A UN sponsored ‘High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy’ kicked off in Rome two days ago, on Tuesday. Its provisional agenda includes food price controls, tariffs and export restrictions, biofuels, effect of climate and assistance for farmers in poor countries. The summit is scheduled to conclude today with a declaration. The points of deliberation have already emerged from the provisional agenda. This is supposed to be a response to the prevailing global food crisis that has put millions in misery.
   Joachim von Braun, the head of the Washington-based think-tank International Food Policy Research Institute, however, thinks that the ‘response’ is not to the suffering of millions in the remote areas of poorest countries. ‘I think a number of world leaders have really been shaken by the outbursts of extreme frustration and aggression,’ he said on June 3 when talking to the BBC. ‘There have been protests in 30 countries – that is what has triggered the response, not the suffering.’
   Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, spoke on the opening day. ‘The world needs to produce more food. Food production needs to rise by 50 per cent by the year 2030 to meet the rising demand. We have an historic opportunity to revitalise agriculture – especially in countries where productivity gains have been low in recent years.’ He went on to share the key recommendations that are part of a ‘Comprehensive Framework for Action’ drawn up by a special UN taskforce he formed last month. These include boosting smallholder farmer food production ‘through urgent injection of key inputs (including seeds and fertilisers) in time for this year’s planting seasons’ and ‘adjusting trade and taxation policies to minimise export restrictions and import tariffs, and helping the free flow of agricultural goods’.
   This only means that countries will be increasingly barred from blocking exports and in fact forced to sell their produce although it might not serve them best in terms of ensuring their own food security. But the UN secretary general, or his taskforce, failed to recommend any measures to contain international oil prices or any set of regulations to govern the international oil producing cartel. Neither was there any mention of biofuels and the sharp rise in demand for food grain driven by the biofuel industry.
   It appears that the solution has been envisaged to lie in agriculture alone. And the recommended fix, boosting production by a certain percentage within a certain time to meet the ‘demand’, is likely to end up meaning that certain developed countries would continue to run their biofuel programme while farmers of poorer countries continue to toil even harder to produce more on their small patches of land. Although implicit from Ban Ki-moon’s tone of urgency, there is enough food to go around – enough for feeding people and livestock that is. The latest issue (June 2008) of Food Outlook, which is published twice a year by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, estimates that world cereal production in 2008 would hit a record high at nearly 2,192 million tonnes, up 3.8 per cent from 2007.
   In spite of the strong growth in world cereal production in 2008, total cereal supplies will remain tight given the strong rise in demand, says the Food Outlook. It states that ‘total cereal utilisation’ in 2008-09 is projected to rise by 2.3 per cent from 2007-08 to 2,176 million tonnes, which would be nearly two per cent over a ten-year trend. The curious usage of ‘utilisation’ instead of simply ‘consumption’ is because cereals are no more considered as human or animal feed alone but also an industrial raw material to produce biofuel and feed automobiles.
   ‘The increase in world cereal utilisation reflects a sustained growth in food, feed and industrial utilisation of cereals. Maize-based ethanol production is likely to continue its strong growth in the new season, accounting for almost 20 million tonnes, or nearly one-half of the overall anticipated increase in total cereal utilisation in 2008/09.’ According to the forecast, human consumption is estimated to account for just over a billion tonnes of cereals – 1.002 billion tonnes to be precise. Livestock feed accounts for another 760 million tonnes while ‘other uses’, which obviously includes biofuel production, accounts for 393.5 million tonnes, which was 329.3 million in 2006. The figures for human consumption and livestock feed were 994 million and 741.4 million tonnes that year. It becomes apparent from the figures that the rise in demand for human and livestock feed is not creating the food shortage. It is the industrial demand for food that has contributed to the prevailing crisis.
   As for the declaration out of the high-level summit, the official global ‘response’ – so to speak – to the sufferings of the millions, will presumably and predictably depend on the most commercially lucrative response where corporations of the North will see their markets expanded and business furthered. There will predictably be precious little regarding a cap on biofuel production, or any hint at regulating the oil market. However, there will be much about the importance of increased food production and the necessity of newer technologies to do so. These technologies, namely terminator technology and genetically modified crops, will be advanced as the new alternatives that typically require more fertilisers and high-end management of agriculture that farmers in the poor countries know little about. The UN declaration would recommend measures that require purchasing expensive technology and agricultural inputs ‘including seeds and fertilisers’ from multinational corporations. In fact, these corporations are already reaping the benefits of the food crisis and will surely home in on further potential opportunities that the current summit offers.
   According to compilations by GRAIN, an international non-governmental organisation promoting sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people’s control over genetic resources and local knowledge, some companies have made a killing out of the food crisis. In the current context of tight food supplies, the small clique of corporations that control the world’s fertiliser market can charge what they want, and according to GRAIN, they are doing exactly that.
   Profits of Cargill’s Mosaic Corporation, which controls much of the world’s potash and phosphate supply, more than doubled last year. The world’s largest potash producer, Canada’s Potash Corp, made more than $1 billion in profit, up more than 70 per cent from 2006. Panicking about future supplies, governments have become desperate to increase their harvests, giving these corporations additional leverage. In April 2008, the joint offshore trading arm for Mosaic and Potash hiked the price of its potash by 40 per cent for buyers from Southeast Asia and by 85 per cent for those from Latin American. India had to pay 130 per cent more than last year, and China 227 per cent. Profits of China’s Sinochem increased by 95 per cent in 2007 to cross the billion dollar mark and reach $1.1 billion.
   But fertilisers are only part Cargill’s business. Its biggest profits come from global trading in agricultural commodities, which is again a monopoly of just a handful of big traders. On April 14, 2008, Cargill announced that its profits from commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were 86 per cent higher than the same period in 2007. ‘Demand for food in developing economies and for energy worldwide is boosting demand for agricultural goods, at the same time that investment monies have streamed into commodity markets,’ said Greg Page, Cargill’s chairman and chief executive officer. Profits for ADM of US increased 67 per cent in 2007 reaching $2.2 billion while the Noble Group of Singapore posted a 92 per cent increase on their 2006 profits.
   The trend is visible in Bangladesh too. In order to attain a ‘bumper’ production the military-controlled interim government enthusiastically promoted hybrid seeds which registered an almost fourfold increase in acreage to reach about a million hectares during the recent boro harvest. That the harvest has been a good one is not in doubt. But the constant mention of the a bumper production – although it does not signify anything in numeric or arithmetic terms – implies a certain degree of overachievement primarily to be credited to the incumbents for their efforts. More credit is perhaps due to the millions of farmers who toiled night and day to produce as much as they could after last years disasters and also to mostly favourable weather, at least as far as paddy was concerned.
   In all this, however, the business of companies selling hybrid seeds have increased dramatically with the incumbents apparently behind it and directing the entire government machinery to promote usage of hybrids. The overriding rationale was very similar to what the UN secretary general had said in Rome – boosting food production. Since there is about a 10 per cent shortfall in paddy production and demand in Bangladesh, increasing food production is an agenda that must be pursued vigorously. But it is the method or means to attain sufficiency in food staple that is being decided by commercial interests rather than with due consideration to farmers’ abilities, knowledge, soil fertility and the environment.
   According to reports, productivity of hybrid paddy during the boro season was about 4.96 tonnes per hectare while it was 4.08 tonnes for high yielding varieties like BR 29 and BR 28. Out of 46,75,274 hectares, hybrid rice was cultivated on 10,10,641 hectares, high-yielding varieties on 35,38,754 hectares, and local varieties on 1,25,879 hectares. Of the total production of 19.723 million tonnes, about 5.2 million tonnes were hybrids and 14.46 million tonnes were high-yielding.
   The potential yield of HYV paddy developed by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute is far more than that which hybrids have achieved. Experts claim that productivity of several good high-yielding varieties could be further increased with better management of fertilisers and irrigation and a little training of farmers. They suggest that there is almost no need for switching to hybrid technology immediately as the available HYVs like the BR 29, BR 28, BR 33 and others could raise grain yield by at least 20 per cent if the authorities improved their management of the inputs.
   There is increasingly more stress on new technology, the necessity of which cannot be undermined. But it appears that instead of promoting technology that farmers would easily adapt to, there is a shift towards technology that is alien to farmers. New initiatives to increase food production – be it research in the laboratories or introduction of new varieties in the field – must be such that strengthen the farmers and increase their resilience and not such that increase their dependence and vulnerability.
   The UN summit on the food crisis will predictably urge people worldwide to increase food production to ensure food security. Without even addressing the problematic issues of sustainable access to healthy food and thereby one’s purchasing power, one is wont to ask why, since there is already enough food to go around and then some more. Why produce so much food when feed demand is clearly far lower than global production of cereals. The answer is probably that the developed countries need the poorer nations to produce an increasingly higher surplus so that they can continue to turn food into fuel and thus satiate their internal demand for fuel, primarily to feed their empty fuel tanks.