Can agricultural biotechnology help to reduce hunger and increase food
security in developing countries ?
In the public debate about biotechnology in general (and genetically
modified food in particular), it has been argued by different parties that
biotechnology either will or will not help to reduce hunger and increase
food security in developing countries. The aim of this, the 5th conference
of the FAO Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture, is to
to allow a more detailed and comprehensive discussion of this topic. The aim
of this document is to provide some brief background to the subject as well
as to mention some of the factors that should be considered in the
conference.
The first edition of the State of Food Insecurity in the World, published by
FAO in October 1999, provided a recent update on the status regarding hunger
in the world (for those with access to the Web, the report can be found at
http://www.fao.org/NEWS/1999/991004-e.htm ). It estimated that in 1995-1997
there were roughly 790 million undernourished people in developing countries
(and 34 million in developed countries), i.e. whose food intake was
insufficient to meet basic energy requirements on a continuing basis. The
majority (524 million) was in Asia, including 204 and 164 million in India
and China respectively, while there were 180 million undernourished in
sub-Saharan Africa.
The report also examined changes from 1980 to 1996 in the proportion of
undernourished people in a selection of countries, to try and understand the
factors determining such changes. The analysis highlighted, as other reports
have previously done, that many different demographic (e.g. changes in
population size or the degree of urbanisation), environmental (e.g.
degradation of land), economic (e.g. changes in Gross Domestic Product),
social (e.g. road infrastructure, literacy) and political (e.g. war,
economic boycotts) factors may affect the degree to which particular
population groups are vulnerable to poverty and hunger.
The global population size is currently 6 billion, and it is rising rapidly.
By the year 2020, it is expected to reach 7.5 to 8 billion. Where will the
food come from to feed these additional mouths ? Can it be provided by
''conventional'' methods of plant, animal or fish production alone ? An
important factor to be considered is that much of the land currently used to
produce food is being degraded - largely due to overgrazing, poor farming
practices and deforestation. To counterbalance this, one might ask whether
there is much additional land that can be brought into use for food
production. There is some scope for extending the land area used for
production in Africa and South America, although this may be at the expense
of forestry and wildlife. For Asia there is little scope for extension of
the land base. Under these conditions, will it be possible to provide enough
food for the additional billions, without using biotechnology in plant,
animal and fish production ? Is biotechnology indispensable if we are to
successfully meet the challenge of an increasing world population ?
However, the problem of hunger is complex and does not just depend on the
amount of food produced. Currently, enough food is produced globally to feed
all its inhabitants. Nevertheless, around 15 % of them are undernourished.
Is the unequal distribution of resources and food a greater threat to world
hunger than the sheer quantity of food produced ? Biotechnology may increase
the amount of food produced but will it affect the key problems of unequal
access to food ? Is it possible that we may end up in the situation where
the amount of food produced globally increases, with the help of
biotechnology, but so also does the number and proportion of hungry people ?
Comments from Professor Mazoyer in a recent FAO publication, The State of
Food and Agriculture 2000, might be of relevance in this context. He wrote
"After 50 years of modernization, world agricultural production today is
more than sufficient to feed 6 billion human beings adequately. Cereal
production alone, at about 2 billion tonnes or 330 kg of grain per
caput/year and representing 3 600 calories per caput/day, could to a large
extent cover the energy needs of the whole population if it were well
distributed. However, cereal availability varies greatly from one country to
another: more than 600 kg per caput/year in the developed countries, where
most is in fact used as animal feed, but fewer than 200 kg per caput/year in
the poorer countries. Moreover, within each country, access to food or the
means to produce food is very uneven among households. Consequently, in many
countries, large segments of the population do not have enough food. And the
large majority of the 830
million chronically undernourished are in the poor peasant farming
community. World food security, therefore, is not an essentially technical,
environmental or demographic issue in the short term: it is first and
foremost a matter of grossly inadequate means of production of the world's
poorest peasant farmers who cannot meet their food needs. It is also a
matter of insufficient purchasing power of other poor rural and urban
consumers, insofar as the poverty of non-farmers is also a product of rural
poverty and migration from the land."
Another factor that might be considered for discussion during the conference
is that agricultural biotechnology has primarily been driven by private
industry for farmers in developed countries. The products developed so far
have, with few exceptions, not been targeted towards poor farmers in
developing countries. Will biotechnology, which can potentially increase the
efficiency and quality of food production, provide tools to aggravate
inequalities in the world ? If trade barriers are progressively reduced,
through organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, and export of
food from developed to developing countries become easier and more
commonplace, is it possible that biotechnology will make this trade more
profitable, thus creating or increasing the dependency of developing
countries on developed countries for food ?
Discussion in this conference should also address whether particular
biotechnologies have especially high (or low) potential to reduce hunger and
increase food security in developing countries, or whether the application
of biotechnology within specific agricultural and food-related sectors
(crop, forestry, animal or fisheries) or within specific regions of the
developing world can have greater (or lower) impact on hunger and food
security in developing countries.
When submitting messages (which should be no more than 600 words),
participants are requested to ensure that their messages address some of the
elements mentioned in this document.
For those wishing to get a reminder of the types of biotechnologies
currently available in the four sectors, the Background Documents (BD) of
the first four conferences may be useful. For the crop sector, brief
descriptions of genetic modification, micropropagation and biotechnologies
based on molecular markers are provided in BD 1. For the forestry sector,
brief descriptions of genetic modification and biotechnologies based on
vegetative reproduction or molecular markers are provided in BD 2. For the
livestock sector, reproductive biotechnologies (embryo transfer, cloning
etc.) and DNA-based technologies in animal health, animal nutrition and
growth and animal genetics and breeding are described in BD 3. For the
fisheries sector, brief descriptions of molecular marker biotechnologies,
induction of polyploidy, sex-reversal and creation of single sex fish
groups, hybridisation, selective breeding, freezing of male gametes, genetic
modification and DNA-based technologies for fish health are provided in BD4.
Top of page
