Developing sustainable food security for all has been the key mandate of FAO since its founding. This mandate was reinforced by the World Food Summit in 1996 and its follow up meetings and instruments, such as the Right to Adequate Food.
Recognizing that there has been great progress towards this goal in the last 60 years, the 32nd Session of the Committee on World Food Security assessed the food situation in September 2006 and acknowledged that the World Food Summit target of halving the number of hungry people by 2015 will not be met; the number of undernourished has remained virtually unchanged since 1990-92, although there has been a reduction in the percentage of undernourished (FAO, 2006a).
Household and national food security are complex and complicated goals influenced by many factors such as technologies, human capacities, policies, prices, trade and infrastructural context. Demand for food is certain to increase with increasing population pressure and income, even though this demand and ability to supply the demand are not equal in all communities.
Indeed, today’s total global agricultural production is sufficient to feed the current world population and both necessary technologies and multi-lateral environmental agreements are available to help meet development and conservation needs.
However, hunger, poverty and environmental degradation persist even as concerns about global human security issues continue to increase. Moreover, the last decades provide uncompromising evidence of diminishing returns on grains despite the rapid increases of chemical pesticide and fertilizer applications (Between 1978 and 2003, statistical yearbooks clearly show the decrease of grain harvested per tonne of chemical fertilizers in China, decreasing from 34 to 10 while the chemical fertilizer index increased from 0.03 to 0.10. In Indonesia, paddy rice production steadily increased despite the removal of a distorting subsidy in 1986 that reduced national pesticide use by more than 50 per cent.
These examples show the importance of ecosystem services, such as soil nutrient cycling and pest predation, on agricultural productivity), resulting in lower confidence that these high input technologies will provide for equitable household and national food security in the next decades.
Overall, global cereal output is declining, mainly among the major producing and exporting countries (the ration of world cereal ending stocks for 2006/07 is forecast to fall to 19.4 per cent down from nearly 28 per cent at the beginning of this decade FAO, 2007).
FAO projections for the period of 1999 to 2030 estimate an increase of global agricultural production by 56 per cent, with arable land expansion accounting for 21 per cent of production growth in developing countries. For this same period, the share of irrigated production in developing countries is projected to increase from 40 to 47 per cent (FAO, 2006b).
Arable land expansion and large-scale irrigation may be a cause of concern with regards the loss of ecosystem services. Although the number of undernourished people will decline (from more than 850 million at present to about 300 million by 2050), high rates of poverty and food insecurity are expected to continue with the present models of food production and consumption, along with further natural resource degradation.
Seventy-five per cent of the world’s 1.2 billion poor live in rural areas of developing countries. They suffer from problems associated with subsistence production in isolated and marginal locations with low levels of technology. These subsistence and small holders livelihood systems are risk prone to drought and floods, crop and animal diseases and market shocks.
However they also possess important resilience factors associated with the use of family labour, livelihood diversity (non-farm activities account for 30 to 50 per cent of rural income) and indigenous knowledge that allow them to exploit risky environmental niches and to cope with crises. Pro-poor policies based on efficiency and employment generation associated with family farms can be expected to improve these household conditions.
Worldwide undernourishment is not explained only by a lack of food availability as several causes of hardship lie outside the agricultural sector. However, there is need to seek new solutions to address the problems posed by growing populations (and disparities) and environmental degradation through new paradigms for agriculture and food supply chains.
The Organic Agriculture Paradigm:
Organic agriculture is no longer a phenomenon of developed countries. It is now commercially practised in 120 countries, representing 31 million ha of certified croplands and pastures (~ 0.7 per cent of global agricultural lands and an average of 4 per cent in the European Union), 62 million ha of certified wild lands (for organic collection of bamboo shoots, wild berries, mushrooms and nuts) and a market of US$40 billion in 2006 (~ 2 per cent of food retail in developed countries).
Although difficult to quantify, non-certified organic systems (e.g. indigenous models that follow organic principles by intent or by default) of several million small farmers may represent at least an equivalent share in subsistence agriculture of developing countries.
Unlike legally protected labels, the term “organic agriculture” is used in this review in its broadest sense. Organic agriculture as a holistic production management system that avoids use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms, minimises pollution of air, soil and water, and optimizes the health and productivity of interdependent communities of plants, animals and people.
The term “agriculture” is used in its wider sense to include crop/livestock systems, organic aquaculture and organic harvesting of non-timber forest products. Agricultural “products” include food, fibres and medicinal and cosmetic raw-materials. Finally, “organic agriculture” is not just about production. It includes the entire food supply chain, from production and handling, through quality control and certification, to marketing and trade.
In the market place, the organic claim requires certification, and related products are distinguished by an organic label. Organic labels are obtained through third party certification and grower group guarantee systems, both of which provide valid verification of compliance with organic OFS/2007/5 3 standards.
Those farming systems that actively follow organic agriculture principles are considered organic, even if the agro-ecosystem or the farm is not formally certified organic. However, the non-use of external agriculture inputs does not in itself qualify a system as “organic”, especially if this results in natural resource degradation (such as soil nutrient mining). Therefore, organic agriculture includes both certified and non-certified food systems.
To provide clarity on the organic claim, organic agriculture is governed by detailed standards and lists of allowed and prohibited substances.
In addition, the organic community (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM)) has adopted four overriding principles for organic agriculture:
1. Principle of Health:
Organic agriculture should sustain and enhance the health of soil, plant- animal and human as one and indivisible.
2. Principle of Ecology:
Organic agriculture should be based on living ecological systems and cycles- work with them, emulate them and help sustain them.
3. Principle of Fairness:
Organic agriculture should build on relationships that ensure fairness with regard to the common environment and life opportunities.
4. Principle of Care:
Organic agriculture should be managed in a precautionary and responsible manner to protect the health and well-being of current and future generations and the environment.
These principles are currently being translated by IFOAM into international benchmark standards that will allow diverse pathways towards achieving organic agriculture objectives.
Organic agriculture can be described as “neo-traditional food system”, as it uses scientific investigation to improve traditional farming practices anchored in multi-cropping systems, natural food preservation, and storage and risk aversion strategies that have traditionally secured local food needs.
Lessons Learned in Hunger Reduction:
Taking Stock Ten Years after the World Food Summit (1996-2006) (FAO 2006) highlights:
1. Hunger reduction is necessary for accelerating development and poverty reduction; hunger perpetuates poverty and targeted interventions are needed to ensure access to food;
2. Agricultural growth is critical for hunger reduction, in the poorest countries, agricultural growth is the driving force of economies and combating hunger requires an expanded commitment to agriculture and rural development;
3. Technology can contribute, but under the right conditions (e.g. adapted to local conditions that favour small-scale producers and increase farm incomes);
4. Trade can contribute to hunger reduction and poverty alleviation but gains are neither automatic nor universal;
5. Public investment is essential for agricultural growth (e.g. infrastructure, research, education and extension);
6. Development assistance does not target the neediest countries and has declined compared with the levels of 1980s; and
7. Peace and stability are a sine qua non for hunger and poverty reduction. Protracted conflicts seriously undermine food security (FAO, 2006).
The FAO Special Programme for Food Security, launched as a pilot to promote food security development globally, today involves 105 countries, of which 33 are being scaled-up through national programmes.
Key lessons learned (1994-2006) include the following:
1. Water management is a limiting factor to better agriculture and livelihoods and the range of water technologies must also consider improved soil management and agro-forestry options for sustainable water supply.
2. Sustainable intensification of crops through organic agriculture can provide higher yields with a minimum dependence on external inputs but this requires linkage to markets and building marketing groups and farmers’ skills.
3. Diversification of income sources comes with improved management skills and access to new assets. Even, where markets are not strong, household nutrition levels can be improved with indigenous crops and home and school gardens.
4. People are central but their knowledge and organisational capacity must be improved to achieve better use of available resources or to identify new opportunities. Building community organisations includes marketing groups, savings groups, multipurpose cooperatives or contract farming of various types.