This is an edited script of a speech given by Per Pinstrup-Anderson, Professor of food nutrition and public policy at Cornell University, New York in Sydney recently.

We face a global food shortage, the like of which the world has never seen. How do I know that? I have read books, articles and blogs that tell me so. They bear titles such as Agricultural Apocalypse 2010, The End of Food,
Food Wars, Fearing Food and In Defence of Food.

They, and many others, try to bring back to life Thomas Malthus,
the philosopher who more than 200 years ago said the world’s
population would increase faster than food supply, thus resulting in
mass starvation. One could argue that these publications are written
by authors aware that exaggeration and sensationalism get people’s
attention. Books predicting the end of the world is nigh do sell. But
even serious scientists and international organisations are talking
about the ”perfect storm” of global food shortages.

When global food prices increased rapidly during 2007, the United
Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation reported large increases
in the number of undernourished people. Its estimates of up to 170
million additional hungry people were quoted by newspapers worldwide.
Its admission that these estimates were rough and subject to errors
was lost in the frenzy to quote them. When food prices fell
dramatically during the last half of 2008, one might have expected a
fall in the number of undernourished people. That did not seem to
happen. At least it was not reported.

Is the world really headed towards a global food apocalypse? No,
not really. Large groups of people do not have access to sufficient
food to meet their needs. Hunger and malnutrition contribute to the
deaths of about 5 million preschool children a year. For them, the
apocalypse is real. Many more survive but suffer from malnutrition
and associated poverty and poor health. But there is plenty of
underused productive capacity to feed the present, and expected
future, global population.

The key questions are whether natural resources will be managed
sustainably, food prices kept high enough to cover the costs of food
production, and whether governments will prioritise sustainable food
production for all. More than two-thirds of African farmers are net
buyers of food; they cannot produce enough food to meet their needs.
Not because they are lazy and the productive capacity is absent, but
because they do not have access to credit, fertilisers and
high-yielding seeds that are drought-tolerant and resistant to
insects.

They do not have access to markets where they can sell their
products at prices that cover production costs. Their crop yields
could be doubled or tripled. It has been done in places where these
problems have been solved. Poor farmers damage the environment. They
mine their soils for plant nutrients because they cannot get access
to reasonably priced fertilisers. For them, feeding their families
now is more important than protecting the land for the future.

Poor farmers expand agricultural production into lands unsuited
for agriculture and at high risk of degradation because they cannot
increase yields on the better land. But these problems can be solved
with enlightened policies and investments. The necessary
interventions will vary among countries and places, but two are
likely to be very important in most settings: improved rural
infrastructure (roads, irrigation facilities, institutions) and
agricultural research to expand yields, reduce unit costs of
production and assure sustainable use of natural resources.
Triple wins, such as reduced soil degradation, increased food
production and an escape from poverty, are waiting to be realised.
Access to fertilisers will reduce soil mining, increase yields and
help poor farmers out of poverty – but only if the farmer has access
to credit, and the infrastructure gives him access to markets without
excessive transactions costs. Without efforts to expand food
production in a sustainable manner, the doomsday prophets will be
right. Many more millions of children will die, natural resources
will be destroyed and the world will face real food shortages.
Will policy makers respond in time? The global food crisis that gave
ammunition to the predictors of a food apocalypse was a warning of
what may happen when the food sector is ignored by policy makers.
Unwarranted complacency is the doomsday prophet’s best friend.

Source: Per Pinstrup-Andersen,

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June 2010