Global Challenges for Future Food and Agricultural Policies

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Preface
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables

In the last century, before climate change started attracting public attention, agricultural and food policies in many countries evolved over time from focusing on increasing productivity and securing farmers’ incomes to the promotion of environmental goals and rural development. Subsequent policy concerns incorporated sustainability as a key issue in agricultural and rural development, underlining the increasing importance of natural resources to food production and to food security. The policy framework also began to shift from policies protective of farm incomes to measures that addressed changing consumer preferences and concerns. Public discourse expanded from the previous emphasis on technological advances that increase total factor productivity and competitiveness to the implications of how food is produced and product differentiation. Challenges that emerged from public discord relate to the role of technology in food security, biodiversity, and sustainability of agricultural production and the food system. While this evolutionary sequence refers to policy orientation in developed countries, it also depicts changes in the focus of policies in countries with economic development…

Global agriculture faces a formidable challenge over the coming decades. It will be required to feed a population that is expected to approach 10 billion by 2050, an increase of nearly one-third compared to 2015. Most of the world’s population will live in developing countries (with one-third in China and India alone), where rising incomes will lead to an increased demand for livestock products and the animal feed needed to produce them. The population will also be more urban, with more than half the world’s population living in mega cities. The demand for agricultural products in non-food uses, such as fiber and fuel, is also likely to expand as world population and incomes increase, and as concerns about the contribution of fossil energy usage to climate change shift the focus to renewable sources…

Over the years, donor countries and international organizations have provided hundreds of billions of US dollars in financial assistance to developing countries for agricultural development. Data from AidData.org, which are discussed below, indicate that total worldwide aid for agricultural development during 1975–2013 was US$415 billion (in 2014 US dollars), or nearly US$11 billion per year on average. What has been achieved as a result of this aid? Has the aid been effective, and what does “effective” mean in this context? What determines aid allocations? This chapter focuses on agricultural development aid: who gives and who receives, what types of agricultural development assistance are given and received, and whether this assistance has been effective, depending on alternative criteria for defining effectiveness.

Meeting the increased demand for food and agricultural products, driven by anticipated growth in the world’s population and the effects of dietary change, is expected to pose a major challenge for global agriculture. In this chapter, the focus is on the role of research and development (R&D) in responding to this challenge.

The protection of intellectual property (IP) is an important issue for private sector involvement in research and development in the agricultural sector. This chapter focuses on the protection of IP.

The productivity of agriculture globally has risen due to increased use of purchased inputs, such as seed, agro-chemicals, energy, and machinery. However, a small number of large multinational firms increasingly dominate the supply of most of these inputs. This chapter discusses the forces driving structural change in the input supply industries, their implications and potential policy response.

With its high projected rate of population growth and the likelihood of increasing per capita incomes, food demand in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is likely to expand significantly in future years. Under a medium growth scenario, the United Nations projects that the population of SSA will rise from an estimated 962 million people (13% of the world total) in 2015 to 1.4 billion by 2030 (16%) and 2.1 billion (21%) by 2050. Although a decline in commodity prices has resulted in a reduction in the rate of economic growth in recent years, the growth in per capita income on a purchasing power parity basis is expected to be positive over the longer term (World Economic Forum, 2015)…

The future of food and agriculture depends heavily on the availability of resources. Some of these are renewable (e.g., water); some are essentially non-renewable (e.g., soil) or can be derived from non-renewable sources (e.g., plant nutrients); and some can potentially be supplied by either non-renewable or renewable sources (e.g., energy). Agriculture is a major user of renewable resources. Approximately 37% of the earth’s land area is currently devoted to agriculture; roughly one third of that area is arable land and land under permanent crops (FAOStat). Agriculture uses roughly 70% of the world’s supply of freshwater…

During the last century, agricultural production has accelerated to an unprecedented level with population growth and economic development. World cropland area expanded by more than 50%, from roughly 1,200 million hectares (Mha) in 1900 to 1,800 Mha in 2000 (Adams, 2012). The intensity of agricultural production, characterized by a low fallow ratio and the use of inputs, such as capital, labor, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers to raise agricultural yields, also increased tremendously; global fertilizer nutrient (nitrogen, phosphate and potash) consumption reached 187 million metric tons in 2014 (FAO, 2015)…

The importance of agriculture for water use and of water for agriculture, combined with market and government failures, provide a nexus of global policy issues around agriculture and water. The issues are traditionally framed around agricultural water use. A long standing policy concern in arid regions is inefficiency in water allocation among competing uses due to institutional preferences for agriculture. A key policy concern for developing countries is depletion of groundwater supplies due to open access. But inefficient use of irrigation water, due to weak or missing price incentives, is a concern in both developed and developing countries. These concerns are expected to intensify as population and income growth increase the demand for water, and climate change alters regional water supply regimes and increases the variability of water supplies (Hanjra and Qureshi, 2010). Most of the growth in global population is taking place in water-stressed regions of Asia and Africa. Changes in dietary patterns are leading to higher demand for water-intensive crops, while demand from municipal and industrial sectors will also expand. A global mean surface temperature rise of 2°C above present levels is estimated to bring an additional 15% of the population under conditions of severe water scarcity (Schewe et al., 2014)…

The increasing pressure on natural and environmental resources created by the growth in world’s population and demand for food have an impact on food production, farm income and food security. This impact can have a direct effect on environmental resources, such as wildlife or water, or an indirect effect through externalities, such as climate change. The proliferation of bilateral, regional, and international environmental agreements over time is a sign of the increasing complexity of environmental problems and the need for a collective approach to address them…

Climate change will alter the policy-making framework for agriculture and the food system by transforming the physical environment within which the system operates. It will intensify the challenges of pursuing the core objectives of food security and sustainability of natural resources examined in Chapters 2 and 8, and adds three key dimensions to be addressed in framing national and international policies for agriculture and the food system:

• Is there a need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in agriculture and, if so, is there potential for mitigation in the sector? What role can policy play in promoting mitigation?
• Is there a need for adaptation in agriculture in the face of climate change and, if so, what should be the role of policy?
• What is the role of policy in helping to deal with uncertainties generated by climate change in the food and agricultural system?

These policy considerations need to be made in the light of continued growth in global GHG emissions, despite an increasing number of climate-change mitigation initiatives, including the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (Chapter 11). Without intensification of efforts to constrain emissions, global average temperature in 2100 is expected to increase by 3.7°C (6.7°F) to 4.8°C (8.6°F) relative to preindustrial levels, with major implications for the world's climate (IPCC, 2014).

Chapter 12 makes the case for the need to include the agricultural sector in global greenhouse gas mitigation efforts. In this chapter, options for mitigating emissions and how these differ regionally are examined.

Climate change poses challenges for regions and farmers around the world. Recent changes and forecasts both suggest that local climates are changing. Regardless of the cause of climate change, farmers will have to learn to cope and adjust, in order to avoid yield and income losses. The choices that farmers have made in the past may no longer lead to the same outcomes in the future. The challenge that farmers face is to determine when and how they should alter their production choices…

In September 2015, the United Nations adopted an ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger among its core targets. Together with other significant global conferences and agreements in 2015, including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, it implies the need of a more dynamic approach to agricultural development and policy-making to transform agriculture into a more dynamic and adaptive sector…

International institutions, both governmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations, as well as private charitable research and advocacy organizations, play an important and often influential role in underpinning the governance of the international food system. They address interconnected issues related to food and agriculture: facilitating progress on domestic and international policy reform and trade negotiations, and improving the sustainability of agricultural development pathways. They have been instrumental in providing practical advice and funding, and facilitated forums for discussing strategies, policy debate, peer reviews, benchmarking, and the sharing of comparative experiences across countries…

The purpose of this chapter is to examine “rational” policy choice. The view of rationality adopted is one in which policy choices relating to food and agriculture are made on the basis of clearly defined objectives and are evidence-based. The actual approach used in any given situation (local, national or international) is likely to be less than ideal than the way policy-making is depicted in this chapter. Social and political systems that apply in a given situation will define the context in which policy decisions are made. Explaining the impact of such systems on policy-making has largely been the province of political scientists, although some economists have ventured into the area by considering the political economy of agricultural policy (de Gorter and Swinnen, 2002). In contrast to that strand of the literature, the focus of this chapter is on a methodology that meets requirements for rationality and as such represents an “ideal” approach to policy formation and implementation.

Information plays a crucial role in political markets and policy design. In his path breaking book An Economic Theory of Democracy, Downs (1957) explains the concept of the rationally ignorant voter. According to Downs, it is rational for voters to be ignorant about certain policy issues, if the costs of information are higher than the expected benefit from being informed. This information mechanism has major implications for agricultural and food policies, one of them being that policies will be introduced that create concentrated benefits and dispersed costs (Anderson et al., 2013). This rational ignorance not only applies to voters’ choices in political markets but also to consumers’ choices in commodity markets, as McCluskey and Swinnen (2004) have explained…

Since 2015, when the global community adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Climate Change Accord, the financial resources needed to achieve global development goals have far exceeded current financial flows. Indeed, the World Bank/IMF Development Committee noted in April 2015 that the world needs to move from billions to trillions of financing in order to meet the challenge of promoting inclusive, sustainable growth, reducing poverty and inequality, and protecting the planet (Development Committee, 2015). Multilateral Development Banks have pledged to catalyze more investment from private investors and other sources of capital such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies. They have proposed to leverage their capital base by borrowing from capital markets to increase their ability to finance development. They are also working towards catalyzing greater private investment by: (1) promoting high quality investment projects; (2) helping mitigate risk associated with investments; (3) mobilizing resources from and co-investing with traditional investors and through new sources of commercial financing for development; and (4) developing new financial products to help unlock additional flows (World Bank, 2017)…

The chapters in this book have surveyed the increasingly complex economic and social environment within which agricultural policies have to be framed in the 21st century. As indicated in the introductory chapter, the policy agenda has broadened considerably. The combined challenge posed by food security, conserving natural resources and dealing with climate change takes policy-making to a new level of complexity. In this short concluding chapter we highlight some of the key issues for the future of policy-making that emerge from this volume…

The following section is included:

• Index