Research News
DFID's Chris Whitty Opens Global Summit: Food Security in a Climate of Change
DFID's Chief Scientist Chris Whitty and Mr Gao Hongbin, Vice Minister, Ministry of Agriculture, People's Republic of China provided the keynote addresses to the CABI Global Summit: 'food security in a climate of change' currently taking place in London (19-21 October).
Chris Whitty spoke frankly about the challenges and opportunities for food security over the coming decades. The issues surrounding food security are underpinned by a complex interaction of economic volatility, growing populations, and of course the impact of climate change. Linked to the issue of food security are rising food prices driven by the increasing demand for food, rising fuel prices, and inappropriate agricultural policies among other factors.
Whitty acknowledged that policy-makers are often presented with policy choices that favour one form of action over another. This is seen as unhelpful to rational decision making. It should not be a case of having to choose between, for instance, funding new technologies or investment in better delivery. The key to positive outcomes is to do both. There is a need to develop a better understanding of complex and linked resources, and base policy action on clear and robust evidence.
Underlying this need is the fact that existing technologies and methods have an impact well below their potential because they do not get to the people that need them the most. There is a need to intervene in food networks at every level to ensure that knowledge and technology is passed on appropriately.
The challenges will not stand still. New environmental challenges, new diseases and changes in populations quickly make new technologies outdated. This means innovative ideas and new technologies must be adapted into the policy-making process as soon as they come available. There is believed to be a current lag-time of around 25-30 years to get new technologies into practice in sub-Saharan Africa. This underlines the need for policy-makers to implement more flexible and up to date responses to issues associated with food security.
This message was reinforced by Mr Hongbin who described the food security programme developed in China over recent years, which has successfully solved the problem of feeding 1.3 billion people. China's success rests on substantial increased investment in rural infrastructure and public utilities, greater policy support of agricultural production and by pressing for greater innovation, particularly through the improvement of genetic resources to improve land productivity. These steps have allowed China to succeed in feeding 21% of the world’s population with only 9% of the world's arable land.
This precedence suggests that the world can produce sufficient food for its rapidly growing population, but only if the appropriate action is taken to provide flexible policy responses to the complex and linked resources that underpin food security.
More information
- Read Chris Whitty's presentation in full
- Read the Conference Summary
- Read the SciDev.Net article: Technical fixes needed to stem crop losses
- Visit the website for the CABI Global Summit for more information, including speaker biographies and abstracts.
- Sign up to the CABI Blog: 'hand picked and carefully sorted' to keep up-to-date with what is being said. The following blogs have been posted:
Better farm productivity is not enough - We need to "talk more about losing less"
Food Security - helping to achieve MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger