Many media outlets reported a speech Bill Gates gave to the UN food agencies in Rome. He complained that they have performed poorly and failed to measure their progress; and advocated a greater focus on technology, which his foundation has just announced another $200 million of funding for. I read the speech with interest and like the idea of the scorecard, the ream of grants less so. (Disclaimer: the Gates Foundation helped set up and fund the Agricultural Transformation Agency, where I used to work, so I am clearly biased in their favour, but no longer work there so shouldn’t be too biased).
First, the idea of an agricultural scorecard, which the UN bodies should use to assess their programs. I love this. Most of us rely on FAOStat for yield data (it’s unreliable, but it’s the best we have), so why not take it a step further and give the FAO responsiblity for tracking progress by country? Taking it a step further, how about assessing the policies of major agricultural donors? Some countries give with one hand and take with another – the US and European countries have generous development programs for African farmers, but then exclude their products with their tariffs, farm subsidies and non-trade restrictions. I haven’t seen any suggestions for what should go on the scorecard, but I would try to balance it evenly between inputs (access to seed, fertilizer, credit, land tenure) and outputs (yield, resilience to shocks, greenhouse gas emissions, climate readiness). African countries will try to hold themselves to the Maputo declaration that 10% of their budget go on agriculture; I would prefer to see a qualitative assessment of the extent to which their policies favour small farmers, since you can spend a lot of money on fertilizer subsidies and extension services without achieving very much.
Second, the focus on technology. Gates and others credit smallholder farmers with the ability to transform agriculture, and the experience of China and other Asian countries shows that they can. Small farms can be highly productive. Sadly, however, the way in which the foundation currently funds smallholder productivity is a bit like pushing a string. The problem in places I have worked, especially Ethiopia, isn’t that we are failing to develop cool technologies, it’s that existing technologies don’t reach farmers. Gates defends his foundation’s investment in GM seeds, but that doesn’t seem like the most urgent investment when we consider that only 20% of maize grown in Ethiopia is a hybrid (an 80-year-old technology), compared with 70%+ in Kenya and 90-100% in developed countries. GM seeds will be expensive, at least initially: they’re unlikely to reach the poorest farmers, even if the public sector tries to subsidize them. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that agricultural research is a high-return activity; but there’s also a lot of research sitting on the shelves and researchers who aren’t incentivized to maximize the use of their technologies.
So where should the Foundation be focusing its time and money, as well as research? I’d suggest policy, infrastructure and (with reservations) capacity building. On policy: make support to countries’ agricultural development plans conditional on them making sure that, for example, small farmers are not kicked off their land in the name of ‘development'; then make support to researchers conditional on those researchers getting out there and marketing their technologies. (When the World Bank used to do that, we called it conditionality; it has gone out of fashion at the Bank, but the Bank spends taxpayers’ money, Foundations spend their own, so they should worry less about the politics). On infrastructure: rural roads and (uncool) irrigation are still needed to link farmers to markets and increase their productivity; and yes they should have conditions not to build roads through rainforests or irrigation in saline deserts. The fact that fertile countries like Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia are huge importers of rice, which they have a good climate to grow, reflects poor roads and access to markets as much as low productivity. Finally, capacity building: this is a dread term, so no training for ministries or conferences or workshops please, but yes to hiring more extension agents, building up technical colleges for them to learn their craft and limited start-up assistance to agricultural ministries or smaller, leaner delivery units inside or outside those ministries.
All in all, I have huge respect to the Gates Foundation and their fellow pioneers at Rockefeller and Ford for putting agriculture back on the agenda in a big way and leading the way for USAID and others to follow. I just wish the sector would pay more attention to the results of past investments in agriculture and do more to make sure that farmers everywhere have access to the best technologies and policy is supportive of them.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
