Predictions by various consultancies about the likelihood of a recovery from the present economic slump were dealt further blows yesterday by new reports showing that a rise in food prices in the coming decade is almost a certainty.
The first bad news came from the International Fund for Agricultural Development, which notes that with a large proportion of arable land being managed by communities still living in abject poverty, chances of a much needed boost to food production are limited.
“There remains an urgent need… to invest more and better in agriculture and rural areas” based on “a new approach to smallholder agriculture that is both market-oriented and sustainable,” the report says.
How likely this investment is as the rich North struggles to recover from the banking system’s collapse is a matter of some concern. Failure to do so will inevitably lead to higher food costs around the globe.
The report cites the consequences of climate change – which will make agricultural production more difficult in many places – as complicating the challenges of addressing rural poverty in these regions and globally.
Accentuating this concern was a report from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which says that without improvement in rural poverty maize prices are likely to increase by 130% over the next 40 years.
Releasing the report in Cancun during the current round of UN moderated talks on climate change, Phillip Thornton of ILRI said that it was important “… to get countries in Cancun to take action now to keep the global temperature increase below two degrees Celsius by the turn of the century – otherwise we are headed towards a four degree rise if greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked.”
Current estimates of a two-degree increase in global temperature will increase water stress in dry areas, see coastal flooding and a loss of 30% of animal and plant species. This will be catastrophic for food supplies for a human population predicted to swell by a third (three billion) by 2050, and will be even more so at four degrees.
A third report, by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), quantified the scale of that catastrophe through evaluating the climate change impact on three of the world’s most important staples – maize, rice and wheat – between now and 2050.
This predicts increased crop failures and a fall in the capacity of existing arable land to support the burgeoning human population. Compromised biodiversity also limits the potential for developing new plant material that can improve or even maintain production levels under changed climatic conditions.
The study predicts prices of the three staples will increase by around 150% in real terms in the intervening years.
Population growth would be a challenge in many African countries, said Delali Nutsukpo, a senior agriculture official in the Ghanaian government and lead author of the country’s case study. “We need to take measures to control population while investing in rural livelihoods programmes – but will that happen?”
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