by Alex Evans | Aug 28, 2008 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion, is amusing himself by taking shotguns to sacred cows on agriculture and development again. This time, as Owen Barder points out, he’s on Comment is Free, where he regales us with his views on GM technology. As you may have guessed, he’s not in quite the same place as Prince Charles:
[Europe’s] GM ban has three adverse effects. It has retarded productivity in European agriculture; grain production could be increased by about 15% were the ban lifted. More subtly, because Europe is out of the market for GM technology, the pace of research has slowed. GM research takes a long time to come to fruition, and its core benefit – the permanent reduction of global food prices – cannot fully be captured through patents. European governments should be funding this research, but it is entirely reliant on the private sector. Private money for research depends on the prospect of sales, so the ban has not only blocked public research – it has reduced private research …
It is conventional to say that Africa needs a green revolution. The reality is that the green revolution was based on chemical fertilisers, and even when fertiliser was cheap, Africa did not adopt it. With the rise in fertiliser costs as a byproduct of high energy prices, any green revolution will perforce not be chemical. What African agriculture needs is a biological revolution. This is what GM offers, if only sufficient money is put into research. There has as yet been no work on the crops specific to the region, such as cassava and yams.
What to make of his claims? Well, first, I’m curious about his source for the assertion that Europe would have 15% higher grain yields if it permitted GM, as in fact, GM tech hasn’t actually made any major advances in yields for the three main cereal crops (wheat, rice and maize).
What’s certainly true that GM technologies can contribute to making crops more resilient to biotic stresses (pests, weeds etc.). The second generation of GM research is now focusing on abiotic stresses like reduced water availability, soil salinisation etc. But if life sciences represent one R&D approach towards more resilient agriculture, an alternative is ecologically integrated approaches like integrated pest management, integrated soil fertility management and so on.
What both approches have in common is moving away from the Green Revolution’s high-input approach and towards a high-knowledge approach instead. But whereas in life sciences, the knowledge-intensiveness is concentrated at the top end of the supply chain – in R&D labs in biotech and seed companies – with whole systems approaches, the type of knowledge involved is both more participative, and more open to local adaptation. Given adequate investment in extension services to train farmers, then, the latter approach can improve economic resilience as well as crop resilience – by reducing farmers’ dependence on expensive off-farm inputs.
Although there’s much to admire about Collier, when it comes to agriculture, his approach does sometimes come across as a bit, well, ideological. Here he is in The Times a few months back, for instance, where he says:
“The remedy to high food prices is to increase supply. The most realistic way is to replicate the Brazilian model of large, technologically sophisticated agro-companies that supply the world market. There are still many areas of the world – including large swaths of Africa – that have good land that could be used far more productively if it were properly managed by large companies. To contain the rise in food prices we need more, globalisation not less.
Unfortunately, large-scale commercial agriculture is deeply, perhaps irredeemably, unromantic. We laud the production style of the peasant: environmentally sustainable and human in scale. In respect of manufacturing we grew out of this fantasy years ago, but in agriculture it continues to contaminate our policies. In Europe and Japan huge public resources have been devoted to propping up small farms. The best that can be said for these policies is that we can afford them.
In Africa, which cannot afford such policies, the World Bank and the Department for International Development have orientated their entire efforts on agricultural development to peasant-style production. Africa has less large-scale commercial agriculture than it had 60 years ago. Unfortunately, peasant farming is not well suited to innovation and investment. The result has been that African agriculture has fallen farther and farther behind.” [emphasis added]
The remedy to high food prices is to increase supply? Not necessarily. Remember Amartya Sen’s sage observation on this point: food security is less about the overall quantum of food available than about who has the resources to access it: as he once put it pithily, “starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough to eat. It is not the characteristic of there not being enough to eat”.
So although we do indeed need to increase global food supply – by 50% by 2030, the World Bank reckon – that on its own ain’t enough. The process also has to work for the three quarters of the world’s poor who live in rural areas, most of whom rely at least partly on agriculture. Although these people should have benefited from high food prices, they haven’t – because they’re largely net food buyers, not net food sellers; because fertiliser costs have risen even faster than food prices; because they’ve got poor infrastructure; and so on.
Now, if you’re Collier, you probably think that the best thing for poor people in rural areas would be if they just packed themselves up and decamped to the nearest city. But actually, the evidence set out in the latest World Development Report supports the opposite case. Between 1993 and 2002, the number of people living on less than a dollar a day declined from 28% to 22% of people in developing countries. The principal driver for this improvement, the report continues, has been falling poverty in rural areas (where poverty fell from 37% to 29% over the same period) – and 80% of the decline in rural poverty was due not to migration to cities, but simply to better conditions in rural areas.
Countries like Vietnam show that ag-based growth, export success and smallholder farming can all come together in a virtuous circle: unlike most developing countries, Vietnam has done reasonably well out of high food prices. But to achieve this, various factors need to be in place: infrastructure, access to credit, access to technology, functioning markets, risk management mechanisms, acess to assets backed up by effective rule of law and dispute resolution, etc. etc.
But most small farmers in Africa have never had the benefit of these enabling conditions. In this regard, they’ve been let down by their governments (who despite an African Union target of spending 10% of government budgets on agriculture, mostly spend less than half that level), and by donors (who largely forgot about agriculture until the food price spike, having allowed the proportion of development assistance spent on agriculture to fall from nearly 20% at its peak to around 3% today).
Perhaps it would be worth trying out what real commitment to making smallholder farming work could achieve in Africa, before jumping to the conclusion that the only way forward is to empty Africa’s countryside of people?
by Richard Gowan | Aug 22, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, North America
With each day that passes, members of the commentariat out-bid each other with explanations of how events in Georgia signify the decline of the West. Comparisons to the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechosolvakia abound. And South Vietnam, obviously. It takes a brave skeptic to argue that this is not the start of “Cold War II”. So I expect to be consigned to the “insane” file when I say this: Russia has fought a successful, rather classical, limited war and won a tactical victory that may yet turn into a strategic defeat for Moscow.
I’m not saying that’s certain, but it’s a real possibility. To see why, it’s necessary to get past the images of Russian armor grinding up Georgian roads. There’s no doubt that the war went Moscow’s way. But remember: in 1968, nearly 200,000 Soviet and Warsaw pact troops poured into Czechoslovakia. Today, we worry because Russia may leave 2,000 soldiers on Georgian soil. That’s 2,000 too many, but the imagery shouldn’t obscure the numbers. This was a small war.
And a small war that hasn’t necessarily ended exactly as Russia hoped. Mikhail Saakashvili is still in office. He is receiving a stream of visitors: Rice, Cameron, etc. Now think back. In 1968, Alexander Dub?ek didn’t get to meet a similar cast of characters – as you ask, the equivalents would have been Dean Rusk and Edward Heath. He got flown to Moscow (in fairness, the last leader of South Vietnam was allowed to return home and grow orchids).
So what we’ve discovered over the last weeks is that Russia can conduct a small victorious war on its immediate border, but that the West is still able to project enough political influence to prevent a total rout there. By itself, this puts Russia into a similar league to Rwanda, which can destabilize the eastern Congo all it likes but still has to put up with U.S. and UN meddling there. Go the Red Army!
This point is not lost on the Russians. They are making it themselves. From the West, this looks like an attack on the West. From Russia, it’s Grenada. I don’t deny that this is not only a tragedy for Georgia, but also a shock to the (post-Cold War) system. But will the long-term effects on that system necessarily favor Russia? Here are two reasons to think that they might not.
Reason #1 is that Russia has compounded growing Western business mistrust. That hurts. Daniel Drezner excerpts the following from the FT:
Investors pulled their money out of Russia in the wake of the Georgia conflict at the fastest rate since the 1998 rouble crisis. Russian debt and equity markets have also suffered sharp falls since the conflict began on August 8, with yields on domestic rouble bonds increasing by up to 150 basis points in the last month.
Alexei Kudrin, finance minister, said the capital flight had largely subsided and would be more than made up for by projected inflows. Russia’s foreign currency reserves, at $581bn, are the world’s third largest. But the ebbing of foreign investor confidence will make it harder for Russian companies to raise debt and equity finance since foreign sources account for a disproportionate share of long-term capital for Russian corporate borrowers. “The market is vulnerable to foreign capital flight,” said Kingsmill Bond at Troika Dialogue, the investment bank. “The major Achilles heel of the Russian market is that there is very little domestic long-term capital.”
Of course, Russia is an energy superpower and all that, but the idea that it is now immune from foreign financial forces is overstated. Reason #2 for thinking all may not be going Moscow’s way is geopolitical. U.S. commentators are reviving the Vietnam-era domino theory with a Eurasian twist: after Georgia, Ukraine will be next, then the ‘stans and so on. Maybe so, but again it’s not inevitable. The BBC notes that many former Soviet states have shown support for Georgia (or at least the West) or stayed quiet during the crisis. That’s not just Ukraine. It’s Belarus:
Only a few years ago Russia was such a close ally, there was talk of the two countries merging, so one might have expected [Belarusian mini-Stalin President Lukashenko] to back Russia’s action in the Caucasus. But Belarus has had a series of bad-tempered rows with Russia over energy supplies and has recently shown more interest in improving Western contacts.
The initial response from Minsk to Russia’s intervention in Georgia was decidedly ambivalent – so much so, that the Russian ambassador there even publicly expressed his displeasure. President Lukashenko travelled to Sochi to reassure President Medvedev that Moscow’s military operation had been conducted “calmly, wisely and beautifully”.
But he took steps to clear the way for better relations with the US and Europe. In the last few days the final three political prisoners in Belarus have been suddenly released – the beneficiaries, it seems, of an unexpected presidential pardon.
One has hallucinatory visions of McCain’s International Freedom Express steaming into Minsk in 2009, with Son of Liberty Lukashenko offering anti-missile facilities…
OK, it’s unlikely. But it’s striking that Russia’s neighbors and investors aren’t all buying into the “New Russian Dawn” rhetoric pervading the op-ed pages. The real question is whether Western governments are ready to take advantage of these openings to gain strategic leverage over Russia, or whether they’ll pass. Over on the ECFR website, Daniel offers the hawkish take. Russia’s actions have “made the West’s embrace of both Georgian and Ukraine more rather than less likely.” I’m not so sure. But the essential point is that Georgia was only a tactical win for Russia: like France in 1940 for the Germans, and Iraq in 2003 for the U.S., a quick victory involving lots of tanks may invite longer-term failure.
by Daniel Korski | Aug 14, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks
Whilst the US has stolen a march on Europe by deciding to send aid with the US military, this will be palliative and humanitarian, rather than deal with the longer-term reconstruction requirements.
The EU has similarly released funds for humanitarian programmes – which will be needed to help and house the estimated 100.000 refugees. But for the longer-term, what’s needed is joint UN/World Bank Assesment Mission to survey the reconstruction requirements
Such a mission should then be followed up by a donor’s conference hosted by an EU state. There the US and EU can pledge aid and coordinate their contributions.
France, which has led mediation efforts and recently hosted similar events for the Palestinians and Afghanistan, are ideally prepared to lead the effort.
If the EU wants to play a larger role on the civilian side – given its likely subsidiary peacekeeping role – it would be logical to appoint an EU Special Envoy to lead a joint EU Council/Commission Reconstruction Mission with third-party participation ie the US (like ICO in Kosovo). Preferably UN-mandated but not strictly necessary as it could be by Tblisi’s invitation.
Adam Kobieracki, the Polish former NATO Assistant Secretary-General would be an ideal candidate unless the mandate of the current EUSR Peter Semneby is to be refocused from the South Caucasus (inc Armenia).
In most post-conflict scenarios, the host government is very weak and coordination therefore a task for the international community . This is patently not the case in Georgia and the sooner the Georgian president appoints someone to lead the reconstruction effort – or take the role himself – the better.
Two tricky questions, however, remain.
First, given the damage done to the Georgian security forces, it will be necessary to survey their state and propose an Security Sector Reform plan to rebuild these. Putting a plan together will require an assessment and a seperate donor conversation.
– although this will obviously be contentious with Russia. To start off, the US, Canada and the UK should field a joint mission which can report back to other donors.
Second, what to do about South Ossetia and Abkhazia? The fighting has clearly wrought considerable damage in the break-away republics and if the refugees are ever going to return, many of their houses will need to be rebuilt and the economy re-started.
But to what extent should this be Russia’s task as opposed to the EU’s? And if the EU gets involved – funding a large reconstruction programme – should this work be part of a quid pro quo over other issues, for example the role and independence of its peacekeepers? Any Assesment UN/World Bank mission should clearly spend time in the two break-away republics but the analyses should be seperate from the assesment of Georgia proper, not automatically be part of the donor’s conference and deal directly with the criminalised political economy of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
by Alex Evans | Aug 8, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
Although all the attention lately has been on food prices and the effect of their sharp rise for inflation, development and security, the rises seen on food have been as nothing compared to some of the increases seen on fertilisers over the same period.
A briefing by Andrew Dorward and Colin Poulton, published in June by the Future Agricultures consortium, gives chapter and verse. Between May 2006 and May 2008, here’s what prices did for selected key foods and fertilisers:
Cotton – up 29%
Beverages – up 41%
Wheat – up 61%
Maize – up 108%
Rice – up 185%
Urea (a key nitrogen fertiliser) – up 160%
DAP (a major phosphate fertiliser) – up 318%
The underlying causes cover both sides of the supply / demand line. On the demand side, there’s the basic fact that the need for fertilisers is soaring as a result of higher food prices and demand for crops as biofuels.
On the supply side, energy costs are a huge factor (especially in the case of nitrogen fertilisers); some fertiliser exporters (like China) have imposed export controls; and in the background, there are capacity limits to increasing production, especially for phosphates – a point that has the peak oil crowd already thinking hard about the concept of peak phosphorus.
None of this, needless to say, is good news for farmers, who according to the paper find themselves hit twice: once on the affordability of fertilisers when purchasing them, and then again (given food / fertiliser price differentials) on their profitability when using them.
Dorward and Poulton argue that in the short term, it’s still worth developing country governments’ while to subsidise fertiliser use, even if the rates of return are lower – and that donors need to step up fast with additional financing (a proposal that the World Bank signalled its openness to in its ten point plan on food). Dorward, Poulton and the Bank all agree that the question of getting them to the right place – fast – is as important as the question of who picks up the bill.
In the longer term, the paper suggests, the focus needs to be on more integrated soil fertility management with greater use of organic materials [i.e. compost and manure] together with smarter use of inorganic fertilisers – an area of work that the big agricultural research institutes like CIMMYT are already focusing on heavily. Moving towards more integrated soil fertility management already makes sense for reasons of environmental sustainability. If fertiliser prices fail to fall in the longer term, these areas of research are also going to be one of the critical front lines in feeding 10 billion of us.
by Alex Evans | Jul 24, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
As a general rule of thumb, my starting assumption is that we need new multilateral agencies like we need a hole in the head. But if there’s an exception to that rule, then energy has a pretty good claim to be it. As I argue in Multilateralism for an Age of Scarcity, there is no multilateral agency with a mandate to look at all aspects of the issue:
The International Energy Agency is supposed to represent major consumer countries, but its 27 members are all OECD countries – hence leaving out key emerging economies including China and India. Although the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is generally thought of as the major body representing producer states, in fact well over half of the world’s oil is produced by non-OPEC countries. Yet the most fundamental incoherence on energy is the obvious one: that with consumer and producer states represented by two different institutions in two different cities, it is wholly unclear where any discussions about a comprehensive approach encompassing both producer and consumer interests would take place.
Now, IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has written a piece in the FT which starts from the same analysis, and goes on to argue that a new global energy organisation is indeed needed. What would it do?
“complement, not replace, bodies already active in the energy field … bring a vital inter-governmental perspective to bear on issues that cannot be left to market forces alone, such as the development of new energy technology, the role of nuclear power and renewables, and innovative solutions for reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions”;
“provide authoritative assessments of global energy demand and supply and bring under one roof energy data that are now dispersed and incomplete … speed the transfer of appropriate energy technology to poor countries and give them objective advice on an optimal energy mix that is safe, secure and environmentally sound”;
“develop a global mechanism to ensure energy supplies in crises and emergencies, and help countries run their energy services and even do it for them temporarily after a war or natural disaster … co-ordinate and fund research and development, especially for energy-poor countries whose needs are often overlooked by commercial R&D.”
He concludes, “the need for joint action to develop long-term solutions to the looming energy crisis is now undeniable. It is difficult to see how this can be done without an expert multinational body, underpinned perhaps by a global energy convention, with the authority to develop policies and practices to benefit rich and poor countries alike, equitably and fairly”.
So what to make of this call? A few thoughts.
First, I can’t see much in the first two paragraphs that isn’t already done by the IEA – with the possible exception of advising poor countries on their energy mix, which agencies including UNDP and the Bank already cover. True, most publicly available data on oil reserves is pretty suspect; but this new agency wouldn’t obviate that problem (which stems from internal machinations within OPEC).
The interesting element here is the idea of a global mechanism to ensure energy supplies in crises and emergencies (what could the head of the IAEA be thinking of?). When I was drafting Multilateralism for an Age of Scarcity, this seemed to me one of the real gaps in current multilateral capacities – both for dealing with short term spikes (attack on Iran leads to $200 oil) and long term stresses (peak oil). In those conditions, a regime for sharing access to what supplies there are will be essential for reducing the risk of competition and friction, and for providing (at least a degree of) predictability, to reduce wild market swings as much as can be.
What I think is missing from ElBaradei’s proposal is a proper account of where food fits in. There are plenty of major reasons why food prices and energy prices are ever more closely in synch: biofuels, input costs (especially fertiliser), and the fuel used to cultivate land, harvest crops, process, refrigerate, ship and distribute them. If energy costs keep going up over the long term (as looks likely, recent sharp falls notwithstanding), then food prices will do the same – making it more important than ever to effect a far more integrated international approach.
