Sunday 26 June 2011

New FAO boss must do better

The United Nations’ food agency has picked Brazil’s Jose Graziano da Silva as its director general, the first new leader in almost two decades. His challenge is to improve the FAO’s performance on food security as the world faces near-record food prices that are driving millions into poverty.

Photo: ©FAO/Alessia Pierdomenico

Graziano da Silva (pictured above), 61, former Brazilian minister of food security will take over at the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization from Jan. 1 to July 31, 2015, replacing Senegal- born Jacques Diouf after 18 years at the head of the biggest UN agency.

 

Graziano da Silva was in charge of former Brazilian president Luiz Inacia Lula da Silva’s “Zero Hunger” plan started in 2003. The plan reduced hunger in Brazil by half and cut the percentage of Brazilians living in extreme poverty to 4.8 percent in 2009 from 12 percent in 2003, according to the FAO, which awarded Lula the 2011 World Food Prize for “Zero Hunger.”

The FAO, set up in 1945 as a specialized UN agency, says it leads international efforts to defeat hunger and helps developing countries improve farming. The mandate of the agency, whose headquarters moved to Rome from Washington in 1951, includes raising nutrition levels and agricultural productivity.

Millions have starved in the developing world since 1945 with parts of Africa ravaged by famine. Food price shocks are becoming more common, not less, and the Green Revolution never got going in Africa, partly because of ‘structural adjustment’ policies overseen by the FAO that starved agriculture of resources and gave rise to the welfare trap many poor nations now face – no agricultural base and forced to accept food aid, mainly from US farmers who depend on the government-funded food aid market.

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Farm-Africa making a difference

Farm-Africa is making a difference with its focus on agricultural development in Africa.

Former United Nations leader Kofi Annan says gets results because it "supports locally relevant and scalable demonstrations of what works".

Farm-Africa allocates 52% of the funds it raises to developing agricultural best practice and just 2% to governance and 11% on raising more funds.

FARM-Africa homepage

Read the full report: http://bit.ly/jMuVF0

Tuesday 21 June 2011

Offal no longer going in the pit

Exports of red meat ‘co-products’ – such as edible offals, casings, pelts and rendered products, tallows and meat meal –  offer increasingly important market diversity for New Zealand agriculture and in 2010 contributed $1 billion to the country’s sheep and beef sectors, according to a new industry report.

In its recently-released industry note The Fifth Quarter, specialist food and agribusiness bank Rabobank says a focus for New Zealand’s sheep and beef sectors has been on increasing exports of edible offal in particular, using existing plant to process a wider range of edible products. Expansion of sales from edible, but not traditional, parts of the animal carcass has increased the utilisation and returns from meat processing, the report says.

So-called ‘co-products’ are a diverse range of goods created once red meat cuts have been processed from the animal carcass.  Adding value to pelts, viscera (offals), bones and fats may be done in New Zealand or raw materials can be sold into a diverse range of markets.

Report author Rabobank animal proteins analyst Rebecca Redmond says pressures on supply in the New Zealand sheepmeat sector in particular (with decreasing stock availability) has been driving processors to extract greater value from the whole carcass.  “A similar story has played out for the beef sector, where focus on the expanding range of edible non-meat products has occurred in line with increased interest from emerging markets,” she says.

Evolving from subsistence to commercial farming

The following policy report has been released by the Chicago Council:

Policy Paper

Leveraging Private Sector Investment in Developing Country Agrifood Systems

Charlotte Hebebrand, Global Agricultural Development Initiative Policy Paper, May 2011
The for-profit sector is now a critical player in the shift from subsistence agricultural economies, where poverty and uncertainty perpetuate hunger, toward well-functioning commercial systems, where farmers can afford needed inputs and reach cash markets. Private-sector engagement is also essential for “scaling up” government-financed development proj¬ects, and for sustaining these projects after government funding is reduced or withdrawn.
This policy paper consists of four sections. The first reiterates the benefits of sound private-sector investment in sustainable food security; it also explains the paper’s primary focus on investments from transnational corporations (TNCs) and describes how TNCs approach decisions on investment allocations. The second section highlights examples of TNC investments that have simultaneously benefited smallholders in developing countries while creating profits—or the potential for profits—for the investors. The third section explores how the US government engages with TNCs and incentiv¬izes investments. The final section concludes with recommendations for TNCs, governments, and other players, with a view towards increasing TNC investments that both strengthen agricultural development and offer profits to TNCs.
Get the full report at http://bit.ly/mEHbOW

Sunday 19 June 2011

Food prices now on a higher plateau

Commodity prices rose sharply again in August 2010 as crop production shortfalls in key producing regions and low stocks reduced available supplies, and resurging economic growth in developing and emerging economies underpinned demand, according to the FAO's Agricultural Outlook 2011-2020 report.

A period of high volatility in agricultural commodity markets has entered its fifth successive year, says the FAO report. "High and volatile commodity prices and their implications for food insecurity are clearly among the important issues facing governments today. This was well reflected in the discussions at the G20 Summit in Seoul in November, 2010, and in the proposals for action being developed for consideration at its June 2011 meeting of Agriculture Ministers in Paris."

This Outlook is cautiously optimistic that commodity prices will fall from their 2010-11 levels, as markets respond to these higher prices and the opportunities for increased profi tability that they afford. Harvests this year are critical, but restoring market balances may take some time. Until stocks can be rebuilt, risks of further upside price volatility remain high.

This Outlook maintains the view expressed in recent editions that agricultural commodity prices in real terms are likely to remain on a higher plateau during the next ten years compared to the previous decade. Prolonged periods of high prices could make the achievement of global food security goals more difficult, putting poor consumers at a higher risk of malnutrition.