Johan Swinnen, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute, promoted a multilateral approach to address growing issues of food insecurity during the CALS speaker series.
Swinnen is also the managing director of systems transformation at CGIAR. He detailed the status of global food security with respect to conflict, climate change and COVID-19.
In 2013, economists and policy experts saw massive decreases in food insecurity and poverty worldwide and expected the downward trend to continue, Swinnen explained. In the late 2010s, however, poverty rates started increasing again.
The recent increase in poverty is “not due to COVID-19 or to the Ukraine crisis, ecetera,” Swinnen said. “It’s really something structural that changed before that and was reinforced by COVID-19.”
The global food system cannot be solved by any single intervention, he said. Malnutrition is caused by low income and limited access to vital micronutrients. 30% of energy consumption and 20% of greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to food production, according to Swinnen.
Swinnen used figures to demonstrate correlations between undernourished populations and multiple other factors, implying that undernourishment may be related to increased variation in temperatures, decreased GDP growth and forcible displacement across the globe..
Swinnen also mentioned that COVID-19 has renewed structural burdens, disproportionately affecting poverty and nutrition for specific populations. He shared that Sub-Saharan Africa has 15% more people in poverty and South Asia has 27% more since the outbreak of COVID-19. Women, children, migrants and rural residents are also affected at higher rates, according to Swinnen.
“We are now looking at what’s generally described as a food system’s transformation,” Swinnen said. “So we need to address a whole set of constraints and also a whole set of objectives that we need to take into account going forward.”
Swinnen believes that economists and policy experts should consider much more than a simple headcount of those living in poverty. With years of price variation for food, fuel and fertilizer, he thinks it may be time to start considering price shocks as a ‘new normal.’
Current issues like recovery from COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine may be temporary, but their timelines and long-lasting impacts are difficult to predict.
“You have to think of it as not one policy or two policies, but one set of different things you need to do,” Swinnen said in regards to addressing current issues.
According to Swinnen, if price shocks cannot be prevented, policy choices must focus on resilience to reduce their negative effects. He focused on three areas to reduce the impacts of price shocks.
Climate change mitigation and reduced reliance on greenhouse gases could help limit how frequently and how intensely price shocks occur. Early-warning systems could also assist in anticipating shocks and being informed about when they happen.
Safety nets like insurance and social welfare could be effective at absorbing price shocks and limiting negative impacts at the household level.
“This is really a broad policy framework that you need to have,” Swinnen said.
Swinnen also believed reform of the food system couldn’t address only one aspect.
“(Food, fuel and fertilizer prices) are actually remarkably correlated,” Swinnen said. “The extent of correlations is very strong, surprisingly strong.”
While consumers at large only interact with food prices, both fuel and fertilizer are vital inputs for agricultural production. In the U.S., only 14.5 cents per dollar spent by a consumer are paid to farmers.
Fertilizer in particular has been affected by current events. Russia alone is responsible for 15-20% of the global fertilizer export market in three primary fertilizer nutrients, Swinnen said. As a result of the war in Ukraine, fertilizer prices have increased.
One attendee contested Swinnen’s talking points, saying that they know how long the current issue will persist: forever.
They argued that the increase in consumption and population have created an impossible situation to solve and that there are simply too many people on the planet to effect positive change.
Despite the current issues of climate change, price volatility and increasing poverty, Swinnen instead turned to hope.
“If we were able to have this success from 1990, roughly, to 2015, why can we not do it again?” Swinnen said.
Katie Hettinga can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @katie_hettinga