The Sustainable Food and Agriculture Systems work stream of the G20 Engagement Group, Business 20, has endorsed three principles that it claims will contribute to building sustainable food systems and agriculture. Its principles are increased trade, resilient supply chains, and sustainable agricultural practices.
Agricultural economist Wandile Shirobo explains these three principles and how African countries can leverage them.
What is global food security? How is it different from food poverty?
Global food security is becoming more comprehensive and seeks to address the challenges of access to food, nutrition, sustainability and affordability. The broad goal of global food security is to ensure that countries, particularly the G20 members, work together in efforts to reduce global poverty levels. This poverty reduction must be significant at the national and household level.
Achieving this goal will require countries’ domestic agricultural policies to enable increased food production, prioritize environmentally friendly production approaches, and reduce trade tensions. This allows countries that cannot produce enough food to import food, and most importantly, at an affordable price. Additionally, countries need to ease global logistics frictions, eliminate tariffs, and smooth the flow of agricultural products. This includes, in some cases, the lifting of export embargoes. For example, in 2023, India banned rice exports, causing a spike in global food prices.
This is why I have supported the approach of achieving food security through trade. Such an approach is essential in an environment characterized by trade tensions, which generally increase all transaction costs. Ultimately, the goal of improving global food security aims to improve living standards for all people, primarily focusing on poorer regions of the world such as Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
How can increased trade, resilient supply chains, and sustainable agricultural practices strengthen food security?
These interventions are at the heart of reducing costs. If trade frictions (tariffs, non-tariff barriers, export bans) are eased, the transaction costs needed to deliver goods cheaply from the place of production to the place of consumption can be lowered.
Resilient supply chains also mean that food can be produced, processed and transported to the point of consumption with less friction, even in the event of a natural disaster or conflict.
Sustainable agricultural practices are at the core of our food system. Still, this does not mean moving away from improved seed varieties and genetics or eliminating pesticides and other inputs. It mainly refers to making better use of them. I noted an alarming trend in activism to eliminate agricultural inputs. This is a path that will lead to lower agricultural productivity and yields, and ultimately to worsening hunger. The key is to use these inputs safely and optimally. In recent agricultural protests in the European Union, the EU’s regulatory approach to sustainable farming practices was one of the issues farmers raised as a key risk. They cited the EU’s Green Deal, which aims to accelerate reductions in the use of inputs such as pesticides, fertilizers and certain other chemicals that are essential to increasing production. In my view, the G20 should be wary of activist movements that are dangerous to global food security.
What concrete policies should countries, especially African countries, put in place to ensure the success of these principles?
South Africa and the African Union, both G20 members, should promote three broad interventions in agriculture to achieve the three G20 principles and boost food production that can benefit the continent.
1. Climate-smart agriculture
First, there should be a strong push to share knowledge about climate-smart agricultural practices. These are new innovations and farming methods that minimize damage to crops caused by climate-related disasters such as droughts and heat waves. This is important because Africa is highly vulnerable to natural disasters.
For Africa’s agriculture to get back on track, governments need to develop coordinated policies on how to respond to disasters. These responses must include everything African countries need to mitigate climate-related disasters, adapt to climate change and quickly recover when disasters occur.
2. Trade reform
Second, Africa needs to promote reform of the global trading system and improve Africa’s food security through trade. South Africa already enjoys deeper access to agricultural trade with several G20 countries through reduced tariffs and some tariff-free access.
Ensuring open trade between countries around the world is in the interest of all G20 members. Open agricultural trade allows countries to buy and sell agricultural products at lower prices. This is essential in the current environment where some countries are taking a more confrontational approach to trade.
African countries with low agricultural productivity and generally low or poor crop yields may benefit less from open trade in the short term. But in the long run, they too will benefit.
3. Improve access to fertilizer
Third, Africa should continue to prioritize discussions on improving fertilizer production and trade. Sub-Saharan African countries have poor access to and use of fertilizers. However, increased adoption of fertilizers is an important input for increasing food production and thus reducing food insecurity. Access to affordable finance is also a challenge for African agriculture.
It is therefore important to link discussions about fertilizers with investments in network industries such as roads and ports. Making fertilizer available is another matter, but moving fertilizer to agricultural areas is difficult in some countries and increases costs for farmers. As part of this, the G20 should promote local production.
Producing fertilizer on the continent would reduce the negative impact of global price shocks. It will also make it easier for the most vulnerable African countries to purchase and distribute fertilizer.
Where do you think the balance lies between more efficient agricultural production and reducing agriculture’s contribution to climate change?
Rather than demonizing the use of pesticides and seed breeding, we need to use technology to adapt to climate change. That trend is certainly on the rise in some parts of South Africa. By using high-yielding seed varieties, fertilizers, and pesticides to control disease, you can farm relatively small areas and rely on sufficient yields.
However, significant reductions in these inputs will result in greater dependence on expanding the planted area. Cultivating more land means damaging the environment. The main focus should be on the optimal and safe use of agricultural inputs to improve food production increases. This is the key to achieving global food security.
The G20 has a role to play in ensuring we move towards a better world. These agricultural principles outlined above are part of an approach that can help move us towards a more food secure and better world.
Wandile Sihlobo, Senior Researcher, Department of Agricultural Economics, Stellenbosch University
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