The Hyderabad-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has hailed the world leaders commitment to significantly raise investment in agriculture. Referring to a positive outcome of recently concluded World Food Summit, the ICRISAT director-general, William D Dar said, ?One very important outcome of the summit is the strong affirmation of all countries for the need for significant investment in agriculture which includes the call for the doubling of investment in international agricultural research?.
All governments, he said recognised the need to significantly increase food production and to empower and provide support to small farmers to boost their productivity. We support this policy declaration as agriculture has really been neglected for so long hence the global food crisis today, he said.
Dar, however, pointed out some grey areas in the food summit declaration. One was on export bans and other trade distorting measures which continues to contribute to and exacerbates the crisis, he said. According to him the summit only recognised this as a problem but no action was taken to vacate export bans. IFPRI studies shows that elimination of export bans would stabilize grain price fluctuations, reduce price levels by as much as 30 percent, and enhance the efficiency of agricultural production.
Both ICRISAT and IFPRI are affiliated institutions of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The World Food Summit convened by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation discussed food security, climate change and bio-fuel
The second grey area in the declaration, according to Dar was on biofuels. ?The summit recognised only the challenges and opportunities of biofuels. They should have distinguished more forcefully between smart and non-smart types of bio-fuels. Corn is not a smart bio-ethanol crop, much more in developing countries because of its implications to food security. Smart bio-ethanol crops like sweet sorghum should be further developed, promoted and commercialized because it also ensures food and environmental security, ? he said.
Dar called for strong actions by governments to put up new and or enhance existing safety nets for poor people who are the most vulnerable among the population. ?We should also build up long term resilience of poor people to crisis like global warming, droughts, typhoons, floods and many others. Mitigation on and adaptation with climate change must be given high priority attention and investment as this will have great impact in agriculture and the poor,? he said.
According to Dar the summit could have been more successful if the world leaders were clear as to who would be responsible for implementation and monitoring. ?This has been the case before and food production stagnated or declined, and poverty and hunger continued to escalate in spite of having targets like that of the millennium development goals (MDGs). We know that the developed countries have started to make their commitments and pledges including international organisations which is a welcome development and but we need to do more. The developing countries must do the same, put up the needed policy support, and give the highest priority and investment to their agriculture sector. There should be a new way of doing things to address the global food crisis. The billion poor people of the world, being very vulnerable will continue to suffer because of soaring food prices if we don`t do it right. The world today must act as one now,” he said.