Food Security Policy

Lord Stern of Brentford Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stern of Brentford]

My Lords, I join other speakers in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, for raising this vital issue. In my remarks, I shall draw on my experience as a professor of economics at the London School of Economics, my work on development issues for four decades, and my experience as chief economist of the World Bank.

Let us be clear at the outset on one key practical and conceptual proposition, which is vital for the understanding of this issue and for the construction of policy. I hope that it is obvious, but it is important. People go hungry or starve because they do not have the wherewithal to acquire food. Usually, they do not have the income to buy food because of all the prices that they face. For subsistence farmers this may arise because their farming activities have failed; for agricultural workers it may be because droughts or floods are so bad that employment has collapsed; or, for workers outside agriculture, it may be because there is severe unemployment or underemployment. Thus, this issue concerns the real incomes of very poor people. It is about poverty.

Noble Lords do not have to worry much about their own food security because our incomes are sufficiently high. We make a serious analytical and policy mistake if we argue that food security is simply about food supply or fluctuations in agricultural markets, important though they both are. Thus, we should support DfID and other development institutions in their focus on raising incomes and fighting poverty wherever it is in the world. We also should support DfID in its emphasis on entrepreneurship and private sector opportunities in raising the incomes of poor people. We should encourage all development institutions to continue to devote their energies to health and education, which is key to opportunity, particularly for women. As I said in my maiden speech, the evidence is clear that women generally make better use of opportunities and allocate resources more wisely and responsibly than men.

The volatility of food price and the availability of food matter. Locally, these depend not only on how markets function but also on transport and storage infrastructure, and governance. Thus, for example, it is crucial that food can flow into areas of food shortage and that this is not prevented by trade restrictions, internal and external, as we have seen all too often. And it is no good having decent roads, even assuming you do, if these are vulnerable to highwaymen and hijacking, even occasionally by those associated with government. Thus DfID and other development institutions are right to focus on governance.

Having said that, it is clearly vital to examine food production in a world where population is likely to grow from 7 billion to 9 billion or more in the next 40 years. As my friend from the LSE, the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, emphasised, in many parts of the world, particularly the rich world, food and resources are wasted by casualness or greed. But throughout the world they are wasted as a result of bad policy, poor storage and weak infrastructure. A recent McKinsey report on the waste of these resources has documented in great detail this waste. Thus there is great scope around the world for raising the productivity of land, water and energy by better techniques and policy. How this is done should be a priority for governments and development institutions, which all too often have drifted away from rural and agricultural issues.

I give five examples. First, using degraded land in Indonesia could make a major contribution to increasing food production, reducing greenhouse gases and increasing incomes. Secondly, in Brazil there is one head of cattle per hectare. That cannot be a good use of land. The animal has to look for about 100 metres before it sees a friend; it must be pretty lonely. Thirdly, slash and burn agriculture is widespread across the world. Fourthly, water and energy in India are squandered by the unwillingness and inability to price properly, thus also restricting vital investment. Finally, agricultural research could deliver on great potential, ranging as others have remarked from low-till agriculture, to better seeds, to the use of algae for protein in animal feed, which could substitute, for example, for soya and reduce the pressure on rainforests.

I must also stress the extraordinarily destructive potential of climate change. Its effects are largely in terms of water—that means floods and inundations; storms; drought and desertification; and sea-level rises and sea surges. They all damage livelihoods, especially of poor people. We saw the effects, for example, of the floods in Pakistan in 2010, when one-fifth of the country was under water and 20 million people were directly affected. We see now the devastating effects of the continuing drought in north-east Africa. Both events are likely to have been strongly influenced by climate change. I invite noble Lords to consult chapters 3 and 4 of the report that has just been published by the International Food Policy Research Institute on the impacts of natural disasters and their links with climate change on agriculture and food security. We are seeing all this on the back of just 0.8 degrees centigrade increase in global surface temperature since the 19th century. On current policies, we may be heading for 3, 4, or 5 degrees centigrade by the end of the century above the benchmark 19th century level. At the higher levels of possible temperature, hundreds of millions, possibly billions, would have to move. That would likely result in the generation of the greatest insecurity of all—extended and severe conflict.

There is a great deal we can do across the board to reduce emissions, particularly in agriculture. For example, we can increase land and water productivity, and thereby reduce pressure on forests. And we can work to realise the great potential in second generation biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol. This means that food and biofuels become complements, not competitors and substitutes; cellulosic ethanol is made from the waste from, for example, corn or wheat after the grain has been extracted.

As I conclude, I pose two specific questions to the Government. Why has the UK failed to meet its commitments made at the 2009 G8 summit in Aquila in Italy on agriculture and food security? If I understand the numbers correctly, the UK committed $1.7 billion of the $22 billion total, with delivery estimated within three years. So far, the UK has fulfilled only around 30% of its pledge. Given the Secretary of State’s commitment to supporting the Prince of Wales initiative calling governments around the world to undertake an economic review of their national food security, what progress has been made?

Food security is largely about economic development and overcoming poverty. No doubt resources in the rich world are under great pressure at this time of economic crisis, a crisis which we have ourselves created in the rich world. But this is surely not a time for us to forget that we are rich and it is not a time to forget about our common humanity.