|
Crop Diversity Topics Analysis and Reflections no.18 2009 |
|||||||||||
|
National |
 |
|||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
NATIONAL SECURITY |
||||||||||||
|
I’ve been in southern Norway for a week now and it hasn’t stopped raining. My friends note it’s been coming down steadily for six weeks. Nothing terribly unusual. Norwegians cope with an old saying. “There’s no such thing as bad weather; there are just bad clothes.” Everyone understands the wisdom of preparing for the proverbial rainy day. As individuals, we try to have some financial savings, health insurance and perhaps even a little extra food in the cupboard. And if you’re Norwegian, you have good foul weather gear. Similarly, countries instinctively protect against external threats, most obviously through military expenditures. $1,339,000,000,000 globally in 2007. It hardly stops there. Whether driven by necessity or simply blessed with the luxury of being able to plan and act ahead, countries contrive to secure what they anticipate they’ll require. Oil and other natural resources figure prominently. Such is the stuff of geopolitics, and its tools - alliances, deals, saber rattling, forward contracts and “strategic stockpiles.” Recently, however, a number of countries have become interested in more than oil. They’ve become focused on food according to a report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). They’ve been buying land. Lots of it. There has been a shopping spree involving millions of hectares in countries such as Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and in several countries in Southeast Asia. In Madagascar, an effort to purchase half the country’s arable land fell through but only after causing civil unrest that played a role in toppling the government. Why food? Why now? There are so many reasons. For starters: population growth. Rising demand associated both with population and with increasing incomes. Declines in rates of crop yield improvement. Roaring competition from cities for the 70% of fresh water supplies that agriculture takes. The simple fact that "they just don't make farmland any more". Any and all of these factors seem destined to make it harder and harder for countries to satisfy their appetites.The swift and dramatic jump in food prices in 2007-8 came as a shock. A number of producing countries slapped embargoes on food exports. People in other countries took to the streets and rioted in protest and frustration over price hikes (see “Sirens”). Such events exposed vulnerabilities that previously lay hidden. In short, they revealed weaknesses in national security. With this as prologue, IFPRI tells us: "Food-importing countries with land and water constraints but rich in capital, such as the Gulf States, are at the forefront of new investments in farmland abroad. In addition, countries with large populations and food security concerns such as China, South Korea, and India are seeking opportunities to produce food overseas." One can hardly fault the land-buyers for the rare act of planning ahead. As recent experience indicates, international markets cannot be relied upon in dire times. Over-dependence on them makes food-importing nations vulnerable. Vulnerability abounds. 131 of 196 countries are net food importers, including 42 out of 58 low-income countries. In a number of countries the contribution of imports to the total consumed is high and rising. Soon Saudi Arabia, for example, will cease growing wheat and become fully dependent on imports. It’s simply running out of the water needed to grow its wheat crop. Land is not the only thing being acquired. For countries such as Saudi Arabia, whose agricultural production is limited by water constraints, food imports are water imports. We are all familiar with the worldwide flow of bottled water. Global consumption now tops 115,000,000,000 liters a year. The amount of water that lies behind the production of food imports, however, dwarfs that for bottled water. The production of a kilo of wheat takes 1,300 liters of water. And over 100 million metric tons is exported/imported annually. That’s a veritable ocean of surrogate water that importing countries are accessing. And that’s just wheat. Planning for the Rainy Day Acquiring land to secure vital food supplies makes perfect political and economic sense for countries that can afford it. Acquiring land and water makes even more sense.But the plan has one noticeable defect. Controlling land and water alone isn’t enough. In a climate-changing world, it will be the crops, not the land alone, that determine success. Land cannot evolve and adapt to new climates; crops can and must if the plan is to be successful. The evolutionary step will not be a small one for crops. Later this century, the coldest growing seasons in many countries will be hotter than the hottest ever experienced in the past. Not only will the average temperature rise significantly, but the number of extremely hot days will also double in many places. Soil moisture levels will drop. Rainfall patterns will change. Pests and diseases will migrate. In short, the crop varieties being grown in Madagascar today will not be productive or economically viable in Madagascar tomorrow. Quite simply, they are not adapted to conditions they have never before experienced. How could they be? Tomorrow’s crop varieties do not yet exist, of course. To a large extent, they are not even in the pipeline. Consciously or not, those who are now buying and leasing massive amounts of land must be assuming that productive, new climate-ready varieties will be available. They are not alone in making this assumption. It seems almost all of us are. Certainly most of our governments are. Most research institutions are. Most NGOs are. The discourse on climate change adaptation is remarkably devoid of concern about whether and how our food crops will adapt to a climate that hasn’t existed in agriculture’s 12,000-year history. It is entirely possible that this year’s G-20 Meeting in Pittsburgh, the Rome Food Summit, and the UN’s huge Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen will pass with hardly a mention of the topic, much less a commitment to it. We can do better. If we want agricultural systems capable of feeding the world in 2050, we must start to work now: collecting, screening, and conserving diversity and priming the plant breeding pump with critically-needed new crop traits. This is not “just” an aid or development issue. It’s not even just a climate change issue or a national security issue (though it would be a step forward were everyone to recognize it as such). It is all of the above. In a world beset with global-level climate change, water, energy, financial and a host of other crises, we are impelled to change our thinking. National security isn’t what it used to be, because there are no individual or national solutions to the big global problems. Define these problems as you wish. But connect the dots. And be sure to plan for that rainy day, even when it seems, ironically, that the proverbial rainy day will really be hot, dry and sunny. |
||||||||||||
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TOPIC |
||||||||||||
|
Joachim von Braun and Ruth Meinzen-Dick. “Land Grabbing’ by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries: Risks and Opportunities.” IFPRI Policy Brief 13, April 2009. http://www.ifpri.org/publication/land-grabbing-foreign-investors-developing-countries You will also find many other thoughtful pieces about climate change, water, and food production from our friends at the International Food Policy Research Institute on their website: http://www.ifpri.org Global Humanitarian Forum (2009). The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis. Geneva. Francis Ng and M. Ataman Aksoy. Who Are the Net Food Importing Countries? The World Bank, Development Research Group, Trade Team. January 2008. |
||||||||||||
HAPPENINGS AT THE TRUST |
||||||||||||
|
In the past month we have lost two giants in the field of agriculture who happened also to be personal and institutional friends. |
||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
The Global Crop Diversity Trust | Website: www.croptrust.org | Email: info@croptrust.org |
||||||||||||
|
Unsubscribe from Crop Diversity Topics |
||||||||||||
National Security
Why food?
Planning for the Rainy Day