We are quite happy with the outcome although more could have been achieved, though what is particularly pleasing is the fact that the leaders have been able to commit to an accountability framework.

This framework, the Muskoka Accountability Report, is the first of its sort and is a clear sign that leaders are opening up their negotiations to the outside world so that no longer are commitments made behind closed doors.

Whilst it was revealed at Muskoka that only US$6.5 billion of the US$22 billion pledged at L’Aquila last year has actually been dispersed to date, Dr. Sibanda said that it was encouraging that leaders had promised to ensure the full amount would be dispersed by 2012.

Dr. Sibanda noted that the majority of the US$6.5 billion that has been delivered has gone towards financing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP).

Globally we now accept that Africa has a plan, Africa is committed to a plan it wants to implement and there is now coherence, slowly, in financing initiatives that are Africa-led.

The broadcast also addressed the growing crisis in the Sahel, in particularly in Chad and Niger.  To tackle this challenge, Dr Sibanda proposed starting with agricultural policy.

How do we get Africa to have and realise its own green revolution? How do we get Africa to improve productivity? Unless we realise the potential productivity by having good quality seed, by having the right fertilizer to improve productivity, by looking after our natural resources, making sure our soils are fertile enough to boost productivity, we will always be chasing the food that we cannot produce and grow on our own.

Listen to the interview here:

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Danielou discussed that how the Farming First principles were developed to provide relevant guidelines to agricultural programmes worldwide at global, regional and local levels, both in developed and developing countries.

She highlighted how the challenge in developed countries was to reduce the environmental impact of agricultural activities, whilst in developing countries the focus must be on raising agricultural productivity:

We need to learn the lessons from those [that have achieved increased productivity] and see how we can increase agricultural productivity, especially in Africa, whilst not having the environmental impacts that we had in the sixties or the seventies.

Danielou also said,

If you want to perform agriculture in the best way possible for farmers, or for consumers or for nature it has to be seen as a highly knowledge- and technology-intensive sector and there has to be constant investment in agricultural research.

Listen to the Farm Cast interview with Morgane Danielou here:

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The proliferation of aligned, but ultimately separate, food-security initiatives over the past two years suggests a number of roles for the G8 and G20 to play, as core funders of international development.

Farming First, a sustainable-development coalition, believes that G8 and G20 leaders should help proactively guide policymakers to coordinate their efforts to prevent overlapping, competing or disjointed activities in agriculture. Our 129 supporter organisations have compiled a comprehensive “Guide to Food Security Initiatives” ahead of this year’s G8 and G20 summits.

Alongside the need for cohesion, Howard Minigh spoke of the need for collaboration between all stakeholders to effectuate these food security policies successfully.

In these times of austerity we urge world leaders to demand greater transparency on the delivery of these billions and on the impact they are having. Lastly, we urge their governments to engage with all relevant stakeholders, notably farmers, scientists, engineers and industry, on turning enlightened food-security policies into effective and sustainable action on the world’s farms.

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Food security is an immediate and future priority for all countries worldwide. Since the food crisis erupted in 2008, a large number of global and regional food security initiatives have been launched or strengthened in response. While these developments are welcome, improving policy and implementation coherence is essential to ensure programmes have the desired impacts.

As we move towards action on these food security policies, Farming First urges policymakers to:

1. promote a clear joint focus on a common goal for food security at the global level through policy and operational coherence
2. encourage increased transparency on how much of pledged funding has been committed and to what types of programmes
3. engage a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that efforts are coordinated, clear, collaborative and ultimately successful.

Returning farmers to the centre of policy decisions is fundamental to sustainable development. Governments, businesses, scientists and civil society groups must focus attention on the source of our food security. Women farmers should become specially targeted recipients because of their vital roles in the agricultural workforce,
household food procurement and preparation, and family unit support.

Productivity levels in most developing countries have to be raised exponentially while considering environmental sustainability. Policies encouraging investment in developing countries’ agricultural sectors should be supported.

Governments should invest in their agricultural sectors and devise long-term agricultural development strategies supporting the development of local agricultural markets and farmers’ ability to answer market demands.

Local production should also be stimulated by providing farmers with the technology, the knowledge and the adequate financial services they need.

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This is the question which Peter Hazell tries to address in a recent article written for the Guardian newspaper.

Hazell discusses how the Green Revolution, which introduced modern agricultural practices and technologies to the developing world, helped Asia and South America to eradicate (for the most part) hunger from within their populations.  Yet most of the African continent and its farmers have not benefitted from an equivalent revolution, and the productivity of their harvests has remained stagnant over the past half century while populations have been rapidly increasing and climate change is causing a less reliable supply of food.

In fact, local access for African farmers is still low.  Historically, African governments have committed much less than their Asian counterparts in funding agriculture.  Hazell estimates that Africa has spent around 5% or 6% of total government spending over the past 40 years while Asia has spent 15% or more over the same period.  At the same time, foreign donors have, until recently, neglected agriculture as a development priority for their funding allocations.

There are indications that this is changing.  African leaders have committed to increased funding to 10% of budgets and world leaders have earmarked money for investing in rural infrastructure support among other actions.  As an example, the G8 just committed to $20 billion in funding at their July summit in Italy.

This momentum makes Hazell believe that

if supported, millions of poor farmers could lift themselves out of poverty and… it [Africa] could provide a solution to the global food shortages and spiraling food prices we are all facing.

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Obama’s trips to Italy and Ghana both served to demonstrate his public support for an increased focus on the needs of farmers, particularly those without sufficient access to the tools they need to farm efficiently and feed themselves.

In Italy, Obama said:

There is no reason why Africa cannot be self-sufficient when it comes to food.  It has sufficient arable land.  What’s lacking is the right seeds, the right irrigation, but also the kinds of institutional mechanisms that ensure that a farmer is going to be able to grow crops, get them to market, get a fair price.

In a recent Bloomberg article, Farming First’s Ajay Vashee, President of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP), discussed the need for African farmers to have better access to the seeds and fertilizers they needed to increase their yields and improve their livelihoods as farmers.

Vashee particularly noted the success of Malawi’s farm input subsidy programme, which has been running for the past five years and which has served as a model for neighboring countries.

The Bloomberg article noted that Tanzania began a fertilizer-subsidy programme last December, that Kenya has announced a similar subsidy plan to boost yields, and that the Ugandan government had increased spending on agriculture by 47 per cent in its latest budget.

In preparation for his trip to Ghana, Obama discussed the role that governments should play in driving progress in African development goals, quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

Countries that are governed well, that are stable, where the leadership recognizes that they are accountable to the people and that institutions are stronger than any one person have a track record of producing results for the people.

In May, Farming First interviewed the coordinator of Malawi’s farm subsidy programme and Principal Economist in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Idrissa Mwale.  Watch the video here:

Watch other videos from Farming First on Vimeo here.

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A draft of the G8’s declaration notes that:

The combined effect of long-standing underinvestment in agriculture and food security, price trends, and the economic crisis have led to increased hunger.  Food security is closely connected with economic growth and social progress as well as with political stability.

The G8 intends to earmark US$12bn over the next three years, much of which will come from the US and Japan.

In a separate commentary piece, Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso noted that a global framework needs to be developed by which to measure progress in sustainable agriculture development.  Aso stated:

Japan will work with key partners to develop a global platform to agree on principles and compile good practices.  We call on interested parties to meet in September.  We need a grand coalition with a common vision, for our interests are all entwined.

Indeed.

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In the wake of the recent G8 Agricultural Ministers meeting, Dr. Sibanda asked the fundamental question, “So what can Africans do to put food on the table and money in their pockets?”  Her answer is to invest further in agriculture.

The article highlights the need for those in power to seek consensus, both in terms of how policy is drafted and programmes are implemented. Regional and pan-African programmes, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural ADevelopment Programme (CAADP) — show promise for how coordinated efforts to share knowledge, enable markets, and build local access are already under way.  Dr. Sibanda wrote:

It is time we realised that there can be no sustainable development without sustainable agriculture. For Africa to develop sustainable food polices, partnerships are key.

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There is a need for a radical shift in thinking which places the farmer at the centre of a new approach. New investments, incentives and innovations are needed to achieve greater sustainability while delivering increased agricultural production. This needs to be backed-up by a stable policy framework and investment strategy which assists farmers – and particularly smallholder farmers – to sustain both themselves and the world’s growing population. The kind of change proposed in Farming First’s call to action which puts farmers at the heart of the solution.

As the G8 declaration has rightly recognised, “agriculture and food security are at the heart of the international agenda”. Commenting before the meeting, United States Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, said:

This is not just about food security, this is about national security, it is about environmental security…

I can figure out there are only three things that could happen if people do not have food: people could riot, that they have done; people migrate to places where there is food, which creates additional challenges; or people die.

Much of what was said in the G8 ministers’ final declaration echoes the call made by the coalition supporting Farming First. The Farming First plan is based on six principles: safeguarding natural resources; sharing knowledge; building local access; protecting harvests; enabling access to markets; and prioritising research imperatives.

The final declaration called for “enhanced support including investments in agricultural science, research, technology, education and innovation” as well as supporting “efforts against wastage along the food chain in developing countries” and identifiying “the necessity to provide smallholder farming access to land, credit, technical assistance, education and crop insurance, as well as allowing family farmers to have access to local and international markets was underlined.”

Host minister, Italy’s Luca Zaia, told the post-meeting press conference:

Food security requires targeted policies to guarantee effective management and sustainable utilization of natural resources involving local communities in accordance with their identities… We commit ourselves to increasingly share technology, processes and ideas with other countries.

China’s vice minister of agriculture, Niu Dun, told the G8 meeting that the international community:

should build up capacity in monitoring and conducting early-warning on global food security. Developing countries should intensify cooperation in food security, making it a critical platform for common response to food insecurity and financial crisis.

Further more detailed discussions will take place at the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in May and the full G8 summit in Italy in July. Hopefully, these meetings will culminate in what the world requires: real, financed commitments.

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The G8 communique highlighted the fact that the world will need to increase its level of productivity in order to feed the growing population and to avoid the threat of wider global instability due to hunger and struggles for scarce resources.

Dr. Sibanda explained why food availability and food security should be urgent matters for the world’s policymakers:

When we talk of stability we cannot run away from talking about issues of availability… We are also looking at reduced availability – particularly in Africa – where we are not producing enough and we are relying on food imports and food aid. When we look at the agenda for stabilizing prices, particularly stabilizing food availability, we are saying, “How can food be moved between countries?”

There are tariffs and other barriers which need to be addressed, but at the global level, you are really looking at subsidies and protection of markets and the issue of trade. Can we have a trade regime which is equitable and that allows African countries that have excesses in production to sell in global markets and also allows food aid procurement to be sourced from local markets in Africa?

Dr. Sibanda also discussed why food security should remain a top priority despite the financial crisis that the world is also facing at present:

The whole spiral effect of the different crises means that you cannot just say that by addressing the financial crisis everything else will fall into place. As part of addressing the financial crisis, you cannot leave out the issue of food security because the commodity trade market has been disturbed…Agriculture forms the bulk of the commodities that are traded between countries so it is imperative that we look at the issue of food stability and food security globally.

As part of the financial crisis, you need to address the food agenda, and food security is key. You cannot stabilise the financial markets when there is insufficient food.

Listen to the full BBC interview with Dr. Sibanda here:

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