Oxfam 'right to highlight food security challenge'

The Crop Protection Association has welcomed this week’s high-profile focus by Oxfam on the global food security challenge, but warned against discounting the role of intensive, large-scale farming systems in meeting the world’s future food needs.

In a new report entitled Growing a Better Future: Food justice in a resource-constrained world, the international aid charity warned that the price of food is set to double by 2030 unless radical action is taken to change the global food system.

But CPA has expressed concern that the Oxfam report is quick to dismiss the role of large-scale, ’industrialised’ agriculture in meeting our future food needs, instead focusing almost exclusively on efforts to increase the productive potential of small-scale producers in developing countries.

"Oxfam is to be applauded in raising the profile of the food security challenge, and in calling for urgent action to avert a major crisis in the years ahead," said CPA chief executive Dominic Dyer.

"But although the Oxfam report reaches a similar conclusion to the Government’s Foresight report in calling for a radical overhaul of the global food system, its perspective on the role and contribution of modern, technology-based agriculture appears radically different.

"Foresight called for the ’sustainable intensification’ of global agriculture, highlighting the potential for new and existing technologies and practices to boost farm productivity in both developed and developing regions of the world. The Oxfam report, by contrast, suggests that ’modern agro-industrial farming is running faster and faster just to stand still’, calling instead for a renewed focus on the productive potential of smallholder agriculture in developing countries.

"In doing so Oxfam risks missing vital parts of the food security challenge and the solution. All farmers, large and small, need to find sustainable ways to increase their production. We also need to reduce waste, improve information systems, trade policy and many other aspects, but the key lies in raising global agricultural productivity," said Mr Dyer.

"No production method or technology should be ruled out, and many of the modern scientific tools in plant breeding, crop protection and crop nutrition which have driven increased productivity in industrialised countries will have a key role to play in boosting yields and production efficiency in less developed parts of the world.

"Indeed I will be visiting Kenya over the coming days as part of a CropLife mission to highlight the role of advanced seed and crop protection products in unlocking the productive potential of developing world agriculture.

"But the fact remains that the production-limiting effects of climate change are likely to hit hardest in developing regions of the world, and the engine of global food production will continue to be concentrated in temperate areas such as northern Europe and North America.

"Addressing the food security challenge will require a renewed emphasis on technological innovation, including more progressive, science-based regulation and a joined up approach to R&D investment and partnership between public and private sector," concluded Mr Dyer.