[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] Food Price Explosion 'Should Be a Wake-Up Call'

[mary rose]

FYI and consideration.


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Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 7:14 AM
Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Food Price Explosion 'Should Be a Wake-Up 
Call'



http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,554794,00.html


Food Price Explosion 'Should Be a Wake-Up Call'

Global farm representative Jack Wilkinson says that recent rises in food 
prices were a necessary adjustment. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with him about the 
good side of farm subsidies and why higher food prices aren't necessarily so 
bad.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who do you actually represent? It would seem that a large 
farm in North America would have radically different interests than a small 
subsistence farmer in Africa.

Wilkinson: We are made up of national farm organizations. A third of our 
members are from developed countries with two-thirds coming from the 
developing world. It is a very broad cross section. But we don't have any 
agro-industry companies among our members.

Commodity prices, especially for rice, have been rocketing upwards in recent 
months.
REUTERS

Commodity prices, especially for rice, have been rocketing upwards in recent 
months.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: With so many members in developing countries, you must be 
vehemently opposed to farm subsidies in Europe and North America?

Wilkinson: We came to the agreement a long time ago that export subsidies 
should be eliminated, and even European farmers agree. There was recognition 
that such subsidies were doing damage to third country small-scale farmers, 
particularly in the developing world. We are not against subsidies to 
farmers. We are against subsidies to farmers that damage farmers in other 
countries.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Like those in place in the European Union under the Common 
Agricultural Policy?

Wilkinson: Some of the EU subsidies that are in place are very good 
subsidies. A farmer gets paid for producing food. A fisherperson gets paid 
for fishing. They don't get paid in the developing world to protect habitat. 
In Europe and North America, there are a number of subsidies in place that 
allow farmers to set aside and rehabilitate marginal lands that are 
incredibly important from a biodiversity point of view. If you don't have a 
subsidy that supports that kind of activity, it doesn't happen. It is way 
too simplistic to say that all subsidies are bad.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In Germany, Gert Sonnleitner, president of the German 
Farmers Association, is doing what he can to maintain subsidies that protect 
the income of farmers. That is hardly the kind of environmental protection 
subsidies you are talking about.

Wilkinson: Just because you have a subsidy that helps stabilize the income 
of farmers doesn't mean that it will by definition hurt the developing 
world. The problems come when subsidies support commodity production 
resulting in surpluses that are then dumped cheaply, destroying the 
opportunities of an African or Latin American or Asian farmer to make a 
living. The Common Agricultural Policy reforms in recent years have 
dramatically changed the negative impact of such subsidy programs. Part of 
the problem is that a lot of economists and editorial writers do not bother 
to keep up on agricultural policy. It is more convenient for them to 
remember the damaging programs from the past that no longer exist.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Developing countries, though, don't seem to be any better 
off, especially given the extremely rapid rise in food prices in recent 
years.

Wilkinson: Now governments in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world 
are concerned about their poor urban consumers. Their concern should be, now 
that we have strong commodity prices for the first time in a decade, how 
they can put an agricultural strategy in place to allow their farmers to 
increase their production so they can feed their nation and supply regional 
markets.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You mean that climbing food prices -- prices for rice alone 
climbed by 80 percent last year -- are not necessarily the awful thing that 
they have been made out to be in recent months?

Wilkinson: There is a perfect mid-spot where a farmer earns enough from 
farming to make a living and yet the urban consumer is not paying an 
unreasonable amount of money for it. Prices needed to change from where they 
were, but prices overreacted simply because the shortage caught some people 
by surprise.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The recent price explosions then were simply a necessary 
correction?

Wilkinson: Low commodity prices meant that farmers were interested only in 
feeding their own families. Higher prices will facilitate needed investment. 
Let me give you an example. In many countries, storage problems and other 
issues lead to post-harvest losses of up to 30 percent of the crop. We know 
right now, with modest expenditure, how to eliminate most of that loss. 
Instead of cutting down more forests to grow more crop only to lose 30 
percent, why are we not putting a major emphasis right now on saving all the 
crop that we grow? Additional money allows farmers to invest in more 
efficient practices.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Still, you make it sound as though the higher prices are 
little more than a blip in the market and nothing to be terribly concerned 
about.

Wilkinson: On the contrary. This should be a wake-up call. We have 53 
countries in Africa and about three of them are growing enough surplus food 
that they can export to the region. It doesn't have to be that way. The fact 
that we have 250 million malnourished people in Africa is a scandal. And the 
challenges will only become greater. Because of dietary changes and 
population growth, agricultural needs are growing by at least 4 percent a 
year. Climate change adds additional pressure and the amount of water 
available per person is dropping as well.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How dangerous is the pressure being put on arable land by 
biofuel crops?

Wilkinson: Biofuels are certainly an additional pressure. But I think it's 
unfair that some NGOs are saying 'if only we didn't have biofuels, the world 
would be a perfect place.' It is reasonable to ask whether any agricultural 
land should be growing non-agricultural crops. But biofuels are not the only 
such demand on agricultural land. Uruguay, Chile and Argentina grow trees 
for export to Europe on agricultural land. Even barley for beer could be 
questioned. I'm not being flippant here. I put biofuels in the same 
category. It has become a mantra that biofuels are the enemy, and I say that 
we need to put it into context.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do you think of the idea of setting up a World Food 
Bank to coordinate supply and demand centrally as a mechanism to control 
shortages in one part of the world and surpluses elsewhere?

Wilkinson: We've been there before. We had a set-aside program in Europe for 
many years which involved taking agricultural land out of production to 
regulate the surplus. There was a program in the United States that involved 
the government buying surplus and storing it for use when needed. But the US 
moved away from that because the surpluses were being taken to Africa as 
part of the World Food Program, landed free of charge, and discouraging 
farmers in those regions from ever developing a commercial market.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How else can world hunger be eliminated?

Wilkinson: The best way to achieve global food security is through strong 
and organized farm communities working together to develop cooperative 
marketing and local food enterprises. We need to utilize farmers and their 
productive capacity at home, beginning at the local level. We have enough 
land, we have enough farmers. We just need good agricultural policies.