Attachments
PREFACE
Economic research on global food supplies has been always diverse and multidimensional. The role and potential of the food producing sectors, and the basic problems caused by the supply constraints, were issues which dominated research in the early parts of this century. This approach looked at the technological and economic capabilities of the agricultural sector, the rate of growth of the total and per capita agricultural output, and the changing structure and geographical patterns of agricultural and especially of food production. Research work, dealing with the growing population and tlhe increasing food needs has been developing and, in fact, oscillating between two extremes in the past decades: one which approached the issues from the perspectives of the changing effective demand for food; and the other from the aspects of the changing physical needs of the people. The first approach defined potential demand as a function of population and income growth. Researchers, looking at the future volume and patterns of the effective demand for food, devoted great attention to the changes of per capita income level, its impact on the share of food in the total consumer expenditure, and its changing composition towards a better and more balanced diet. The entitlement approach could be, in fact, in certain ways also related to the 'effective demand' concept, as a deliberate policy to reduce famine through increasing the income for the poor. The other extreme looked at the food supply issues basically from the perspective of the basic nutrition requirements of individuals in the given country, and combined it with the expected increase of population. It has become increasingly understood that, in public policies aiming at the achievement of sustainable food security, a complex and multi-dimensional approach is needed.
Research on the availability of food supplies for the growing global population has been an important component of the programme of the United Nations University, practically since its foundation. The research programmes of the UNU have dealt in the past with the problems of food supplies in global, regional and national perspectives and in different dimensions. The programmes in the past have also been related to some other issues, like population growth, nutrition norms, socially appropriate food and agricultural technologies, poverty, national policies and international responses. The research work revealed the role of different factors and the intensity of interlinkages between some of them. Most of the past research programmes were implemented in cooperation with some other national or international institutions. The tasks of research on the improvement of global food security have been formulated explicitly in the first 'Medium Term Perspectives' of the UNU, in 1982. The programme intended to identify the optimal mix of policies for food security on regional, national and local level, as well as the specific tasks of families and individuals. It focused, however, chiefly on nutrition issues. UNU/WIDER's programmes, in the past, have dealt in this context mainly with the causes and effects of famine, the interrelations between poverty and hunger, and with the search for national policies which could improve the food situation of the poor. The research programme focused mainly on South Asia. Other regions of the world were dealt with in a much less systematic way. Today Africa, and especially Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), is in a very difficult situation.
This study of Dr Siddig Salih, a Senior Research Fellow at UNU/WIDER, is an important policy-oriented contribution to the analysis and the solution of the problems of food security in a macroeconomic dimension. It is a part of a much broader research project, which he is conducting on 'Resource Mobilization and Sustainable Growth in Africa'. The food problems of Africa have had traditionally many specificities compared to other continents. The causes of the differences between Africa and other continents could be found of course in the natural environment - about 40 per cent of the continent is desert and another 40 per cent is savannah. Africa is about 21 per cent of the earth's surface, and the combined flow of rivers is about 7 per cent of the combined flow of the world's rivers to the oceans. Evaporation in many parts of the continent exceeds surface rainfall. Groundwater is naturally distributed in an extremely unequal fashion. Water pollution has become a very serious problem in many countries.
Research on African agriculture has revealed that human cultivation activities in Africa, especially during the second half of the 20th century, had a devastating effect on the life-sustaining capacity of the continent. Now as we approach the end of the 20th century the accumulation of the environmental problems has reached a critical level in many countries. The burning of the forests, the patterns of land use, and animal husbandry contributed to the deterioration of the soil. Population on the other hand increased very fast. It trebled between 1900-1960 and it will treble again within the 40 years between 1960-2000. By 2000, about 30 per cent of the poor in the developing world, close to 270 million people, will live in Africa (whereas in 1985 the figure was 15 per cent).
After the World Food Congress of 1974, which proposed global nutritional surveillance, there was meaningful progress in measurement and monitoring of food consumption patterns and the nutrition status of the African population. The methodology for surveillance of nutrition status and food availability has been refined on both national and family level by UNICEF, PAO and WHO. Crucial information has been gained on the basis of the regular monitoring, which also serves as a source for studies and for policy-formation related to food security within a number of African countries. According to the results of this monitoring and the research based on it, close to 40 per cent of the population of SSA is facing the realities of food insecurity.
Dr Salih's work draws attention to factors related to the shortcomings of agricultural policies, pricing, marketing, taxation, the neglect of investments in agrotechnology, infrastructure, research and extension. All these indicate that there is no single nor simple answer to the food security problem. Certain measures must be related to the environmental sustainability of agricultural output, others to the patterns of land tenure, or to agricultural policy incentives. All these require a better understanding of the realities, much sounder methodological foundations, and improved utilization of the accumulated knowledge in the given area.
This contribution of Dr Salih, which I recommend to the reader, with its macroeconomic orientation to the theoretical and practical analysis of the food security problems in Africa, is not only an interesting and useful piece of research on conceptual and measurement issues, but could also help in the formation of policies by facilitating a better understanding of the diverse and difficult African realities in a comparative way: the sources of a few success stories, the failures of certain policies, the degree of dependence on food aid, the need for new approaches in national policies and international actions, the traditional and new constraints, the evolving opportunities offered, for example, by regional cooperation in food supplies by improving the utilization of food, and maybe in the longer run the changes in the traditional eating habits. This latter option may become extremely important in the growing urban areas. The rapidly changing human settlement patterns in Africa open a new dimension also in the patterns of food supplies and consumption, making the improvement of food security an even more urgent task than in the past, predominantly rural, environment of the continent.
Mihaly Simai
Director, UNU/WIDER