The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in investing in agriculture. In 2003, heads of state from across Africa committed to allocate at least 10 per cent of their national budgets on an annual basis to agriculture and, through their commitment to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), to reduce poverty through agriculture-led growth.1 More recently, at the 2009 G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy, world leaders responded to the global spike in food prices by pledging to provide $22bn over three years to promote food security in developing countries.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Demographics, Development, Poverty, and Food
This briefing paper explores how the failure to tackle climate change threatens all aspects of food security – availability, access, utilisation, and stability. The changing climate is already jeopardising gains in the fight against hunger, and it looks set to worsen. It threatens the production and distribution of food. It threatens people's ability to access food by undermining livelihoods and destabilising prices, and it damages diets by harming human health and putting at risk the quality of food produced. Finally, the paper sets out how these impacts can be averted, through urgent action to avoid dangerous climate change, address our broken food system, and strengthen its resilience.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Development, Environment, Poverty, and Food
Massive investment in agriculture is desperately needed to help fix the broken food system. Private sector investment can play a vital role in delivering inclusive economic growth, environmental sustainability and poverty reduction. However, in order to do so, it must be adequately regulated and should adhere to some key principles, such as focusing on local food markets, working with producer organisations and respecting the rights of small-scale producers, workers and communities.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Development, Environment, Poverty, and Food
In 2009, EU governments committed to sourcing 10 per cent of transport energy from renewable sources by 2020: they are set to meet this target almost exclusively using biofuels made from food crops. By putting a mandate in place, European governments are propping up powerful industry and farming lobbies without spending a penny from national budgets: as direct subsidies and tax exemptions are phased out, the cost is increasingly borne by the consumer. For example, by 2020 biofuel mandates are likely to cost UK consumers between £1bn and £2bn more each year—that's about £35 from every adult—and to cost German consumers between €1.37bn and €2.15bn more—up to €30 per adult. EU governments have replaced subsidies paid out of the public purse with a subsidy that consumers, often without their knowledge, pay directly to big business.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Development, Energy Policy, and Food
Climate change is making extreme weather – like droughts, floods and heat waves – much more likely. As the 2012 drought in the US shows, extreme weather means extreme food prices. Our failure to slash greenhouse gas emissions presents a future of greater food price volatility, with severe consequences for the precarious lives and livelihoods of people in poverty.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Economics, and Food
This report is composed of two parts. The first introduces the four big commodity traders – Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus – which are the focus of this study. Collectively, these trading companies are often referred to as 'the ABCD companies' because of the coincidence of their initials. Part 2 then looks at these traders in relation to a number of the global issues pressing on agriculture: the 'financialization' of both commodity trade and agricultural production; the emergence of global competitors to the ABCDs, in particular from Asia; and some of the implications of large-scale industrial biofuels, a sector in which the ABCDs are closely involved. It includes a discussion of how smallholders in developing countries are affected by some of these changes, and highlights some development policy implications, given the importance of the ABCDs in shaping the world of food and agriculture.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Poverty, and Food
In 2011 the world waited for the UN to declare famine before providing assistance on the level needed to save lives in Somalia – this delayed response wasted lives and money. We are now seeing warnings of Somalia slipping back into crisis and cannot afford to make the same mistake again – we should respond now, and in force, in ways that make people better able to withstand the next disaster to strike.
Topic:
Security, Health, Islam, United Nations, Food, and Famine
The 2011 drought across the Horn of Africa was, in some places, the worst to hit the region for 60 years. It was first predicted about a year beforehand, when sophisticated regional early warning systems began to alert the world to the possibility of drier-than-normal conditions in key pastoral areas of Ethiopia, Somalia and Northern Kenya, linked to the effects of the climatic phenomenon La Niña.
Topic:
Security, Development, Humanitarian Aid, Food, and Famine
The ASEAN Investment Report for 2011 considers 2010 as an important year for the region in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. FDIs in ASEAN for the said year reached a record high of US 75.8 million dollars, nearly double the inflows in 2009. Included in these FDIs were private sector investments in agriculture, as Southeast Asia has become one of the most favored destinations of large-scale agricultural land investments.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Gender Issues, Food, and Foreign Direct Investment
The devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010 exacerbated the country's grinding poverty and serious development problems, while at the same time worsening Haitian living conditions. The tremor killed over 250,000 people and injured 300, 000. It crippled the economy, causing losses estimated at almost 120 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Nevertheless, economic growth is expected to rise between 7 and 9 percent in 2012, largely owing to reconstruction efforts. The population in internally displaced persons camps has decreased from 1.5 million to around 390,000 (according to the June 2012 report of the International Organization for Migration), and the country's hurricane preparedness capacity has increased.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Gender Issues, Government, Food, and Fragile/Failed State