The road to food security: What works and what doesn’t?

Considering that donors spend some US$ 150 billion per year in development aid, and that much of this is oriented to poverty alleviation and food security it is perhaps surprising to know how few thorough international reviews that have been made to assess  what works and what doesn’t work. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now reviewed existing evaluations in the field and make a summary in the study A systematic review of the impact of interventions in agricultural production, value chains, market regulation.  One conclusion is that most evaluations and impact assessments are not solid enough to allow for any far-reaching conclusions. Of 365 evaluations screened only 38 fulfilled the quality criteria the reviewers had developed.

The review assessed four pathways to food security: increasing production; development of value chains; market reform and land security. Interventions based on access to credit; development of non-farm sector; social safety nets; stabilized prices, hygiene and sanitation were thus not part of the review.

Overall conclusions

Interventions improving land tenure security scored mostly positive, especially when combined with other interventions.

Interventions increasing agricultural production scored generally positive, except for sustainability.

Value chain development scored well on increasing trade, but the most vulnerable people did not benefit.

Market regulation reform interventions score lowest, due to the combination with reduced support to the agricultural sector in several African countries.

Success was most likely where different interventions were combined in a favourable national climate.

As I have been working a lot with value chain development I took a particular interest in that: Intervention in value chain comes out as one of the better strategies for improving food security. The report highlights that there is a big potential in the development of domestic value chains. For example, in Kenya approximately 500,000 smallholders produce vegetables and fruits for the domestic markets while only 11,500 smallholders were engaged in the export market. The export market involves many more large plantations with employees. They employ in total also around half a million people, who are food secure through their income. The evaluation also studied value chains built around GlobalGAP, Organic and Fairtrade.

Number of farmers producing certified products for export markets          

Standard	Worldwide	Developing countries	Africa
GlobalGAP (2007)	97,000		2,871
Organic (2009)	1,808,000	1,526,000	511,000
Fairtrade		977,000	589,000

source: IOB study 363, 2012

Clearly donors are disappointed with the very limited impact of all the efforts spent to train smallholders in GlobalGAP systems. There have been many donor financed projects for linking smallholder farmers in developing countries to organic markets in developing countries. For example the Export Promotion of Organic Products from Africa. In that programme, more than 120 thousand smallholders in Uganda and Tanzania were linked to organic markets in Europe, USA and Japan. The estimated earnings reached some US$ 30 million per year.  The review assess the impact of organic value chains as successful, but can’t conclude if the efforts have reached the most vulnerable or not. Successfactors have been linking of farmers to commercial exporters (as opposed tp supporting farmer to export themselves), group certification and efforts to improve quality. Also for Fairtrade it was unclear if the most food insecure people were reached and perhaps surprising the report states that, Fairtrade seems to have reinforced men’s role in household an cooperative decision making around cash crops; in one case women’s income had even declined. For the total household income, in four of six cases in Latin America, there had been no increase of household income with Fair trade: ”The low income for Fairtrade farmers is due to the competition between the Fairtrade crop and other farm and non-farm activities, the additional costs for inputs and (hired) labour, and the limited Fairtrade market - only part of the produce is sold as Fairtrade.”

On the opposing side to organic stands a strong drive to increase use of chemical fertilizers, and sometimes GMOs and pesticides. The reports says that the subsidised fertilizer schemes in Zambia and Malawi have been successful. However, another recent special review of such schemes, Agricultural input subsidies in Sub-Saharan Africa from DANIDA comes to a much less positive conclusion after studying such schemes in Malawi, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania:

• Significant increases in agricultural productivity and food production is possible, and the potential for improving agricultural productivity by subsidising agricultural inputs exists. However the estimates are somewhat uncertain. Costs are very high, and given uncertainties it is unclear whether the programmes provide value for money.

• There is very little convincing evidence to suggest that outcomes are likely to persist after termination of the programmes. However, the subsidy programmes are designed to address the distortions created by market imperfections rather than the market imperfections themselves. When (if) the programmes are phased out, input use is likely to decline again.

It also concludes that none of the programmes managed to reach the poorest households

On the, rather controversial, effects of market deregulation, the Dutch review shows how market de-regulation in China and Vietnam, in combination with land reform, has contributed tremendously to growth and reduction of poverty. ”The impact of domestic trade reform alone was not evaluated, but together with the other pathways in Vietnam’s agricultural development, it contributed to the production increase, from a deficit of 27% in 1980 to a surplus of 40% in 1999. And for China:

In China, during the so-called household responsibility system reform between 1978 and 1984, national grain production increased from 305 to 407 million tonnes. Increases in efficiency increased labour productivity and reduced production costs and food prices. [... ] As a result, per capita grain consumption increased from 195 to 250 kg per year, and household income increased by 15% per year between 1978 and 1984. The efficiency gains in agriculture made labour available for the rural industry sector that absorbed about one third of the rural labour force by 1996. Poverty declined from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001.

On the other hand the report also points to that during the period of big de-regulation

In most African countries, the increase in food import was larger than the increase in agricultural export. The ratio of food import to agricultural export has worsened for all African countries plus Guatemala and Peru, remained the same for Guyana, and had improved for China, India and Chile (1970-2002). In the period 1995-2002, the situation was worst for Senegal which imported food worth more than three times their total  agricultural export. Farmer income from export crops increased in all countries. In contrast, farmer income from liberalised food crops decreased in all countries, except in Chile. Farmer income from food crops that were still protected increased in Cameroon, Nigeria, Morocco, China, India, Chile, Guyana and Peru.

That land reform the report highlights that land titling and solutions based on individual, private ownership may not be the best. As a matter of fact they are likely to benefit more those that are already better off, and exclude women and disadvantaged groups.

As the report points out, there is no silver bullet that by itself can guarantee food security. It stands clear to me that food security – poverty and equality are intrinsically linked, and that the reason for food insecurity is found in an unjust society and unequal access to resources, and therefore,  that the path to food security is to correct those injustices.

Paving the land - and taking it back again

"Restoring to fertility land covered with concrete is an enormous task, but not an impossible one. So, Lorenza Zambon, actress and gardener, tells the story of a couple in Turin, Italy, who decided to give to their children a patch of fertile land as a gift. It was a lot of work; concrete had to be cut and broken to pieces and the rubble carried away. Then, restoring the fertility of the soil took truckloads of dirt, charcoal, and more. Zambon doesn't tell us how long the task took nor how much it cost, but surely it was slow, messy and expensive. It was also a subversive idea: in the generally accepted view, paving the land means "developing" it, and that means making money. So, destroying property to restore the fertile soil is something that nobody in his/her right mind would - normally - do."

writes Ugo Bardi on his blog post about the increasing encroachment on agriculture land by roads, houses etc. It is very hard to get accurate data for exactly how much land is paved over or "built" in the world. Data from Denmark looks like this. 

Danish land use (ministry of environment 2004)

 4.1 %, 4.3 % and 4.4 % of the EU territory was classified as artificial surface in 1990, 2000 and 2006 respectively. This corresponds to a 8.8 % increase of artificial surface in the EU between 1990 and 2006. In the same period, population increased by only 5 %. In 2006 each EU citizen disposed of 389 m² of artificial surfaces, which is 3.8 % or 15 m² more compared to 1990. Unsustainable land use trends can be observed in Cyprus, Denmark, the Netherlands and Portugal where land take is growing considerably faster than population growth. Furthermore, there are several new Member States also affected by unsustainable land use trends due to continuing land take and at the same shrinking populations. Policy targets for land take. Quantitative limits for annual land take exist only in six Member States: Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. In all cases the limits are indicative and are used as monitoring tools. This can be read in a recent EU report. I write more about this report in the post EU farm land increasingly sealed. 

In Garden Earth I write:

Roads and petrol stations—the crops of the modern times

The statistical basis for assessing how much land human beings have taken in direct use for buildings, roads, etc., is surprisingly weak. Literature quote figures from 1.5% up to 9%. In Sweden 3%, 1.29 million hectares of the land, is built on in some way. Land for housing was 29% of this; roads, railroads and airports 31%; industries, etc. 11%. Of course, Sweden is sparsely populated. In the county of Stockholm 15% of the land is built upon whereas in the northernmost county of Norrbotten only 0.6% of land is built upon. There were 550,000 kilometres of roads (some 60 metres per person) covering 345,000 hectares of land (SCB 2004). In the more densely populated Denmark, human infrastructure is calculated to cover almost 20% of the land area (Danish Ministry of Environment 2005). During the 1960s, 7% of European farm area was encroached upon by roads and 15% of the agriculture land of Great Britain was built upon (Montgomery 2007). By 2010, the United States lost almost 10 million hectares, more than 2.5% of farmland, to human infrastructure since 1950 (Talberth et al. 2007). Eastern United States has a larger proportion of its total area (4–5%) in urban and suburban landscapes than in other regions (H. John Heinz III Center 2008).

We need to do something with the ongoing encroachment of agriculture land by built infrastructure. It is scandalous that soils are not protected by any international conventions. As far as I understand it is not even on the agenda in the upcoming Rio + 20 meeting.
Time for a soil convention!

Update 19 April:
Apparently the EU Commission released some guidelines about "soil sealing"
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/pdf/soil_sealing_guidelines_en.pdf
and there is an upcoming conference about it:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/conference_may2012.htm 

The Market is not a management system for the planet

Olle harvesting cabbage at Torfolk

Even the most convinced proponents of a free market realise that there are things that can't be left to the market to sort out. Human rights, law and order, security, basic social security have, in almost all societies, been regulated by some other institution than the market, often by a state. Most of our social relations are within the context of family, kinship, communities, etc. and thus also are not regulated by markets. And even for those things that are, mostly, regulated by markets there are many government rules. Even in the market-oriented United States there are supposedly 130,000 regulations for how economic agents may, or may not, behave. And the more central an issue is to our society, the more regulations there are. For example, all countries have labour regulations. They are there because we realize that the workers are a weaker party in an alleged "free" labour market: they need some kind of protection. There is no doubt, in my view, that some market regulations go too far, and that governments should refrain from micro-managing economic activity. A bigger threat, however, is when governments want markets to regulate things that are not at all suitable for market regulation.

Agriculture is a very complex activity. It provides us with our most essential need, food.  Throughout history, food supply has always been subject to political intervention. The Romans tried to regulate prices, although they failed, like most other subsequent efforts; the record of government interventions in food markets is rather poor. Faced with the prospect of food shortages, we now see country after country making bilateral food deals. They no longer trust the global trading system to safeguard their food supplies. The fact that we have major famine, e.g. in the Horn of Africa, while lots of food is wasted in other parts of the world is also an indication that markets in food don't work very well in safeguarding the survival of fellow humans. Agriculture is also largely the foundation of society. Human relations in the farming system shaped social structures over millennia. Even modern industrial societies have grown out of a context where agriculture played a pivotal role. The preservation of farming is not only about food production but also about culture, society and heritage.

Scientists now speak about the Anthropcene, the era in which planet Earth's big systems, hydrological, biological, climatic and even geological, are mainly shaped by humans. Farming already occupies around forty percent of the planet's terrestrial surface and with the urban and peri-urban areas, human activity covers perhaps sixty percent. We also know that farming and land-use accounts for around one third of the greenhouse gas emissions, the second largest source after fossil fuels. This means that farming is the most significant human management system of the planet; that the future of humans on the planet largely rests upon how we manage the farmscape. And markets are not the right tool for managing the planet.

Column in upcoming issue of ecology and farming 

How to use the land?

(Photovoltaic elements outside of Heby in Sweden)

Will solar energy farms be a solution for the future? Is it really more efficient to use solar panels on farm land than to grow biomass?

Well, photovoltaic elements seem to have an efficiency of 12-15 percent, e.g. 12-15 percent of the incoming solar energy is captured by the cells and converted to electricity. The photosynthesis supposedly has only a few percents efficiency. I am not hundred percent sure of the math here, but that is what you get from literature. So from that perspective the choice is easy.

Notably, the miracle of the photosynthesis is NOT to just capture energy but to (re)produce life, something quite more remarkable than electricity. Nevertheless, in an energy scarce future we will have these kinds of discussions. Not to speak about the conflict between energy and food...


Another similarly interesting discussion is if you have a dam of water. Will you use that water for:
1. Hydropower
2. Irrigation of biofuel crops
3. Irrigation of food crops
4. Industrial water
5. Household water
6. Tourists water
7. Flooding wet lands to preserve bio-diversity
8. Tear down the dam to restore nature?

In a nature scarce world, there are tough choices to be made.

Earth as an apple

I came accross this on the Endangered Spaces blog:

Cut an apple into quarters. Put aside three of those quarters. These slices represent the oceans of our world.


What is left is 1/4. Slice it in half. Set aside one of the halves. This is the part of the Earth on which people cannot live, the poles, deserts, swamps and high mountains.


What is left is 1/8. This is where the humans live, but not necessarily where they grow their food.


Slice your 1/8 piece into four sections. Put aside three of them. What is left is 1/32. The three pieces you set aside represent the places where the soil is too poor to farm--too rocky, wet, cold or steep. These also represent the cities, homes, highways, shopping malls, schools, parks, factories, parking lots and golf courses where people live play and work--but do not grow food.

Take the 1/32 piece that remains. Carefully peel it. Look at this tiny scrap of apple peel. This represents the surface topsoil of the planet that may be farmed. This thin skin represents the thin skin on the Earth's crust upon which humankind totally depends. This soil is less than 5 feet deep and is a fixed amount of food-producing land.

Eat the rest of your apple, but save that tiny piece of apple skin. Treat is as if your life depends on it.

For more information on using this as a teaching tool, please visit this website.

Time for a soil convention!

The topsoil is one of the most fundamental assets we have, a natural capital. Soil formation is slow, to build up a cm takes centuries. To destroy it takes just a few years. Many civilizations have been ruined by their lack of care for the soil. It is high time that an international convention for protection of soils is signed and implemented. Not that I have any high expectations that such a convention will deliver so much. Changing the habits of a billion farmers is not easy, and changing the habit of cities and citizens to swallow fertile lands for infrastructure is also very hard. Nevertheless a soil convention would highlight the issues.

Not only soil eroision is problematic but also the transformation of soils into urban infrastructure, dams etc. Here global statistics are pretty wobbly, figures from 3 to 9 percent of land transformed to infrastructures appear. In fairly densly populated Denmark almost 20 percent of the land is used for human infrastructure.



Most of cities, houses and roads are built on arable land. In China approximately 600.000 hectares per year are transformed to human infrastructure. In Sweden 345.000 hectares are covered with roads, that corresponds to more than ten percent of the arable land (not all of it is of course built on arable land).

It is ironic that people are upset about land use for biofuel while they gladly drive their petrol driven cars on top of the ruined soil.
(Yes, I think that government subsidised bio fuels is dubious, no, I don't think it is ethical to take food from the poor and drive cars, yes, I think biofuels are a lot better than petrol if properly made, yes, I think high prices for agricultural products are good)

It is high time for a Soil Convention. Is UNEP the one taking the lead? Which country will suggest it?