Protecting Today’s Investments, Looking Toward Tomorrow

Protecting Today’s Investments, Looking Toward Tomorrow

The world is not producing enough food to keep pace with increasing demand.⁵⁰ There is no doubt that this is everyone’s problem: the consequences of failing to solve it will affect us all. Nothing fuels global instability like hungry people taking their frustration to the streets of capital cities, as we’ve seen in recent years when food prices spiked.

It will take a concerted effort by governments and the private sector to turn the situation around so that global food production is on track to meet human needs. Developed countries have more influence over the outcome than others. They must come forward and lead because they have the greater share of resources to bring to bear on the problem.

The agricultural challenge is exacerbated by the effects of climate change. The most recent news is quite alarming: if climate change continues at its current rate, child malnutrition rates will increase by 20 percent by 2050.⁵¹ This forecast is based on existing data and scientific models which extrapolate from that data. For example, the model combines data on the increasing severity of droughts with research from West Africa showing that children born during drought years are 72 percent more likely to be stunted.⁵² Adapting to climate change would be hard enough with a set population, but in fact, world population increases every day. By the end of the century, the number of mouths to feed is expected to reach 10 billion. Agricultural productivity must be increased quickly enough to stay ahead of climate change and population growth combined.

Developing countries are experiencing the destructive effects of climate change now—before many of the developed countries have truly mobilized to help slow the changes. Most developing countries are in southern latitudes whose higher temperatures create environments that are inherently difficult for agricultural production. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where rain-fed agriculture employs 70 percent of the population, drier conditions are producing smaller harvests or none at all, posing a grave threat to already-fragile food security situations.⁵³ In coastal regions, climate change is producing more frequent and severe cyclones, leading to flooding and outbreaks of disease.

Some of the countries facing the most alarming climate change impacts are partners in the U.S. Feed the Future initiative. Mozambique’s National Disaster Management Institute reports, “The exposure to natural disaster risk will increase significantly over the coming 20 years and beyond,” as more severe cyclones hit the coast.⁵⁴ Even Mozambique’s “normal” exposure to natural disaster risk can bring significant damage; for example, severe flooding in 2000 cost the country $550 million and lowered the national GDP by 1.5 percent.⁵⁵ In our era of rapid change, building the resilience of families and communities is arguably the best way to help them. Feed the Future investments are focused on improving food security and reducing poverty; families with greater access to resources will be better able to help themselves adapt to climate change.

Climate change is no longer avoidable. The only questions are how soon, and by how much, we allow it to happen. The last decade was the hottest on record; the one before that was the second-hottest. Residents of developed countries have more choice than others about when and how to get serious about containing the damage caused by climate change. The surest way to slow climate change is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Because agriculture itself contributes one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, the agricultural sector must become more sustainable while simultaneously becoming more productive.

The United States has tools to raise productivity in sustainable ways that poor countries don’t. One of these is a sophisticated research and development (R&D) sector. Historically, U.S. public investments in agricultural R&D have paid off handsomely, with cost-benefit ratios of 20:1 or even higher.⁵⁶ The United States also contributes to global agricultural R&D, primarily through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Established in 1971, CGIAR is a network of research centers around the globe, all focused on innovations to support poor farmers in developing countries—something that the private sector tends to neglect. Investments in CGIAR have a comparable track record, with a rate of return on investments estimated up to 17:1.⁵⁷

U.S. support to CGIAR peaked in the early 1980s and then declined steadily for more than two decades. One reason for this, according to The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, was “the erroneous impression that the world’s food problems had been solved. It seemed to some that support for more productivity was no longer needed; food problems came to be understood in some circles as only problems of distribution.”⁵⁸ 2008 brought a rude awakening as food prices surged and a global hunger crisis ensued. At the height of the crisis, U.S. support to CGIAR was only a quarter of what it had been in the early 1980s.⁵⁹

In 2011, when CGIAR turned 40, the global agricultural system appeared eerily similar to the way it had looked in 1971 when the center was founded. At the time, Malthusian predictions of a world growing too fast to keep up with the demand for food were influential. The Green Revolution that spread across Asia and Latin America stilled those voices for a time. But, as described earlier, global leaders became complacent, and investments in both agriculture and agricultural R&D fell off.

This chapter raises many questions that cannot be answered without additional agricultural research and development, and therefore more funding for it. Just one example: How can agriculture most effectively improve nutrition in countries with high malnutrition rates? Agricultural R&D questions are not academic, but immediately relevant to human problems. In the past decade, the magnitude of the threat that climate change poses to agricultural productivity has become much clearer to researchers and policymakers. We also know more now about the importance of delivering the right nutrition at the right time in life, and about effective ways to do this. All of this is knowledge gained because of investments in R&D.

R&D rarely pays off quickly; it usually takes more than a decade to realize returns on investment. But the results are well worth waiting for, as many examples show.⁶⁰ Instead of restricting R&D funding, we must urge policymakers and the private sector to stay focused on making the investments that are necessary to solve the urgent problems of global hunger and poverty.