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November 24, 2016

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Home » Opinion » Foreign Views

Agriculture R&D offers hope for world’s poorest

By Bjørn Lomborg | November 24, 2016, Thursday | Print Edition

HUNGER has wracked humanity since time immemorial. Nearly every major society has been shaped by famine. Yet the struggle against hunger is a battle that humanity could finally win.

More cereals were produced annually in the last quarter of the twentieth century than in any preceding period, and more grain will be harvested this year than at any time in history. Since 1992, the number of hungry people worldwide has plummeted by more than 200 million, even as the human population grew by nearly two billion.

But enormous challenges remain. Affordable, nutritious food is one of people’s top priorities everywhere, and one in nine people still do not get enough food to be healthy. With today’s population of 7.3 billion expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050, food demand will increase accordingly. Along with more mouths to feed, stresses on food supplies will include conflicts, economic volatility, extreme weather events and climate change.

Increases in agricultural productivity, owing to improvements in seeds, new fertilizers and pesticides, improved credit access and technological breakthroughs, have been a key driver in reducing hunger.

The World Bank has found that productivity growth in agriculture can be up to four times more effective in reducing poverty than growth from other sectors. So how do we keep up this progress?

Investment in research and development is vital. According to research conducted for Copenhagen Consensus, which I direct, investing an extra US$88 billion in agricultural R&D over the next 15 years would increase yields by an additional 0.4 percentage points each year, which could save 79 million people from hunger and prevent five million cases of child malnourishment. Achieving these targets would be worth nearly US$3 trillion in social good, implying an enormous return of US$34 for every dollar spent.

Scientific breakthroughs also play a key role in fighting specific nutritional challenges such as vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness. Robert Mwanga was awarded this year’s World Food Prize for inspiring work that resulted in the large-scale replacement of white sweet potato (with scant Vitamin A content) by a vitamin A-rich alternative in the diets of Uganda’s rural poor.

Another way to increase agricultural productivity is through labor. When Copenhagen Consensus researchers examined responses to global warming in Bangladesh, they found that increasing agricultural labor productivity “is the only way to increase the resilience of Bangladesh to climate change and to meet long-term development goals.”

Labor productivity

Bangladesh is an instructive case, because it is susceptible to flooding and the effects of climate change, and its agricultural productivity lags behind other developing and middle-income countries. Unsurprisingly, the Bangladeshi prime minister’s office is striving to lead in global innovation, sustaining an agriculture innovation lab that shares best practices and ideas.

Copenhagen Consensus has worked with the world’s largest NGO, BRAC, to find out the policy wishes of people living in rural Bangladesh, including the “ultra-poor” with whom BRAC works closely. These laborers, housewives and others, some of whom live on the equivalent of US$0.60-0.70 or less a day, are seldom given a place at the table to discuss policy.

Across nine rural forums in far-flung parts of the country, the participants overwhelmingly spoke with one voice, calling for the same policy priority: increased agricultural productivity. “Everyone knows Rangpur has a Monga problem,” said a local from Chandpara in the Rangpur division, using the Bengali term for the annual cyclical phenomenon of seasonal hunger.

Humanity’s fight against hunger can be won. Great progress has been made, but the world needs more agricultural R&D and higher productivity.

 

Bjørn Lomborg is Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2016. www.project-syndicate.org

Foreign Views


 

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