"Tens of millions of children will face starvation in 20 years if governments do not increase spending now on irrigation, education and agricultural research for poor countries, according to a new analysis."
And the article below notes, "public funding for agricultural research and for production technologies such as irrigation has fallen over the past decades."
But it has fallen selectively. Hans Herren has commented how the project he won the World Food Prize for, which helped to save the staple cassava crop in Africa, probably would not even attract funding these days as all monies are going into genetic engineering. We noted a classic example of this problem recently with a successful non-GE project to develop a salt-tolerant wheat that has ground to a halt because the funding has sinply dried up.
And the IFPRI report concludes, "If spending declines from current levels to $323 billion, then 178 million children are calculated to starve in 2020."
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Child starvation will climb unless decline in food research is reversed
New Scientist, August 29
Debora MacKenzie
Tens of millions of children will face starvation in 20 years if governments do not increase spending now on irrigation, education and agricultural research for poor countries, according to a new analysis. This was performed by the world's most complex computer model of the global food system and shows that a 39 per cent increase in spending now could mean a corresponding decrease in the number of malnourished children in 2020.
The report was released on Tuesday by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research funded by the World Bank and rich countries. Using a computer model named IMPACT, Mark Rosegrant and colleagues predicted that 132 million children will face starvation in 2020 if current government policies do not change.
That is less than the 166 million malnourished in 1997. But the model found that over the next 20 years, increases in population, coupled with slower rates of increase in the yields of key crops plus a vastly increased demand for meat in newly-prosperous, industrialising countries, will make food security ever more elusive.
While with current policies the number of starving children will halve in China, the number will decrease only a few percent in South Asia and will grow by 18 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa.
"The world's decision makers face a fork in the road," the team concluded. Either they can continue current policies, or boost spending on measures that increase food security.
Ending hunger
Under current policies, Rosegrant and colleagues calculate that improvements in food security will cost $570 billion between 1997 and 2020, with 21 per cent going for research. Boosting this total to $802 billion would cut the number of starving children in 2020 from 132 million to 94 million. Most of those would be in Africa, but malnutrition could end completely in Latin America.
This increase in spending is less than five per cent of developing countries' overall government spending now. However, the report notes that public funding for agricultural research and for production technologies such as irrigation has fallen over the past decades. If spending declines from current levels to $323 billion, then 178 million children are calculated to starve in 2020.
IMPACT models the entire world food system, both the production of food and people's ability to buy it, by calculating the effects of agricultural changes each year over successive years.
This is immensely complex, as a price change in one crop one year can lead farmers in one region to boost its production the next year, and others to abandon it. The system also incorporates assumptions about changes in technology and environmental constraints.
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"We consider the use of the South's rural poverty to justify the monopoly control and global use of genetically modified food production by the North's transnational corporations, not only an obstructive lie, but a way of derailing the solutions to our Southern rural poverty. It is the height of cynical abuse of the corporations' position of advantage."
Joint statement signed by over 40 developing country NGOs
"I don't think any of us would disagree that, if an alternative exists to a GE solution, it's to be preferred"
Mr Hodson QC acting on behalf of the Life Sciences Network at the New Zealand Royal Commission on Genetic Modification February 8, 2001
"We already know today that most of the problems that are to be addressed via Golden Rice and other GMOs can be resolved in matter of days, with the right political will."
Hans Herren, Director General, The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Kenya; winner of the World Food Prize 1995
"Low-tech 'sustainable agriculture,' shunning chemicals in favour of natural pest control and fertiliser, is pushing up crop yields on poor farms across the world, often by 70 per cent or more... The findings will make sobering reading for people convinced that only genetically modified crops can feed the planet's hungry in the 21st century... A new science-based revolution is gaining strength built on real research into what works best on the small farms where a billion or more of the world's hungry live and work... It is time for the major agricultural research centres and their funding agencies to join the revolution."
New Scientist editorial, February 3, 2001
"Organic agricultural production based upon cheap, locally available materials and technologies provides an important alternative in the search for an environmentally sound and equitable solution to the problem of food security.”
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN
"Biotechnology and GM crops are taking us down a dangerous road, creating the classic conditions for hunger, poverty and even famine. Ownership and control concentrated in too few hands and a food supply based on too few varieties of crops planted widely are the worst option for food security."
Christian Aid report - Biotechnology and GMOs