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DEVELOPMENT: Matching Struggling Farmers with the World’s Hungry

Wolfgang Kerler

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2008 (IPS) - In a significant policy shift, the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP) announced Wednesday that it will start buying food directly from local farmers’ associations in developing countries.

Dubbed the Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative, WFP says it will be an alternative to the established bidding process where pre-qualified suppliers can file their tenders.

“This is a revolution in food aid,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran.

The WFP says the initiative will create reliable markets for low-income farmers. Forward contracting and sale guarantees are supposed to serve as incentives to increase output and productivity alike.

“More than half of the 90 million people we will reach with lifesaving food this year are poor farmers,” Sheeran said. “They are often cut off from markets, roads, transportation and storage.” P4P will allow them to “break the cycle of hunger”.

Over the next five years, P4P will be piloted in 21 countries – 15 in Africa, four in Latin America and two in Asia – with the aim of significantly boosting the incomes of at least 350,000 small farmers.

However, Per Pinstrup-Andersen, an internationally known expert on food policy and a professor at Cornell University, stressed that P4P may not automatically improve the situation for poor people in developing regions.

“It is true that in some African countries, the main bottleneck to additional income to small farmers is the lack of a market,” Pinstrup-Andersen told IPS. “Under those circumstances, P4P would be a good programme.” Small farmers could produce more, sell more and earn more money.

“But many others are not able to produce more,” he explained. And with already high demand and high prices for food, additional demand from WFP could tighten the situation, Pinstrup-Andersen said. “Only if P4P can strengthen the rural infrastructure is it a good programme,” he added.

Asked about these concerns, Josette Sheeran told IPS that WFP is going to be “very careful not to compete with local markets”.

WFP’s efforts will be aligned with organisations such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), other U.N. agencies, the World Bank Group and NGOs that are working with small farmers to improve their productivity and to improve rural infrastructure.

Financial support for P4P comes from the Bill and Melinda Gates and the Howard G. Buffett Foundations, which are giving 66.0 and 9.1 million dollars, respectively. The government of Belgium is contributing another 750,000 dollars for P4P in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Ultimately, the goal here is to have these markets be self-sustaining,” Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, said at the launch event.

Even today, the World Food Programme purchases the bulk of food used for humanitarian operations in developing countries – 1.6 million metric tonnes worth over 600 million dollars in 2007. Uganda was the top seller with 210.223 tonnes.

Ugandan President Yoweni Museveni welcomed the new initiative, as did Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, Jakaya Kikwete, president of Tanzania, and Sandra Torres de Colom, first lady of Guatemala, who all took part in the launch event.

Museveni explained that subsistence farming is the main reason for poverty in his country, asking: “If I have food but I have no money, how will I get out of poverty?”

With P4P, subsistence farming could be turned to commercial farming – and not only food security could be reached but also income security.

The Purchase for Progress initiative comes at a time when soaring food, fuel and fertiliser prices are conspiring to badly undermine the fight against hunger and malnutrition.

Last week, the FAO released new data saying the number of undernourished people worldwide increased by 75 million in 2007 – to a total of 923 million.