.
Our planet is under tremendous stress to meet the ever-growing demand of human activities. In 2015, the Earth “overshoot day” – the day each year when our demands on the planet outstrip its ability to regenerate – was reached on August 13, 2015. It is therefore critical to pause and think on how we are going to feed the world, taking into consideration that the world population will grow by an additional two billion people by 2050.
In the 1970s after the first oil energy crisis, France started using the motto “We don’t have oil but we have ideas” in order to reduce the country’s energy consumption. We can’t reduce our food consumption but we can optimize its production and reduce waste. The FAO estimates that “one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year” and that “recovering just half of what is lost or wasted could feed the world alone. “
Private sector solutions
This is where the private sector comes into the picture with solutions that notably can address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals such as Zero Hunger and Responsible Consumption and Production. These solutions consist in software to hardware and in expertise to optimize planning, production, storage, transformation and distribution of food. Technology and innovation intersect with food security and proper nutrition and are revolutionizing agricultural activities.
Mobile phone applications enable smallholder farmers in emerging countries to track the price of commodities, to identify potential buyers for their crops and to facilitate financial transactions in the absence of local bank branches. Precision farming assisted by GPS technology enables more affluent farmers to connect the entire crop cycle from enterprise planning to planting, crop care, harvesting and grain storage. It also enables them to monitor their usage of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and water, optimizing land usage down to a precision of a few centimeters. Precision farming through data collection over several seasons helps adjust the use of expensive inputs based on the output and yields generated on clearly identified tracks of land.
Better technology and the usage of it can also improve quality and security of the output: for instance, harvesting grain at higher moisture levels and drying it in dryers result in less damage which in turn reduces the risk of mycotoxins insurgence. The existence of storage, and more precisely proper hermetic storage, such as grain silos and cold storage, is critical to reduce waste, notably post harvest losses. Similarly, processing equipment for fruits, roots and vegetables can considerably reduce waste for products with a very short shelf life (such as tomatoes into cans, mangos into juices and cassava into flour).
Besides the production and productivity gains, technology and innovation prevent pollution of underground and flowing waters by adjusting the usage of fertilizers and pesticides to the level really needed. More importantly they indirectly prevent deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats by boosting production and productivity and thus profitability, reducing the need to increase acreage to increase volumes.
New tools and solutions are available to farmers to make agriculture “sexy” and appealing to the youth. This can contribute to change the thinking, notably in emerging markets: agriculture can now be seen as an industry of its own and as source of profits just like energy, construction or telecommunications, not just as a subsistence mechanism. In a recent article, Akin Adesina, President of the African Development Bank and former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Nigeria referred to agriculture as a business and elaborated on approaching agriculture as an investment opportunity. If agriculture can finally be seen as a business that can generate profits to be reinvested in the business but also in healthcare, better nutrition and education then maybe the number of smallholder farmers abandoning their farms in quest of a better life in urban areas could be reduced. Small tracks of land need to be aggregated for capacity building purposes and to enable the mechanization of agriculture but the ability for some to succeed in agriculture is not a fiction.
If the solutions exist why are they not more widely used?
Though the private sector has the solutions to solve rapidly food security and proper nutrition issues, multiple obstacles get in the way of rolling them out. Access to finance is probably the most recurring challenge but many more exist such as: corruption that prevent companies from operating and that diverts money from state coffers that would otherwise go to agriculture projects; red tape and overregulation that slow, impede or simply deter the conduct of business; lack of regional integration that increases the cost of doing business; lack of investments in education and training that prevent human capacity building; pushes to force foreign companies to localize manufacturing when it does not necessarily reduce costs; protectionism shielding national “champions” that are not necessarily champions when confronted to the reality of an open market, etc.
Furthermore, the private sector cannot work alone. There has to be a meeting of the minds and of the means to get things done and some political will in the target country: public-private partnerships is regularly quoted as a solution and it can be. What also needs to happen is better coordination between the different players: private sector companies, governments (federal, regional, local), financing institutions (private or public banks, international financing institutions, foundations), implementers (private or public, NGOs, educational programs) and most importantly the end-users.
Another problem is the goodwill intentions plagued by missing parts in the development scheme: for instance allocating money to purchase tractors but none to train the end-users or to provide spare parts; or supporting increased production without thinking about how the additional output would be stored and transformed will result in failure.
Ultimately, the private sector is ready to help but success will depend on the involvement of and collaboration between all the actors. Our planet can properly feed nine billion people in a sustainable manner but all the roadblocks need to be removed to unleash its amazing potential.
About the author: Mr. Philip de Leon is based in Washington, DC and is the Director for Public Affairs and International Business Development at AGCO Corporation. AGCO is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of agricultural machinery. AGCO supports more productive farming through a full line of tractors, combines, hay tools, sprayers, forage equipment, grain storage and protein production systems, seeding and tillage implements and replacement parts. Mr. de Leon is the AGCO Staff Representative on the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa (PAC-DBIA) and an executive board member of the Corporate Council on Af
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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How the Private Sector Leads the Way in Food Security and Proper Nutrition Solutions
plowing at dusk
May 27, 2016
Our planet is under tremendous stress to meet the ever-growing demand of human activities. In 2015, the Earth “overshoot day” – the day each year when our demands on the planet outstrip its ability to regenerate – was reached on August 13, 2015. It is therefore critical to pause and think on how we are going to feed the world, taking into consideration that the world population will grow by an additional two billion people by 2050.
In the 1970s after the first oil energy crisis, France started using the motto “We don’t have oil but we have ideas” in order to reduce the country’s energy consumption. We can’t reduce our food consumption but we can optimize its production and reduce waste. The FAO estimates that “one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year” and that “recovering just half of what is lost or wasted could feed the world alone. “
Private sector solutions
This is where the private sector comes into the picture with solutions that notably can address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals such as Zero Hunger and Responsible Consumption and Production. These solutions consist in software to hardware and in expertise to optimize planning, production, storage, transformation and distribution of food. Technology and innovation intersect with food security and proper nutrition and are revolutionizing agricultural activities.
Mobile phone applications enable smallholder farmers in emerging countries to track the price of commodities, to identify potential buyers for their crops and to facilitate financial transactions in the absence of local bank branches. Precision farming assisted by GPS technology enables more affluent farmers to connect the entire crop cycle from enterprise planning to planting, crop care, harvesting and grain storage. It also enables them to monitor their usage of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and water, optimizing land usage down to a precision of a few centimeters. Precision farming through data collection over several seasons helps adjust the use of expensive inputs based on the output and yields generated on clearly identified tracks of land.
Better technology and the usage of it can also improve quality and security of the output: for instance, harvesting grain at higher moisture levels and drying it in dryers result in less damage which in turn reduces the risk of mycotoxins insurgence. The existence of storage, and more precisely proper hermetic storage, such as grain silos and cold storage, is critical to reduce waste, notably post harvest losses. Similarly, processing equipment for fruits, roots and vegetables can considerably reduce waste for products with a very short shelf life (such as tomatoes into cans, mangos into juices and cassava into flour).
Besides the production and productivity gains, technology and innovation prevent pollution of underground and flowing waters by adjusting the usage of fertilizers and pesticides to the level really needed. More importantly they indirectly prevent deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats by boosting production and productivity and thus profitability, reducing the need to increase acreage to increase volumes.
New tools and solutions are available to farmers to make agriculture “sexy” and appealing to the youth. This can contribute to change the thinking, notably in emerging markets: agriculture can now be seen as an industry of its own and as source of profits just like energy, construction or telecommunications, not just as a subsistence mechanism. In a recent article, Akin Adesina, President of the African Development Bank and former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Nigeria referred to agriculture as a business and elaborated on approaching agriculture as an investment opportunity. If agriculture can finally be seen as a business that can generate profits to be reinvested in the business but also in healthcare, better nutrition and education then maybe the number of smallholder farmers abandoning their farms in quest of a better life in urban areas could be reduced. Small tracks of land need to be aggregated for capacity building purposes and to enable the mechanization of agriculture but the ability for some to succeed in agriculture is not a fiction.
If the solutions exist why are they not more widely used?
Though the private sector has the solutions to solve rapidly food security and proper nutrition issues, multiple obstacles get in the way of rolling them out. Access to finance is probably the most recurring challenge but many more exist such as: corruption that prevent companies from operating and that diverts money from state coffers that would otherwise go to agriculture projects; red tape and overregulation that slow, impede or simply deter the conduct of business; lack of regional integration that increases the cost of doing business; lack of investments in education and training that prevent human capacity building; pushes to force foreign companies to localize manufacturing when it does not necessarily reduce costs; protectionism shielding national “champions” that are not necessarily champions when confronted to the reality of an open market, etc.
Furthermore, the private sector cannot work alone. There has to be a meeting of the minds and of the means to get things done and some political will in the target country: public-private partnerships is regularly quoted as a solution and it can be. What also needs to happen is better coordination between the different players: private sector companies, governments (federal, regional, local), financing institutions (private or public banks, international financing institutions, foundations), implementers (private or public, NGOs, educational programs) and most importantly the end-users.
Another problem is the goodwill intentions plagued by missing parts in the development scheme: for instance allocating money to purchase tractors but none to train the end-users or to provide spare parts; or supporting increased production without thinking about how the additional output would be stored and transformed will result in failure.
Ultimately, the private sector is ready to help but success will depend on the involvement of and collaboration between all the actors. Our planet can properly feed nine billion people in a sustainable manner but all the roadblocks need to be removed to unleash its amazing potential.
About the author: Mr. Philip de Leon is based in Washington, DC and is the Director for Public Affairs and International Business Development at AGCO Corporation. AGCO is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of agricultural machinery. AGCO supports more productive farming through a full line of tractors, combines, hay tools, sprayers, forage equipment, grain storage and protein production systems, seeding and tillage implements and replacement parts. Mr. de Leon is the AGCO Staff Representative on the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa (PAC-DBIA) and an executive board member of the Corporate Council on Af
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
