A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Speeches Made at an International Conference V I S I O N June 13-15, 1995 Jointly Hosted by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the National Geographic Society Washington, D.C. A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Speeches Made at an International Conference 262 o ^ - . \ / 1 c 1V I S I O N June 13-15, 1995 Jointly Hosted by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the National Geographic Society Washington, D.C. CONTENTS FOREWORD Per Pinstrup-Andenen vi INTRODUCTION David Nygaard 1 WELCOME Gilbert M. Grosvenor 3 David E. Bell 4 H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe 5 2020 HINDSIGHT, CHALLENGES, AND VISION 2020 HINDSIGHT: SUCCESSES, FAILURES, AND LESSONS LEARNED IN FEEDING THE WORLD, AN AUDIOVISUAL PRESENTATION Text by Kellie Gutman, Rajul Pandya-Lorch, and Barbara Alison Rose 7 THE CHALLENGE FOR A 2020 VISION: EXTENT OF TODAY'S HUMAN SUFFERING AND A VIEW TOWARD 2020 Per Pinstrup-Andersen 9 KEYNOTE ADDRESS / . Brian Atwood 15 KEYNOTE ADDRESS H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe 20 TO THE YEAR 2020: THE IMPACT ON PEOPLE WHO WILL GO HUNGRY? SCENARIOS FOR FUTURE GLOBAL AND REGIONAL FOOD SUPPLY Mark Rosegrant 29 THE COEXISTENCE OF GLOBAL FOOD SURPLUSES AND FAMINE: POVERTY'S ROLE IN THE FOOD EQUATION Nancy Birdsall 38 THE DEPLETION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: THE IMPACT OF FOOD Gordon Conway 45 in INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON HUNGER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 49 Klaus Jttrgen Hedrich 49 Bal Ram Jakhar 52 Donald Brown 52 THE WORLD'S POPULATION IN FLUX: ISSUES AND PRESCRIPTIONS TO 2020 59 Margaret Catley-Carlson 59 Sudhin K. Mukhopadhyay 66 IMPROVING NATURAL RESOURCES TO FEED THE WORLD: PREREQUISITES FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE 69 Sara Scherr 69 Reuben J. Oletnbo 72 Lester Brown 75 TECHNOLOGY'S CONTRIBUTION TO FEEDING THE WORLD IN 2020 80 Peter Hazell 80 Hubert Zandstra 82 Gordon Sithole 85 INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT IN THE ANDES Cisar Cardona 87 USING GENETIC MAPS AND MARKERS TO INCREASE RICE YIELDS Susan McCouch 89 THE MARCH OF MALNUTRITION TO 2020: WHERE ARE THE SOLUTIONS? 93 Lawrence Haddad 93 Kalanidhi Subbarao 96 Julia Tagwireyi 100 TOWARD A CONSENSUS FOR ACTION Per Pinstrup-Andersen 104 REGIONAL VISIONS AND REQUIRED ACTION SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Baba Dioum 109 ASIA SartajAziz I l l LATIN AMERICA Eduardo J. Trigo 117 WEST ASIA AND NORTH AFRICA Adel El-Beltagy 120 IV A GLOBAL VISION AND REQUIRED ACTION 125 Anders Wijkman 125 Ismail Serageldin 129 CLOSING REMARKS: A SUMMING UP Keith Bezanson 134 APPENDIX: Agenda 143 FOREWORD During the past few years, the International Food Policy Research Institute has become increasingly concerned at the apparent complacency in the international community about the future of the world's food situation. As a result, in late 1993 IFPRI began an initiative to look toward the year 2020 to identify the critical issues that must be confronted if the world's growing population is to be fed and the livelihoods of today's poor and hungry are to be improved. This initiative, "A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment," has as its goals to seek consensus about the problems of ensuring adequate future food supplies while protecting the world's natural resources for future generations, to create a vision of what the future should look like, and to recommend steps that must be taken immediately to make that vision come true. With enthusiastic interest and backing from the international development com- munity, IFPRI began research in early 1994 on topics related to the future world food situation. It organized a series of seminars and workshops on specific topics and geographic regions of the developing world. In addition, it initiated a number of publica- tion series that aim to bring attention to and encourage debate on these critical issues. The response by the development community to these 2020 Vision activities was impressive. To increase the circle of participants, IFPRI organized an inter- national conference to bring together representatives from nongovernmental orga- nizations, government, and aid agencies as well as researchers and other interested parties from around the world to discuss 2020 research findings and begin to identify solutions to the urgent problems of hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation. The conference was held in Washington, D.C., June 13 to 15, 1995, and was co- hosted by the National Geographic Society. More than 500 people from 50 countries participated in the conference. Some 30 speakers summarized state-of-the-art know- ledge and thinking on particular issues; identified priorities for regions, countries, or donor agencies; and made recommendations for future policies and programs in the food and agricultural sectors. Throughout the conference, question-and-answer sessions provided members of the audience with the opportunity to raise and discuss issues. In addition, the conference included an innovative role-playing session in which the panel members addressed realistic issues of food security in a hypothetical country. This document contains the speeches as they were presented at the conference (it does not include the discussion or role- playing sessions). A unique collection of information and informed opinions on the pressing problems facing the world during the next 25 years, this compilation shows, I believe, broad agreement among the participants that the world cannot afford to be complacent and that immediate action must be taken if the unfortunate scenarios that some predict are to be avoided. At IFPRI, work on the 2020 Vision agenda continues. A 2020 Vision document, "A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment: The Vision, Challenge, and Recommended Action," which was distributed and discussed at the conference, is being revised and will be published in the coming months. Research findings will continue to be published in a series of 2020 Vision discussion papers, 2020 Vision briefs, and the 2020 Vision newsletter News & Views. During the next 12 months, 2020 Vision research findings will be discussed in seminars held in a number of countries throughout the world. It is our hope that countries will take on the challenge of developing a 2020 Vision for their own countries and international institutions, and that they will be supported by the international community. Per Pinstrup-Andersen Director General VI INTRODUCTION David Nygaard Conference Moderator The conference "A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment" was a forum for presenting the results of 2020 research, workshops, and seminars to help solve the urgent problems of hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation. At the conference, a distinguished group of researchers, policymakers, donors, and development practitioners from around the world gave their views on the complex issues that will determine world food security in the next 25 years. Conference sessions explored the relationships between the environment and agriculture, agriculture and economic development, economic development and poverty, and poverty and hunger. The conference opened with welcoming remarks from Gilbert M. Grosvenor, David E. Bell, and H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe and an audiovisual presentation reviewing the world's food and environ- mental record of the past 25 years. Per Pinstrup-Andersen then examined the current food and hunger situation and the challenges to achieving a 2020 Vision. Two keynote addresses, by J. Brian Atwood and H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe, provided alternative perspectives on these global issues. The next session focused on people, looking at how food production and con- sumption during the next 25 years will affect the poor. Mark Rosegrant presented projec- tions of future food supply, and Nancy Birdsall addressed the role of poverty in food security. Gordon Conway's speech considered the relationship between food production and threats to the world's natural resources. Then three participants, Klaus Jurgen Hedrich, Bal Ram Jakhar, and Donald Brown, each gave international perspectives on hunger and the environment. Changes in population will clearly play a large role in determining whether the 2020 Vision can be achieved. Margaret Catley- Carlson and Sadhin K. Muhkopadhyay highlighted expected trends and devel- opments in population growth, urbanization, migration, and health, as they relate to food and natural resource management. The theme of the next session was the need to improve natural resources in order to feed the world sustainably. Focusing on the status of water, land, and forests, Sara Scherr, Reuben J. Olembo, and Lester Brown, described how mismanaging these resources may limit agricultural growth in the future. Then followed an examination of technology's contribution to feeding the world in 2020. Peter Hazell, Hubert Zandstra, and Gordon Sithole examined the determinants of growth in agricultural production, including the future role of research and new agricultural technologies, such as biotechnology, and their impact on the environment. C6sar Cardona and Susan McCouch described two technological innovations that promise to raise agricultural productivity. Next Lawrence Haddad, Kalanidhi Subbarao, and Julia Tagwireyi looked at malnutrition to the year 2020 and examined issues linked to food production, food access, and food use. They also considered malnutrition as it relates to poverty, health, urbanization, and dietary transition. A 2020 Vision far Food, Agriculture, and the Environment The final morning of the conference was devoted to clarifying the 2020 Vision and required actions. Per Pinstrup-Andersen presented a broad consensus for actions needed to achieve the Vision. He was followed by several speakers who gave regional perspectives. Baba Dioum offered a regional vision and actions required to achieve it for Sub-Saharan Africa; Sartaj Aziz, for Asia; Eduard J. Trigo, for Latin America; and Adel El-Baltagy, for West Asia and North Africa. Anders Wijkman and Ismail Serageldin, representing international multilateral organizations, each discussed die global vision and strategies. In a final session, Keith Bezanson summarized the outcome of the meeting. WELCOME GILBERT M. GROSVENOR President The National Geographic Society Welcome, and good morning. I am Gil Grosvenor, president of the National Geo- graphic Society. It is my very great pri- vilege to be co-hosting this important conference. It is a pleasure to have representatives from over 50 countries here this morning. This is not new for us. Our writers and photographers are working as we speak in anywhere from 25, 35, maybe more countries, so we are used to working internationally. And, of course, we have many visitors from around the world at any one time. But it is rare for us to have such a large, varied international representation as we have here today, and that is very exciting for us. Geography is our mission. And I think our second president, almost 100 years ago, said it all in a few words. Alexander Graham Bell broadly defined geography as "the world and all that is in it." And, you know, that is pretty much the way we do it today. We do not feel you can separate out components. And the issues that you will be dealing with today, tomorrow, and Thurs- day, are to us, pure geography. They are as far-ranging as the world and all that is in it. Any geography that you want to talk about is part of the problems that you are going to be dealing with. And conversely, every part of the problem you are dealing with makes three days of geography. Geography goes to the very heart of the quality of life on Planet Earth. Will there be enough food and resources to support an exploding population? And, if not, what to do? Fairly basic, fairly basic geography. So the issues you will be discussing here are critical, complex, more often than not intertwined: food, agricultural practices, water, population, competition for the land use, and pollution. I mean, that is geo- graphy. And we must all realize that these issues, which seem light years from the comfort of this auditorium, impact each one of us daily. I am sure you have all had your coffee and your juice and a hearty breakfast this morning, and yet we all know there are more than 1 billion people on Planet Earth today, about 20 percent of our population, who either have nothing to eat or are on the brink of hunger, and that of course could frequently lead, and I am sure will, to famine, wars, and massive migrations. The National Geographic's role is to educate people about life on PJanet Earth so that we humans understand each other better, so that we better understand the cycle of life, and so that we do a better job of conserving our natural resources. We believe that in today's world, National Geographic's role is more critical than ever, i.e., the role to interpret and to publish what you will be deliberating on for the next three days. As the world becomes more industrial- ized and more convenient—CNN, drive- through McDonald's, microwave ovens, fax machines—we seem to detach ourselves further and further from the earth, much more so than our forebears did, and they more so than the Native Americans before them. And the further we do withdraw from the earth, the less we see the need to con- serve resources. Our forebears treated the land as sacred because their livelihoods depended on taking care of it, the health of their families depended upon it. A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Consider this: In just 100 years in this country, we have gone from an agrarian society, where the vast majority of people had a personal stake in caring for the land and the water, to one in which only 3 percent of Americans make their living as farmers today. More Americans work in the Department of Agriculture today than work on the land. It is sad, but it is also true. Most Americans think water comes magically from the faucet. They have little understanding where it really comes from, where it goes once it swirls down their drain, or the reality that water is a finite resource. And that is but one critical resource about which they know very little. We must not take important resources for granted. We must conserve and pre- serve all of our precious natural resources. At National Geographic, we believe that educating the public to understand the critical natural resource issues is the key to the survival of the quality of life that we enjoy today in this country. I recently saw some statistics on the pressures upon Earth's resources that as- tounded me. They are statistics that I sus- pect are on the tongues of everybody in this room, but when I came to grips with it, it was frightening. In 1970 the human population was 3.6 billion. Today, in 1995, it is 5.6 billion. And it will be 8 billion within 25 years. How will we support 8 billion people with the same amount of water, for example, that we had in Biblical times. I am not sure anybody in this room knows how we are going to do that. From 1970 to 1990, the number of automobiles more than doubled, from 250 million to 560 million, producing all kinds of opportunities and also all kinds of problems. Oil consumption, obviously tied to the automobile, increased from 17 million barrels to 24 million barrels a day, even though the price went up, even though there was an international move to conserve fossil fuels. We still could not control the con- sumption. Soft drink consumption per year more than doubled, from 150 million barrels to 364 million barrels. And, of course, pre- dictably, the amount of aluminum used for beer and soft drink cans increased by more than 1,700 percent, from 72,000 tons to 125 million tons of aluminum per year. And these statistics go on and on. You probably know them better than I do. And yet the great wide public has virtually no understanding and therefore no sensitivity to this issue. And I am not blaming them; rather I am blaming us. We have not been very good about articulating the critical consumption of natural resources. We either need to figure out how to make our resources stretch further or how to reduce consumption of those resources at a time when the population will surely con- tinue to grow exponentially. Either way, it will take the best of minds, including many in this room, to sort through our options. Then we will need a major commitment to educate an international audience about our choices for the future, if we hope to main- tain any kind of quality of life on the planet. I just wish you good luck. I hope you have a productive conference, and I pledge to you that the National Geographic Society will continue to raise the consciousness of tens of millions of potential allies in our fight, your fight to help conserve Planet Earth's resources. I thank you very much. Have a great three days, and I trust you will enjoy yourselves at our Society headquarters. DAVID E. BELL Board Chair International Food Policy Research Institute May I, on behalf of the International Food Policy Research Institute, add my welcome to that of President Grosvenor? And may I thank him and the National Geographic H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe 5 Society for co-hosting this conference and for making their excellent facilities available. Just a couple of sentences about the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The Institute was founded in 1975 and is one of the 16 centers in the Con- sultative Group on International Agricul- tural Research (CGIAR) system—the only center focused wholly on policy. IFPRI's headquarters are here in Washington—dia- gonally across the street from where we are now—but its researchers work all over the world, typically in collaborative research with scientists in developing countries. Now a word on the concept of this conference. The original idea came from Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director general of IFPRI. As the concept was worked out, it expresses the concerns of Per and the IFPRI staff and board about a number of trends regarding food, agriculture, and the environ- ment; about the challenges facing us over the next 25 years; and about the apparent widespread and worrisome complacency about the world's food situation. Therefore, IFPRI organized an initiative around these issues, comprising: First, the research by IFPRI staff, work- ing with research scientists in many parts of the world. The scope and range of this re- search are suggested by the lists of dis- cussion papers and briefs included in your conference folders. Second, a number of small meetings and workshops to discuss particular issues. A list of these is also in your conference folder. They involved experts from national agricultural research systems, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank, and other sources of expertise. The list shows that there were three regional workshops in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, plus a number of subject matter meetings. The most recent meeting was held in Italy three weeks ago: a workshop on fertilizer and plant nutrients co-sponsored by FAO and IFPRI. There have also been meetings of an international advisory committee, a tech- nical review committee, and an outreach committee. Third, the research and meetings have led to a series of publications: a bimonthly newsletter, briefs, discussion papers, and others, all listed in your folder. Fourth, this conference. And finally, after the conference, there will be follow-up symposia around the world. All this work has been funded by some 20 donors. We have been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to the 2020 initiative, including the response to the invitations to this conference. We welcome all participants, many of whom have traveled long distances to be here. We look forward to a stimulating and productive meeting. H.E. SPECIOSA WANDIRA KAZIBWE Vice President of Uganda On behalf of my President, who is the chair of the International Advisory Committee of this wonderful initiative, I want to welcome you all to this meeting. I want to thank Mr. Grosvenor and his team for having accepted this burden of sharing with us what must be done to make sure that everybody has something in their stomachs and that we conserve the environment. I want to also thank the chairman of the IFPRI Board and his team, and Per, with his very hard-working experts who traveled all over the world and have since come up with the background for us to be able to know where we are going. For us in the developing world, initiatives of this kind give us hope, even though the climate (political, geographical, social, and cultural) has not changed. Why do we think A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment it has not changed? It is like we are still living in the jungle where survival of the fittest is the order of the day. And we, especially those of us in the developing world, hope that through joint efforts of this kind we can forge a better future for the world. We believe that if we work together, we can indeed be partners and not recipients in the development process. We have a saying in my country that if you have a scar, during the healing process even your neighbor who sees you scratch it, does not know how itchy it is. In Africa, in particular, the place I know best, and in other countries that belong to the developing world, the reasons why we are not solving our problems is not because we do not know how die scar is itching. It is just that we are caught up in the hard wind of a very fast moving world. We want to be players in this initiative, not spectators. That is why when you invited my President—when he became chairman of the advisory committee on this initiative—we felt not only privileged but challenged, and we can assure you that through this kind of partnership we are ready to move our world from a world of superstition to a world of science, with efforts that will erase the feelings that turn our people to believe in fete, with the feeling that we must indeed act now if we are to solve the problems that we have. I want to once again welcome you and to assure you that this initiative, with all of us here, will move us ahead. This initiative and the vision we have for the year 2020 will become a reality if each and every one of us plays our relevant roles to the maximum. I thank you very much. 2020 HINDSIGHT: SUCCESSES, FAILURES, AND LESSONS LEARNED IN FEEDING THE WORLD, AN AUDIOVISUAL PRESENTATION Text by Kellie Gutman, Rajul Pandya-Lorch, and Barbara Alison Rose The late 1960s and early 1970s were dominated by concerns about feeding the world, especially what was then called the Third World. Global population had reached 3.7 billion, double flie level of a half-century before. Seventy million new mouths were being added every year, 90 percent of them in developing countries. More than 900 million people were food insecure—they did not get enough to eat to lead productive lives—and many more were living in poverty. About 12 million hectares of land, the equivalent of another Bangladesh, were being brought into agricultural use each year to feed the burgeoning population. The combination of rapid population growth, widespread hunger, and rampant poverty seemed a prescription for disaster. Add to this a series of natural disasters, such as the great Sahel famine, cyclones in India and Bangladesh, and drought in the Soviet Union, and it is not surprising that concerns about a world food crisis began to gather momentum. In 1973, oil price hikes and the Soviet Union's surprise purchase of most of the world's wheat surplus fueled fears of a continued crisis. Asia was the biggest concern. Experts were predicting imminent famines and starvation. In 1968, Nobel Laureate Gunnar Myrdal warned that India would have difficulty feeding more than 500 million people. Others were declaring that the limits to growth on the planet would soon be reached. These prophecies did not unfold. The Green Revolution, in the form of high-yield- ing crop varieties—especially rice and wheat—increased irrigation, and expanded use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, together with better agricultural policies, largely prevented the predicted famines and widespread starvation. During the 1970s, Asian cereal production rose by a third, mainly driven by a large jump in cereal yields. Wheat pro- duction alone grew by 70 percent. Modern rice varieties covered 33 percent of land under rice cultivation. This remarkable advance in Asia's food production came about through the hard work and commit- ment of scientists and farmers, supported by enlightened national policymakers and international donors. By 1980, the number of people who were hungry in East and South Asia had declined by more than 100 million to about 650 million. The impact of the Green Revolution extended far beyond the farmers' fields. Agriculture was the engine of economic growth for much of Asia, particularly South- east and East Asia. In countries like Thailand and Malaysia, agricultural growth rates rose to around 5 percent a year. As their incomes rose, rural people demanded more consumer and other goods, generating growth in other sectors of the economy. In Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia gross domestic product grew by 7 percent or more a year during this decade. Not all developing countries benefited from the Green Revolution. Because the agricultural technologies of the Green Revolution emphasized rice and wheat and were heavily dependent on the combined use of fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, much of Africa and Latin America were left out. But there were exceptions. Kenyan farmers quadrupled maize yields in the first half of the 1970s. In Colombia, rice pro- duction more than doubled by 1975 thanks to adoption of new varieties. By 1980, there was a sense that the world food crisis had passed. Global food 8 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment supplies were up by 25 percent from 1970; cereal reserves were abundant. There was a general feeling that the Green Revolution was solving the problem, and that it was just a matter of time before Africa and Latin America followed in Asia's footsteps. But throughout the 1980s, Africa reeled from a series of droughts. Ethiopia and Sudan suffered severe famine. In Latin America, tropical forests were burning at a rate of 8 million hectares a year. In Asia, groundwater supplies were being depleted or contaminated, salinization and waterlogging of productive soils were occurring at an alarming rate, and flora and fauna were disappearing as farmers pushed into new lands. Farmers and agricultural laborers were noticing the consequences of overexposure to agricultural chemicals. And throughout most developing countries, parti- cularly those in Africa, population continued to grow unchecked. While the Green Revolution averted the predicted crises, it was not enough to banish hunger completely. Storage facilities often did not exist to handle the bounty; farmers often did not have timely access to markets; pests and post-harvest losses often destroyed some of die increased food production. And even as food supplies rose, food did not reach everyone in need. Those who could not afford to buy food or the inputs necessary to grow it went hungry. While the Green Revolution provided farming and nonfarming jobs, these were not enough to keep pace with population growth. And many of the technological fixes were running their course. Poverty remained pervasive. At this time, a few voices were raising concerns about the environmental conse- quences of misuse or overuse of Green Revolution technologies, the bypassing of women and their views in the development and use of new technologies, and the improbability that the Green Revolution could be extended to Africa. People had new concerns centered on the financial crises in Latin America and the need for realigning many developing country economies. The Green Revolution lost steam. Many developed and developing countries turned away from agriculture. Bilateral and multi- lateral assistance to agriculture began to decline. Many developing country govern- ments cut their spending on agriculture and reduced their previously strong support for agricultural research. Despite dwindling financial resources, environmental, gender, and regional concerns gained some attention. Grass-roots efforts within the nongovern- mental community raised awareness of these issues and sought local solutions. National and international agricultural research ef- forts began reexamining research priorities. Despite the slowdown, by 1990 there were 150 million fewer hungry people than two decades earlier and 1.5 billion more people were being fed. There was economic progress in Southeast and East Asia and pockets of Latin America and Africa. We were moving toward sustainable agriculture and protection of the natural resource base. We recognized that hunger is more than a matter of producing enough food to eat. The Green Revolution taught us some valuable lessons: famines are not the results of natural disasters but poor policies; people must have the resources to grow the food they need or the income to buy it; agricul- ture must be the basis for economic development in most low-income countries; agricultural technologies must be developed to produce more food on existing agricul- tural land to protect the natural resource base; and agricultural technology must go hand in hand with enlightened economic policy. The Green Revolution bought us time. With research and technological investments and better policies, it gave us tools to prevent world food crises. It showed us that agriculture is essential to feed people, alleviate poverty, and embark upon broad-based economic growth. THE CHALLENGE FOR A 2020 VISION: EXTENT OF TODAYS HUMAN SUFFERING AND A VIEW TOWARD 2020 PER PINSTRUP-ANDERSEN Director General International Food Policy Research Institute Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, col- leagues, and friends. As we have just heard, global food pro- duction increased faster than population growth during the past 25 years. We do not have a global food shortage today, largely because people with foresight made the right decisions in the past. One of the questions we must address during the next two-and-a- half days is whether such foresight is still with us, and, if not, how we bring it back. The world has won important battles in the area of food security, but the war has not been won. Failure to take appropriate action now may result in a loss of future battles. And many more battles must be fought. Success in food production is one of the reasons international food prices have conti- nued to decline since the world food crisis of 20 years ago. But another reason is that more than a billion people earn less than a dollar a day. These people are unable to buy the food they need and thus create the demand that drives the market. The result is lower prices and continued hunger. Eight hundred million people—that is one out of every six persons in developing countries—do not have access to the food they need for healthy and productive lives. They are what we call food insecure. They are hungry and they do not have the means to fill that hunger. They are not just statis- tics. They are real people like you and me. The difference is that we can afford to go to lunch at 12:30 p.m.—they cannot. One-third of all preschool children in developing countries—200 million chil- dren—are malnourished. That is almost the size of the population of the United States. They are underweight for their age. They do not grow to their full capacity, and they are frequently sick. Many of them die before they reach school age, and those who survive perform poorly in school. Many of those who survive grow up to be adults with low labor productivity. The world may have won some food security battles, but 200 million children did not. The 40,000 who died yesterday will not get a second chance. This does not have to continue. IFPRI's 2020 Vision is a world where every person has economic and physical access to sufficient food to sustain a healthy and productive life; where malnutrition is absent; and where food originates from efficient, effective, and low-cost agricultural systems that are compatible with sustainable use and management of natural resources. I hope all of you will make it your Vision. This Vision is based on the principle affirmed by the United Nations and its members that freedom from hunger is a human right. This right implies that national governments, assisted by the international community, have a responsibility to create an economic and social environment in which every person is capable of meeting his or her food needs in a sustainable manner. Whether the Vision is fully achieved by year 2020 depends on appropriate action taken by civil society and national go- vernments in both developing and indus- 10 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment trialized nations. That commitment to the 2020 Vision and associated action will not only eliminate hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, it will set the world on the road to sustainable broad- based economic development. However, a lack of commitment will lead to deeper human misery, further degradation of natural resources, and lost opportunities for improving the well-being of people in both developing and developed countries. We must act now. For each day we wait, many thousands of children will die and many millions of people will be hungry, poor, and desperate. Lack of action today could lead to social and political instability throughout many regions of the world, as well as a global refugee crisis. There has been a ten- fold increase in refugees since the mid-1970s to 50 million displaced persons today. As poverty and hunger become more en- trenched, this number will only grow. Do not believe for a minute that you will not be affected. A world of extreme poverty on the part of many, and overt material excesses on the part of some, is an unstable world. A continuation of the dramatic deterioration of the relative income distribution experienced during the last 30 years will lead to more social and political upheaval, misuse of available resources, and falling living standards for all. Lost opportunities for exports, increas- ing pressures on the borders from refugees and displaced persons, environmental pro- blems of global significance, and increasing international instability are some of the ways in which the industrialized world will be affected. So how do we proceed to achieve the 2020 Vision? This morning, I will discuss the major challenges and opportunities, leaving a presentation of recommended ac- tion until Thursday. More details are avail- able in ihe document you received when you registered. This morning I would like to make seven points. First, it will be a tremendous challenge to achieve the 2020 Vision. Between now and 2020, world population will increase by about 40 percent, to a total of 8 billion people. This amounts to a population in- crease of more than 90 million people a year, the largest in human history. About 94 percent of this increase will occur in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa' s population will more than double, and Asia's population will increase by some 1.5 billion people. Diets will change toward more livestock products, which will place further pressures on future food supplies. Add to this, the efforts needed to eradicate already existing food insecurity and malnutrition and you have a major challenge. If national governments and inter- national institutions continue on the course they have followed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the 2020 Vision will not be achieved. Food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition will not be eliminated and more natural resources will be degraded. Al- though food insecurity and malnutrition will fall in East and Southeast Asia, they will increase dramatically in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, there are opportunities for chang- ing these projections. Mark Rosegrant will give more details on this in the afternoon, and we will discuss a specific strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa on Thursday. My second point is that the world's natural resources can support the 2020 Vision. At this time, achieving the Vision depends not on resource constraints but on action taken or not taken. Continuation of current practices that lead to degradation of our natural resources will impose serious environmental constraints on the earth's ability to feed future generations. Although the data are somewhat un- certain, 2020 Vision research and con- sultations show that between one-quarter and one-fifth of the world's agricultural land, permanent pastures, and forest and wood- lands have been degraded over the last half- century. Overgrazing, deforestation, and Per Pinstrup-Andersen 11 inappropriate agricultural practices account for most of the damage. To a large extent, these practices result from poverty, popula- tion pressures, lack of access to credit, insecure property rights, and inappropriate technology. If degradation continues at current rates, the consequence will be severe for future agricultural productivity and the food security of the rural poor. Fortunately, a large share of current land degradation is reversible. Much of the degraded land can be restored to its original productivity, but doing so is usually ex- tremely expensive. Low and rapidly declin- ing soil fertility is a major concern in a number of developing countries, including many of those in Sub-Saharan Africa, where failure to replenish nutrients over a long period of time is leading to nutrient mining of the soil. One reason is the very low use of both organic and inorganic fertilizers, and the projected increase in fertilizer use to 2020 is grossly insufficient to restore soil fertility in those areas. Water is another critical issue. Water- logging and salinization resulting from poor water management in developing-country regions threaten current and future agricul- tural productivity. Inappropriate manage- ment and allocation of water are resulting in inefficient use of water, widespread waste, and increasing water scarcity. National and international conflicts are already brewing over rights to scarce water and will certainly worsen if we do not begin to use water more efficiently. Because agriculture uses a large share of all water used, improved efficiency in that sector is important for all water users. In contrast, agriculture uses only a small share of total energy. Therefore, although energy use in agriculture is increasing rapidly, efforts to save energy may be better focused on other sectors. While pesticide use in agriculture has increased dramatically, losses to pests are still high. People in both developed and developing countries are coming to realize that pesticides compromise human health, contaminate soils and water, damage ecosystems, exterminate species, and lead to pesticide resistance. According to 2020 Vision consultations, it is clear that past practices of pesticide use cannot be sustained and that environmentally sound alternatives are required. The challenge is to combine current methods of controlling pests with new methods in a way that controls pests but has few or no negative environmental effects or health risks. Marine fisheries are an important source of food. Widespread overexploitation is causing collapse in some areas, and international disputes over fish stocks are increasing. Our estimates are that fish catches will not increase between now and 2020. The challenge is to maintain the present levels of harvest from natural fisheries while increasing sustainable aqua- culture production. My third point is that although food production will need to rise a great deal to meet food demands by 2020, IFPRI's pro- jections indicate that these demands can be met at the global level without price increases. In fact, we project a decline in real food prices in the international market. However, having enough food to meet global market demand at lower real prices does not imply food security for all. As I mentioned, more than a billion people cannot afford to meet their food needs. Therefore, falling food prices and increasing food insecurity can coexist. Current com- placency about the world food situation results from a mistaken view that sufficient food in the international market means that people have access to the food they need to be healthy. Regional food shortages will occur in both Asia and Africa and may be especially severe in Sub-Saharan Africa. That region's need for food imports is projected to triple by 2020, and it is unlikely that African countries will have the foreign exchange to pay for it. This brings me to my fourth point, 12 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment which is that the world has missed oppor- tunities for alleviating poverty and food insecurity through agricultural growth during die last 10 to IS years. Governments of many low-income developing countries have failed to provide the required support to agriculture, and international assistance to agricultural development has fallen markedly during the last 10 years. Other goals including efforts to alleviate poverty and protect the environment have taken on increasing prominence. We must recognize, however, that more intensive farming, on a sustainable basis, is a pre- condition for alleviating poverty and environmental degradation in low-income developing countries. This is because most poor people live in rural areas and depend directly or indirectly for their livelihoods on agriculture and because farmers are the stewards of the natural resources. The role of agriculture in generating broad-based economic growth is well docu- mented. Research in a number of develop- ing countries, including low-income coun- tries in Africa and Asia, has shown that growth in agriculture generates considerable additional growth in other sectors. The experiences of several fast-growing eco- nomies, such as China, Indonesia, and Korea, confirm these findings. In low- income developing countries, including most of Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture provides a large share of national income and employs much of the national labor force. In those countries, the agricultural system is frequently the only sector that can lead the way to broad-based economic development. A stagnant agriculture usually results in a stagnant economy, rapidly increasing po- verty, and food insecurity. On the other hand, a vibrant agriculture leads to a vibrant economy, decreased poverty, and improved food security. Developing countries' desire to industrialize is not in dispute, The question is whether it is done at the expense of agriculture or on the basis of agriculture. The former has failed, the latter succeeded. Faster agricultural growth, based on sustainable intensive farming and reduced unit costs of production, will be an important step toward achieving the 2020 Vision. As we heard earlier this morning, the research that led to the Green Revolution helped to accelerate intensive farming, in- crease production, and lower costs per unit of food produced. In fact, the unit costs of producing wheat and rice dropped by around 30 percent. The impact of reduced unit costs on the food security of poor consumers can be enormous because the poor spend a large share of their incomes on food. The 2020 Vision is most likely to be achieved if accelerated food production can be brought about at falling unit costs. Developing countries must pursue low-cost rather than high-cost agriculture. They cannot do so, however, without more invest- ment in agricultural research. Low-income developing countries are grossly underinvesting in agricultural re- search compared with industrialized coun- tries, even though agriculture accounts for a much larger share of their employment and incomes. Their public spending on agricul- tural research is typically less than a half of a percent of agricultural gross domestic product, compared with about one percent in higher-income developing countries, and 2 to 5 percent in industrialized countries. Developing countries have far too few agricultural researchers given the number of people engaged in agriculture and the amount of land farmed. Growth in public spending on agricultural research in devel- oping countries has slowed from 7 percent a year in the 1960s to 2.7 percent in the past decade. Many developing countries are even reducing their support for agricultural research. This downward trend has been underway for quite some time in parts of Africa and has recently been present in Latin America. Existing technology and knowledge will not permit production of all the food needed for 2020. Continued support for agricultural Per Pinstrup-Andersen 13 research at present levels will result in virtually no improvement in reducing mal- nutrition in children and moderate reduction in world food prices. Further cuts in public investment in agricultural research will have severe consequences for global food produc- tion by reducing yield growth. Instead of declining, world food prices will rise, and the number of malnourished children will increase. Tremendous opportunities for reducing unit costs exist not only in food production but also in food marketing and distribution. The marketing costs for agricultural inputs and outputs are very high in many develop- ing countries, particularly in low-income, food-deficit countries. More efficient and competitive marketing could greatly reduce these costs for the benefit of consumers and producers. Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of food marketing is also critical for feeding the urban population of developing countries, which is expected to more than double over the next 25 years. Last, but not least, international trade liberalization and the rapid changes in diet expected in developing countries during the next 25 years provide opportunities for competitive agricultural systems in develop- ing countries to expand employment in agricultural processing, packaging, and other similar activities. As international trade liberalization proceeds, agricultural systems that are not competitive will lose out in both domestic and international markets, with severe negative effects on food security and poverty. My fifth point is that broad-based economic growth and reduced food prices will not dramatically reduce the number of malnourished children unless accompanied by access to primary health care, clean water, and good sanitation along with education, empowerment of women, and good child care. While considerable progress has been made on providing these services, we must do much more if we are to achieve the 2020 Vision. My sixth point is that low-income devel- oping countries need to increase their rate of investment to achieve the 2020 Vision. Higher-income developing countries, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, now invest more than 35 percent of their incomes while investments in Sub-Saharan Africa are around 15 percent and falling. Foreign financial assistance may be of some help in increasing investments in low-income developing countries, but domestic savings rates must be increased as well. Moreover, international capital is less likely to be available for low-income, food-deficit coun- tries than it is for higher-income, rapidly growing developing countries. Reallocation of international assistance and domestic government funds will be necessary to achieve the 2020 Vision. My final point is that foreign assistance to help developing countries achieve the 2020 Vision may be good business for donor countries. A 2020 Vision study just com- pleted shows that for each dollar invested in agricultural research for developing coun- tries, their imports increase by more than four dollars, of which about one dollar refers to agricultural imports. Developing countries with healthy populations and grow- ing economies make good markets for indus- trialized countries. In conclusion, let me briefly reiterate three main points: 1. Although the global food situation looks good, as we move towards 2020, tre- mendous human suffering due to food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition occurs in large parts of the world; and natural resource degradation is rampant. 2. The world's natural resources are suffi- cient to remove this suffering by 2020. The most important question today is not whether we can feed the world. Rather, it is whether civil society and govern- ments in both developing and developed countries have the political will to feed the world and to commit to taking the 14 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment actions that are needed today. Failure countries are flailing to take advantage of to take action will affect us all. that lesson. 3. The agricultural sector played an essen- I have tried to highlight some of the tial role in leading broad-based eco- challenges facing us as we move to achieve nomic growth and industrialization in the 2020 Vision. On Thursday, we will higher-income developing countries of present to you our recommended global and Asia. Many low-income developing regional action. KEYNOTE ADDRESS J. BRIAN ATWOOD Administrator United States Agency for International Development I want to congratulate IFPRI and the National Geographic Society for convening this conference and for focusing our atten- tion on the future. As the Administrator of a government agency struggling to survive the present, I find looking forward particu- larly stimulating. The columnist Walter Lippmann once observed that politicians should not be "right too soon." What he did not say was that they cannot be successful if they are right too late. Perhaps that is why this city tends to neglect the future. I suspect the same is true of every capital city. It is so difficult to gain the attention of today's voters even when discussing threats that hold dire con- sequences for successor generations. Yet we know we must address critical long-term issues. None are more important than food security. So I congratulate IFPRI and the National Geographic Society for forcing us to relate the policies and budgets of today to the challenges of tomorrow. You ask us to look at the year 2020. That is in itself provocative. But I want to provoke even more by asking you to consider two very different visions. The first 2020 is, quite frankly, a terrible place, the consequence of today's proclivity to focus on ledgers that neglect investments in the future. In this vision of the year 2020, world population exceeds 8 billion—a 50 percent increase. More than a billion and a half people live on the edge of starvation—twice the number of today. Twenty-five million children die annual- ly from malnutrition and the diseases that accompany it—again twice as many as today. Food production has increased, but too slowly; untouched tracts of land are a thing of the past, as more and more marginal lands are put under the plow. Nations that once were food secure, either by production or income, have become food insecure again. Spreading social conflicts and the competition over resources impede the use of proven methods to grow food, store it, and ship it. The loss of biodiversity has by now claimed so many specifics that opportunities to discover new food groups and medicines are reduced to nil. Food prices soar, making the steady decline in world food prices experienced from 1950 to 1992 a distant memory. Nations find themselves spending an increasing proportion of their incomes to maintain their diets and, in so doing, undercut their own potential for economic growth. In the traditional food-exporting nations of North America and Europe, new parasites and diseases, many liberated by reckless development in remote areas, periodically wipe out grain crops and animal herds. Unfortunately, one does not require much of an imagination to picture this version of the year 2020. Some of the manifestations are already with us. One does not need to extrapolate much from the scenes of today—the 40 million refugees and displaced persons, the structural food deficits, the failed states—to imagine the 16 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment world of tomorrow. But there is another vision of the year 2020, one that assumes a more enlightened approach to international cooperation. One that can be produced with leadership and ingenuity. In this 2020, the gains of the Green Revolution have been protected, not lost to new diseases and environmental damage. Marginal lands are mostly intact because improved agricultural technologies have made existing fields far more productive. Grain stocks are tight, but integrated pest management and effective storage tech- niques free up millions of bushels that once were lost. Advance planning, prepositioning, and regional cooperation cannot avert drought but minimize the consequence—famine. Development assistance supports broad- based economic growth and builds political institutions, defusing conflicts before they ignite. Demands on humanitarian assistance continue, but not to the point where they exhaust available resources, or constantly command the center stage of international diplomacy. We all know which 2020 we would choose. But can we make our political sys- tems respond. Perhaps. The corollary to Lippmann's admonition that politicians should not be right too soon is that leader- ship must be right on time. And it is already late! We will determine which future comes to pass. Not merely "we," meaning the people of 1995. But "we," the development experts, the researchers, the farmers, the citizens, and, yes, even the politicians—we will determine the future if we succeed in communicating to our publics what is at stake. The issue is more than research, more than agriculture, more than grain and meat and food itself. The issue is food security. And the hardest challenge of all is to look beyond the end of the furrow, beyond the narrow development program, beyond the specific research proposal, and to focus on what really is at issue. I say to the traditional national security thinkers that food security is a fundamental issue of foreign policy. It is, in fact, a condition whose absence is a major con- tributor to international instability. Food insecurity motivates people to migrate, engage in civil conflict, and otherwise disrupt economic growth and peaceful coexistence. We are uncertain about how the world will look 25 years hence, but one thing is certain that, in 2020, people will know that the years that immediately followed the Cold War demonstrated how events might transpire—for the better with the global embrace of democracy and the free market, or for the worse with the spread of civil wars that sowed chaos, drove refugees from their homes, and left failed states and ruined lands in their wake. Twenty-five years from now people will certainly understand that, all too often, food was the linchpin of events, especially in the developing world. Twenty-five years from now, people will be less forgiving of those who wanted to use foreign aid only to facilitate transitions or to substitute for military involvement. People will ask us why we did not counter the real threats to our people's security. People will ask why the Cold Warriors, long after their victory, continued to fight a war that was over. People will ask why American leadership, so significant in the Cold War, was so absent in the new world of so much disorder. Or will they? Then, there is the world of opportunity. Food insecurity is also an economic growth issue as IFPRI and this conference have well recognized. Many developing nations are primarily agrarian, and broad-based growth simply cannot take place if rural populations have no means of improving their incomes or their nutrition. Food insecurity is an environmental issue. Subsistence agriculture drives the J. Brian Atwood 17 exploitation of marginal lands, misuse of water supplies, exhaustion of soils, defo- restation, release of greenhouse gases, and the loss of genetic diversity. Food insecurity is a population, health, and nutrition issue. Food insecurity is inti- mately connected with poor maternal health, high rates of infant mortality, and the dis- empowerment and illiteracy of women—key factors that drive higher birth rates and degrade health standards—further exacerbat- ing the hunger problem. And food insecurity is a democracy is- sue. Where democracy exists, starvation from famine has been rare, as Amartya Sen has shown us. This problem is not going to go away. If current trends continue, food problems in Africa could grow exponentially. In Asia, where population grows, the eventual emer- gence of a gigantic middle class intent upon a richer diet, and the failure to preserve the gains of the Green Revolution could again create a dependency on imported food, even as overall wealth increases. World food production in general and developing-country food production in parti- cular may become more variable due to global warming. In nations already on the margin and lacking in resilience, these changes can have a disastrous effect. And the natural resource base, including the biodiversity that could yield potential food sources, many of which have hardly been identified, much less developed, is likely to continue to deteriorate. How do we deal with the challenge of creating a food-secure world? How do we persuade our publics that food insecurity affects them and that they must be involved in finding solutions? And what policies should we pursue, especially when develop- ment funding of all kinds is diminishing? First, we need to point out how our own self-interest is affected. Food insecurity is not someone else's problem. Someone else's hunger threatens us. And conversely, someone else's progress benefits us, and de- velopment assistance is critical to that progress. Much of the dwarf wheat and rice grown in the United States now incorporate genes first identified in Asia. Resistance to pests, to drought, to bacterial and viral diseases—qualities on which American farmers rely to turn out crops for our own consumption and for export—derive in large measure from genetic material and germplasm identified abroad. The same is true of new growing methods, and these things were not just identified by accident, but as part of development programs designed to do just that. Every case just mentioned are programs supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). If we are talking about self-interest, we need to point out that increased food security abroad means jobs here at home. One-third of U.S. farm acreage currently grows crops for export, providing the country with a $22 billion trade surplus and more than 750,000 jobs. But hungry people make poor custo- mers. IFPRI's own excellent study, re- leased at this conference, shows that agricultural aid pays back $4 for every dollar invested in expanded grain exports and in growing trade in a variety of food- stuffs. And rising agricultural productivity ultimately leads to expanding sales of non- food goods and services that better-fed, emerging middle classes invariably need and want to buy. Self-interest also extends to crisis prevention and its savings—in illegal mi- gration that does not flood across borders, in food aid and humanitarian assistance that are not required, and in funding for peace- keeping and national reconstruction that does not have to be found. Indeed, self-interest is inseparable from prevention and prevention, is the least expensive—yet most effective way—to address significant problems while advancing our own interests. In Africa, for instance, we cannot ad- dress growing food problems simply with 18 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment relief. Since last year, the United States has spent more than a half billion dollars in Rwanda and Burundi, mostly for relief. Yet we know that the same amount of money invested in development assistance could save much larger amounts in future relief. We must reverse the trend in which relief competes with development funding. We must make relief operate as part of a con- tinuum that includes recovery, long-term development, and then trade and investment. The Greater Horn of Africa Initiative is an example of this approach. It is founded on the assumption that, while drought may be inevitable, famine is not. Ten govern- ments, in partnership with development agencies and affecting some 22,000,000 at- risk people, are working to establish early warning systems to quickly identify food crisis areas; preposition food stocks to mini- mize the social disruptions of famine, espe- cially refugee movements; and support re- gional approaches to planning and crisis management. The Initiative for the Greater Horn really has two objectives: First, to prevent natural events from becoming regional disasters, demanding endless humanitarian relief and threatening stability; and second, to lay the groundwork for regional cooperation and institutional growth that will make it possible to address the structural food deficits that are still emerging. By helping to prevent famine, we help societies to meet a challenge and cohere; by helping societies to cohere, we increase the chance that they will find the resources, the skills, and the will to address other issues that impede their growth. The President's Greater Horn Initiative, now embraced by the countries of the region, underlines a critical part of the way we make our case to our publics. We cannot separate food issues from the larger issue of development. We need to find new ways to do our business. Part of this is practical. In a time when most industrial states are devoting fewer resources to devel- opment assistance, we cannot expect that aid for any particular concern, even one as demonstrably valuable as agricultural research, will be immune to funding cuts. This means that we must do more with less. Another part of the answer lies in the integrated approaches that we have been pursuing. The issue of food is bound up in other issues, and lasting progress will be achieved only if progress is achieved in those areas as well. Thus, for us, food security involves laboratory research, policy, and how it affects what is planted and sold, and by whom. • Food security involves economic growth, especially access to resources and who can accumulate resources sufficient to ensure proper nutrition. • Food security touches on education, especially the education of women who represent the majority of farmers in places like Sub-Saharan Africa. • Food security involves population pro- grams, for improved nutrition means lowered birthrates and increased child survival, two demographic factors that strongly affect who goes hungry and who is fed. • Food security involves the natural en- vironment. Today in India, 100 million acres of forest are still standing pre- cisely because improved methods of rice and wheat production have reduced the pressures to cut them and put them into agricultural production. • Food security is an issue of democracy. Participation and accountability are the natural antidotes to starvation and mal- distribution of food. The third and final way to make our case and enlist the support of our publics is to remind them what we have achieved and the challenges that lie ahead. There is a connection: we have learned so much in the last 25 years. The experience and the scien- tific tools available to us now were J. Brian Atwood 19 undreamed of in 1970. Not only in genetics, but in the social tools that can encourage people to adopt improved methods and the economic tools of the free market. The only way to deal with the next quarter century is to understand what worked during the last quarter century. In that regard, we need to do much more than refute the silly charge that foreign aid has not worked. We need to build on our success and plan for the future. One of first tasks is protecting the achievements of the last 25 years, the gains of the first Green Revolution. Not only do those gains mean that hundreds of millions of people have food to eat, the declining real food prices that have accompanied pro- ductivity gains have benefited everyone, but most especially the poor and the vulnerable. Continued and increasing productivity of the breadbaskets and rice bowls of the devel- oping world must not be taken for granted. We talk a lot about sustainable develop- ment. Well, the Green Revolution created development, and it falls to us to sustain it. In doing so, we also need to remember that advances in areas where the first Green Revolution took hold underpin food security in all regions, by helping to make food more available and affordable. If anything, such interdependence will become more pro- nounced in the future. At the same time, we need to find ways to bring a second revolution to bear on the special problems of areas with problem soils and areas subject to climatic vagaries, es- pecially drought. Some of the answers will come from research on how natural re- sources are managed and how land, water, fertilizers, and other inputs can be made more sustainable and more productive. Other pieces of the puzzle will come from continued advances in developing new crop varieties with tolerance to both physical and biological stresses. The combination of re- search tools and integrated approaches make the task more doable than ever before. Those of you who specialize in ag- ricultural development will not succeed in making the public your partners if you do not create a partnership with your colleagues in other development fields. Now is the wrong time for parochialism. We must reach out to NGOs and PVOs, to environ- mentalists; to population experts; to health, education, and democracy experts; to old and new academic partners; to private industry; and to communities here and abroad. We have to share responsibilities and avoid duplication, use resources to their maximum, and train and enlist anyone who can make a measurable contribution to im- proved food security. We know that our legislatures and our citizens care about the hungry. That they understand, increasingly, how aid creates jobs and trade. Their search for measurable results plays to our strength, for the pursuit of food security has produced tangible improvements at home and throughout the world. Now is the time to build on that legacy. Like all visionary years, the year 2020 will arrive. And as the visionary becomes real, we will know all too well if the salient reality is hunger, pain, and conflict; or hope, health, and prosperity. So, to those politicians who do not wish to be right too soon, I say "Wake up, it's getting late." KEYNOTE ADDRESS H.E. SPECIOSA WANDIRA KAZIBWE Vice President of Uganda I believe many of you will agree with me that it is very difficult for a woman to fit in a man's shoes. But, in Uganda, we say that nothing is impossible because every- body came from a woman, men and women alike. So, I bring greetings from my President Yoweri Museveni and the people of Uganda. Ugandans are indeed honored for the challenge given to participate in this im- portant crusade for a better-fed humanity and the protection of the environment. At home, we always say, "East, West, home is best." Think globally, but act locally. So, my address will focus on Uganda. I believe that through the examples I am going to give on what we are doing in Uganda, the doubting Thomases will believe too that the 2020 Vision is feasible and is achievable. I also know that the vision for a Uganda without hunger in the next 25 years is relevant to Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, but also the whole of the developing world in general. Uganda is found in the heart of Africa, and it sits astride the Equator. It is between longitude 30 and 35 degrees east. It is a high plateau with an altitude of between 3,000 and 6,000 feet above sea level. Its highest peak, called the Margherita, is 16,700 feet high and has snow the year- round. It is part of the range of mountains called the Mountains of the Moon. The country has a dense network of rivers, lakes, and swamps, all of which occupy over 20 percent of the total land mass. These physical features indeed give Uganda a mild and pleasant climate, with a mean tem- perature of 26 degrees. In fact, the mini- mum temperatures, the annual ones, range between 8 and 23 degrees Centigrade. I believe many of you are wondering how a country on the Equator can have this kind of climate and snow. Sometimes we say that as part of the diversification and improving on the employment of our people, we should start skiing so that many of you can come and ski there during the summer—of course, it is summer all the year there. The annual rainfall ranges between 500 and 2,500 millimeters. The relative humidity ranges between 70 and 100 percent. The above facts show that Uganda is endowed with a climate, altitude, and soils that favor the growing of a wide variety of tropical, subtropical, and temperate crops. Indeed, while I was watching the film, I could see that Uganda was part of the Green Revolution of the Far East because we grow rice, both upland and swamp rice. We are growing apples in the western part of the country. We grow millet, which researchers do not talk much about and which we know is part of our cereals and is very nutritious. And, for us women, after a hard day's work, it is the simplest food to prepare for our husbands and children; it takes a very short time. We also grow tropical crops like sugarcane. The bimodal rainfall patterns permit two crops' harvest every year in most parts of the countries. In fact, in my part of the country where I was born, we sometimes harvest four crops of maize. We have plen- ty of good arable land, but only 8 percent of this arable land is under food crops. But this is enough for our 19 million people and we now have a surplus for export. H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe 21 Uganda is, therefore, too ready to be- come the food basket of Africa. However, what kind of farmers are going to be our partners in the realization of our vision in the year 2020? Most of our farms are no more than five acres per family. Virtually all of our agriculture is rainfed. The ag- ricultural tools are the hoe, the machete, and the ax. The main source of energy is the human muscle. Indeed, this is a place in Africa, and possibly in most of Sub-Saharan African, where this muscle is a woman's muscle. This is the farmer about whom was asked, "What are you going to do for this farmer and her husband?" The system of production that promotes smallholder farmers, in our experience, however primitive it may look, is very resilient. It ensures a degree of food se- curity at the household level. Despite all of the problems that Uganda has had, we have not lacked food for the people inside the country. I am sure you all heard about Idi Amin. Everything was destroyed during his rule—the infrastructure, educational insti- tutions. If you go to the countryside, the people there have more experience in research and they may be able to tell you how to achieve the 2020 Vision with no infrastructure on the ground. Our big cons- traint has been marketing and distribution, coupled with the low purchasing power of the peasants in the villages. The resilience of our smallholder farmers is exemplified by the coffee sector. It sur- vived all of the difficult times and, indeed now, Uganda is the world's fifth largest producer of coffee. At the other end of the tunnel, we have our brothers from Angola whose coffee sector virtually collapsed be- cause it is based on the theory of large-scale production. With the war, I doubt whether they have any coffee to talk about. Our advice, therefore, is that when we look at the farmer on the ground, the track record, the experience, and given the uncer- tainty and the political field we are talking about in Sub-Saharan Africa in the short and medium term, before the politics in the region is resolved, more research must be done on how best to improve the pro- ductivity of the smallholder farmer. With improved productivity will come enough to feed the family, to feed the country, and surplus for sale, as we have demonstrated in Uganda. We need simple technologies to alleviate the problem of pseudo-drought. I know many times we hear in the country there is a drought in the eastern part of the country, but with a rainfall of between 500 and 2,500 millimeters of rain, how can we talk about droughts? We are a people who believe when the rains do not come that there is a witch in the village. We play the drums and chase the witch away. Maybe because of the vibrations and the dancing we raise plenty of dust and we get precipitation and it rains. Yet we know that the simple tech- nology of having micro-dams in the villages to trap this rain water and the harnessing of wind power to pump water into the fields would be a welcome security in case of delay in the coming of the rains. In the medium term, our goal is to provide extension services to our farmers in the whole agri-business chain. We have started educating them on the availability of agricultural inputs within their localities that can boost the productivity of their land. Vocational education is increasingly being promoted to the community so that when opportunities present themselves they can move from the land to the factories. While promoting the small-scale farmer, we are not forgetting the large-scale farming. Our long-term goal is the modernization of the whole of the agricultural sector. More people will inevitably have to move from the land into the factories. So, currently, we are promoting investment into agro-based industries, and we believe that this is inevitable. My President, as a good number of you know, has been all over the globe, looking for investors in the industrial sector. And I 22 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment want to tell you, in line with what Brian Atwood said earlier, the early bird catches fee worm. If you want to reap, you have to invest. We are looking for partners. If anybody wants to reap from any agri- business in Africa, they must be prepared to invest as much as they invested in the Far East for them to be able to realize the Green Revolution that we have been talking about. In Uganda, we know that the policy that has helped us to achieve the little that we have is that government has gotten out of doing business. We have sold the public enterprises that were very much involved in the marketing of produce. How have we done this? We have said, "compete with the private sector." And it has paid dividends. But, we know that the trade in the world, which we are being told to liberalize, is done on paper but not in practice, especially in the agricultural and food sectors. How can we, the children of the world who are mal- nourished with kwashiorkor, be told to start running at the same time as children who never suffered malnutrition even when they were in the womb. That is what you are asking the children of Africa and the developing world to do. You liberalize the markets while you keep subsidizing yours. We do not have the muscle in the developing country to tell you that if you do not stop subsidizing, we shall stop giving you development aid. Where is the equity in this issue of global liberalization? Due to marketing bottlenecks, our farmers do not have access to markets that would, in turn, stimulate them to produce more. For instance, in the United Kingdom, one kilogram of steak costs $30. In Japan, they play music to their cows and they dance with them and a kilogram of steak costs $200. In Uganda, where our cows feed on what mother nature has given us, a kilogram of first-class steak costs only $2.50. With the removal of these bottlenecks and steady markets, our farmers can and indeed are capable of producing more. When we promoted our farmers, we just got up as politicians and said, "double production." The muscle power of a woman was liberated on maize because it was not a cash crop. Husbands concentrate on crops like coffee and cotton. But the food crops have always been the domain of the woman and she would get some money from increased production of maize. Kenya, our neighbor, was ready to buy the maize. But what happened? Tons and tons of yellow maize, very cheap, were dumped into Kenya by the United States. So, we would like to really tell you that in Uganda we believe, even with minimum input now, we can actually move forward on the road to the realization of the 2020 Vision. Due to the enabling policies of go- vernment and provision of basic infra- structure like roads, the importation of cereals dropped from 36,000 metric tons in 1974 to only 7,000 in 1990. And, as I talk now, the World Food Programme does not buy food from anywhere else. They buy from our farmers, which means we have started exporting. The agricultural sector has attained a growth rate of 4.4 percent per annum, and this is on rainfed agriculture with hardly any fertilizers being used by the farmers, with little technical assistance. With the right policies in the right direction and with the continuation of peace, we know that we shall be able to continue this growth. At this juncture I wish to assure you that we shall not allow the 2020 Vision to mature at the cost of degrading the environment. We shall not, if that happens, be able to sustain our vision. Forests and grasslands are crucial for the maintenance and pro- ductivity of the soil, especially in our humid tropical soils of Uganda, which are very prone to leaching. After wide consultation with the people all over the country, we, as Ugandans, have agreed that we must have a common code of conduct in the form of a law that we shall use to manage our environment for the good H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe 23 of our grandchildren. So, we have sub- mitted a bill in parliament, and we are going to have an environmental monitor for the whole country. Through our program of decentralizing and empowering people to take charge of their affairs, they will also make by-laws within their communities and localities to enforce environmental pro- tection for future generations. We are replanting forests and planting trees where there were none before. In- deed, through our youth and women's programs, we have started reclaiming the bald mountains. These are mountains in the western part of the country which are bald, and we would like to plant them with trees. But the long-term solution in protecting our trees is the use of alternative sources of energy. Ninety-five percent of fuel used in the home, both for cooking and lighting, is fuel wood. We have a program to expand the production of hydroelectric power ge- neration and transmission through the build- ing of big and small dams throughout the country. It is imperative, therefore, that agricul- ture and natural resource programs address issues that affect the players. When we talk about the players, and consider all of the aid programs, which mainly target agriculture, money comes in and is spent on something like a new four-wheel drive truck, used around Kampala. They put on demonstration projects near Kampala, and the real farmer, this woman we have been talking about, ends up hearing about the workshops and seminars and sees the four-wheel drive vehicles taking the dead AIDS victims to the village. At the end of the day, the real farmer does not end up benefiting from the program. I would like to say that not all of these projects are like that, but given the fact that when we borrow money from the World Bank for an agricultural program, we must repay it. It is not a donation. And, when we talk about donor funds, it creates a feeling among the people in the developing countries that this is a gift. At donor's conferences people say, "Oh, the World Bank has given us money." And, you know, if you have not worked for what you have got and if you believe you are not going to pay, you are not going to internalize that program to make it your own. We must address these issues of financing, issues of our relationships with the agencies that loan us money, to be sure they go to the right programs. Somebody was asking, "Why is it that the developing countries are not putting more in agriculture?" You borrow for agriculture, and it is a long-term loan. Then you have your neighbors around threatening to invade you. That means insecurity. Then you find AIDS is killing your people. This is the dilemma of a politician, a policymaker who has so many priorities. Each problem is a priority at any time in the life of a leader in a developing country like Uganda. We know that the people who are very interested in making sure that the world does not go hungry are women. It is the woman who will care whether her child is hungry. It is this woman who, if she is educated, will insist on having vegetables in her backyard so that her child does not have to suffer from blindness due to a very simple nutrient that comes in carrots. But this woman may not know. She will think someone has be- witched this bright child of hers. In Uganda, women, who are crucial players in any development effort, are being empowered. You can see that as I am a living example of that. It is not mere token- ism. In our country, women are moving to the commanding heights of politics, admi- nistration, the professions, commerce, and industry because we sustained our country when our husbands went away. We pulled on the trousers that they left behind, and we are saying that because our area is still insecure, we must know and learn how to manage society. This trend has not only stopped at the top. It is creeping in right from the villages. 24 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment The engines of change in the developing world in Africa are going to be the women. They have experienced hunger. They have experienced conflict. They are only too ready to move ahead, to make sure that this man is fed. The point I wish to make with regard to food, agriculture, and the environment is that at the moment in my country women produce 80 percent of the food. They are responsible for 60 percent of the planting of all crops, food and nonfood, 70 percent of weeding without the hoe, which you saw on the screen slideshow earlier, 60 percent of the harvesting, and 90 percent of food pro- cessing and preparation. They are factories, human factories. They should, therefore, play their proper role in the determination of food and agricultural policies. They must participate actively in the implementation of those policies and be able to earn the fruits of their labor, which is not the case in our rural communities at the moment. Household food security in Africa is still the domain of women. It is remarkable that they feed Africa without access to inputs such as credit. They even have limited access to agricultural land. In my country, a woman plants food on her father's land, her brother's land, her husband's land. But if her brother, her father, and her husband know that she is going to sell that food, she will be taxed, not by the revenue authority but by her husband, by her father, by her brother. And these, the taxation levels, are not inconsistent with the norms of taxation. These women are not educated and their daughters have a slim chance of being edu- cated and, most importantly, a slim chance of participating in decisionmaking. The women of Uganda and Africa (I may be speaking on behalf of the women of Africa because we have held many con- ferences on this topic) recommend that in order to realize the objectives we have set ourselves in the next 25 years, women must be facilitated to own land. They have the labor, the muscle, tilling the land is theirs, but the crucial resource of land is not in their hands, so we cannot expect them to improve its productivity. Women must gain access to credit. In this regard, lending policies should be reconsidered since they are largely based on one's ability to provide collateral for the loans. Let me take an example of a suc- cessful credit scheme in Uganda where, I must say, the people of the United States of America helped us. In this scheme, money was loaned to farmers, both women and men. But, being a Minister of Gender, both men and women, I know that the men, instead of taking money to the land, married a second wife. I want to assure you that having more than one wife is more of a liability than an asset because the more women you have, the more children you have, and now the government is sending every child to school. So you end with 3 people in the home producing food for about 50 people, with a hoe, a machete, and an ax. A women's group of some 30 persons, on the other hand, borrowed about $280 to grow soya beans. Within six months, those women had paid back that loan and they were able to plant more soya beans from the profits and they even built a small store. When it came to the payment rate, without collateral, over 88 percent of women repaid their loans. The men never achieved 40 percent repayment rates. The point I want to emphasize is that we can use these cases that have been tested for future credit programs. Currently, we are push- ing—we the women leaders of Africa—for a banking facility for women, which will take us from smaller scale to become medium- scale producers. We also want to be big scale. Unfortunately, women's issues normally come on the second to last page of any agenda, and people say, "Oh, but there are so many banking programs in Africa, the women should benefit from those." So Mr. Brian Atwood, recruit me to work for USAID. H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe 25 The workload for women must be reduced through the provision of relevant technology. This woman is the machine. She is supposed to be the faucet. Americans do not know where water comes from. My God, let them come to Africa. The women there know where the water comes from and they know which water may be good for drinking, just by looking at it, which water may give diarrhea to the children, and this water is being shared by the whole ecosystem, including the insects, the lizards, the frogs, and the snakes. Let us release this woman of Africa from the unnecessary trekking to collect water, trekking to collect firewood, so that we give her the minimum training to enable her to participate and benefit from the programs and the won- derful research by IFPRI to realize the 2020 Vision. Women should make decisions on what to grow, how to grow it, and most importantly they must be involved in the marketing of what they produce and in the disbursement of the returns from their sweat. There is a program that is supported by Action Aid, and it is taking place in Bangladesh, El Salvador, and one district in the Ugandan mountains. I would like to quote from a short-term evaluation of what they have been doing. We have found that after an average of about 100 contact hours, participants learned to read and write, some to an extent that they were writing fluent oral histories and letters. Compared to the World Bank's stated average of 25 percent, 70 percent of those who initially enrolled in this program, passed the standard literacy test. I quote, "A breakdown of the results showed that men and women performed equally in writing. Men performed better on reading, but women performed better in numeracy." "The program has also led to many community actions which have succeeded in making die links between literacy and wider development. In conducting a household by household survey of their village and examining changes in the local population over recent years, women were moved to discuss family spacing." Women organized community meetings to address this topic. They invited trainers from the Ministry of Health, but these trainers came on the women's own terms. If you come, you are going to eat millet with us. You are not going to sleep in the hotel because, if you talk about my spacing in my family, you must live in a place that I live in so that you can help me to judge my income and advise me on how many children you think I should have. They insisted that their husbands at- tended these meetings—a feat that is almost impossible to achieve in Sub-Saharan Africa. To get a man to talk about the number of children he has, you are testing the will of God. Similarly, a map of natural resources to- day, compared to resources 20 years ago, promoted discussion of deforestation, and the women were mobilized to organize their own tree nurseries. After 100 hours of learning how to read and write, these wo- men were empowered to discuss the 2020 Vision. If someone had lectured them about family planning or deforestation, they would probably not have listened. But because these women came to their awareness through their own analysis of the issues, they now have a real sense of ownership of the issues and strong conviction to them. The results of this program included terracing, the introduction of new crops, using new planting techniques, protecting water sources, building piped water systems. The women are using their muscle to lay pipes so that they can tap this water that comes from the snow in the mountains. Dysentery, a problem two years ago, is no longer heard of in this particular area. Women are establishing their own grain stores after discussing the type of technology they think is relevant to them. And, they are also constructing basic latrines. It used to be taboo for a woman to dig a latrine, but now the women are digging the latrines 26 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment because the men sometimes are so drunk, if they go down there, they may not come out. These 100 hours of training have done wonders and, indeed, this is really what I wanted to talk to you about most. There is also widespread reporting of changed atti- tudes and behavior. Men are consulting wo- men for the first time on certain types of household decisions, such as the building of kitchens, latrines, and paying school fees. Women, for the first time, were gaining access to male compounds where decisions are traditionally made. There are even cases where men are now helping women to carry water. It is taboo in the mountains for a man to carry water; your manhood would be threatened. But, after this functional literacy program there is the sharing of the household chores so that women have time to discuss other issues that affect the en- vironment and food security. Another notable impact has been in- creased school enrollment. In one parish, school enrollment tripled and all the new children are reported to be sons and daughters of parents who have been at- tending this functional literacy program. Equally important is the fact that girls are now reported to be going to school, more or less, in equal numbers as the boys. I would like to challenge you to really concentrate on targeting this woman. Incidentally, when you read many documents on the literacy rate of women in Africa, they will tell you, "Oh, in Uganda, 55 percent of women are literate." But what does this mean? In my own assessment, less than 70 percent of women have ever seen a blackboard. Twenty percent are the likes of me, but the 70 percent in the villages, what they mean by "I know how to read and write," is "I will be able to read that this bus goes to Kampala, Kam-pa-la." That is all. This issue must be addressed. If we are to address issues of population growth, and in Sub-Saharan Africa the po- pulation growth rate is over 4 or 5 percent in some countries, it is the women who will make the decisions. The experts also tell us that world agricultural production has been felling during the last three decades, from 3 percent in the 1960s to 2 percent in the 1990s, and this will decline further to 1.8 percent by the year 2010. Who is going to be the engine for us to be able to reverse or to forestall this decline, and to make sure we move in the right direction? Given its size and natural resources, Africa at a population of about 702 million is currently underpopulated. Africa is the second largest continent in the world. It is much bigger than the China you are worried about. Why is everybody worried about lack of food for Africa? The answer is poverty. It is very difficult—this is my own experience and do not let many developing country leaders lie to you that it is very easy—to tell people, "space your children, reduce the number." In the project I referred to the functional literacy program was coupled with income-generating pro- grams for the people, and there is better health. But when you find a woman who first got pregnant at the age of 15 and then lost each and every child she had for five years, how do you get to that family and start talking about population issues because the child is the source of labor. The child is the social security in time of old age. We must concentrate on the reduction of po- verty, and we need the assistance of the developed countries because poverty is bad for everyone. Today, the developed world uses 80 per- cent of the world's resources. I think because the developed world is the one that talks about human rights a lot, let us see them demonstrate this by transferring this 80 percent to be shared by the greater population so that we have an equitable flow of food around the world. Putting in place infrastructure will help assure that the developing world is indeed in a position to fight its own poverty, to ensure its own survival. Poverty is a major cause of environ- H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe 27 mental degradation. Unfortunately, it is increasing. The gap between the rich and poor is increasing everyday. Poverty under- mines the cohesion of states, destroys the basis of human rights and is a source of instability in the world and destroys the environment. Take the example of the Clinton initiative Brian Atwood was talking about. Uganda is one of the countries that is to participate in this initiative. It is the case of chicken and egg. When we say, "allow us to make decisions that affect us," we are told, "No, no, no. Do it this way." People can get angry. They can get very angry because the feeling is that when you have problems, nobody cares, and when you have peace, people do not want you to be empowered to make decisions that will help you realize the 2020 Vision that Per Pinstrup-Andersen has been dreaming about. Food, agriculture, and the environment are going to be the engines of development for the Third World. These initiatives should help us to look at this whole problem in its true global dimensions, in its true totality so that from peace we continue on the road to prosperity. To an environmentally sensitive world, the eradication of poverty must be on top of the agenda. It is within the means of the developed countries of the world to assist in its eradication. Our 2020 movement must work to convince the developed countries to liberalize trade and to grant the developing countries access to their markets. I do not know how a Japanese policymaker explains to a Japanese taxpayer that, instead of buying a kilo of steak at $2.50, you should buy it at $200. How do you explain that when you are saying that the market is liberalized? In fact, when we hear what is happening between the United States of America and Japan on trade, you know the saying, "When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." Most developing countries are indebted to the extent that virtually all of their export earnings are spent on debt-servicing. The debt burden has become crippling and intolerable. We are not saying that we should blame anybody for it, but I think both the developed and developing world have been responsible for this crippling debt. We are all to blame, so together we must join hands to see how we can alleviate this problem of poverty. When I was in Dakar in April, I told the Americans who were there, "You see, when people talk about debt and structural adjustment, it is not vice presidents like me who suffer. No, it is that poor woman in the village." The outflows from the developing to the developed countries are increasing and not decreasing. The poor are becoming poorer and will continue to clear the forests, to use marginal land, to overgraze, and to create deserts and wastelands in order to service the debt and, hopefully, survive. The low input, low output agriculture will continue to create hunger, because like Per Pinstrup- Andersen said, "We are milking the cow. This is the land and we are not feeding it." So it will eventually starve with the resultant land degradation. In Uganda, our call is to design a new approach to managing. Let us call on go- vernments to be transparent. Let us call on experts to come and look at the way we are managing this poor taxpayer's money. Be- cause even when we borrow it, this taxpayer will pay. Through this approach, we shall come up with examples of accountability and transparency that will be able to help us stabilize our economies. And, indeed, the examples of this nature will help people who are doubting Thomases to believe that indeed even if Jesus died many years ago, and Mohammed, we all live in the image of God and we can still have saviors in our midst. If the economic conditions of the devel- oping countries were to improve, most of us would get off the land in order to conserve and protect the environment. And, if this were to happen, then the much vaunted population bomb would not likely explode, 28 A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment especially in Uganda and the generally underpopulated Africa. So, the issue of population must be related to potential development rather than the presence of poverty in African countries. I do not want to end my address without addressing a trend that is beginning to disturb us in Africa and that is related to the protection of the environment and whether we shall be in a position to achieve this 2020 Vision. There have been several incidents of attempted dumping of hazardous toxic and radioactive wastes on our continent. In fact, recently one of our ministers disclosed to parliament that there is a country that wanted to give us $600 million—I know that when you are a beggar, you cannot be a chooser—but to swallow radioactive material for $600 million is indeed something that I cannot even put a name to. It is unaccept- able to us. It is all the more serious when the polluters attempt to ship these dangerous wastes to countries that do not have the technology and the resources to deal with them. This is immoral and dangerous and should be resisted at any cost. I ask all of you at this conference to use all of the influence you can muster to make sure that our poor countries are not polluted in this manner, pollution that will indeed take us back and stop us from realizing our vision. Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen. When I look around this hall I see a great assembly of intellect and talent. I see a people determined to improve the lot of the majority of hum