2. CONTENTS
117 How Pittsburgh can help Copenhagen on 141 Growing to meet future challenges
climate change Luis Alberto Moreno, president,
Frank Loy, former US under secretary of state for Inter-American Development Bank
global affairs and former chief climate negotiator
144 Long-term commitment vital for
122 From conventional to creative energy Africa’s growth
supply strategies Donald Kaberuka, president, African
Victoria V. Panova, Moscow State Institute of Development Bank
International Relations
148 Securing food and agriculture worldwide
126 Deploying carbon capture and storage Donald G.M. Coxe, chair,
Nick Otter, CEO, Global CCS Institute Coxe Advisors LLC
131 Financing renewable energy technologies 152 Food security and the biofuels challenge
and production C. Ford Runge, Distinguished McKnight
Raili Kajaste, Nordic Environment Finance University Professor of Applied Economics
Corporation, and Risto Penttilä, Finnish Business and Law, University of Minnesota
and Policy Forum EVA
158 America’s global health support
Reinforcing development, food for development
Gloria Steele, head, Global Health, USAID
security & health
163 Health security from economic and
134 The G20, or the G200? A Commonwealth view
environmental innovation
on global development challenges
Jeffrey L. Sturchio, president and CEO,
Kamalesh Sharma, Commonwealth
Global Health Council
secretary general
137 Achieving interdependence Actors & stakeholders
Haruhiko Kuroda, president,
Asian Development Bank 169 G20 leader profiles
3. REINFORCING DEVELOPMENT, FOOD SECURITY & HEALTH
Securing food and
agriculture worldwide
The G20 has the opportunity to tackle global food security and make historic changes
to the very politics of food supply
T
By Donald G.M. he global financial crisis and economic oils – is reduced because of the recession, and grain
Coxe, chair, Coxe recession pushed the world food crisis prices have sharply retreated. Nevertheless, grains
Advisors LLC off the world’s front pages only months remain at higher prices than prevailed before the
after the United Nations High-Level global food crisis began, even if, among foodstuffs,
Conference on World Food Security in only sugar is now at near-record highs. The emerging
Rome sought to marshal resources for economic recovery will assuredly send grain and
the food crisis in June 2008. oilseed prices skyward, exacerbating the problems of
Unfortunately, the food crisis has not gone away. the poorest people of the world.
More than 1 billion people suffer from serious Why is there a world food crisis when global
malnutrition. World grain carryovers relative to grain, meat and milk production has been growing
consumption remain at marginal levels, even though throughout the decade? The answer lies in the longer-
consumption of high-protein foods – meat, milk and term effects of the food policies of the major food-
4. REINFORCING DEVELOPMENT, FOOD SECURITY & HEALTH
producing members of the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Since the 1950s, the farm programmes of the The Asian economies
United States, Canada and Europe have been driven
by the seemingly endless surpluses of grains, leading the recovery
particularly feed grains. President John F. Kennedy
introduced the feed grain programme in 1961 to deal must not be stopped by
with what he called the challenge of abundance. That
legislation, and its successors and imitators across food shortages and soaring
most of the OECD in later decades, sought to control
grain production and provided for aggressive export
grain prices
programmes aimed at what were called emerging
economies, funded by loans at low rates. What ‘rich
people’ could not consume would be sent to the When the new middle class in China, India and
‘poor people’ to prevent starvation. The policies were southeast Asia, collectively responsible for soaring
the awkward spawns of the intimate relationships oil and metals prices, began to change its diet of
between farmers and agribusiness, on the one hand, subsistence levels of bread and rice to include meats
and the deeply felt charitable impulses of the majority and milk, the arithmetic of protein conversion began
of OECD voters, on the other. to change the global supply and demand ratio for
Those policies were, in effect, backed by the World grains. It takes roughly seven units of vegetable
Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), protein to produce a unit of beef protein, five units for
which structured their long-range programmes to pork and milk, and nearly three for poultry. But the
strengthen economies throughout the developing number of hectares of grain production worldwide
world by building viable urban industrialised has been growing by only 1.5 per cent in the last
societies along developed market models. They decade, whereas consumption was rising at 3.5 per
ignored the insights of such intellectual giants as cent until the global recession hit. Industrialisation,
Mohandas Gandhi that most of the poor lived in rural urbanisation, pollution and overdrawn aquifers have
areas and that the sustained dumping of grains meant limited the growth of reliable arable land worldwide.
that most farmers in the developing world could never What is needed now is a swift, sustained increase
achieve the earnings needed to support their families in per-hectare yields worldwide, particularly in the
and generate surpluses for urban dwellers. Only in emerging economies.
recent years has the World Bank begun to reshape That means permanent changes in the politics of
its strategies to provide the irrigation, technology food worldwide.
and fertilisers needed to produce adequate food As the world emerges from this recession, the
supplies in emerging economies. Today, roughly two Asian economies leading the recovery must not be
thirds of India’s population still live on farms and in stopped by food shortages and soaring grain prices.
villages, and most families have plots so tiny that they Already, some wealthy countries are engaged in large-
can barely meet their own needs – let alone supply scale ventures – such as offshore farming – designed
bourgeoning urban demands. to ensure their food security. They fear that in the next
The European Union’s Common Agricultural food crisis, they might not be able to buy adequate
Policy, which consumes roughly 40 per cent of the supplies of food at almost any price.
EU’s budget, has been conspicuously successful in Technology and reasonably good governance
protecting its own farmers’ incomes. But the advent were at the core of the industrialisation that made
of genetically engineered (GE) seeds threatened to North America and Europe wealthy – and reduced
disrupt this tenuous balance by expanding grain the percentage of farmers in the population to single
outputs, creating even greater surpluses that must digits, while continuing to expand food output to help
somehow be funded to protect price levels. While drive the growth of cities and prosperity. The G20 has
there is a legitimate debate about the potential longer- a historic opportunity to launch that model across
range risks of using new technologies to expand food the world.
output, the experience of the US, Canada and other Time could be running out. Weather conditions
GE-using food giants has forced the overwhelming have been generally favourable – compared with long-
majority of scientists to endorse their supervised use. term historical records – across most of the world’s
The US has been so successful in expanding corn major food-producing regions in recent decades.
production through GE seeds that it has decided to Recent erratic weather conditions, which have
deal with its surpluses by mandating the allocation triggered late planting seasons in temperate zones,
of one third of its corn output for ethanol production. may signal climate change conditions that could have
The EU’s biofuels programme has been so successful catastrophic effects on global food supplies.
that it was recently blamed by a coalition of Asian The world can no longer take cheap, readily
countries for driving up the prices of soybean and available food for granted.
palm oil to levels that threaten their urban poor.
When Keynes was challenged for changing This article is drawn in part from the keynote address
his mind on a policy issue, he replied, “Sir, the to the 78th annual conference of the Couchiching
facts have changed. How do you respond when the Institute of Public Affairs on ‘The Politics of Global
facts change?” Food’ on 6 August 2009.
