Fewer Farms, Larger Farms

Right now, the world is in the midst of a food crisis. Some might contend that we never fully recovered from the food crisis of 2008, but what is certain is that food prices are rising. The reason for the spike is open for debate, but some combination of a growing demand due to population growth, an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events (floods in Pakistan, the Moscow heatwave, etc.), an expanding middle class with a growing taste for meat and dairy, global trade policy, commodity speculation, agribusiness lobbying, ethanol, and many other factors is likely. The success of the Green Revolution beginning in the 1960’s caused food prices to fall year after year for decades. With the world assuming that the food problem had been solved, the limited number of development dollars went to researching other global problems, namely solving public health issues like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

 
Global warming was another issue. Over the last two decades, economists and climatologists have been contemplating the effects of global warming on food production. The consensus was that, while climate change and the corresponding shift in weather patterns would have an adverse impact on agriculture in certain regions of the world, a rising temperature could actually open up new pockets of arable land. The one bright spot of climate change was that the increased amount of carbon in the atmosphere would actually improve crop yields. Unfortunately, that hypothesis proved to be overstated, at best, and quite possibly downright wrong. It turns out that a warmer world, despite what the computer models may say, is not good for food production.
 

The Economist recently had a special report on the feeding the world. The articles were thought-provoking and alarming, and should galvanize a stronger response from the developed world. As food prices increase, the people who are hit the hardest are those spending the highest percentage of their annual income on food. So, for a person of the developed world, a dramatic increase in the price of maize is less apparent on his grocery bill than it is for the rural farmer who is spending 60% of his income on maize. For this reason, the 2008 food price crisis led to riots in some countries and was hardly acknowledged in others. For the 100 million people driven into extreme poverty as a result of the spike in staple crop prices, the prospect of another food crisis in 2011 is likely terrifying, particularly if they understand the challenges in feeding nine billion people over the next half-century.

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Industrial Agriculture and Solutions to World Hunger

In this essay, the author discusses the right approach to combating the problem of hunger - an attribute shared by closed to 900 million people worldwide.  He takes issue with the arugula-eating liberal elites, like Food First, a California-based organization that opposes the technological advancements of the Green Revolution.   Modern improvements in agricultural technology and sciences create higher crop yields.  When land ownership is limited to a few hectares, it is critical to maximize the output on these small plots,  which is what industrial improvements in agriculture enable.   It is true that there are downsides to the Green Revolution, including further marginalization of subsistence farmers and, in some regions, a widening of the income gap in the agricultural community.  But what cannot be said about this approach is that the food it produces is either inferior to organically-grown crops or that the process is any less sustainable.  Industrial technologies, chemical fertilizers, and improved seeds generate more food, feeding more mouths, reducing malnutrition and generating income.

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A New Way Forward on Development

The Obama Administration recognizes that the successful pursuit of development is essential to our security, prosperity, and values.  In a world shaped by growing global economic integration and the fragmentation of political power; by the rise of emerging powers and the persistent weakness of fragile states; and the potential borne of globalization and risks posed by transnational threats, development is a strategic imperative to the United States.  Our investments in development – and the policies we pursue that support development – can facilitate the stabilization of countries emerging from conflict, address poverty that is a common denominator in the myriad of challenge we face, foster increased global growth, and reinforce the universal values we aim to advance." - "A New Way Forward on Global Development"

This is an excerpt from the opening paragraph of a memo leaked to Foreign Policy magazine the other day.  It is a draft version of the National Security Council’s Presidential Study Directive on Global Development Policy (PSD-7).  The 7-page documents details plans for an overhaul of U.S. approach to development and foreign aid.  I am still reading through the document and the commentaries that have already been posted, but the approval ratings from the development community have so far been positive.  My first thoughts are that the document is classic Obama: simple and pragmatic, intuitive and ambitious.  It proposes consolidating the fragmented government agencies to reduce waste, bringing more accountability to aid distribution by applying quantifiable metrics to programs and investing in those with a proven return, and building in-country capacity to produce sustainable solutions.  In a world of limited resources and an industry with a reputation for squandering those resources, the report proposes selectively choosing sectors that yield the most far-reaching and broad results.  Simultaneously, the U.S. will hold countries responsible for keeping up their end of the bargain by utilizing funds appropriately.  The U.S. will take a multi-lateral approach, working with other foreign governments, NGOs, philanthropy organizations to divide the labor and financing according to sector expertise.  Lastly, the U.S. will create a new "modern architecture" to ensure that government agencies are working in tandem.  Here, the memo delineates the strategy for the future:

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Mass-Cooperation in Common-Pool-Resource Management

Elinor Ostrom, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in EconomicsMass-cooperation is a term usually reserved for internet phenomena: wikipedia and couch-surfing are two common examples.  The idea of mass-cooperation flies in the face of received economic wisdom: that humans are rational and self-interested--or, as pro-regulation types interpret it: people are cold and selfish.  This is often expressed through the parable referred to as "The Tragedy of the Commons", the lesson of which is that people are too short-sighted to plan for the future, and, if given the opportunity, will use up all of their common-pool resources due to individual self-interest trumping group-consciousness.  The tragedy of the commons paradigm has been applied to both small-scale resource pools, such as local fisheries, and large-scale resource pools, such as the world's oceans.      

Nevertheless, the recent Nobel recognition of Elinor Ostrom, whose empirical research into common-pool-resource management turns the "tragedy of the commons" trope upside down, indicates that theories of mass-cooperation are finding a mainstream audience.  For years, evolutionary game-theorists such as John Maynard Smith and Brian Skyrms have been quietly chipping away at the wall between biology and economics while authority figures have continued to justify their own intrusion into collectively-owned and managed resources via the "tragedy of the commons" allegory.  The debate between the tragedy of the commons and mass-cooperation pits the narrative against the empirical, and while there is no doubt that the former is the sexier of the two, perhaps we should pay heed to the latter when formulating solutions for tricky, controversial topics.  Ostrom's discoveries could have radical implications on how we solve problems as diverse as welfare, aid for Africa, and climate change.

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