Primary production must also satisfy these needs. Traditional risk aversion in smallholder production systems reflects precarious economic balances in peasant communities. The stabilization of national economies, including more stable national currencies, will encourage smallholder investments in yield-increasing, cost-reducing technologies.