By Ramesh Jaura
BONN, May 26 (IPS) - Agricultural experts from industrialised and developing countries have pledged themselves to "a food-secure world for all."
At gatherings hosted this week by the German federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ) in the eastern town of Dresden, they resolved to "reduce poverty, hunger, and malnutrition by sustainably increasing the productivity of resources in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries."
This, they said in the so-called 'Dresden Declaration', would be done through scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, policy, and environment.
The gatherings, that concluded Friday, took place less than six months after Germany deputy Minister for Economic Co-operation and Development, Uschi Eid, declared 2000 a year of "global food security."
Eid called upon the participants to help improve the concepts and instruments of food security so that they prove to be effective in crisis situations.
"Food security means more than food aid - it involves combating the structural causes of hunger and malnutrition," Eid told international agricultural experts.
The participants are working with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
Rudolf Buntzel-Cano from the German Evangelical Development Service (EED) said the Dresden meetings had taken place at a point in time when the agricultural production was lagging behind the global food requirements.
"At the same time, governments around the world and international donors are reducing the grants for research aimed at combating hunger and poverty," Buntzel-Cano said.
According to GFAR Co-ordinator Reinhold Ernst, one of the two meetings - the Global Forum - sought to mobilise the world scientific community in its effort to alleviate poverty, to increase food security and to promote the sustainable use of natural resources.
GFAR was initiated in 1996 by the world's largest public agricultural research organisation, the CGIAR, affiliated to the World Bank.
Ernst said representatives of "stakeholders" of agricultural research are involved in the GFAR. They include international agricultural research organisations, research bodies in the North - Advanced Research Institutes (ARIs) - and in the South - the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS), donors, private sector, non-governmental organisations, and farmers' organisations.
The other gathering titled 'Charting the CGIAR's Future - A New Vision for 2010' that concluded Friday, recommended a new strategy.
It stated: "Recognising that the determinants of poverty are complex, the CGIAR's operational goal will be to contribute to lifting as many as possible of the world's 1.2 billion absolute poor out of poverty by means of research and research-related activities in areas within the CGIAR's comparative advantage."
The compelling need for urgent action was underlined in a new study by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
"Nearly 40 percent of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded, which could undermine the long-term productive capacity of those soils," according to scientists at the IFPRI, who carried out the most comprehensive mapping to date of global agriculture.
The evidence compiled by IFPRI suggests that soil degradation has already had significant impacts on the productivity of about 16 percent of the globe's agricultural land.
Combining the new map of agricultural land with existing expert assessments of soil degradation suggests that almost 75 percent of crop land in Central America is seriously degraded, 20 percent in Africa (mostly pasture), and 11 percent in Asia.
"The results of this innovative mapping raise all kinds of red flags about the world's ability to feed itself in the future," said Ismail Serageldin, World Bank Vice President for Special Programs and CGIAR Chairman.
IFPRI is one of 16 research centres that comprise the CGIAR.
"The economic and social effects of agricultural land degradation have been much more significant in developing countries than in industrialised countries," said Serageldin.
"These are precisely the regions where the greatest growth in food production will be needed, but where all indications are that achieving such growth will be the most difficult."
The analysis of the world's agro-ecosystems comes from satellites, maps, and tabular data sets. IFPRI's scientists have undertaken this project in partnership with the World Resources Institute (WRI) as part of a larger international initiative, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a comprehensive multi-year, scientific assessment that will be launched this year.
The agro-ecosystem report is one of five in-depth studies supporting results which will be highlighted in "World Resources 2000-2001, People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life." This flagship publication, to be released in September 2000, will sound the alarm about widespread decline in nearly all the world's ecosystems.
"Halting the decline of the planet's life-support systems may be the most difficult challenge humanity has ever faced," said Jonathan Lash, WRI President.
"The key is to provide people with information and incentives to think about the capacity of ecosystems to produce not only goods, such as food and timber, but also critical services, such as water purification, carbon storage, and bio-diversity."
According to Dr. Per Pinstrup-Andersen, IFPRI Director General, these threats to the world's food production capacity are compounded by three disturbing trends:
- 1.5 billion additional people will be on the planet by 2020, almost all in poorer developing countries;
- the natural fertility of agricultural soils is generally declining;
- and it is increasingly difficult to find productive new land to expand the agricultural base.
The IFPRI Global Study, presented simultaneously in Dresden and Washington on May 21 warned: "Competition for water will further magnify constraints to food production. While inputs and new technologies may succeed in offsetting these declining conditions for the foreseeable future, the challenge of meeting human needs may grow ever more difficult over longer periods of time.":
