The need for quick wins in response to any food crisis is obvious, but can that noble aim also make it harder to save lives and livelihoods by neglecting more effective long-term solutions?
The answer is yes, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. At last week’s European Humanitarian Forum in Brussels, FAO urged donors to recognize that seeds, fertilizers, and animal vaccines are just as important as emergency aid.
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FAO points to a staggering new statistic to make its argument: 80% of people in the three most serious categories of acute food insecurity, as measured by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, are farmers.
“It is the missing piece, the missing data point,” says Beth Bechdol, FAO’s deputy director-general overseeing its emergency work, who spoke with Devex U.K. Correspondent Rob Merrick at the forum. She was there to “bang the drum” for agricultural aid as “the first line of defense” in any crisis response.
“The approach from donors is this mindset that we need quick wins — we need to show immediate impact, whether that's tied to the investment itself, or it's just people's attention spans,” Bechdol explains. “Agriculture is the long game. It's harder to measure the long-term impacts that come from, say, modified seed varieties, or an extensive animal husbandry campaign, or long-term water management.”
FAO came to Brussels armed with evidence of success. In Iraq, it says, a €100 million ($108 million) European Union-funded program to repair infrastructure, introduce new technology, and improve land and water use efficiency delivered a 29% growth rate in agricultural output in 2022-23, the highest of any economic sector. In Afghanistan, it has spent $370 million since the Taliban’s 2021 return delivering wheat seeds, fertilizers, livestock feed, poultry, and home gardening assistance to millions in rural areas, helping to take 7 million people out of acute food insecurity.
Bechdol says funders often have little patience for results that might not show for many years, but FAO is determined to “demonstrate these agricultural solutions,” adding: “I do feel the message is beginning to bring people along.”
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Humanitarian aid has been stuck at the border of the Gaza Strip for months as nearly the entire population of some 2.2 million is on the precipice of famine. Airdrops have proved an extraordinarily inefficient way to deliver critical supplies like food and medical equipment. Earlier this month, the United States announced plans to build a floating maritime pier off Gaza’s coast. But aid groups don’t expect that to solve the key issue of Israel blocking the aid.
Typically, any aid effort to bring supplies to those in need would be welcome, but most humanitarian groups Devex spoke with couldn’t shake their wariness — and worry — that maritime-delivered aid would be, more than anything, a distraction from the crux of the crisis. The problem has never been about getting aid to Gaza, experts say. It has been about persuading Israel to let it in, write my colleagues Elissa Miolene, Colum Lynch, and Michael Igoe.
It’s worth noting that a maritime pier would face some of the same issues as a land crossing in terms of Israel controlling the flow of aid, points out Kate Phillips-Barrasso, the vice president for global policy and advocacy at Mercy Corps. As U.S. President Joe Biden’s once-close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu frays, many experts see a maritime pier as the result of diplomatic gridlock — and, perhaps, a performative last resort. In signs of further strain, this week Netanyahu canceled a high-level Israeli delegation's planned visit to Washington after the U.S. abstained from a U.N. vote demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
Read: Aid groups doubt Biden’s pier will solve Gaza’s problems (Pro)
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Dozens of food and agriculture leaders — from U.S. lawmakers to World Food Prize laureates to nonprofit heads — filled an airy hall at the U.S. Institute of Peace on Tuesday for an event organized by the World Food Prize Foundation. They were there to highlight how women are driving growth and innovation in agriculture, and how to create more fertile ground for female leadership in agriculture.
U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan, pushed for a “moonshot” in agricultural research, and for an increase of women in the agricultural innovation sector. Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, the founder of African Food Changemakers, highlighted the agricultural abundance on the African continent — and the need to elevate the farmers who know that landscape the best. And Cary Fowler, the U.S. special envoy for global food security, touted his Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils initiative, which tries to promote the indigenous, often overlooked crops that are typically tended by women.
“Women must have a seat at the table because women have always been a part of agriculture. They just haven’t always been heard, or recognized, or fully included,” said Jennifer Lester Moffitt, the undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We are responsible for changing that.”
Meanwhile, 27 past World Food Prize laureates signed an open letter Tuesday urging the Group of 20 major economies to agree to a new global plan to tackle the food crisis. It comes as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — who won the World Food Prize in 2011 — makes hunger and poverty key priorities for the country’s G20 presidency. He recently launched a task force to fight global poverty and hunger.
“In the 21st century, it is primarily the lack of political will and leadership that allow hunger and malnutrition to persist and to rise,” the laureates write. In order to help the 735 million people who are hungry worldwide, they wrote, the G20 should commit to a plan that fully funds the U.N.’s humanitarian appeals for food and nutrition assistance, and invests in smallholder farmers to build their resiliency, among other things.
A brutal system of labor exploits women and children working in India’s state of Maharashtra as they harvest sugar cane for Pepsi and Coca-Cola. [The New York Times and The Fuller Project]
Just in time for Easter, cocoa prices have soared to $10,000 per metric ton for the first time ever as supply constraints push prices up 138%. [CNBC]
The United States will expand its much-praised Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils to the Western Hemisphere, first to Guatemala. [U.S. Department of State]
Finance for big livestock companies is on the rise, with a 15% overall increase in credit to the 55 big livestock companies from 2019-2022, compared to the prior four-year period, according to a new report. [Feedback]
Rob Merrick, Elissa Miolene, and Andrew Green contributed to this edition of Devex Dish.