Statement from Thomas Hertel: “Trade in Technology: A Potential Solution to the Food Security Challenges of the 21st Century”.
MUTTARAK Raya
Dear colleagues,
After 4 days of discussions about the challenges of food security in the context of climate change and demographic changes, we conclude with the statement from Thomas W. Hertel, Purdue University (with Uris L.C. Baldos and Keith O. Fuglie) on “Trade in Technology: A Potential Solution to the Food Security Challenges of the 21st Century”. As the title suggested, Tom presented that trade in agricultural technology may indeed be a viable option to boost up food production in order to keep up with population growth in the fast growing regions.
Whilst past investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) has contributed to strong growth in agricultural output, there remains a concern about food security in Sub Saharan Africa – the world’s fasted growing region in terms of population size. Tom has proposed trade in agricultural technology as a potential solution to improve agricultural output. Technological trade can be done directly i.e. transferring of knowledge from overseas or virtually. Commonly, the direct transfer of agricultural technology does not always work because solutions for one agro-ecosystem may not be compatible with another system.
Based on the literature on virtual water trade, Tom suggested the possibility of virtual trade in agricultural technology in addressing the Malthusian challenge in Sub Saharan Africa. The virtual technology trade in this case involves importing food from regions where improvements in agricultural technology outpace population growth. The relaxation of restrictions in agricultural trade policies make the implementation of virtual technology trade viable.
In their working paper, based on the analysis of historical data during the period 1991-2011 examining the relationships between R&D investments, knowledge capital and agricultural productivity, Tom and colleagues has shown that virtual technology trade will be key to tackle food insecurity in Sub Saharan Africa in the future (2050).In particular, it is important to consider the interplay between international trade in commodities and trade in technology in understanding global food supply.
I highly recommend you to read the statement by Tom and colleagues which gives us a good overview of the role of technology and R&D in agricultural development as well as offers solutions to future food security challenges.
Please send cyberseminar contributions to the email discussion list at pernse...@ciesin.columbia.edu
As Alex has just mentioned in his email, we will extend the cyberseminar to Tuesday 26 May. We welcome your contribution to the discussions!
-- Raya Muttarak, Moderator, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria
-- Andres Ignacio, Moderator, Director for Planning and Geomatics, Environmental Science for Social Change, Philippines
-- Susana Adamo & Alex de Sherbinin, PERN Co-Coordinators, CIESIN, Columbia University, USA
Raya Muttarak, DPhil
Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (Univ. Vienna, IIASA, VID/ÖAW)
Deputy Program Director, World Population Program
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone : +43 2236 807 329
Fax: +43 2236 71 313
Email: mutt...@iiasa.ac.at,
raya.m...@oeaw.ac.at
Elisabeth Kago Nebie
Dear All,
Thank you very much for such an interesting discussion and congratulations to all the presenters for their great work.
I apologize if this was already discussed (and for the length of my reply), but my questions mainly touch on the potential impacts of the virtual trade in technology on local livelihoods, innovation, capacity building, and sustainable development. The livelihoods aspect was also discussed by Andres Ignacio and Cascade in the “climate change and food security in the Sahel” thread and I found their posts interesting).
1- Thinking of COVID 19, diplomatic issues (embargo) and conflicts, and their impact on agricultural production and international trade, would increased dependence on other countries for food add an additional layer of uncertainty/risk on countries that would rely ‘more formally’ on others to buy specific types of crops and countries that commit to sell those crops?
2- If more food is bought overseas to solve local food insecurity issues, would it reduce or boost investment in local research and development? What would be the implications for local capacity-building and ability to develop domestic food production in the long run?
Local soil and water conservation strategies have been quite successful in securing food in some villages in the Sahel of West Africa (West, Somé, Nébié 2014 and Reij, Scoones and Toulmin (eds) 2013), but these initiatives need more support/investment/research to potentially 'scale up'. What could be the potential impact of the virtual trade in technology on this type of indigenous innovation/creativity?
4 - What could be the impacts on local smallholders' livelihoods (e.g., income) and what would happen to the support they usually get from government/non-governmental partners to invest in farming?
5- What would be the benefits and negative effects of importing crops on local diet, food preferences, and health?
Thank you very much in advance for sharing your thoughts on these points.
Best,
Elisabeth
Dear colleagues,
After 4 days of discussions about the challenges of food security in the context of climate change and demographic changes, we conclude with the statement from Thomas W. Hertel, Purdue University (with Uris L.C. Baldos and Keith O. Fuglie) on “Trade in Technology: A Potential Solution to the Food Security Challenges of the 21st Century”. As the title suggested, Tom presented that trade in agricultural technology may indeed be a viable option to boost up food production in order to keep up with population growth in the fast growing regions.
Whilst past investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) has contributed to strong growth in agricultural output, there remains a concern about food security in Sub Saharan Africa – the world’s fasted growing region in terms of population size. Tom has proposed trade in agricultural technology as a potential solution to improve agricultural output. Technological trade can be done directly i.e. transferring of knowledge from overseas or virtually. Commonly, the direct transfer of agricultural technology does not always work because solutions for one agro-ecosystem may not be compatible with another system.
Based on the literature on virtual water trade, Tom suggested the possibility of virtual trade in agricultural technology in addressing the Malthusian challenge in Sub Saharan Africa. The virtual technology trade in this case involves importing food from regions where improvements in agricultural technology outpace population growth. The relaxation of restrictions in agricultural trade policies make the implementation of virtual technology trade viable.
In their working paper, based on the analysis of historical data during the period 1991-2011 examining the relationships between R&D investments, knowledge capital and agricultural productivity, Tom and colleagues has shown that virtual technology trade will be key to tackle food insecurity in Sub Saharan Africa in the future (2050).In particular, it is important to consider the interplay between international trade in commodities and trade in technology in understanding global food supply.
I highly recommend you to read the statement by Tom and colleagues which gives us a good overview of the role of technology and R&D in agricultural development as well as offers solutions to future food security challenges.
Please send cyberseminar contributions to the email discussion list at pernseminars@ciesin.columbia.edu
Alex de Sherbinin
I have some thoughts of relevance, I think, to your Cyberseminar.
(1)Having studied small scale farmers in Africa, the Middle East and Asia throughout my Career, I believe that such thoughts are important.
(2) Why? It is that clusters of small scale farmers need and create world-wide the population and services of villages and towns while large agribusiness largely creates much poorer laborers often without the presence of their families.
(3) In Zambia where I have studied small scale-farmers since 1956, when the minority who have had a good education, retire they want to have or acquire, utilize and live on their own small-scale farm, rather than live in a city or town.
(4) what about large-scale agribusiness.? What is needed is a major shift in functions. (a) research by agribusiness on equipment and agricultural produce for small scale farmers (b) emphasis on local and international distribution and sale of appropriate equipment and relevant crops to small-scale farmers (c) making available relevant small-scale training courses for that equipment and for improved and new crops.
(5) International distribution to urban and non-farm areas and sale of small-scale agricultural produce especially in urban markets.
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The Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) Cyberseminar Discussion List
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Alex de Sherbinin, PhD (he/him/his)
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CIESIN, The Earth Institute at Columbia University
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Jane O'Sullivan
Sent: 23 May 2020 07:14
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Subject: [PERN Cyberseminar] Re: Statement from Thomas Hertel: “Trade in Technology: A Potential Solution to the Food Security Challenges of the 21st Century”.
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Alex de Sherbinin
Replies inserted below.
Thomas W. Hertel
Distinguished Professor and Executive Director
Center for Global Trade Analysis
Department of Agricultural Economics
Purdue University
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~hertel/
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Jane O'Sullivan <j.osu...@uq.edu.au>
Date: Mon, May 25, 2020 at 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: [PERN Cyberseminar] Re: Statement from Thomas Hertel: “Trade in Technology: A Potential Solution to the Food Security Challenges of the 21st Century”.
To: PERNSeminars - List <pernse...@ciesin.columbia.edu>
Cc: mutt...@iiasa.ac.at <mutt...@iiasa.ac.at>
Dear all,
Apologies for a long post, but hopefully it responds to some of the other comments.
Thomas Hertel’s paper raised some interesting issues around how we frame issues and phenomena.
His framing of food imports as “virtual technology transfer” is certainly innovative. In one sweep, it eliminates any notion of humanity’s dependence on its land resources, and the environmental footprint of its food production. Why not “virtual land transfer” or “not so virtual greenhouse gas emissions transfer”?
[TH:] Well, our inspiration for this choice of terminology was actually the literature on virtual water trade which is very much rooted in environment and natural resources.
While acknowledging population growth as an external driver of food demand, he frames the solution to food security entirely on the supply side: “Absent a dramatic shift on the demographic front, we must look to the technology side of this regional footrace for a solution.” This suggests a belief that agricultural productivity is more amenable to intervention than human fertility, and a willingness to dismiss the latter.
[TH:] We have actually undertaken an extended case study on Niger (led by Kayenat Kabir who has since graduated). There we focus on both supply and demand sides – considering measures to reduce fertility. We conclude that addressing the population growth rate is key. However, when Kayenat presented this work in Niger, there was no interest in discussing fertility!
I also found interest in this juxtaposition: Hertel says, “the empirical evidence shows little in the way of ‘technology spill-ins’ from rich countries in temperate regions to tropical zones” while Andres reports issues arising from the uptake of “commercial agriculture”, which would seem to me to be exactly such “spill-ins”. It is certainly true that technologies need to be adapted to different settings – both environmental and cultural. But I think it is too simplistic to separate endogenous from exogenous technology change. Hence I wonder how much of the “direct R&D investments in SSA”, to which Hertel attributes the lion’s share of increases in food production/decreases in price, are more adaptations of technology transferred from elsewhere. Having been a member of an active global scientific network focusing on tropical subsistence crops, I can’t see a point of separation.
[TH:] You are correct that it is very difficult to separate these two effects. My co-author, Keith Fuglie has been studying this topic for several decades and concludes that most technology transfer does indeed arise from collaborations such as the one you mention.
I also note that Hertel does not mention increases in cropping area in relation to modelling the 1991-2011 period, in which increased food production in Africa is attributed to technology improvement. How much of the increase in food production is actually attributable to improved technology, and how much to increased plantings? In my experience with tropical root crops, the increase was overwhelmingly in area planted, mostly through the shortening of fallows, but also through clearing of forest (and fallow shortening plays less and less role as they are shortened out of existence). Hertel mentions cropland conversion for moral sway in relation to a future hypothetical, if food imports fail to keep food prices sufficiently low, but he does not mention it in relation to his model.
[TH:] There was little time to present, but we do have a slide confirming your suspicion that Africa was the exception over these two decades with output expansion mainly coming from the extensive margin (more cropland).
Also interesting to me was his comments on the propensity for Europe to convert its productivity gains into environmental gains, rather than raising food output. Hertel suggested, “Under this scenario, much of the environmental burden of feeding the world is shunted to Africa.” He did not say that, if Europe were instead to continue increasing food production at the expense of its environment and non-human species, “Under this scenario, much of the environmental burden of feeding Africa is shunted to the rest of the world.” To me, this poses an interesting framing for a discourse on morality.
[TH:] Yes indeed.
It also harks back to Hertel’s assertion that, “the outcome of the global footrace between food supply and demand seems no longer in doubt.” This statement would seem to hinge very much on whether Africa will peak around 5 billion (roughly the UN’s current assumption), or considerably more (since the UN assumes near-term rates of fertility decline that are still not happening, especially in the Sahel), or potentially considerably less (if there were a concerted effort to put population back on the development agenda, and extend voluntary family planning services and messaging in Africa in the ways that proved so successful elsewhere).
Hertel confirmed that sub-Saharan Africa is unlikely to increase food production sufficiently to keep pace with population growth. He takes up Simon Batterbury’s question: does it matter – in a globalized world? He argues that it will matter less, if commodity markets are “fully integrated” (which he defines as each commodity having a single price regardless of where it is shipped from or to), and if other parts of the world are coerced into choosing to produce more food rather than sparing land for nature.
[TH:] However, I did not discuss the problem of paying for the increased imports. Africa is moving in the direction of more manufacturing, but much less rapidly than Asia at a similar point in their development. World markets are no longer so open to such imports. And China, along with the Asian supply chain, still dominates the global manufacturing landscape.
I suggest that it does matter how import-dependent a country’s food supply is. It can access this food in one of four ways. 1/ It can rely on food aid – a highly risky proposition, ensuring it is the first to starve in any global crisis. 2/ It can borrow money to pay for it – equally unsustainable as a strategy. 3/ It can sell minerals and fossil fuels, should it be so lucky as to have any, and only while they last (Egypt, Syria and Yemen are examples of the disruption that can occur when oil revenue runs out). 4/ It can sell its services and manufactures to pay for food. This leaves it as a price-taker for labour, in a global labour market that is already overcrowded, and dependent on large capital investments from somewhere to create employment opportunities, almost certainly ensuring that the profits go off-shore to the provider of that capital. A country that develops down this path does not enjoy the fruits of differentiation of labour, because they are too busy producing goods and services for export to produce goods and services for each other. There are a few import-dependent countries that thrive by being a price-setter rather than a price-taker, but this club is very hard to break into – they are mostly enjoying control of a monopoly or gateway, conferred in colonial times. In short, if not one of these countries with legacy privileges, then food import dependence amounts to a form of debt bondage.
[TH:] This reinforces the point which I just made.
Note that “a stronger focus on a monetary rather than a subsistence economy” can lead to a deceptive impression of economic growth, when the rising GDP per capita more reflects the monetization of people’s consumption than its improvement.
Many countries have adapted to outgrowing their own food self-sufficiency by shifting from subsistence products to export commodities. In that way, they procure get more staple food from the proceeds of the cash crop than if they used the same land to grow staples. To a casual observer, this can look like a take-over by “commercial agriculture”. Often, it does involve some large commercial plantings (sometimes foreign-owned, sometimes state-sponsored, sometimes local entrepreneurs), to create sufficient critical mass, capital investment and skill base for the industry to be viable and create market access for smallholders. Often (but not always) these commercial farms might take land access from local communities to a greater extent than they provide livelihood opportunities (both by employing people, and by enabling them to grow and market the cash crop. I am certainly not suggesting that these developments are always beneficial or fair to all stakeholders. But I think they are too often presented as a neo-imperialist dispossession, when that was not the dynamic.
This ties into the question from Cascade Tuholske. In a community where productivity gains are outpacing population growth, improved technology can reduce the demand for agricultural labour, but this has the effect of freeing up labour for other purposes that benefit the community. With increased agricultural surpluses, they can afford to buy the services of these people, and quality of life improves. Where population is outpacing productivity gains, people are pushed off the land but there is no surplus to generate demand for their labour. Adopting a more labour-intensive, high-value market crop (like vanilla, or cut flowers) can be one adaptation. But it increasingly locks in the community’s position as cheap labour – a work-around for overpopulation, but not its solution.
I hope these thoughts are helpful to someone. I’m very happy to be taken to task about any of the issues raised.
[TH:] Thanks for the thoughtful remarks, Jane. I trust you have access to our full paper, and, more importantly, the references. This is a big topic!
Sincerely, Tom Hertel
Alex de Sherbinin
This discussion keeps becoming more fascinating!
I have worked extensively on the topic of population and agriculture, especially in the 1990s, and have just now skimmed through some of the many stimulating comments in this current PERN cyberseminar, without up to now finding time to read the two introductory papers leading off the discussion, though i have met Massimo in the past and appreciate his many contributions on demography.
I find the comments and discussion back and forth between Jane O’Sullivan and Tom Hertel today particularly stimulating, and expressing many of my views better than I can. I would love to be more specific but just want to mention I don’t have time now due to working on (and being way behind on) developing a chapter on population and agriculture for a forthcoming Handbook on Population and Environment (Eds. Hunter, Gray & Veron). There I am revisiting the Malthus-Boserup debate and recent evidence and literature on the extensification and intensification of agriculture, and will make a feeble attempt to consider as well some of the many additional intriguing issues being raised in this especially stimulating PERN discussion.
I would also like to add that i did not know about Prof. Sullivan’s work in this area, so I Googled her and discovered she has just published in 2020 an article in Ecological Economics that looks fascinating, adding additional observations to the rich discussion regarding broader dimensions of population impacts, some of which i have long been thinking about in the back of my mind, though many are not so easy to measure or therefore to research quantitatively.
Richard Bilsborrow, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill