FROM THE FIELD
It took 400 scientists more than three years and much wrangling, but the report published this week calling for radical changes in world farming in order to remedy inequalities could not have come at a more opportune time.With dozens of developing countries finding themselves stretched and experiencing internal unrest as a result of rising food prices, and everybody from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the UN's World Food Programme warning of worse times to come, the report by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) proved a timely call for action.The 2,500-page report concluded that while advances over the last half century had resulted in the world's food production increasing at a faster rate than its population, the present system of production and trade meant the benefits were spread unevenly and at an "increasingly intolerable price" paid by small-scale farmers, workers, rural communities and the environment."Malnutrition and food insecurity threaten millions," the report's authors wrote. "Rising populations and incomes will intensify food demand, especially for meat and milk which will compete for land with crops, as will biofuels. The unequal distribution of food and conflict over control of the world's dwindling natural resources presents a major political and social challenge to governments, likely to reach crisis status as climate change advances and world population expands from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050."Launching the report, IAASTD director Prof Robert Watson said recent food price hikes had been driven by increased demand, poor weather, export restrictions, more land use to produce biofuels such as corn-derived ethanol, commodity market speculation and higher energy costs.The IAASTD report, commissioned by the UN and the World Bank, prescribed a fundamental rethink of agricultural knowledge, science and technology to develop a sustainable global food system. "Modern agriculture will have to change radically if the international community wants to cope with growing populations and climate change, while avoiding social fragmentation and irreversible deterioration of the environment," said Salvatore Arico from Unesco, the UN's educational, scientific and cultural division, in a summary of the report.Outlining some of the challenges facing world farming in the next decades, Prof Watson said: "We need to enhance rural livelihoods where most of the poor live on one or two dollars a day."At the same time, we need to meet food safety standards. All of this must be done in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner." Agriculture should no longer be treated merely as a single issue of production, he said, adding that this approach had resulted in "an increasingly degraded and divided" planet.[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
