Idea of self-help starts to gain momentum
Saturday, 23 October 2010
The most overworked cliché of a decades-old development debate has been the Taoist saying that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish you feed him for life.
Frequently cited by leaders of the developed world to underline their commitment to helping the world's poor help themselves, the dictum was nevertheless honoured more in the breach than the observance in a global aid system that relied heavily on handouts to the hungry in times of crisis.
With the food price crisis of 2007-08, however, donor governments and global development institutions began to see the wisdom of pursuing a strategy based more firmly on fostering untapped potential in poorer countries if they were to avert threats to global food security.
The focus since then has been on research and long-term investment in agricultural projects in the developing world aimed, in part, at integrating subsistence farmers into their local food economy by helping them improve yields, diversify their crops and transport their goods to market.
The trend was underlined in a policy shift by the US Aid, the US international development agency, which launched a "Feed the Future" initiative in May, a year after President Barack Obama pledged to reverse years of declining aid budgets for agriculture in poor countries. He said donor countries would pool at least $18.5bn to reverse the slide.
The US Aid-administered initiative focuses on the agricultural research and development (R&D) of agribusiness to support efforts undertaken by developing countries.
Other governments and institutions have embraced the trend.
The World Bank announced in April the establishment of a $900m Global Agriculture and Food Security programme that stemmed from a proposal put to the Group of Eight countries at the height of the food price crisis.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as donor governments, are contributing to a fund that provides finance for infrastructure, better water management and access to improved seeds and technology for poor countries.
The World Bank, which will supervise the fund, noted: "The food price spike in mid-2008, and its associated negative impacts on poor people, amplified a need to reverse a decline in investment in agriculture over the past few decades."
Those decades coincided with a period of food surpluses that saw a decline in public investment on research in areas most relevant to the poorest countries, such as pest control and high-yielding crops. In surplus years, research focused on processing and other technologies geared to consumers in the rich "north".
Some of the poorest countries did not wait for the "wake-up call" of the food price crisis, as it was described by agriculture experts at the time, to take initiatives to ensure their food security, even if that meant defying the received wisdom of the donor community.
After a disastrous harvest in 2005 left more than a third of the population of Malawi reliant on emergency food aid, the government of President Bingu wa Mutharika decided to act.
He boosted subsidies for fertilisers in spite of the demands of the World Bank and donor countries that he adhere to strict free market principles by abolishing them. Their prescription for Malawi had been that it should concentrate on raising cash crops for export and spend the income on importing food.
Within two years, as a result of the president's initiative, Malawi's farmers were supplying the local market and exporting their surplus abroad.
This rapid turn round made the country a poster child for domestic self-help initiatives in the developing world.
Despite the strides in Malawi and elsewhere, food shortages remain chronic in many parts of the world, with almost 1.0bn people likely to go undernourished this year, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Oxfam. International, the charity, said a slight decline this year in the number of those going hungry, to 925m, the first drop in 15 years, was more the result of luck than good policy.
"Another global food crisis could explode at any time, unless governments tackle the underlying causes of hunger, including climate change, food price volatility, and decades of underinvestment in agriculture," says Jeremy Hobbs, the organisation's director.
The new emphasis on helping the poor help themselves addresses at least one of those challenges - underinvestment.
But development experts say that success will depend on how closely cash-strapped donor governments meet their aid commitments.
September's New York summit on achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals, which include enhancing food security, was a display of good intentions, but aid lobbyists are reserving judgment on whether reality will match the rhetoric.
Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute and an adviser on development issues to Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, says: "Raising yields threefold in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is feasible. But the amount of money made available is still tiny and less than had been promised."
Frequently cited by leaders of the developed world to underline their commitment to helping the world's poor help themselves, the dictum was nevertheless honoured more in the breach than the observance in a global aid system that relied heavily on handouts to the hungry in times of crisis.
With the food price crisis of 2007-08, however, donor governments and global development institutions began to see the wisdom of pursuing a strategy based more firmly on fostering untapped potential in poorer countries if they were to avert threats to global food security.
The focus since then has been on research and long-term investment in agricultural projects in the developing world aimed, in part, at integrating subsistence farmers into their local food economy by helping them improve yields, diversify their crops and transport their goods to market.
The trend was underlined in a policy shift by the US Aid, the US international development agency, which launched a "Feed the Future" initiative in May, a year after President Barack Obama pledged to reverse years of declining aid budgets for agriculture in poor countries. He said donor countries would pool at least $18.5bn to reverse the slide.
The US Aid-administered initiative focuses on the agricultural research and development (R&D) of agribusiness to support efforts undertaken by developing countries.
Other governments and institutions have embraced the trend.
The World Bank announced in April the establishment of a $900m Global Agriculture and Food Security programme that stemmed from a proposal put to the Group of Eight countries at the height of the food price crisis.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as donor governments, are contributing to a fund that provides finance for infrastructure, better water management and access to improved seeds and technology for poor countries.
The World Bank, which will supervise the fund, noted: "The food price spike in mid-2008, and its associated negative impacts on poor people, amplified a need to reverse a decline in investment in agriculture over the past few decades."
Those decades coincided with a period of food surpluses that saw a decline in public investment on research in areas most relevant to the poorest countries, such as pest control and high-yielding crops. In surplus years, research focused on processing and other technologies geared to consumers in the rich "north".
Some of the poorest countries did not wait for the "wake-up call" of the food price crisis, as it was described by agriculture experts at the time, to take initiatives to ensure their food security, even if that meant defying the received wisdom of the donor community.
After a disastrous harvest in 2005 left more than a third of the population of Malawi reliant on emergency food aid, the government of President Bingu wa Mutharika decided to act.
He boosted subsidies for fertilisers in spite of the demands of the World Bank and donor countries that he adhere to strict free market principles by abolishing them. Their prescription for Malawi had been that it should concentrate on raising cash crops for export and spend the income on importing food.
Within two years, as a result of the president's initiative, Malawi's farmers were supplying the local market and exporting their surplus abroad.
This rapid turn round made the country a poster child for domestic self-help initiatives in the developing world.
Despite the strides in Malawi and elsewhere, food shortages remain chronic in many parts of the world, with almost 1.0bn people likely to go undernourished this year, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Oxfam. International, the charity, said a slight decline this year in the number of those going hungry, to 925m, the first drop in 15 years, was more the result of luck than good policy.
"Another global food crisis could explode at any time, unless governments tackle the underlying causes of hunger, including climate change, food price volatility, and decades of underinvestment in agriculture," says Jeremy Hobbs, the organisation's director.
The new emphasis on helping the poor help themselves addresses at least one of those challenges - underinvestment.
But development experts say that success will depend on how closely cash-strapped donor governments meet their aid commitments.
September's New York summit on achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals, which include enhancing food security, was a display of good intentions, but aid lobbyists are reserving judgment on whether reality will match the rhetoric.
Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute and an adviser on development issues to Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, says: "Raising yields threefold in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is feasible. But the amount of money made available is still tiny and less than had been promised."