September 28, 2010

UN's FAO calls for agricultural reinforcement

Global policy makers should see the recent rises in food prices as a wake up call to strengthen agriculture development, a senior official of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Monday (Sep 27).

Food productivity growth over the last 10 years has stagnated at about half the pace needed annually to meet the expected growth in demand for food between now and 2050, said Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO's assistant director-general and regional representative for Asia and the Pacific.

Grain prices have jumped to multi-year highs since June, after major exporter Russia banned shipments due to a severe drought. Still, global stocks are relatively abundant thanks to rich harvests in 2008 and 2009.

"The market is becoming more and more sensitive to the commodity production situation and price hikes," Konuma said.

Global cereal output growth in major staple foods rice and wheat has stagnated at 0.6% to 0.7% annually over the last 10 years, about half the production growth rate of 1.2 to 1.4% annually needed from now to 2050, he said.

Land and water scarcity, competition between food and bioenergy crops and changing diet pattern of consumers in China and India makes food shortages a realistic issue in the future.

"We are advocating the importance of food and agriculture to lead policy makers to bring resources to agriculture. One reason for the stagnation of agriculture productivity is a lack of sufficient investment in agriculture," Konuma said.

The share of agriculture assistance in official development assistance in 1979 was 19% but it has fallen to 5% in 2007, he said, calling on rich nations to spend more to help developing countries and for developing countries to reconsider budget allocations for agriculture.

He said the Russian ban on exports should just be a short term measure.

"Exporters should not put such a ban for a long term. If Russia says they are planting wheat in time to produce to recover the losses ... if the government has concrete action and confidence of production, such restrictions should be lifted as early as possible to stabilise international markets," he said.