Agriculture: Royal Society Report

My Lords, I too, must declare an interest as a farmer, and a trustee of the Lawes Agricultural Trust at Rothamsted. I focus my remarks on the crucial agricultural research that that goes on in this country but which is for the benefit of farmers in the developing world, notably Africa. The UN believes that by 2030, one in every three births will be in Africa, and that by 2050, every other birth in the world will occur there. Although the political instability that goes with food shortage should be avoided—I, too, am an optimist—in most of the rest of the world, the disaster that is waiting to happen in Africa is sure to spill over and affect us all, unless we now redirect our efforts to reinvigorate African agriculture. Most African farmers, 70 per cent of whom are women, are struggling to enter into commercial farming. Indeed, how can a lady farmer in Africa invest in irrigation or crop storage—two very important missing pieces of the jigsaw needed for African agriculture—when she cannot establish ownership or rights to her land? What is the point of her paying for modern seeds, even if they have the potential to triple her production, when she says, "What do I do with the surplus when I have fed my family and my village?". There are no local markets. There is no market infrastructure. There are few roads. A village with surplus might be only 60 miles away from a village with famine. Only last year, in 2008, northern Tanzania was short of maize, while southern Tanzania had a surplus, but it was easier and cheaper to ship maize in from abroad than to transport it from the south to the north of the country. However, there is huge potential for agricultural growth in Africa. It has abundant resources and 12 times the land area of India, with only half as many people to feed. Tanzania, for instance, reckons that it is using only 23 per cent of its arable land. We need an agricultural revolution to take Africa out of poverty. Asia has shown that it can be done. In the 1970s and 1980s, Asian Governments kick-started their green revolution by spending 15 per cent—sometimes more—of their budget on agriculture. For instance, that allowed Vietnam to turn itself from being a net importer of rice into being the second largest exporter of rice in the world. It allowed China to take 400 million people out of poverty by focusing on smallholder agriculture. Always, agriculture is the key. The World Bank estimates that a 1 per cent increase in agricultural GDP in Africa reduces poverty by four times as much as a 1 per cent increase in non-agricultural GDP. Yet donor countries spend less than 5 per cent of ODA on agriculture. The UK is one of the worst offenders. Our aid to sub-Saharan Africa has declined by 30 per cent since 1997. There are numerous examples where research and extension have worked. For instance, the introduction of Mosaic disease-resistant cassava varieties into West Africa during the 1980s is estimated to have contributed to feeding an additional 29 million people in the region on an ongoing basis. That is but one example of many. It is vital that we continue to provide the science to enable us to repeat such breakthroughs. However, the main point that I want to make today, which echoes the message of the Reaping the Benefits report, to which other noble Lords have referred, is that any renewed investment in R&D is completely useless unless it is translated into work on farms and in communities. The point is that knowledge transfer is a two-way process. It is a partnership between growers and scientists. If the link between the two is broken, everyone is wasting their time. Blue-sky research with no bearing on the growers’ ability to produce is pointless. We used to have a revered reputation for agricultural extension in Africa, which we are losing. We were way ahead of the rest of the field, but DfID now talks about not having "a competitive advantage" in agriculture, which, frankly, is meaningless nonsense. Modern seeds and fertilisers could already triple production on many farms if only the lady farmer could find the training and finance package from her local government. Does that need a competitive advantage in agriculture? She could bring money to her village if only she could find storage for her crop and the means to market it and transport it away. Does that need a competitive advantage in agriculture? She could invest in her own land—for example, in irrigation—if only she were allowed to own it. Does that need a competitive advantage in agriculture? Focusing on agriculture does not require DfID to have agricultural expertise; it is about helping African Governments across a variety of departments to invest in a range of rural infrastructure, without which most of our agricultural research and extension will go to waste. I believe that there are serious political dangers ahead if we do not invest in agriculture in Africa. Our foreign policy and overseas aid must be targeted at ensuring that our scientists can bring their research and solutions to bear on these problems.