Facing alternative futures: prospects for and paths to food security in Africa

"Food security in Africa has substantially worsened since 1970. Although the proportion of malnourished individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa has remained in the range of 33–35 percent since around 1970, the absolute number of malnourished people in Africa has increased substantially with population growth, from around 88 million in 1970 to an estimate of over 200 million in 1999–2001. Yet this discouraging trend need not be a blueprint for the future. New research from IFPRI shows that the policy and investment choices of African policymakers and the international development community can make an enormous difference for Africa's future agricultural production and food security. By modeling the results of a number of different policy scenarios in Africa through the year 2025, we show that the number of malnourished children, one important indicator of food security, could rise as high as 41.9 million or fall as low as 9.4 million. These scenarios, therefore, shed light on the effectiveness of various policies and investments in assuring a food-secure future for Africa.' from TextFood insecurity, Forecasting, Agricultural productivity, Human capital, Malnutrition in children, Impact model,

Looking ahead: long-term prospects for Africa's agricultural development and food security

"Sub-Saharan Africa is the only developing region in the world where food insecurity has worsened instead of improved in recent decades. In this discussion paper, Mark W. Rosegrant, Sarah A. Cline, Weibo Li, Timothy B. Sulser, and Rowena A. Valmonte-Santos show that this discouraging trend need not be a blueprint for the future. The research contained in this discussion paper was conducted in preparation for the IFPRI 2020 Africa conference “Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020: Prioritizing Actions, Strengthening Actors, and Facilitating Partnerships,” held in Kampala, Uganda, April 1–3, 2004. The authors examine the implications of several different policy scenarios based on IFPRI's International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT). This model, developed at IFPRI in the early 1990s, has been continually updated to incorporate more food sectors and geographic regions. In this paper, the authors use IMPACT to assess the consequences of a wide range of policy and investment choices for Africa, including a business as usual scenario (continuation of current policy and investment trends through 2025), a pessimistic scenario (declining trends in key investments and in agricultural productivity), and a vision scenario (improving trends in investments and hence in agricultural productivity and human capital), as well as scenarios for more effective use of rainfall in agriculture, reduced marketing margins, and three different scenarios for trade liberalization. The wide variation in results reveals how much these choices will matter. For example, the number of malnourished children under five years old in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2025 is projected to be 38.3 million under business as usual, 55.1 million under the pessimistic scenario, and 9.4 million under the vision scenario. It is our hope that this research will clarify the steps needed to help stimulate the actions contributing to approaching the vision scenario. " From Foreword by Joachim von BraunImpact model, Food insecurity, Forecasting, Agricultural productivity, Human capital, Malnutrition in children,

Climate Change and Asian Agriculture

Asian and global agriculture will be under significant pressure to meet the demands of rising populations, using finite and often degraded soil and water resources that are predicted to be further stressed by the impacts of climate change. In addition, agriculture and land use change are prominent sources of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Fertilizer application, livestock rearing, and land management affect levels of GHG in the atmosphere and the amount of carbon storage and sequestration potential. Therefore, while some impending climatic changes will have negative effects on agricultural production in parts of Asia, and especially on resource-poor farmers, the sector also presents opportunities for emission reductions. Warming across the Asian continent will be unevenly distributed, but will certainly lead to crop yield losses in much of the region and subsequent impacts on prices, trade, and food security—disproportionately affecting poor people. Most projections indicate that agriculture in South, Central, and West Asia will be hardest hit.

The Philippines energy future and low-carbon development strategies

This paper presents an assessment of alternative, long-term energy supply and low-carbon strategies for the Philippine power sector from 2014 to 2040 using TIMES model. It examines the potential contribution of renewable energy to diversify the Philippine energy supply-mix to meet future electricity demands. The reference scenario compares the impact of four alternative policy goals: (1) carbon tax, (2) targeted renewable-based power generation, (3) limited coal share in supply-mix, and (4) renewables subsidy. The reference scenario shows a significant increase of the share of coal-based power generation and import dependency of fossil-fuel increases from 227 PJ in 2016 to 1073 PJ in 2040. The model results for the alternative policy scenarios show a large potential for renewable energy-based power generation. The alternative policy options show a significant decrease of import dependency in the energy supply-mix for power generation. Most alternative policy scenarios project a higher total system cost, with the exception of the subsidy scenario. System cost increases only 2.6% in the renewables target scenario relative to the reference scenario. However, long-term benefits from investing in the alternative policy options would need to be considered, including diversification of energy supply-mix, improved energy security, and progress toward a low-carbon society

Green growth strategy: The economywide impact of promoting renewable power generation in the Philippines

This study assesses the economywide impact of promoting renewable power generation by targeting a 50 percent share of renewables in energy production by 2040. Using a novel approach by linking a bottom-up energy model with a top-down economywide model, we found that increasing the share of renewables in the power sector could slightly slow down the industrialization process and reduce economic growth. Implementing this policy, however, would allow the country to reduce carbon emissions by 65 million tons in 2040 and improve energy security. The health co-benefit is estimated to reach up to 324 billion Philippine pesos (PHP), which levels the welfare loss. Receiving foreign financial inflow as a compensation for reducing carbon emissions could drive the economy into Dutch disease, shifting more economic activities into the nontradable sector. Increasing total investment demand in the future as a policy response could potentially mitigate this effect and improve economic welfare by 155 billion PHP

Climate change: Impact on agriculture and costs of adaptation

"The Challenge The unimpeded growth of greenhouse gas emissions is raising the earth’s temperature. The consequences include melting glaciers, more precipitation, more and more extreme weather events, and shifting seasons. The accelerating pace of climate change, combined with global population and income growth, threatens food security everywhere. Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Higher temperatures eventually reduce yields of desirable crops while encouraging weed and pest proliferation. Changes in precipitation patterns increase the likelihood of short-run crop failures and long-run production declines. Although there will be gains in some crops in some regions of the world, the overall impacts of climate change on agriculture are expected to be negative, threatening global food security. Populations in the developing world, which are already vulnerable and food insecure, are likely to be the most seriously affected. In 2005, nearly half of the economically active population in developing countries—2.5 billion people—relied on agriculture for its livelihood. Today, 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas. This Food Policy Report presents research results that quantify the climate-change impacts mentioned above, assesses the consequences for food security, and estimates the investments that would offset the negative consequences for human well-being. This analysis brings together, for the first time, detailed modeling of crop growth under climate change with insights from an extremely detailed global agriculture model, using two climate scenarios to simulate future climate. The results of the analysis suggest that agriculture and human well-being will be negatively affected by climate change: * In developing countries, climate change will cause yield declines for the most important crops. South Asia will be particularly hard hit. * Climate change will have varying effects on irrigated yields across regions, but irrigated yields for all crops in South Asia will experience large declines. * Climate change will result in additional price increases for the most important agricultural crops–rice, wheat, maize, and soybeans. Higher feed prices will result in higher meat prices. As a result, climate change will reduce the growth in meat consumption slightly and cause a more substantial fall in cereals consumption. * Calorie availability in 2050 will not only be lower than in the no–climate-change scenario—it will actually decline relative to 2000 levels throughout the developing world. * By 2050, the decline in calorie availability will increase child malnutrition by 20 percent relative to a world with no climate change. Climate change will eliminate much of the improvement in child malnourishment levels that would occur with no climate change. * Thus, aggressive agricultural productivity investments of US$7.1–7.3 billion are needed to raise calorie consumption enough to offset the negative impacts of climate change on the health and well-being of children." from TextAdaptation, Agriculture, Climate change, Developing countries, food security,

Community-based fish culture in seasonal floodplains and irrigation systems

The overall objective of the project was to enhance fish production from seasonally flooding areas and irrigation systems using a collective approach to fish culture. The project sought to examine the institutions necessary to support community-approaches to fish culture in a range of social, cultural and economic conditions, in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Vietnam and Mali. Technical designs for fish culture were also tested, building on successes achieved in earlier trials in Bangladesh, with an emphasis on adapting the model to develop locally appropriate culture systems. The project showed that the model is able to generate important benefits for communities in Bangladesh, China and Mali, and may have the potential to so in other countries. However, it was found that introducing fish culture into complex and dynamic institutional contexts, whereby open access waters lie over private property required a range of social, environmental and economic conditions to be in place for the adoption and continuance of the fish culture model

Economic assessment and policy recommendations of fisheries development strategies in Vanuatu

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