Organise to feed the world
Jack Wilkinson, president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, was stating the obvious at the Oxford Farming Conference.
However, it needed to be said, for the sake of the additional 1.5 billion people which world agriculture will be called on to feed, by doubling production between now and 2025.
Feeding the hungry has got off to a bad start, with stocks of cereals at 30 year lows, due to increased Asian and OPEC demand, increased demand for biofuel, and crop yields being reduced by drought in Australia and wet weather in Europe.
Prices have soared. Nevertheless, US and European winter crop plantings have only marginally increased, despite scrapping setaside in the case of Europe. Ireland may be the exception, with winter cropping estimated to be up 20%.
Elsewhere, it seems that grain scarcity doesn’t stimulate a farm production increase. Maybe prices need to go higher, to offset fuel and fertiliser price rises. Maybe the exodus of young people from farming has left an ageing workforce unable to respond to the price signals.
That is likely to be the case in China, India, Southeast Asia and Brazil — now industrialising, having been primarily agrarian until recently, overwhelmingly committed to farming to feeding their population booms of the latter half of the 20th century. Maybe too much land is now protected by environmental laws, or too expensive for farming within range of cities. Or farmers may be demoralised by climate change, the biofuel boom, livestock diseases, economic instability and market concentration — some of the challenges listed by Canadian arable and beef farmer Mr Wilkinson at the Oxford Conference. He said the shot in the arm they need is to get organised, that they could only meet the needs of a changing world if they are organised, empowered and supported to overcome challenges. He said a rural revolution is needed to bring the financial boost in world agriculture down to the small-scale and poorest farmers.
Changes are needed in competition policy, which he said is mainly written to protect the consumer, not the farmer. Farmers must be organised to work collectively through marketing structures and co-ops. If farmers were not empowered in the market place, they would lose the benefits of the present boom in agriculture to others.
