Op-Ed Contributors

Food crisis requires urgent action

By Wei Ha (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-28 08:01

2. Incentives

For decades, incentives for agriculture have been distorted by rich country's exorbitantly high import tariffs and subsidies and developing countries' persistent urban bias. Removing agricultural subsidies and creating a more efficient and fair global food trade are indispensable to the long-run solution to food shortages. It is equally important for the US and Europe to ease subsidies and mandates on ethanol and bio-diesel that are neither economically or energy efficient.

3. Innovation

The high-yielding wheat hybrid, invented in the 1960s by Borlaug, has greatly improved productivity in South Asia. But more effort is needed to develop hybrids that are specific to Sub-Saharan Africa. To address the energy security concerns of developed countries and tackle climate change, we need to find ways to generate renewable energy. At the least, advances have to be made in using other biomass rather than food crops as the feed for biofuel production.

4. Infrastructure

Last but not the least, developing countries will benefit significantly from investment in infrastructure, irrigation systems, electricity, and roads, etc. It requires redoubled investment from both the public and private sectors. It is also possible and economical to engage other partners such as sovereign wealth funds in the development of Africa's agriculture.

The author is an economist with UNICEF.

(China Daily 03/28/2011 page8)