Currently, over 1 billion people – about 15 percent of the world – are hungry. Smallholder farmers are unable to produce enough food to feed their families and lack the support to work themselves out of poverty. In his letter, Gates highlights the responsibility developed countries have to not only invest in agricultural aid, but in agricultural research. Between 1987 and 2006, agricultural aid fell from rich countries from 17 percent to just 4 percent.

At the same time, demand for food is increasing because of population growth and economic development, with the world’s population set to hit 9 billion in 2050. Supply growth has not kept up, leading to higher food prices and climate change threatens farmers’ ability to produce enough food to meet the growing demand.

Agricultural innovation, Gates argues, is a vital way forward. During the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s, new seed varieties for rice, wheat, and maize were developed that helped many farmers greatly improve their yields. In some places, such as East Asia, food intake went up by as much as 50 percent. Globally, the price of wheat dropped by two-thirds. The same process can happen again:

We can be more innovative about delivering solutions that already exist to the farmers who need them. Knowledge about managing soil and tools like drip irrigation can help poor farmers grow more food today. We can also discover new approaches and create new tools to fundamentally transform farmers’ lives. But we won’t advance if we don’t continue to fund agricultural innovation, and I am very worried about where those funds will come from in the current economic and political climate.

He also stated that agricultural research is ‘chronically underfunded’.  Climate change is becoming an increasing threat; studies show that the rise in global temperature alone could reduce the productivity of the main crops by over 25 percent. Climate change will also increase the number of droughts and floods that can wipe out an entire season of crops. Increased investment in agricultural research can unveil new seed varieties that can survive extreme weather conditions, as well as combat plant diseases that destroy crops.

Click here to read Bill Gate’s 2012 Annual Letter letter in full. Follow the debate on Twitter with the hashtag #BillsLetter.

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Some of the profiled innovations include:

• In 2007, some 6,000 women in The Gambia organized into the TRY Women’s Oyster Harvesting producer association, creating a sustainable co-management plan for the local oyster fishery to prevent overharvesting and exploitation. Oysters and fish are an important, low-cost source of protein for the population, but current production levels have led to environmental degradation and to changes in land use over the last 30 years. The government is working with groups like TRY to promote less-destructive methods and to expand credit facilities to low-income producers to stimulate investment in more-sustainable production.

• In Kibera, Nairobi, the largest slum in Kenya, more than 1,000 women farmers are growing “vertical” gardens in sacks full of dirt poked with holes, feeding their families and communities. These sacks have the potential to feed thousands of city dwellers while also providing a sustainable and easy-to-maintain source of income for urban farmers. With more than 60 percent of Africa’s population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, such methods may be crucial to creating future food security. Currently, some 33 percent of Africans live in cities, and 14 million more migrate to urban areas each year. Worldwide, some 800 million people engage in urban agriculture, producing 15–20 percent of all food.

• Pastoralists in South Africa and Kenya are preserving indigenous varieties of livestock that are adapted to the heat and drought of local conditions—traits that will be crucial as climate extremes on the continent worsen. Africa has the world’s largest area of permanent pasture and the largest number of pastoralists, with 15–25 million people dependent on livestock.

• The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) is using interactive community plays to engage women farmers, community leaders, and policymakers in an open dialogue about gender equity, food security, land tenure, and access to resources.  Women in sub-Saharan Africa make up at least 75 percent of agricultural workers and provide 60–80 percent of the labor to produce food for household consumption and sale, so it is crucial that they have opportunities to express their needs in local governance and decision-making. This entertaining and amicable forum makes it easier for them to speak openly.

• Uganda’s Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC) program is integrating indigenous vegetable gardens, nutrition information, and food preparation into school curriculums to teach children how to grow local crop varieties that will help combat food shortages and revitalize the country’s culinary traditions. An estimated 33 percent of African children currently face hunger and malnutrition, which could affect some 42 million children by 2025. School nutrition programs that don’t simply feed children, but also inspire and teach them to become the farmers of the future, are a huge step toward improving food security.

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The event this week will offer a platform to debate the most effective ways at reducing poverty rates around the world. The discussion will include presentations by the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre.

Each of the reports featured at the discussion address different facets of poverty-reduction, but together they examine what works and what has gone wrong in international policy decisions, and the range of measures that countries can adopt to alleviate poverty.

The following offers a short summary of each report:

Rethinking Poverty: Report on the World Social Situation 2010: UNDESA

• Disputes the contemporary vision of poverty reduction and affirms that eradicating poverty requires actions leading to sustainable economic growth, employment creation and social development as an integrated framework of economic and social policies.

The commitment made in the MDGs is to eradicate absolute poverty by halving the number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day.

Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics: UNRISD

• Seeks to explain why people are poor and why inequalities exist, and argues that eradicating poverty requires actions that combine economic development objectives with active social policies and forms of politics that elevate the interests of the poor in public policy.

Escaping Poverty Traps (The Chronic Poverty Report 2008-09): CPRC

• Explains five main traps that underpin chronic poverty and outlines key policy responses to these areas, emphasising the need for a ‘just social compact’ between citizens and states.

The number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day declined from 1.9 billion in 1981 to 1.4 billion in 2005.

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and Climate Change Intersect

Statement of Outcomes from Agriculture and Rural Development Day

12 December 2009, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

A group of more than 300 policymakers, farmers and scientists meeting in Copenhagen today urged on negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference to recognize agriculture’s vital role in climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The group strongly endorsed the proposed target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees C. They stressed that reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture is essential for achieving the target. Farmers and researchers are already finding climate change solutions. On that basis, the agricultural community intends to play a pro-active role in actions aimed at reducing emissions, while increasing the productive capacity of agriculture through the development of sustainable practices.

Agriculture faces the challenge of nearly doubling food production in order to meet the food needs of a population expected to reach 9 billion by mid-century but without increasing the sector’s emissions.. Across most of the tropics, agriculture will continue to face the enormous challenge of adapting to harsh and unpredictable growing conditions.

To meet the climate challenge, substantial additional financing and investment will be needed across the entire rural value chain. New investments must be handled transparently to ensure that adaptation and mitigation are not undermined by reduced support for global food security and rural development. In addition, new investment must be accessible to all stakeholders, including researchers and members of civil society, especially farmers and their associations.

Specifically, the group urged climate negotiators to agree on the early establishment of an agricultural work program under the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA).

Agriculture and Development Day was organized by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development, the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, the International Federation of Agriculture Producers, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Global Forum for Agricultural Research, the Earth System Science Partnership.

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Coinciding with the summit, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has launched 1BillionHungry.org, a petition to promote an end to hunger. The web site is premised on the fact that one billion people currently live in chronic hunger.

Jacques Diouf, the FAO Secretary-General, is recorded counting out the amount of time another child soemwhere in the world dies from hunger: 6 seconds.

To support the initiative, all you need to do is enter an e-mail address and your currently country location.

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Poverty levels in drier regions of the country range from 67 to 85 percent, said Professor Firmino Mucavele, Director for Academic Reform and Regional Integration at Eduardo Mondlane University in a presentation of his analysis of agriculture’s true contribution to the Mozambican economy.

Mucavele, a Food Agriculture Natural Resource Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) board member, outlined regional disparities within Mozambique, whose north and eastern districts receive as much as twelve times the amount of rainfall as the southern regions surrounding the Maputo capital.

Crop productivity is also connected to rainfall since irrigation infrastructure in the country is effectively non-existent. Of the 3.3 million hectares suitable for irrigation throughout the country, only fifty thousand hectares (or only a miniscule 0.13 percent) have this resource at their disposal.  Mucavele said:

The common denominator of the smallholder farmers is low productivity, limited ability of households to generate savings and food insecurity.

He added that access to key inputs is also low; only 2 percent of farmers use fertilisers and only 5 percent use pesticides. Underdeveloped capital markets and harvest losses averaging 40 percent also contribute to decreased productivity.

To boost the contribution of the agricultural sector, Mucavele made several key recommendations. He highlighted that the uptake of improved seeds and better production methods could boost crop yields; the yields from maize, which is Mozambique’s primary crop by volume, could be increased seven-fold, from 800 kilograms per hectare to as much as 6,500.  He also pointed out that introducing value-added processes to raw commodities could also boost export earnings, with milled maize fetching five times the price of whole kernels.

Lastly, a concerted effort to reform and support agricultural markets caould stem disruptive variations in crop prices and ensure Mozambique’s farmers a viable source of livelihoods.

Cautioned Mucavele: “Social, environmental and institutional stability depends on food security.”

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An article by the Associated Press says that the Pope:

specified that aid should go to agicultural development to improve infrastructure, irrigation systems, transport and sharing of agricultural technology.

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IFDC – an International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development – is a public international organization addressing critical issues such as international food security, the alleviation of global poverty, environmental protection and the promotion of economic development and self-sufficiency. IFDC is helping to enrich and sustain the lives and livelihoods of people around the world.

IFDC is the only non-profit, science-based organization meeting the integrated soil nutrient management needs associated with a sustainable global food supply. IFDC was established in 1974 in response to the twin crises of food insecurity and rising energy prices. These parallel crises now threaten the world again.

IFDC has helped increase sustainable agricultural productivity in more than 130 nations through the development and transfer of effective and environmentally sound plant nutrient technology and agricultural marketing expertise. IFDC has also contributed to the development of institutional capacity-building in 150 countries through nearly 1,000 training programs, primarily as part of IFDC’s long-term agricultural development projects. These collaborative partnerships combine cutting-edge research and development with on-site training and education. Currently IFDC staff members are serving in more than 20 nations throughout Africa, the Near East and the Far East.

In February, Dr. Marjatta Eilitta, Director for IFDC’s North and West Africa Division, spoke at a Farming First conference held during the UN Commission on Sustainable Development preliminary session in New York.  You can watch a video of her presentation here.

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The widespread lack of refrigeration facilities means that Brookside employs an army of delivery personnel, including more than 1,000 “bicycle boys” in the Nairobi area alone, to collect milk.

Brookside’s sales depots now stretch from the East coast to the shores of Lake Victoria in the West. Its training field days, each attended by up to 6,000 local farmers, help spread best practices in livestock management and provide networking opportunities for smallholders, many of whom are geographically isolated.

The business links rural and urban economies and offers a sustainable route out of poverty for many.  Additional benefits to local communities are health education programmes and funding for school, church and road building projects.

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