Roberta Rampton

More than a billion people go hungry each day -- about the same number as did in the late 1950s. That's both a "tragedy on a grand scale" and an "astounding success," according to a new report called "Millions Fed," produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
    
While the absolute number of hungry people is the same as it was 40 years ago, the proportion is dramatically smaller -- one in six today, compared to one in three then, the report said. It illustrates 20 successful case studies where progress has been made in the fight against hunger.

Some solutions come from science: new varieties of wheat, rice, beans, maize, cassava, millet and sorghum. Others deal with markets, government policies, or the environment.
    
Two farmers from the Sahel region of Africa, oft plagued by drought and famine, visited Washington last month to talk about solutions they found close to home -- one of the success stories trumpeted in "Millions Fed."
    
Almost 30 years ago, farmers in Burkina Faso experimented with a traditional technique called "zai," digging pits in their plots and adding manure to improve soils before the rainy season, resulting in dramatically better yields.
    
"There was a long period of drought in my village," Yacouba Sawadogo told reporters. "Many people left because their life was very, very difficult. But I decided to stay," he said, explaining how he taught others the technique.
    
In Niger, farmers manage trees on their land to prevent erosion, improve yields, and provide livestock fodder. Before, women had to walk 6 miles to get firewood, but now they have enough for themselves and to sell to others, said Sakina Mati, who coordinates tree projects in six villages.
    
The projects have improved 13 million acres of farmland and fed 3 million people, said Oxfam America, a development group that works with the farmers.
    
It's food for thought as rich nations ramp up efforts to help small farmers grow more food in poor countries. "In our approach toward solutions and programs, we really need to listen as well as talk," said Gawain Kripke of Oxfam.
    
"Solutions don't always come from us."

PHOTO CREDIT: Yacouba Sawadogo on his farm in Burkina Faso /Courtesy of Oxfam America

The world needs to spend $83 billion a year to ensure it can produce enough food amid a changing climate for its growing population by 2050, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates.
    
Rich countries have pledged more than $22 billion over three years to help small, impoverished farmers grow and sell more by investing in seeds, fertilizer, roads and marketing infrastructure.
    
Philanthropists have thrown their weight behind the goal. Bill Gates challenged research companies last week to make new technologies available to small farmers without charging them royalties. (Click on the link at the bottom to see his full speech to the World Food Prize forum.)

Corporations have said they see themselves as part of the fight too, particularly when it comes to research. But Robert Thompson, a former World Bank official, says he's pessimistic the private sector will be able to contribute enough. "Their shareholders won't stand for them solving all the problems of the developing countries, and giving it away," he told Reuters.
    
"It's going to take subsidies or at least a public sector contribution to engage their research horsepower," said Thompson, now an agriculture professor with the University of Illinois, who has pushed for more spending on agricultural development for 40 years.
    
Agribusiness should be motivated to get involved in developing countries because they represent a future growth market for their products, Thompson said. "They should be willing to accept lower return on their own investments as an investment in the longer term, but we have to keep the short time horizon of the U.S. investment community in mind," he said.
    
"Shareholders are brutal on companies that don't meet their short-term profit expectations. In that sense, perhaps some of the European companies like Syngenta, BASF or Bayer ... may have a little more license, if you will, to take a longer-term perspective than some of the U.S. publicly traded companies."

Below: Bill Gates addresses World Food Prize forum in Des Moines, Iowa.

World Food Day is Friday, and on opposite sides of the developed world, two large groups of experts have gathered to talk about the risks of food insecurity and what should be done to reduce hunger. In Rome, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is mulling how to feed the world in 2050, and in Des Moines, Iowa, the World Food Prize forum will focus on the role of food in national security.

Last year's spike in food prices raised the political profile of food security. G8 nations and the United States have pledged money and action. I spoke with Per Pinstrup-Andersen, an agricultural economist at Cornell University and a Food Prize laureate, to get his take on what that means. Here are some excerpts. 
     
Q. What do you think is different now in terms of the political will to address this problem? 
A. I think there is an increase in the political will. However, past initatives or past rhetoric of that kind didn't really result in much action. I'm very concerned that we're going to see a lot of additional rhetoric and a lot of plans being designed and discussed during the next year or so, but probably not very much action. Insofar as developing country governments are concerned, I doubt if the political will has changed at all. There is a lot of talk. But unless the developing country governments decide to prioritize the eradication or at least the amelioration of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, not much is going to happen.

The best way of doing that in the long run is to invest in rural areas, in infrastructure, in agricultural research, in primary health care. Look, we know what needs to be done, it's not a big secret, it's just that the governments have other priorities. The World Bank can put in a lot of money, and so can the bilaterals, but for this to have a sustainable impact, the governments of these countries have to step up to the plate. 
 
Q. What can be done to encourage that to happen? 
A. I wish I knew. The governments of most developing countries -- and it's not all of them -- are ignoring the Millenium Development Goals, they're ignoring the World Food Summit goals. Their main concern is to maintain legitimacy so they can hold on to power, and the rural poor are not threatening them. 
     
Q. In the face of that, what can donor countries do to make the best of their investment? 
A. I think all we can really do from the outside is to try to make up for the deficiencies of the national governments by bringing some money and some technical assistance to bear on these problems and to try to convince governments to work with us on this so that over a period of time the government will gradually take over these things. 
     
Q. How do you think the new U.S. food security initiative will play into global efforts to address hunger? 
A. One of my concerns is that we once again are going to spend a lot of time and effort and money on developing plans. We've got so many plans developed for almost every country in the world. We now need to pick them up and put them into action.

I think (the U.S. initiative) is better than ignoring (food security), as we have tended to do in the past. Money may convince national governments to change their priorities, as long as the money keeps flowing. I think we should be prepared to stay in this kind of thing for at least 25 years, which of course is not the way things are usually done. If we are thinking in terms of a five-year time horizon for this food security initiative, it's not going to be sustainable.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Roberto Schmidt (Hillary Clinton in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 11, 2009)

Hog markets are depressed. Farmers struggle to put food on the table. Hard times are seeping into the rural economy, hurting owners of grocery and hardware stores.

Blame the media, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, unleashing several lengthy rants about the evils of oversimplification during a 25-minute teleconference with reporters on Thursday.

Vilsack scolded the media for continuing to call the new strain of pandemic H1N1 flu by its more common name: swine flu.

"It is not swine flu," Vilsack thundered. "Every time that is said, consumers get confused. Schools that are considering purchases for school lunch and school breakfast programs get confused, get worried."

Vilsack implied that pork consumption is down because people worry they can catch swine flu -- whoops, H1N1 -- from eating pork. (You can't.) Instead of stressing safety of pork, or sharing details about how the USDA plans to keep watch for the flu-that-shall-not-be-named in hogs, Vilsack dressed down reporters for harming farmers.

"I know this may seem difficult for people, or silly, unless you're the pork producer, unless you're out there trying to make a living and take care of your family," said Vilsack, heading straight over the top.

"And you pick up the paper, you turn on the radio, you turn on the television, and you see this thing mischaracterized, and then you try to go to the market and sell your pork, and you get less than what you're spending to produce it. And so you've got to tell your family you've got to do without."

Now, we wouldn't want to oversimplify the issue. Ripped from Reuters' headlines, here are some facts about That Flu and hog markets.

* The virus is a mixture of two swine viruses, one of which also contains genetic material from birds and humans.
* Scientists believe the virus was circulating undetected for years, most likely in hogs, before it jumped to humans.
* The H1N1 virus has not yet been found in U.S. hogs.
* Swine flu viruses are not tracked like other livestock diseases because they are rarely fatal and because humans can't catch them from eating pork.
* U.S. pork was banned in many overseas markets after the virus turned up in humans.
* All those markets have since reopened, except for China.
* U.S. hog producers have been losing money for almost two years because of high feed costs and the impact of the recession, which has hurt demand.
* Concerns about "swine flu" have not helped matters.
* Hog producers have urged the government to buy more pork for feeding programs than the USDA has thus far committed.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya (U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack visits a corn plantation at Muguga in the outskirts of the Kenya's capital Nairobi, August 4, 2009.)

Call it the Congressional version of the lightning round.

Ron Kirk, the Obama administration's choice for U.S. Trade Representative, had a rapid-fire confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Monday that lasted no longer than 45 minutes.

"Exhilarating," was how Kirk, a former Dallas mayor, described the quick experience, fittingly, in one word.

Senators had to compress the session to attend a vote on amendments to the omnibus spending bill.

Kirk started off by telling senators "It's been a long and strange journey getting to this point," but didn't even make it through a shortened version of prepared remarks before he was urged by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus to wrap it up.

"I'm going to ask about four questions, and if you don't mind, I'd like about 45-second answers," Baucus told Kirk. He proceeded to ask how Kirk would promote bipartisanship on trade issues, enforce the U.S.-Canada softwood lumber deal, eliminate sanitary and phytosanitary barrier for farm goods, and whether a bilateral trade agreement with Panama was closer to passage than pending deals with Colombia and South Korea.

Baucus alloted Kirk "23 seconds" to explain how he would build support for trade among America's middle class, which views deals as bad for the country, and later, "15 seconds" to talk about how he would enforce deals.

The Doha round of World Trade Organization talks, now dragging into its eighth year? No questions.

Baucus, along with Republican senators Chuck Grassley and John Cornyn, mentioned errors in Kirk's tax return, but none of the senators used their precious seconds of time to question Kirk about his omissions.

Cornyn, who defeated Kirk in a 2002 race for the Senate, praised  Kirk's record in Dallas and called him "the right man" to be U.S. trade representative despite the tax issue.

--By Roberta Rampton and Doug Palmer

Photo: Reuters/Hyungwon Kang (Kirk testifies at his confirmation hearing)

The United States could feed more hungry people around the world by reforming its convoluted foreign aid system, a coalition of aid groups said on Monday.
The groups called on President-Elect Barack Obama to create an agency to take charge and accountability for aid, and handed out this convoluted chart from Brookings Institute to make their point.

The chart links the departments, agencies and government offices that have a role in aid policy and programs -- the grey and blue boxes on the right -- with 50 foreign aid objectives (in green) and the laws and initiatives behind them (in yellow and red.)
(Click on this link if you really want to connect the dots. )
Aid organizations also want freer trade, fewer subsidies, and more flexibility to buy food aid closer to where it's needed, rather than being required to ship U.S. crops overseas, said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. And they have friends in high places who may spur reforms, he said.
Obama, Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden, and Secretary of State-in-waiting Hillary Clinton all have strong foreign aid creds, as do Timothy Geithner, Obama's choice for treasury secretary, and Lawrence Summers, new head of the National Economic Council, Beckmann said.
Several members of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network are advising the president-elect, Beckmann noted, including Gayle Smith, Larry Nowels, and Brookings' Lael Brainard, who created the spider web chart shown here.
Brainard has been touted as a possible candidate for U.S. Trade Representative.

    Top officials from the world's largest fertilizer maker were in London this week trying to convince investors their stock has been unjustly thumped.
    Potash Corp of Saskatchewan shares at the Toronto Stock Exchange have lost 30 percent of their value since a mid-June peak, even though prices for potash fertilizer continued their meteoric rise.
    "Not that I'm whining about it, but we do have the lowest multiples we've ever had. Ever. And I'm not sure it reflects the true value of the company," said Wayne Brownlee, the chief financial officer of Potash Corp, which plans to boost its potash capacity by 80 percent to capture higher prices.
    Hedge funds fled commodities and unwound Potash Corp positions since June, Chief Executive Bill Doyle said.
    Doyle continued to hold fast to his rosy outlook, noting producers are short on potash and prices should continue to rise this year, although not at the same rate as last year, when they tripled.
    Grain prices should remain historically high, Doyle said, leaving farmers flush and able to pay more for fertilizer.
    "Farmers will grouse that their costs are up. They are up, about $39 billion, but their receipts are up $50 billion. So the math works," Doyle said.
    And despite recent events rocking the world's financial capitals, demand for grain will continue to grow, keeping pressure on supplies, Doyle said, unless the world economy slips into a depression.
    "A lot of the people (in developing economies) who have this aspiration to eat better, I guarantee you, wouldn't know what had happened to the investment banking community in New York," he said. "It's not high on their priority list, where food is."

Photo: REUTERS/David Stobbe    Potash is piled into a large storage facility which is then loaded into a train car and transported in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in this December 2006 file photo.

World wheat prices are soaring to record heights, but the rally has been particularly sharp for high-protein spring wheat, used to make bread. Minneapolis March spring wheat futures have jumped more than 85 percent since farmers in Canada and the U.S. northern plains finished harvesting a small crop that was quickly swamped by demand by panicked buyers. Winter wheat varieties traded in Chicago and Kansas City have lagged behind.

But since Jan. 9, the contract has been on a steep upward climb that has traders talking about shorts getting squeezed... especially the Canadian Wheat Board, which has a monopoly on sales of spring wheat from the Prairies to millers and export markets. I talked to Curt Denisuik, the CWB's director of commodity risk management, about the rumors on Feb. 6. He declined to comment on commercially sensitive details about the CWB's position. But he said the main reason for the climb was the shortage of wheat:

"I know there's lot of people who are speculating that the Canadians are the reason that the market is going higher. But really, you need to look at the supply and demand for wheat. What the numbers kind of tell you when you look at that supply and demand analysis, is they (U.S. exporters) have been selling more on a per-week basis than they need to to meet those export numbers. The market is trying to attract ... every last bushel in the bin. If these prices can't do it, then the market will go higher, or someone will have to cancel a sale, and take a different alternative."

"The other comment that I want to make about our position is that you need to understand with U.S. futures, the delivery process is such that the taker of delivery ... has the right to request certificate of U.S. origin for any grain it receives. Of course, as the supplier of Canadian grain, we can't supply that, and we never put ourselves in a position of either making or taking delivery. We don't participate in the delivery process in the U.S. futures. We are very confident that we will not be participating in the delivery process for the March futures in Minneapolis."

Q. As you mentioned, there's a lot of speculation that the board has been caught short or is getting squeezed. Can you speak to that?

A. "There are a number of participants in the market. We're comfortable with our share of the open interest. The market is trying to set the price for the grain it requires in March delivery position. It's influenced by a lot of things and I can't see that our position is a driving factor behind that. That's not to say that others might view it differently."

Q. Obviously there's scare supplies, but for Minneapolis futures, does the story go beyond supply and demand, seeing it locked limit up each day?

A. "There's some discussion about the appropriateness of 30-cent limits... As a seller, we'd prefer obviously for the market to get to its trading level faster. But the reason that 30 cents (per bushel) isn't appropriate any longer is because we've had this dramatic move up in price levels. What was appropriate when prices were at $5 (per bushel) clearly isn't appropriate when prices are at $10 or at $15 or above. You should probably have 60 or 70 or 80 cents, and that's probably more than the market wants to handle. They want to be able to make sure that they can adjust margins and all the aspects that make a marketplace work have to be taken care of."

Fears of U.S. recession have pushed grain prices and fertilizer stocks off recent peaks. But the chief executive of Potash Corp, the world's largest fertilizer company, said it's a short-term stumble. A recession could hurt some industries, but not those based on feeding a hungry and wealthier planet, said Bill Doyle. "Keep in mind we're not in a luxury business," he told analysts on Thursday. "Eating is very high on most peoples' priority lists." Doyle also said $6/bushel corn is not out of the question, on a day when nearby corn futures closed limit-up at $4.89-1/4.

Here's part of my interview with Doyle:

Q: Are you concerned about fears of U.S. recession, given the fact that in the past few days, grain futures markets were hit so hard?

A: Everything got hit, and it's like dropping a bomb: there's some unintended consequences. We were hit as well. If you think about U.S. recession and its impact on global food demand, I think that there's very little in common between those two. The reason is that food demand is such a basic item.

You have hundreds of millions of young people moving from a position where they could only eat starch, to where they are now enjoying protein... Once you get used to eating meat and fish, you don't go back to just eating rice. That switch is so fundamental that it would take a global depression to upset the apple cart. And that's what a lot of people don't understand. They think that the U.S. has such a huge impact, and it does in certain industries, but it doesn't in fundamental industries like our own.

Q: So even though fears have hit grain futures and your stock price, you believe that's a short term impact, if the economy slid into recession?

A: That's a very, very short term impact. And the market will see it because for our own company, obviously stock price is related to our earnings, and we're going to have sensational earnings here in 2008.

Q: You mentioned that you thought you could see corn go to $6 per bushel. Could you elaborate on what sort of parameters you are looking at for that price?

A: An exact date? I'm not sure. I underestimated corn this past year. I've been a corn bull for years. When corn was $1.80 (per bushel), I told people, 'Hey folks, corn is going to easily double and I think we're going to $5 (per bushel) corn.' People thought I was drunk, and just didn't believe it, and all of a sudden we got there pretty quick.

The reason why I say that is the demand for corn is so strong and will continue to be strong. If you think about China alone: meat consumption is growing 20 percent per year, that's for 1.3 billion people. That is a huge growth in meat. We call it the meat revolution in China. In order to feed those animals, it requires a lot of grain.

China has been traditionally a big corn exporter: China exported about 15 million tonnes into about a 75-million-tonne corn market, and now they're going to stop exporting altogether (and will become a corn importer).

What I tell you is, with these changing fundamentals around the world, and all these people coming into this point where they have money in their pocket, there's going to be real competition for that kernel of grain and that food supply for the first time. And that's a big, big change.