Overview of the world food situation: food security: new risks and new opportunities

This speech by IFPRI Director General Joachim von Braun was prepared for the Annual General Meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (Nairobi, October 29, 2003). He argues that an increasingly global food and agriculture system requires accelerated global investment in public goods, including agricultural research and highlights the role of CGIAR as an organisation which is combining technology, natural resource management, and institutional innovations to produce international agricultural research with a focus on people and poverty.

The speech discusses the risks associated with agriculture and uncertainties that have significant implications for food security and livelihoods which are grouped under the headings:

• Adverse resource management and technology interactions, including rapid climate change; mismanagement of water systems, soils, and forests; collapse of marine fisheries; and new plant and animal diseases.
• Health-related food crises, including further spread of HIV/AIDS, the onset of other epidemics that have significant direct or indirect implications for agriculture, and the expansion of unhealthy diets.
• Governance and policy crises, including civil unrest and wars, a decline in the quality of governance related to food and agriculture, erratic changes in the world trade system, and the collapse of small farms.

It concludes that for real progress toward sustainable food security to be achieved:

• the governments of developing and OECD countries alike must back up their new declarations and promising policy initiatives on food security with resources and policy action
• civil society organizations in developing countries must get the support to play their critical roles
• agribusiness and the food industry must get the incentives to invest in poor people