Agriculture repeats itself

Chapter 10 of my textbook on Food Policy for Developing Countries discusses nanotechnology and the fact that companies have a vested interest in ensuring that nanotech does not become the next great consumer scare. To do that, they need to make sure there is public debate, address consumer concerns early on, openly, forthrightly, and without condescension. Governments have an important role to play also in clarifying up front what standards will be required. Having a clear regulatory framework will encourage companies to invest and make it easier for them to demonstrate openly that their products meet safety standards. Here is M. Nestle agreeing on the scope of the problem and supplying some new reports on the subject.

There is a hefty debate brewing on which framework should be used to debate international agricultural policies. Doha is going nowhere slowly. At COP17 African countries had been reasonably unified, but are less so now that South Africa is calling for a greater environmental focus, with Ghana, Mali, and Tanzania prominent on the other side of the debate. One of the better arguments in the article:

Harjeet Singh of ActionAid International said that farmers with fewer than two hectares would only be able to make $3 a year at the present rate for carbon. He said he did not doubt the intentions of South Africa in "pushing for climate-smart agriculture as the answer to agriculture's problems" but added that "climate-smart agriculture could benefit South Africa a lot because your farmers are large-scale and carbon markets work for agriculture on the industrial scale".

Cote d'Ivoire has announced the (re?)formation of a state cocoa board that will take over most of the higher level market functions. The article seems to be written from a Ghanaian-centric viewpoint, worrying about how the CdI board will be able to compete with Ghana's and the likely impact on world prices [which will be lower, duh, because the civil war kept cocoa production and sales much lower].

And for variety, here is an interview with a Zimbabwean crocodile farmer. He has 10,000 crocs at a time, which he exports to Europe and Asia to sell their skins and meat. Among his major costs are importing the beasts to feed the crocs and trying to get enough eggs to keep the project at that size.

Stewards of the Earth

On GMOs, Roman Catholic bishops in Kenya are credited with "taking a new stance," and though it's only a small switch it's surprising to me how many people are against it. What's the new stance? If you're going to starve to death because of famine, it's really much better to eat genetically modified food than to die. ... I know, what was the policy before? Death before GMO? And there are people against this!? I think we need to call in Jon Stewart for this one.


On "over"population, I wish there were far more people arguing that babies are not the problem. Here is one argument from Yglesias:

It’s especially mistaken, I think, to try to look at children as a negative environmental externality. The beginning of wisdom here is to note that pollution isn’t “bad for the planet.” The planet is a gigantic roughly spherical chunk of rocks that can easily survive whatever level of greenhouse gas emissions or whatever else we care to pump into the atmosphere. The big picture ecological threat is a threat to human beings, and to the continued existence of ecological conditions that are conducive to human flourishing. Radical population reduction would sharply reduce the quantity of anthropogenic ecological impacts, but to what end? The goal needs to be to reconfigure human activity in order to make it sustainable over a longer time horizon. But sustained human flourishing requires both acceptable levels of ecological impact and also the continued production of new human beings.

On the lowered and falling prospects for jatropha, a new report by Wu and Kant addresses the Indian and Chinese largely failed plans:

It appears to be an extreme case of a well intentioned top down climate mitigation approach, undertaken without adequate preparation and ignoring conflict of interest, and adopted in good faith by other countries, gone awry bringing misery to millions of poorest people across the world. And it happened because the principle of “due diligence” before taking up large ventures was ignored everywhere. As climate mitigation and adaptation activities intensify attracting large investments there is danger of such lapses becoming more frequent ...

On the land grab, there is a new film out attacking the primary banana corporation in Cameroon. Among the interesting political economy issues:

"If you look at the congressman of the region, he is also the director of public relations of the company, the minister of trade of Cameroon is also president of the board of directors of the company."

An interesting paper showcases informal seed exchange between farmers for preserving seed diversity in Mozambique following a disaster. They argue food aid should include local seed varieties as part of the package to speed diversity recovery following a disaster.

The research established that nearly 90% of the farmers in the affected areas received cowpea relief seed immediately after the back-to-back calamities. Two years after, only one-fifth of the recipient farmers were still growing the seeds, while more than half sourced their seeds from markets. However, this did little in restoring cowpea diversity in the affected communities as the seeds bought by farmers from the market were mostly uniform, coming from other districts that grew just one or a few select varieties. 
On the other hand, about one-third of the affected farmers obtained seeds from friends and relatives living within the same or neighbouring localities to restock their farms – the same people that they have been exchanging seeds with prior to the disasters. This practice was the main reason why cowpea diversity was restored in these areas, the study showed.

Agricultural Subsidies in the US and new GM crops in Africa

The USDA “rural” subsidies aren’t so much rural as agricultural. Most people living in rural areas in the US are not farmers and don’t receive a penny through the USDA. What the USDA does fund, however, is highly skewed away from what most people would like in our agricultural subsidies:

The report found that the USDA spent nearly twice as much to subsidize just the 20 largest farms in each of 13 leading farm states examined as it invested in rural-development programs to create economic opportunity for the three million people living in 1,400 towns in the 20 most-struggling rural counties in the same 13 states.

Current policy encourages big farms to get even bigger. Fewer farmers means fewer people in rural America. As farms consolidate, the population in the countryside declines. As the farm population declines, small towns also decline as less farmers need supplies and services. Rather than sustaining rural life, the current farm commodity system subsidies the decline of rural life.

Interesting agricultural fact in Uganda: “A typical adult here eats at least three times his or her body weight in bananas each year…” The spread of banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) is threatening that.

 Kamenya, a powerfully built 37-year-old, was forced to dig up 1,500 of his 4,500 plants, destroy them, and allow the soil to lie fallow for at least six months. He also had to sterilise his farm tools. This eventually helped control the disease, though he still has problems…. In central Uganda, one of the main banana-growing regions, BXW hit up to 80% of farms, sometimes wiping out entire fields.

Local researchers are working on creating GM bananas to deal with BXW. Kamenya responded to the anti-GM food crowd: “Most of the people against this have choices. Somebody who is hungry does not have a choice. GM, organic or whatever – you have to feed the people."

At the end of the article, it even provides instructions for making typical Ugandan mashed banana (matooke). For comparison, I have about 2 bananas a day and still do not quite eat my weight in bananas every year. I do eat more than the Lovely and Gracious’ weight in bananas, though.

The first GM cassava seeds are out in Nigeria. CR41-10 was designed to resist cassava mosaic disease.

Five Second: Economist on the new food regime; Part 2

Comparing biofuels: “Brazil gets eight units of energy for every unit that goes into making it, so the process is relatively efficient and environmentally friendly. In contrast, American ethanol produces only 1.5 units of energy output per unit of input…”

Preventing waste: “Grain is often heaped on the ground and covered with a sheet: no wonder the rats get at it. Losses could be reduced by building new silos and better roads and providing more refrigeration, but those things are expensive. … If Western waste could be halved and the food distributed to those who need it, the problem of feeding 9 billion people would vanish.

“But it can’t. Western spoilage is a result of personal habit and law. Education or exhortation might make a difference, but the extent of waste is partly a reflection of prices: food is cheap enough for consumers not to worry about chucking it out, and prices seem unlikely to rise by enough to change that attitude.”

Introducing a dairy to western Kenya doubled farmer milk income. The article covers major improvements in seed availability, but infrastructure still lags behind seriously: “When India began its Green Revolution in the 1960s, it had 388km of paved roads per 1,000 sq km of land, and only about a quarter of its farmland was irrigated. Ethiopia now has just 39km of roads per 1,000 sq km, and less than 4% of its land is irrigated.”

A lengthy section also on livestock, on the difficulty of scaling up backyard operations and the economic value of moving to battery systems for instance. Did you know that “India has the world’s largest dairy herd”? “China raised it output of both eggs and milk tenfold.” The article is also bullish on genetically-assisted breeding. Not modification, but tagging genes to make the breeding process much faster.

Food policies

The price of tortillas in Mexico - The world price for maize is now at its highest since mid-08. "On December 22nd the economy ministry announced that it had bought maize futures, which it said should guarantee price and supply until the third quarter of 2011. It also increased a modest subsidy for corn millers."

Kosher Nation: "If they want to sell their product in the United States and they are not kosher, no one will buy it," points out Menachem Lubinsky.  "Coca-Cola won't buy it, Kellogg's won't buy it.  They'll be cut out of the market.  If you're in China or Thailand and you want to export, you have absolutely no choice but to seek out kosher certification."

From Wikileaks - US Ambassador to France in 2007 argued that the US should retaliate to encourage France to not enact a number of policies harmful to GMO interests.

Equine ethics - Horse lovers used to fight to shut down horse slaughter plants and they laregly succeeded. Owners with very old horses now ship the horses to Mexico for slaughter or strand them to await starvation. Both options involve a lot of pain for the horses and very poor conditions. So animal-welfare experts are beginning to consider other options.

Oh, and recent research has overturned the belief since the 1970s that you shouldn't eat mussels that haven't opened. What you should do is smell your mussels before you cook them to check for freshness and make sure you accurately measure the cooking time.

Big Bag o Blog Links to start the new year

China in Africa meets Micro-livestock: a new research program is introducing Chinese weaver ants to African fruit trees to combat pests. The researchers note that if this works, it is: green and organic, another source of income and jobs (rearing ants to sell farmers), and a viable protein source for people who don't mind eating ants.

Half of a charter city: Dijbouti, Ethiopia. The charter city part comes at the end of a lengthy musing on Ethiopian political history, wondering why democracy has taken so little hold.

A policy entrepreneur in India is using Facebook to increasing citizen access to government (ie - complain here) and improve information sharing between government sectors.

GMOs meet Florida orange juice to prevent an insect-borne bacteria which causes "greening" that wipes out the crop and the tree. "Most scientists who have studied the problem seem to agree that genetic modification, and the cultivation of trees resistant to the bacteria that causes "greening" disease, currently hold out the only real long-term hope of fighting it." That was the conclusion of a report sponsored by the Florida Department of Citrus and U.S. National Academy of Sciences

Obama is signing the food safety bill today ... but where will the money come from?

A defense of large incomes for people in finance: "As long as we have an economy that is increasingly dominated by “idea companies,” where the idea is really, really hard to discover and really easy to implement once discovered, finance will earn huge gains." (Response to the responses)

On the gains from having a single currency in the US. To Libertarians, this is called the transaction cost side of private currency creation.

Education spending and minorities: it's easier/more cost-effective to educate a homogeneous population. Tino shows that once you remove immigrant populations from the analysis, the relationship between education spending and outcomes is large and positive. It only looks like additional spending worsens or has no effect on outcomes in the full sample because it's much more expensive to educate more diverse groups, who have lower outcomes for a variety of reasons. Within minority groups too, there is evidence of the same positive effect. The 0-effect sometimes observed is an artifact of lumping groups together.

Which shipping company is best for your package? Depends on the type of package. USPS is gentlest with packages but worst with Express Mail. All carriers were less careful with Fragile boxes.

Lighter Side: What Not to Eat

How about Bacon Soda? In other bacon-related news, robot identifies human hand as bacon.

And why does it all matter?

Preparing the Way: GM Salmon

More than half of the GMO battle has been about perceptions, and in particular ethical perceptions. Are the companies performing this research doing it ethically? Their biggest PR mistake has been to dismiss customers' and NGOs' concerns about food safety, environmental impact, and the other issues. Wilde argues therefore that in order to give genetically modified salmon the best chance for acceptance, even GMO proponents should give recent criticisms due weight and deliberation.

Run some more tests and make it obvious that the companies are acting ethically with the best interests of the public at heart. Wilde cites the testimony of one GM opponent in particular for being reasonable and clear about what standards would need to be met, at a cost of putting off release for 1-2 years for additional food safety tests rather than 10. Doing further studies as a sign of good faith would make it much easier not only for the product but all future GM livestock and organisms.

Bt Cotton and Suicidies

IFPRI's press release is coy. It's 2 page policy brief is almost as coy, reveling in how widely publicized the study (done two years ago) was rather than what it found and how, but does tell us what the conclusion was and where to find the paper:

We first show that there is no evidence in available data of a “resurgence” of farmer suicides in India in the last five years. Second, we find that Bt cotton technology has been very effective overall in India. However, the context in which Bt cotton was introduced has generated disappointing results in some particular districts and seasons. Third, our analysis clearly shows that Bt cotton is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the occurrence of farmer suicides. In contrast, many other factors have likely played a prominent role. Nevertheless, in specific regions and years, where Bt cotton may have indirectly contributed to farmer indebtedness, leading to suicides, its failure was mainly the result of the context or environment in which it was planted.

Three from Marion Nestle

M. Nestle gives us the most recent data on the percent of US crops grown using genetically modified seed, and it's pretty high. She concludes " If you eat any processed foods containing corn, soybeans, or beet sugar, you should assume that they have a high probability of containing genetically modified ingredients.You don’t like this?  Choose organics!"

Another entry in the effects of price changes on nutrition: increasing soda prices by 35% in a hospital decrease consumption by 26%. Adding an education intervention reduced it an additional 18%, but had no effect if there wasn't also a price incentive. Or at least, that's what the abstract says. For some reason I'm having trouble accessing the article through Cornell....

You can submit comments on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans report that was recently released, but do so no later than July 8. The report, for political reasons, suffers from a lack of specificity on foods to avoid; it specifies foods to eat more of and nutrients to eat less, but as Nestle continues to point out, people eat food, not nutrients. She does, however, cheer the report's science section which summarizes and evaluates the best modern research on some 56 questions. A Cornell student compiled the myriad small pdfs into one large (700 page) document available for free here.

Some Thoughts from The Economist

Between 30k and 75k tons of food were stolen or wasted in Venezuela as Chavez aims to make Venezuela more food self-sufficient while simultaneously attacking the private enterprises - farmers and retailers - who make the system work. Food price inflation is up 21% in the first five months of the year, goods are becoming scarcer, food imports are up as productivity is declining, and nationalized businesses are suffering heavily.

Scientists are combining DNA from the Belgian blue cow (extra muscle, low fat) into trout to make them either much meatier with low fat or grow to marketable size at double speed. After ten years' petitioning, the FDA has finally given a clue how they will regulate the new transgenic fish, which The Economist unhelpfully labels Frankenfish.

11% of Kenya's GDP is transferred annually over cell phones. This is made possible by networks of agents that exchange currency for e-float and who then head to the bank as needed to exchange them and restore their balances.

Britain is looking to reduce aid to China and Russia while increasing flows to poorer countries. Mitchell, the new aid minister, is also looking to take on the "cash on delivery" model from the Centre for Global Development.

Buttonwood channels Hayek in explaining the 1997 Asian financial crisis to argue that "Without the boom, there would have been no need for a bust." "If governments keep punishing short-sellers during busts ... there will be fewer shorts around to temper the next boom."

And a fascinating comment from Charlemagne who compares Belgian politics to EU politics. In both cases there is a serious North/South split in attitudes about fiscal restraint and wealth transfer policies. But "this is not just a fight about money... For voters to consent to transfers of wealth, they must feel that the recipients are democratically accountable to them. ... Germany's focus on discipline is arguably an attempt to fix a democratic deficit." Intriguing.

All from last week's copy, subscription required.