Tanzania: Tensions over Genetically Modified Crops | Pulitzer Center

Published October 17, 2013
FINNIGAN WA SIMBEYE
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — A typical Tanzanian family will not pass a day without eating ugali — a stiff porridge made from ground corn, somewhat like Italian polenta.

Would Tanzanians eat ugali if the flour came from genetically modified corn?

Tension over that question is tearing at the country, with scientists insisting the answer should be “yes,” while GM foes say, “No way!”
Most of Tanzania’s corn is grown by smallholder farmers who typically plant seeds from traditional varieties and rely on natural rains. But the rains have failed them. The country’s 44 million people suffered severe droughts in 2003, 2005 and 2011. Millions needed food handouts to survive.
Beyond drought, local scientists say this basic crop also is threatened by climate change, disease and pests.
Genetic modification could help overcome those problems, scientists say. The technology has been adopted by more than 17 million farmers in other countries.
Under current government regulations, though, Tanzanian scientists cannot conduct field trials with GM plants. And farmers cannot cultivate any crop developed with the new biotechnology.
Alois Kullaya is one of several local scientists who are urging the government to relax the regulations. He is principal agricultural research officer at Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute and also Tanzanian coordinator of a research consortium called Water Efficient Maize for Africa.
“We have finished confined laboratory trials from genetically modified seeds in 2009, but until now we can’t conduct field trials because of restrictive liability regulations, which means that all this research goes to waste,” Kullaya said....

@ Tanzania: Tensions over Genetically Modified Crops | Pulitzer Center:

H/T Mark Lynas on Twitter

Global Poverty Rates and Economic Growth -- Growth (not Greed) is Good

Roger Pielke's blog highlights an important insight: Growth is good:
Quote:
The figure above comes from a recent, excellent paper by Martin Ravallion, The Idea of Antipoverty Policy, which shows a dramatic acceleration in the reduction of global poverty since 1950,

Ravallion makes two observations based on the graph (of which he notes, "Neither observation has been made before to my knowledge"):

The middle of the 20th century saw a marked a turning point in progress against poverty globally. Figure 2 plots two series for the $1 a day poverty rate, from Bourguignon and Morrisson (2000) and Shaohua Chen and Ravallion (2010). There is a long list of data problems in these sources and their comparability. However, these are the best estimates we have, and the comparability problems are unlikely to alter two key observations from Figure 2: First, the incidence of extreme poverty in the world is lower now than ever before. While there have been calls to end extreme poverty at various times during the last century or so, they are surely now more credible than ever. Second, the time around 1950 saw a turning point, with significantly faster progress against extreme poverty.

More @ Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Global Poverty Rates and Economic Growth:

The challenges of food security and sustainability

At the Prospect Round Table Dec 10:

...“Markets and trade are the only way we are going to feed the world” said Alfred Evans, CEO of Climate Change Capital. “But you need an effective system with good price signals and policies to make them more effective. There is a policy deficit and a lack of link-up between global organisations.”

“International negotiations are failing across different fronts,” said Professor Sandy Thomas, Head of Foresight at the UK Government Office for Science. “National governments may be aware of these problems but there isn’t a lot of political appetite for this issue and voters aren’t demanding their governments act.”

But what is the scale of the problem, both internationally and at a country specific level? Professor Sir Gordon Conway, the agricultural ecologist who heads the Agriculture for Impact Programme at Imperial College London said one of the big demands would be for meat-based diets (from the burgeoning middle classes of developing countries). Extensive use of fertiliser, rising oil prices, and the fact that we are running out of good land and water pointed to a massive crisis in which the poor would suffer.

The problem of a lack of understanding about the systemic connection between water, food and climate was raised by James Cameron, the vice-chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Measuring Sustainability and chairman of CCC. His concern was a lack of long term thinking— “a scarce resource” —when it came to investment. He was worried too about the inability to value “public goods” or to change the value of assets. For instance land liable to be made infertile by flooding was a “stranded asset” which was not reflected in its price.

Climate change, and its effect on food production, was high on the agenda too. Kevin Watkins, the executive director of the Overseas Development Institute, said that there was a “total disconnect” between climate discussions and food production. A three degree rise in temperature would be unthinkable. He asked whether we wanted cheap energy or our world leaders to get to grips with climate change.

He spoke of the climate change “adaptation apartheid” between rich and poorer countries. The last big drought in the US led to insurance pay outs of $17bn to farmers which is more than all the contributions to sorting out climate change. He illustrated the point: “We have the Thames barrier while in Bangladesh they teach the children how to swim.”

Red tape also hinders investment in agricultural infrastructure, a point made by Stewart Lindsay, the director of sustainability and global corporate affairs at Bunge Ltd, the global agribusiness and food company. He said that approximately $60 trillion of investment was required in global infrastructure between 2013-2030. We need to maximise the efficiency of agriculture by connecting infrastructure—roads, rail and water systems. He said that the amounts involved were beyond the private sector and that governments must support large infrastructure initiatives as well as reduce bureaucracy. Storage infrastructure is often inadequate in developing countries causing sizeable losses to producers and excessive costs which lessen competitiveness in the market.

On the issue of diet, the panel agreed that the possibility of cultural change or “demand suppression” is important but will be hard to achieve. Professor Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, London said “If we are going to have a meat based diet then there will not be enough food. We need to start thinking differently about the sorts of food we eat and the west is going to have to eat less and waste less.” On food waste, Robert Gladwin, the head of sustainability at BASF said the one in three calories of food was wasted, a crisis in production. Viki Hird, senior campaigner on land use, food and water security at Friends of the Earth, questioned whether there was a crisis in production, citing the huge waste in the system...

Prospect Blog @The challenges of food security and sustainability:

Agriculture Development and Nutrition Security Special PNAS USA Feature

From Joonkoo Lee, Gary Gereffi, and Janet Beauvais, Global value chains and agrifood standards: Challenges and possibilities for smallholders in developing countries doi:10.1073/pnas.0913714108

Agriculture Development and Nutrition Security Special Feature - Perspective

C. Peter Timmer
Behavioral dimensions of food security
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12315-12320; published ahead of print September 20, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913213107

Abstract
The empirical regularities of behavioral economics, especially loss aversion, time inconsistency, other-regarding preferences, herd behavior, and framing of decisions, present significant challenges to traditional approaches to food security. The formation of price expectations, hoarding behavior, and welfare losses from highly unstable food prices all depends on these behavioral regularities. At least when they are driven by speculative bubbles, market prices for food staples (and especially for rice, the staple food of over 2 billion people) often lose their efficiency properties and the normative implications assigned by trade theory. Theoretical objections to government efforts to stabilize food prices, thus, have reduced saliency, although operational, financing, and implementation problems remain important, even critical. The experience of many Asian governments in stabilizing their rice prices over the past half century is drawn on in this paper to illuminate both the political mandates stemming from behavioral responses of citizens and operational problems facing efforts to stabilize food prices. Despite the theoretical problems with free markets, the institutional role of markets in economic development remains. All policy instruments must operate compatibly with prices in markets. During policy design, especially for policies designed to alter market prices, incentive structures need to be compatible with respect to both government capacity (bureaucratic and budgetary) and empirical behavior on the part of market participants who will respond to planned policy changes. A new theoretical underpinning to political economy analysis is needed that incorporates this behavioral perspective, with psychology, sociology, and anthropology all likely to make significant contributions.

behavioral economics, structural transformation, food crises, world rice market


Joonkoo Lee, Gary Gereffi, and Janet Beauvais
Global value chains and agrifood standards: Challenges and possibilities for smallholders in developing countries
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12326-12331; published ahead of print December 13, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913714108

Ted London and Ravi Anupindi
Using the base-of-the-pyramid perspective to catalyze interdependence-based collaborations
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12338-12343; published ahead of print April 11, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.1013626108

Michael Kevane
Gendered production and consumption in rural Africa
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12350-12355; published ahead of print May 4, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.1003162108

Daniel Maxwell, Luca Russo, and Luca Alinovi
Constraints to addressing food insecurity in protracted crises
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12321-12325; published ahead of print June 6, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913215108

Prabhu L. Pingali
Green Revolution: Impacts, limits, and the path ahead
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12302-12308; published ahead of print July 23, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.0912953109

Laurette Dubé, Prabhu Pingali, and Patrick Webb
Paths of convergence for agriculture, health, and wealth
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12294-12301; published ahead of print July 23, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.0912951109

Thomas Reardon, C. Peter Timmer, and Bart Minten
Supermarket revolution in Asia and emerging development strategies to include small farmers
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12332-12337; published ahead of print December 6, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.1003160108

Global standards and local knowledge building: Upgrading small producers in developing countries
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12344-12349; published ahead of print June 13, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.1000968108

Ross A. Hammond and Laurette Dubé
A systems science perspective and transdisciplinary models for food and nutrition security
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12356-12363; published ahead of print July 23, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913003109

Patrick Webb and Steven Block
Support for agriculture during economic transformation: Impacts on poverty and undernutrition
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12309-12314; published ahead of print December 20, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913334108


@ Special Issue 2012