Indo-Africa food for thought

India is hosting the 32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE) from August 2-7 in Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the chief guest and agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will be the guest of honour.

It is interesting to note that the last time India hosted the ICAE was in 1958 in Mysore, with then PM Jawaharlal Nehru as the chief guest. If one digs a little deeper, one finds that the ICAE has its roots in India. The founding president of the ICAE was Lord Elmhirst. Rabindranath Tagore cabled Elmhirst at Cornell in the spring of 1921, requesting to meet in New York. When they met, Tagore told Elmhirst about his concern for the villages around Santiniketan, north of Calcutta, which seemed to be on the verge of disintegration. He said that he had already acquired a farm at the village of Surul that could be used as a centre for assisting the villages, but he had not yet found an appropriate means of doing this. He invited Elmhirst to join him, which Elmhirst agreed to. He arrived about a year later, bringing with him a promise of financial help from Dorothy Straight, his wife-to-be.

Tagore made clear his attitude to the villages: “If I can free only one or two villages from the bonds of ignorance and weakness, there will be built, on a tiny scale, an ideal for the whole of India… Our aim must be to give these few villages complete freedom — education for all, the winds of joy blowing across the village, music and recitations going on, as in the old days… Our people need more than anything else a real scientific training that could inspire in them the courage of experiment and initiative of mind which we lack as a nation.”

From those roots, the ICAE has flourished over time. This is perhaps the biggest congregation of agricultural economists committed to the world’s food and nutritional security, which is becoming an increasing challenge in the face of climate change and geopolitical conflicts.

India’s success in ushering in the green revolution and the white (milk) revolution is well known, but the African continent is still struggling to overcome food shortages. Nutritional security, especially of children below the age of 5 years, still remains a challenge for India and Africa. Given that the African Union was invited to be a permanent member of the G20 during India’s presidency, it opens the gates for India and Africa to learn from the global developments in food and agriculture, and also promote South-South collaboration to overcome their food and nutritional security challenges.

In this context, the ICAE has a special session where the experiences of 20 major Indian states are compared with 15 African countries from FY05 to FY20. The two regions have a lot to share. The findings of this unique study show that first, high-debt service ratios result in lower agricultural spending relative to social protection. Second, African countries consistently underfund agriculture compared to Indian states, hampering productivity and efforts to reduce child malnutrition. Third, enhancing public spending on agricultural R&D and extension is crucial, as both regions under-invest in these high-return areas. Lastly, the study suggests reforming subsidies and reallocating resources to infrastructure and R&D to boost agricultural growth and improve child nutrition outcomes. Agricultural investment pays off in poverty reduction and saves on social spending. Food hand-outs have their role in food crises but must not impair growth and job creation in rural areas.

At the global level, in the fight against global hunger, the human and financial costs of complacency are alarming. As a result of recent developments — including growing conflicts, the climate crisis, and economic slowdowns — and the lack of concerted global action, achieving the United Nations’ established goal of Zero Hunger by 2030 seems increasingly infeasible. A new study from the University of Bonn, Germany, and Food and Agriculture Organization shows that it would require additional investments of $21 billion annually in agriculture and rural areas to end global hunger by 2040.

India’s leadership in the G20 last year and the follow-up by Brazil’s G20 presidency this year has had a good impact in setting the global agenda focusing on food security and ending hunger and presenting, for the first time, a strategy paper on bioeconomy for G20. This is now followed up by Brazil, and even more concretely with G20 nations. China too recently launched its bioeconomy strategy. It is commendable that India facilitated on-boarding the African Union in G20 during its presidency. It is now all the more important to get to the South-South collaboration. The developed countries of G20 can help to solve problems of food and nutritional security in the global South, by addressing climate change with support for resilience and by sharing science and innovation for food systems transformation. This is what Africa and South Asia, which together account for almost 3 billion people on this planet, can call for. The investment in climate resilience requires adaptation, mitigationm, and system transformation, the latter is facilitated by building the bioeconomy that would benefit from investments, including the Global Climate Fund. The sequence of G20 presidencies over 2022-25 shows indications of food system governance change — for Indonesia, India, Brazil, and next year, South Africa. A well-functioning global food system is mainly in the interest of the global South. It shows when they are in the driver’s seat.

We hope the Indian Prime Minister will take this agenda of the South in G20, and also provide dynamism in agri-food relations between Africa and India for the common good of almost one third of humanity.

Source: Financial Express