What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

UN official stresses link between healthy soils, sustainable development as Global Soil Week starts, UN

US Announces Plans to Reduce Agricultural Carbon Emissions, The New York Times

Guest Commentary – Agriculture: The Common Thread Connecting the Sustainable Development Goals, Global Food for Thought

Lifting the lid on the household: A new way to measure individual deprivation, From Poverty to Power

New crop insurance math, new challenges for farmers, Politico

UN urged to demand free access to crop data, SciDev.Net

Fostering Economic Resilience, Greenpeace

Meeting the Global Food Demand of the Future by Engineering Crop Photosynthesis and Yield Potential, Long et al, 2015, Cell

Universities join efforts to combat climate change in East Africa, Daily Monitor

This Earth Day, think agriculture, Plantwise

The genome of cultivated sweet potato contains Agrobacterium T-DNAs with expressed genes: An example of a naturally transgenic food crop, Kyndt et al, 2015, PNAS

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Do Aid and Development need their own TripAdvisor feedback system?, From Poverty to Power

Rebranding bran: teaching nutrient-rich cooking in Mali, The Guardian

African hub set up to boost research autonomy, Nature

Global Food Industry Reluctant Leaders of Smallholder Farming Revolution, The Huffington Post

Managing for Resilience: Framing an integrated landscape approach for overcoming chronic and acute food insecurity, Buck and Bailey

Agri-tech for Africa’s food security, development, SciDev.Net

Water-Smart Agriculture in East Africa, PAEPARD

New interactive tool brings malnutrition data to life, Devex

Fateful Harvest: Why Brazil has a big appetite for risky pesticides, Reuters

Denmark’s Drug-Free Pigs, The New York Times

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Roadmap for Strengthening Forest and Farm Producer Organizations, FAO

Six innovations revolutionising farming, The Guardian

Could insects feed the hungry world of tomorrow?, BBC

Beating the heat, Nature Biotechnology

Crop yields and global food security, Australian Government (GRDC)

Acres of genetically modified corn nearly doubled in a decade, Harvest Public Media

What’s the best way to measure empowerment?, Duncan Green, Oxfam

Majority of African Farm Workers Struggle to Afford Food, Gallup

Wild about Agricultural Innovation in Botswana, Global Food for Thought

Pesticide blamed for bee deaths now linked to bird declines, Los Angeles Times

Food Security and WTO Domestic Support Disciplines post-Bali, ICTSD

Why does Europe hate genetically modified food?, Rappler

Can Africa create a new green generation of food producers?, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Higher Food Prices Can Help to End Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Waste, IPS

Update on WTO Doha Round

Chapter four of One Billion Hungry describes the Uruguay and, later, Doha rounds of international trade negotiations. At the time of publishing little headway had been made in reducing tariffs, trade barriers and protectionist measures in the agricultural sector (tariffs for agricultural products are an average 62% compared to 4% for industrial goods) and since the Doha round began in 2001, there has been a stubborn stalemate between developed and developing countries. Reducing the number of proposals to agree in 2011, including measures on intellectual property and trade in services, (and spurring the moniker “Doha Lite”), the World Trade Organisation were seeking agreement between the 159 member countries at a recent meeting in Bali, the success of which looked likely to determine the continuance of Doha altogether, and the value of the WTO itself as this would be the first ever deal agreed under the WTO since its inception 1995.

On the 3^rd to the 7^th December ministers of trade met in Bali and despite several disagreements and standoffs, which threatened to derail the process, an agreement was met. So what was agreed exactly?

Central to the agreement is “trade facilitation”, which commits members to implement binding rules that reduce the amount of customs paperwork needed and set maximum time limits for goods crossing borders, a proposal that is estimated to add over $1 trillion to the global economy. For regions where goods crossing borders are subject to lengthy delays and difficulties, resulting in high transaction costs, an agreement such as this could lower the cost of imports. Reducing these transaction costs associated with trade by just 1% could boost the global economy by $40 billion, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. And the bulk of this increase in economic wealth is expected to benefit developing countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and the Central African Republic, which, according to the World Bank’s Doing Business Index, have the worst scores for the ease with which goods can be traded across their borders.

A further agreement was around increases in farm subsidies, which are currently limited under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. India insisted it should be allowed to subsidise grain as part of its effort to tackle food insecurity, paying farmers higher than market prices for grains for its government domestic stores. As an interim measure, WTO members agreed not to bring disputes against countries breaching the farm subsidies limits as part of food security measures while a longer term solution is found but there remains concern that this gives India the power to distort global trade and undercut producers in other countries. Despite the negative impacts of subsidies, an alternative is yet to be found, and without this compromise India would have backed out of the agreement altogether, although they did agree not to ”distort trade or adversely affect the food security of other [WTO] members”. Development agencies are concerned that the agreement only last four years and only relates to currently held public food stock holding programmes.

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Walking the talk: Why and how African governments should transform their agriculture spending, Action Aid

AGRA Strengthens Efforts to Help Governments Attract Private Investment in Local Agribusinesses, AGRA

Climate Change and Agriculture in East Africa, IFPRI

WTO overcomes last minute hitch to reach its first global trade deal, Reuters

Amb. Quinn’s Remarks: Keynote at UN World Food Day Observance in New York, The World Food Prize

African Plant Breeding Academy launched, World Agroforestry Centre

The Guardian and Observer Christmas appeal 2013: Future Africa, The Guardian

Book links food security to political stability, Cornell Chronicle

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

One small change of words – a giant leap in effectiveness!, World Agroforestry Centre

Policy: Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims, Nature

Enabling African Farmers to Feed the World, Farming First

Roundtable on Sustainable African Agriculture and CAADP 2014 review, PAEPARD

Agricultural Input Subsidies. The Recent Malawi Experience, Ephraim Chirwa and Andrew Dorward

African Farmers Reap Gains Of Biotech Cotton, CoastWeek

Humans are becoming more carnivorous, Nature

Seeds of hope emerge across the world’s drylands, World Agroforestry Centre

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee to examine Food Security, UK Parliament

For sustainable growth, count on agriculture, Thomson Reuters Foundation

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Increasing cropping frequency offers opportunity to boost food supply, University of Minnesota

Climate-Smart Pearl Millet Variety May Be a Game Changer for Nutrition, Feed the Future

WTO chief says no chance of global trade deal, USA Today

Iowa in the Amazon, The New York Times

Science’s role in growing diverse, nutritious food, SciDev.Net

What have been the farm-level economic impacts of the global cultivation of GM crops?, Collaboration for Environmental Evidence Library

‘Total inaction’ at UN climate talks, Africa groups charge, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Eating Aliens, Jackson Landers

Crowdsourcing app fights food loss in Africa, University of Twente

Hunger Grains: Are EU policies undermining progress on development?, From Poverty to Power, Duncan Green

How Africa’s natural resources can drive industrial revolution, CNN

Food prices volatility: watch this space

A recent article by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) outlines the food price situation and the actions that need to be taken to reduce price volatility. In 2012, as prices began to creep higher and a third food price spike since 2007 looked likely, governments should have been poised to act to curb food price volatility once and for all. As the IATP authors believe, governments did not take this opportunity and failed to address the root causes of food price volatility.

This recent article is an update to the authors’ 2012 report, Resolving the Food Crisis, and calls for action to be taken around a series of themes:

• Donor funding for agricultural development
• Reducing biofuels expansion
• Curbing financial speculation on agricultural commodities
• Building food reserves
• Halting land grabs
• Addressing climate change

These issues are neither original nor specific to solving the problem of food price spikes. Instead they are frequently raised by NGOs and other stakeholders across the world and, as the authors point out, these problems are not going away. Not enough is being done to address them. There are huge opportunities for progress in 2013 but whether governments will seize them is another matter, as history attests. Action to address food price volatility from the G20 has revolved to date primarily around the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) and, while G20 leaders plan to meet in Russia this year, no meeting of agricultural ministers is planned. Decisions over the future vision of the World Trade Organisation Doha Development Round could be an opportunity to ensure trade rules ‘protect and promote food security,’ but given the previous disarray of the Doha Round this may be too much to hope for. New farm legislation in the US and reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in the EU show little sign of being transformative.