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Well, good morning everyone. I want to thank all of you who are here at 9 AM.
Start the day off on a very important topic.
In fact, this topic that we're discussing this morning affects every person on Earth.
It can't wait until tomorrow, and many things are optional but this one is not.
We're speaking, of course, about food. We all have to eat.
This topic, over the past decades,
hasn't been at the top of the alarm list in the world,
or even a major focus in past decades here at the forum.
So why has it moved up to star status, not only here,
but in the G-20, the G-8 and elsewhere?
Troubles on the food front.
Anomalies, dislocations, disruptions, distortions.
But, at the same time, there's also unprecedented need,
knowledge, and opportunity.
Today, indeed, we're seeing new models of collaboration, innovation
that could change the face of nutritional security in the decades to come.
Just a few key facts, the world has never fed more people,
and never with better quality food and more nutrition.
Never before has food existed in such abundance.
Global agriculture produces an estimated 17% more calories per person today
than it did 30 years ago, even with the 50% increase
But all is not well.
Today, nearly a billion people will wake up
and be unsure how to fill even this humble cup
which is the cup the World Food Program uses to reach children.
That's how much food they get a day and that transforms their life.
But a billion people, many of them will be unsure how to fill even this cup.
So one out of seven people on Earth today are food-insecure.
We know how to prevent
the devastating personal and economic effects of malnutrition.
Yet, today, in the developing world,
more than 200 million people's brains and bodies
are stunted by a simple lack of nutrition in the early days of life.
Seventy percent of brain growth, we now know,
occurs before two years old.
If children do not have access to nutritious food,
the effects of that can never be reversed.
You can see brain volume actually reduced up to 40%.
So investments in food and nutrition are not only logical from a business point of view,
but imperative to build healthy societies and a healthy world.
Yet since the early '80s, the official share of development assistance for agriculture
dropped sharply from about 17% to about 5% and is finally back on the upswing.
History has shown we cannot build a stable, prosperous, educated world
without food and nutrition.
With that drain open at the bottom of the development bathtub,
progress simply cannot be made on all other fronts.
We also know this is critical for peace and stability.
If people don't have food, they have three options:
they can revolt, they can migrate or they can die.
We need a better plan and we have a great panel to talk about the great things
that are happening to help turn the situation around.
I just want to mention, we humans can be self-defeating on this topic.
Up to 40% of the food produced for human consumption in the world today
is lost or wasted.
This is not just in the developing world, where, after the farm gate,
in the supply chain, you'll often see 40% of the food lost
due to lack of proper drying equipment and storage equipment and other issues.
But in the richer world, you see 40% of the food lost also.
In the value chain, it's wasted or lost at the consumer level or retail level.
So a very important and timely issue.
We have a great group of leaders here with a proven track record on investment solutions
and on new ways of doing business.
Today, we'll address the question to put it starkly.
Is hunger and malnutrition a Malthusian nightmare that will hit us all
like a brick wall as global demand for food skyrockets in the next few decades,
or an unprecedented opportunity to create jobs
and value through the entire food supply chain
with smarter technologies and a better way to reach those who have been left out
of food security and nutritional security,
and what will it take to unlock those investments?
Paul Polman, you'll be heading up the B-20 which is the business aspects of the G-20
headed into the Mexico summit in June.
In addition, Unilever's products are sold in more than 180 countries across the world,
and on any given day two billion people will be using your products.
How do you see new models of innovation and collaboration driving investment of food
and nutritional security, and what can world leaders do to help make sure
you keep investing in this area?
Thanks Josette, and again admiration for what you do with your cup.
Keep it up, for all of us.
The theme of the World Economic Forum great transformation new models applies here
more than ever, in my opinion, and is incredibly relevant.
I'm not in the Malthusian nightmare scenario on this,
although the statistics are daunting.
But it's a tremendous opportunity for green growth that we all need and for employment.
Keeping that focus at this time of equitable and sustainable growth,
makes you very enthusiastic to work in this area.
The statistics are daunting.
It's very clear, as the population goes from seven to nine billion,
I should say that's 77 million more people every year,
every three years in Indonesia, you have to feed them.
The FAO estimates that the supply of food, despite the tremendous progress
that has been made, has to go up by 70% between now and 2050.
In the next 30 years, the same amount of food as we have produced and consumed
in the last 10,000 years, that's what people don't understand sometimes, that 70%.
Separately, 70% of the world's water, 20% of the carbon emission,
some other things, are related to food.
The climate, the whole nexus,
we were briefly talking out of water, energy and food,
are closely linked, which make it extremely complex, but also tremendous opportunities.
People reckon that the current trend of climate change will reduce food yield
by 20 to 40%, so they are closely linked.
Then, as Josette says, we're starting from the wrong base where a billion people
go to bed every day hungry and where, still,
a child dies every six seconds of malnutrition.
We're not exactly on a level playing field,
already today before all these things happen.
It's very clear, as the theme of the World Economic Forum
that applying yesterday's tools
to tomorrow's problems doesn't find the solution.
Increasingly, we're very encouraged by the new models that are out there.
I just want to briefly mention three of them to your question.
The first one is a model that started here at the World Economic Forum two years ago
under the auspice of the WEF and with the help of McKinsey,
we put together what is called the new vision for agriculture.
It is a holistic model that looks at employment.
It is, in fact, a 20-20-20 goal.
Twenty percent more employment, 20% reduction in CO2 emission,
and 20% increase in yield.
It started with President Kikwete in the green growth corridor of Tanzania.
It has subsequently extended to Vietnam with the Minister of Agriculture Phat,
or President SBY in Indonesia.
I'm very pleased to see that President Calderon is picking up on this as well
in Mexico in anticipation of the G-20.
It takes a holistic approach.
The first thing is, obviously, be sure that government policies are right,
they're critical.
Looking at the total supply chain involving all the different stakeholders
in the supply chain, governments, NGOs, different businesses along the supply chain,
and then, more importantly, tailoring the solutions to the local circumstances.
One-third of the global population is actually in agriculture.
Eighty-five percent of those people are small-hold farmers.
Seventy percent of the people
on the bottom of the pyramid are actually small-hold farmers.
If we focus in this new vision of agriculture on the small-hold farmer itself,
we also solve to some extent the issue of not only food security,
but also of the billion people going to bed hungry.
It turns out that an investment in agriculture actually has one of the highest returns
of any investment you can make.
This brings me to the second model, which is a Unilever model where we've clearly
made a commitment to decouple our growth from environmental impact,
where we have as part of that committed to sourcing all of our raw materials sustainably
as a very important part of this.
Last but not least, directly link 500,000 incremental small-hold farmers
to our supply chain.
Needless to say, you have to create the markets.
Companies alone cannot do that.
Often it's fairly inefficient, but we're tracking and measuring that.
We're well on our way with nearly 200,000 small-hold farmers linked to us,
mainly with brands like Lipton Tea.
The third model is - Bruno will expand on it much more.
It's the work we're doing that Josette referred to on the B-20
with the food security.
We're very proud, in fact, that we put 16 of the biggest food companies together
in a taskforce to help the FAO, the World Bank, the Ministers of Agriculture,
prepare for the G-20 and food security.
Again, under President Calderon, that's high on the agenda.
Here, obviously, it is a longer-term plan, covering four or five elements,
not surprising to you, investment in agriculture has actually gone down
over the last decade.
It needs about 80 billion a year to get us to an increase of 30 to 40% in production.
Companies are committing to do that with concrete action plans that are being measured.
We expect governments to do the same in the different places.
Increased functioning of the markets is a key part of that.
Technology transfer, sustainability, and more importantly,
moving the debate from calories to nutrition, which brings me to the nutrition part.
It's very pleasing to see that the G-8, under USAID and Rush,
who is now leading that in Chicago coming up, has nutrition written all over.
In Mexico, we will certainly be moving more towards building nutrition
and furthering the recommendations.
Women in agriculture.
Women historically had no access to training, land rights or tools,
can increase productivity by about 30%.
Half the small-hold farmers are women so we'll be putting that in.
The issue of land rights needs to be further worked.
So I'm very pleased to see that industry, NGOs and governmental organizations
are getting together around the G-20 on an ongoing basis to put this agenda together.
Well thank you Paul, and it's been a transformation to really see business leaders
like yourself having such a comprehensive overview,
and really looking at solving the basic issues
in addition to how we move ahead with investment.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, you've always struck me as a very practical,
solution-minded leader and you need to be even more so now as Finance Minister of Nigeria.
But just to follow on Paul's point on supply chain, it's estimated by the World Bank,
under your old hat, that $4 billion worth of grain is lost
in Sub-Saharan Africa post-harvest.
It's about 40% and theoretically, we could end hunger in Africa
if we could figure out how to capture that and ensure that people have access to it.
What do you see from your new vantage point on what's needed to get the kind of investment
in the post-harvest infrastructure and to stop the losses of wet maize and in other areas?
Well thank you, Josette
As you said, this is an area in which, I think, if we don't all pay attention,
then all the other developments that we're trying to do beat in health,
education and elsewhere will come to naught. So it's a critical area.
I do believe that even though many of the crises of food security and farming occur
in Africa, that Africa is perfectly capable of feeding itself.
But it needs a totally different approach in terms of strategy.
I think many countries now have seen that and are beginning to transform the agriculture.
The new approach, that takes into account sustainability, employment
and other issues that wrap in is very welcome.
I think that before we used to focus so much on production.
To some extent we still do, but that's not the issue.
I think the issue is how to transform the whole value chain of agriculture,
taking it from research where you have to look at the nature of the crops
that are being grown and how to make them more hardy
so that you don't lose so much in terms of the losses post-harvest,
all the way up the value chain to production, to marketing, to the transportation
and infrastructure for storage and for distribution.
I think that transforming our approach into this value chain
will make a tremendous difference to dealing with the post-harvest losses.
Very recently, the CEO of a major company visited my country,
and he made a remark that he was traveling on the roads and didn't see
one single cold-storage truck on the road.
He said, now I can understand why you are experiencing some of the problems you are
in terms of storage losses.
This illustrates why in Nigeria in particular, we've taken a different approach.
Bill and his foundation have been working with us also in the agriculture front
to look at the entire value chain crop by crop of the major crops we produce
and look at this issue of storage and infrastructure,
and how do we then put into the value chain the proper storage facilities,
the proper marketing, the proper price information.
I think it's a whole chain of events to deal with these losses.
That is, I think, the strategy that we need to take.
I'm happy to say that some African countries, recently Malawi and Rwanda and Burkina Faso
that have turned things around.
They've doubled production, they've been able to get it to market.
They've turned from net food importers to net food exporters,
exporting to neighboring countries.
It can be done with a change in strategy, a change in approach, the right investments,
Now, how?
The issue is that the government alone cannot do it.
That is why this partnership with the private sector is critical.
That is why a linkage between what the small farmers do
and what the larger commercial agriculture can do is also vitally important
through our growth schemes, because they can help provide that part of the chain
that helps with marketing and storage and processing and distribution.
I just want to say one thing.
I feel that the issue for us, in terms of food security, is not so much production.
If you take the continent, right now, 50% of the 446 million hectares
of cultivable lands still available in the world is in Africa,
and we have some of the lowest indices in terms of use of technology in production,
irrigated land, use of fertilizers and proof seeds.
You can either see it as a disadvantage or as an opportunity.
There is an opportunity there to increase, to improve production.
But I feel that is not quite the issue. The issue is access.
The world can feed itself, Africa can feed itself,
but the question is that we have a vulnerable population that soon will not have access.
How do we then ensure access to these people?
That access, a lot of it lies with infrastructure.
How do we get the roads and these facilities and the storage and the distribution
to areas where people may not have it?
It even lies with peace and conflict.
How do you solve problems in areas where there may be conflict
so that you can get access to give people food?
I think this issue of access to the most vulnerable is critical
to the issue of food security.
Thank you. After this first round, we're going to go to you
to ask very short but direct questions to our panel.
Let's try to keep this moving so that we can go to the floor very quickly.
Bill Gates. Speaking about different approaches in terms of strategy,
you have been one who's looked at transforming value chains and I, for one, am very glad
that you've set your strategic sights on the issues of food and nutrition and hunger.
At the G-20 in Cannes last year, you really laid down, I think,
a new way of doing business, which is learning between new partnerships south south,
connecting business and government and others together.
How can these new models of collaboration really make a difference
to the hungry kid on the ground?
Our foundation is probably best known for the work we do in health.
I want to make it clear why we think these food issues are of such critical importance.
For the billion plus people who don't get enough food, the effects are quite dramatic.
In fact, the reason that kids end up dying of malaria and pneumonia
is heavily influenced by the fact that they're not properly nourished.
If we could just solve the food issues alone, that would have a huge impact
on health statistics.
Even more important, although harder to measure is that when kids are malnourished
at a young age, it has this permanent effect on how well they develop.
This is a very urgent problem.
My annual letter came out this week,
and the majority of it was focused on talking about agriculture and what we can do.
Historically, there was a lot of success, the so called Green Revolution,
people like Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation,
and in a sense, that success, I think, led to the complacency of the last 10 years.
It's only in the last three or four years that agriculture has gotten back on the agenda
and people are saying, hey, let's get a reasonable level of funding in for this.
Unfortunately, that's coincided with the financial crisis.
So there were big commitments made at L'Aquila.
Only a pretty modest portion of those were fulfilled.
However, I'd say, I'm pretty optimistic about the most critical problem in food security,
which is helping out these billion people.
I do think raising their productivity is going to be absolutely key.
Largely, they're not in the market whatsoever.
Whatever they grow is what they're going to be able to eat.
As was said, the productivity of these farmers is low enough
that the opportunity to double or even triple, in many cases,
that productivity is clearly there.
Better inputs, better information, better seed markets in these countries
are the key things that will get us there.
So despite the fact that the financial crisis means that keeping these aid dollars strong
will be very difficult, I'm fairly optimistic that this is coming back on the agenda.
It was a significant part of the discussion at the G-20.
The G-20 is very interesting because it brings in the middle-income countries,
it brings in China and Brazil.
Those are both countries who've done such a fantastic job of feeding their own population.
They bring both in a technological sense and in an equity sense a lot of knowledge,
including specific understanding, China in rice, Brazil in tropical soil.
If we can draw them in, there's a lot they can do.
We also have a private sector that, although it focused mostly on temperate,
rich-world crops, I think there are models of partnership
where we can take their intellectual property and get it available
with no royalty whatsoever and do specifically adapted varieties
for Asian and African farmers.
We're starting to see some emerging examples of that taking place.
A lot of exciting potentials in the science, as we're able to piggy-back
the genetic revolution from human medicine into the crops.
We have let the research groups that work on the poor-world crops, the CGIR groups,
be underfunded. They're funded at about half of their peak.
Also, if you really look into it, a lot of it now is very short-term funding,
as opposed to the horizontal funding that's necessary.
I think as we do the G-20 in Mexico, we can highlight that,
highlight the new models of cooperation.
Certainly, I know for the foundation, this is an area of focus for us.
The final group that needs to participate here are the poorer countries themselves.
We are seeing a lot of exciting activity there.
Nigeria has a new Minister of Agriculture who, I think, is quite dynamic and ambitious.
We've got countries like Ethiopia, really willing to step back
and re-look at how they do things.
We have Ghana as a great example that has made the investment, and has seen the results.
The different factors are coming together, and we can just track.
The number of interest is the number that don't have enough food.
Can we get that from a billion to a half- billion, eventually to zero?
I think, with the right focus, we can.
Thank you. It is my distinct pleasure to welcome the new Director General
of the Food and Agricultural Organization, Jose Graziano da Silva.
Jose, you had a major role in the Fome Zero program supporting President Lula
in what has turned to be a real transformation
of the face of hunger and malnutrition in Brazil.
In fact, by a number of studies, Brazil is defeating hunger
faster than any nation on Earth.
You come into a huge organization with a huge mandate to really grapple
with these questions, but I'm going to make it an even harder question for you.
Are we going to be able to feed the world in 20 years?
Are you confident that the tracks are laid
or do we need to look at whole new models in doing this?
What do we need to do to insure we're on the right track
and there will be enough food in the world?
An easy question to welcome you to Davos.
Well thank you, Josette. I am confident we can do it.
We can do and we now - we can feed the whole population, seven billion that we have.
As mentioned, the problem is not supply side.
The problem is the access to food.
People don't have the money to buy the food they need or they don't have the access
to water and land to produce it when they are family subsistence farmers.
What I believe that it's not only the challenge to improve 70%,
I mentioned as Paul mentioned,
the problem is how to do that without destroying the natural reserves
as we are doing now, wasting water, erosion soils, destroying forests.
That's the challenge.
Combining these two agendas, climate change and food security, is the challenge.
We need to improve production, that's right.
We need to produce 70% more, that's right.
We need to produce much more in Africa, where Africa has the natural resources to do it,
and there's where the food is needed.
We need to stimulate to developing countries to produce more.
That's all right but even though, even if we achieve the goal of 70% more,
we are left behind 300 million people.
That's something that people don't see at the same time.
So the problem is how to combine food supply with a better access,
stimulated the demand side.
Normally subsistence agriculture does not have the, let's say, the capacity
to pull local development.
We need to address the Mampu models to stimulate local markets.
I believe that the key issue is local markets because nowadays, as you mentioned already,
we lose 30% in storage, transportation, post-harvest.
We waste a lot of money also, money and food, in transportation costs
that are very high nowadays.
So if we are able to combine local markets with local circuits of food production
and food consumption, it will help a lot to improve not only the food production capacity
but also to have helped access to food.
Thank you. Bruno Le Maire, you became a personal hero of mine last year
where you really used the power of the G-20, with the full support of President Sarkozy,
to really do practical things not only on the agriculture issue but for hungry people.
Not only that, something not well known, Bruno Le Maire joined me on the frontlines
of the devastating drought in the Horn of Africa.
We went to Dadaab, the refugee camp; to Wajir, Kenya.
But in Dadaab, where you have the refugees coming from Somalia,
I was with him in a place where many children were being lost, having not had food in weeks,
sometimes up to six weeks.
He kept his commitment to the trip even though his wife and he welcomed a new child
in their own family just three days earlier.
I think that powerful connection with the effects when all of this falls apart
into the pillars of power in the G-20 really helped move the world.
Could you talk about the things that were accomplished there
and how we take that forward and make sure we don't lose momentum in future G-20s?
Thank you, Josette, and thank you for your very kind words.
I think that the most important accomplishment of the French chairmanship of the G-20
was to put the question of food security and agriculture at the top of the agenda.
Agriculture is back on the international agenda at the highest level.
As Bill just said, it is very interesting to have China and India on board
and opening the discussion with the countries
which have to feed more than one billion people each year,
and which have been able to put some new solutions on the table to meet this challenge.
The second point I would like to stress today is that for the first time,
we have been able to take some very concrete and specific decisions.
I would like really to insist on this point,
on this question of food security, on this question of hunger all over the world,
we have to get rid of big statements and big declarations.
The point is not to make some big statements and big declarations on hunger in the world;
the point is to take decisions and to be able to put on the table practical solutions.
This is really the key point.
I'm very proud that altogether, we have been able to take those decisive decisions
and concrete decisions.
I would like just to mention some of it.
The first decision, which seems to me maybe the most important one,
is the creation of AMIS, Agricultural Market Information System,
which is a tool to put some more transparency on commodities markets.
We need transparency if we want to alleviate the situation on commodities markets.
The second decisions I would like to stress is the Rapid Response Forum
because it is a tool that will be headed by the FAO, under the leadership of the FAO,
which will put some more coordination in the decisions of the most important countries
when we are facing a crisis in food security.
If we are looking back at what happened in Russia due to the drought,
when Russia decided to close their borders because of the drought,
there was a lack of coordination among political leaders.
Thanks to this Rapid Response Forum, I'm confident that we will be able,
in the next future, to take decisions in a coordinated matter.
The third decision I would like to stress is the decisions that we have been able to take
at the level of the G-20 on research.
Research on wheat, and also because this is an initiative that will be taken
by the next Mexican presidency, research on corn.
Thanks to that kind of programs, we will be able to improve productivity,
we will be able to improve nutritional value of the production in a sustainable way.
That's why this question of research is so important to me.
The very last decision I would like to quote is the Food Emergency Reserves,
because we need that kind of tool if we want to prevent food crises.
You just mentioned the dramatic situation, the terrible situation in the Horn of Africa.
I really think that if we had that kind of food emergency reserves,
the situation would have been really different.
For the next Mexican presidency, and I will finish my speech with those three remarks,
I think that there are three challenges that are of utmost importance
for the next Mexican presidency and for the G-20 presidency.
The first point is to try to keep everybody on board,
because we have been able to try to define a new model of cooperation during this G-20
when we tried to build concrete decisions on food security.
We have been able to work with international organizations, with the FAO, with the WFP.
We have been able to put NGOs on board, and we need the support of NGOs.
We need the critical aspects of the NGOs.
Of course, we have been also able to work with private investors.
This is something completely new and if we want to go the way of fighting against hunger,
we need the support of private investors.
As Paul said and as Bill said, this new partnership
between private and public investors is of key importance
if we really want to have concrete decisions.
I just wanted to make a hint to the B-20 because I really think
that this new partnership between B-20 and G-20 is something very useful.
The second challenge is to fully implement the decisions that we have been able to take.
Of course we can open a new set of discussions and a new area of discussions,
but we need to implement what has been decided.
My experience as a diplomat, as a political leader,
is that the key point is always to concretely implement the decisions
that have been taken at a political level.
The third point, of course, is to be aware that we are facing in the United States,
in Europe, especially in Europe, a terrible economic crisis
and there is a risk that the political leaders in Europe
go away from this question of food security.
We have to keep the focus on this question of food security.
We have to keep the focus on this question of hunger all over the world
and we should never forget that hunger is not only an economic question,
not only a question of policy;
hunger is an economic but also a moral disaster for the world.
Thank you, Bruno.
Stefan, if we could just get the risk out of the value train,
I think a lot of these problems would be solved.
Unfortunately the words food and risk are deeply embedded.
I don't know if farming is the riskiest laden business in the world,
but it ranks, I'm sure, very high on the list.
Swiss Re has done very innovative work.
I'm familiar with it because we've partnered together
on some weather disaster insurance that has helped farmers in Ethiopia and elsewhere.
Can this be scaled up?
Can we get some of the risk out of farming so families
and the people that rely on the food supply chain aren't devastated
over and over again?
Thank you, Josette.
The short answer would be yes, but I think I have to be a little bit more detailed.
So in an emerging market poverty, systemic agriculture and food security
are closely linked.
The start of a solution for all three is farmer security.
You have to see a farmer as an entrepreneur who works on an open roof.
He's exposed to many risks.
One of the most important ones is, as you mentioned, extreme weather.
Look at this chain.
If there is a serious drought the farmer has no crops, has no income.
Many give up their business, walk to the cities and end up in the slums.
What can we do as private institutions, here I talk now to the financial institutions,
to help the farmer to stay on the land and do what other colleagues have said,
produce food.
Of course, and I think Ngozi said this, you need access,
but you also need access to financial markets.
You need access to risk financing capacities.
What are the instruments which are usually available?
It's access to credit, access to insurance and reinsurance,
but also access to investment, to equity investment in this food chain.
Sometimes even, which is helpful to start it, is access to some sort of subsidies.
May I give you, perhaps, one example to demonstrate this works already
and the only thing we have now to do is scaling this up because the tools are there.
I take this example you mentioned. We worked together in Ethiopia.
In 2008 we started with a project which has some innovating parts in it.
First of all, cash poor farmers could pay for the drought insurance
with their labor but it was a very specific labor.
What they did, they established new irrigation systems or wells,
so this makes their community more resilient against weather impact.
At the beginning in 2008 only 200 farmers were in this program.
Up to now more than 30,000 farmers are in this project.
We are now working on the so-called R4 Project to scale this first now in Ethiopia
to many, many thousands and then also in other African countries
or other countries even outside Africa.
Well thank you. I think we've given you enough topics here to step in.
Do we have any hands up to ask questions?
Please identify yourself and make the questions direct.
Even if he didn't raise his hand, I was going to go to David Beckmann of Bread for the World
first and then we'll go back there.
Well my question, maybe I could ask you, Josette or Mr. Graziano da Silva.
It seems to me that the main issue is how do you build political will?
Because for 40 or 50 years we've had lots of high-level statements
about the feasibility of ending hunger in the world
and people have said over and over again, all we need is the political will to do it.
How do you build that political will in countries?
Josette, you've been involved in seeing how countries around the world
might build the necessary commitment.
Mr. Graziano da Silva, Brazil is maybe the leading example of a country
that within your own politics managed to build national will to reduce hunger.
I'm interested in your reflections on how you get the commitment, sustained commitment,
to get the job done.
Well I'm going to pass this to the politicians on our panel but also Jose.
But I would just say I was recently in Brazil with Jose.
We were at Brazil's conference on food security.
I think every governor from around Brazil was there, local officials,
and I have never seen people, thousands of people, more on fire about ending hunger.
It was imbued through the entire political system that this was a national goal
and people were excited about the possibility but also feeling the pressure
to change those numbers for Brazil.
I was struck how deeply this was imbued in Brazil.
How did that change, because it certainly wasn't there a decade ago?
Yeah, in fact there has been a big change.
I would say that the lessons that we can get from the Brazilian experience,
for sure we need this political commitment to eradicate hunger but to achieve it,
it's very important to demonstrate that we can do it in a very quick way.
That was one of the most important points.
We have been able to scale up good practices that were local to a national level
and to improve them very quickly. Not to make experiments.
There was a decision made, there was a budget available and we stated to implement it.
To do it, as the government does not have the proper structure to do it,
we asked for partnerships among civil society,
private sector, church, football teams, everybody.
So this was because the greatest problem in the beginning of the hunger combat programs
is to find the people that are hungry because they are invisible.
Sometimes you don't have even a number to address, a bank account for them
or something like that, even a register of where to find them.
So civil society involvement is a key issue to quickly improve and scale up local programs.
The second point I want to highlight is that hunger combat needs practical measures.
As Bruno mentioned, it's not something difficult to do.
We're not talking about sending a man to the moon or something like that.
It's practical things that are needed.
So build on local experience that already the people know how to do it.
Facilitate this commitment and facilitate to bring partnerships with local institutions
that are again very important.
I would like to address a third, perhaps lesson or important issue,
that hunger is an emergency issue but you cannot address only this emergency situation
because the environment that produces hunger, the causes,
the structure of things that are there will remain there.
So when you start an action you need to address both at the same time
and try to bring synergies between different programs.
Let me give an example.
We started improving family farmers, but family farmers do not have access to markets
because people don't buy foods locally; they don't have push power.
So cash transfer programs help you to bridge these two:
the supply site to stimulate production, and also to stimulate local markets.
Cash transfer programs in Brazil were key for the success of the Hunger Zero program.
Thank you. I'm just going to ask if we can take two or three questions together.
Then we'll open it up and Bruno and Ngozi, if you want to jump in
on this question that was just asked also. We have one back here.
Shenggen Fan is going to call on you if you didn't put your hand up
and then we'll take this third one and then we'll come to the whole panel.
Please introduce yourself.
Thank you. My name is Francois Meienberg.
I'm working for an NGO called the Berne Declaration, based in Switzerland.
I haven't heard two words this morning and I just wonder if the panelists believe
that they are not an issue if we speak about food security.
The first word is biofuels.
The possible concurrents, producing biofuels and producing foods,
concurrents for water, concurrents for soil and so on.
The other word is food speculation.
Food speculation and price volatility, is this also not an issue?
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Please?
Thanks. Frank Kane from The National newspaper, Abu Dhabi.
I'd like to ask the businessmen on the panel really whether there's been a failure
of international capitalism here again in that we seem not to have bridged an obvious gap
in demand and supply.
On the one hand there is one billion people who are going hungry.
On the other, Mr. Polman tells us that investment in food and agriculture
produces the highest return possible of any investment.
Why haven't the two come together?
Has this been a critical failure of capitalism?
Thank you. Excellent questions. Shenggen?
Thank you, Josette.
I'm Shenggen Fan from International Food Policy Research Institute,
part of the CGIAR research group.
Okay, many of you have mentioned about supporting a country
without a country-driven program.
But one of the problems we are facing is a lack of country capacity to support,
to build our country capacity.
I don't know whether the global leaders in food security can really re-engage
the capacity building to build the countries to lead,
to drive and to arm their development programs.
Excellent and just one last one here.
My name is Har Idain (phonetic) from UAE.
We can't hear you.
My name is Har Idain from UAE.
We thank your distinguished panel for the excellent briefing.
But you know there is something which is called accessibility,
availability and affordability of the food. Accessibility, is it possible to get it locally or internationally?
Availability, is it available in the right way and the right quantity and the right time?
But the most important is the affordability.
His Excellency Graziano, he said that is about almost three hundred million.
Is it affordable for the people to buy it from the local market?
So can we give enough quantity for the poor people to buy it and to be affordable?
This is my question. -Excellent question.
Political will, biofuels, speculation, failure of capitalism, building country capacities,
accessibility, affordability.
We're just going to go through.
Who wants to jump in first? Bill?
Well no one ever said that capitalism solves everything.
There are two things that it's known to have a problem with.
First is funding research and innovation.
You always underfund it because the risk-taker can't capture anywhere near the full benefit.
The other is doing things for the poorest.
The voice of the poor in a market-based system is very feeble.
So certainly in health for things like where we're working on a malaria vaccine,
here in agriculture in terms of particularly the crops of Africa,
the work that's gone into cassava, cassava diseases, the work that's gone into sorghum
is way, way less than you would do if you were optimizing human welfare.
But itג€™s simply ג€“ thereג€™s no market for that.
So thatג€™s where government and philanthropy always has to come in.
It can never be done by price-based mechanism.
Although you want to bring in the actors who have competence,
and so youג€™ve got to effectively create some sort of price signal for them.
Excellent. Paul?
Yeah. In the theory of capitalism we donג€™t disagree,
I think the theory of capitalism is a little bit simple
on all the things weג€™re discussing in Davos, there's a failure of the system to function.
What is very important here is property rights, for example.
Business doesnג€™t get involved in property rights.
The governments need to figure a lot of these things out, rules of law.
Many of the countries in Africa were able to feed themselves.
Government changed and the feeding changed.
R&D protection is very important for bringing in technology,
the rights of women, which are in some countries more recognized than others.
Functioning of markets not having a Doah round or other restrictions.
Export restrictions, weג€™ve seen from Russia for example on grain export.
So what we are not advocating here, which is very important,
itג€™s not them and us, and business or government.
For the first time we have an opportunity,
when the issue becomes far more pertinent, to just work together.
To work together to find a solution.
And that is where, for example, the project like New Fishing for Agriculture comes in,
why itג€™s so powerful. Because it takes this holistic approach,
that all the members of the panel have been talking about.
And I think we are past the time now to say this group of people,
or that group of stakeholders has let us down.
The issue is far more complex, that it needs to be solved at a different level,
which is that corporation weג€™re talking about.
Weג€™re going to go Ngozi, Stefan, Bruno, and then weג€™re going to have Jose wrap up
because we only have five minutes. So Ngozi and then Stefan.
Iג€™d like to put a little bit more optimism to the question
whether we get the financial market interested in this type of production.
There are at the moment only specialists in this business.
Insurance companies and reinsurance companies are in.
I summarize, in one sentence what happens in India and China.
There are roughly a hundred million insurance premiums.
Five to eight years ago today, we had three billion both countries together.
For our company, Swiss Re, we remain the leaders in this company in both.
Working with the government, with more than a hundred million dollars premium there,
and we earn money.
So the key risk is for all investors and all those who invest in the value chain,
in stock, and everything.
They would like to get rid of the risk of weather.
And this is why we invest a lot of intelligence now,
for example, together with IFC, to create indices.
Because if this innovation is there for all the countries, for all the specific items,
people can invest and can insure their credits or their investment against this intake.
This is the moment you get money from the financial market.
Thank you. Ngozi?
Two quick comments on political will and country capacity.
I think the food price crisis of 2008 was a watershed moment that woke many countries up
and has contributed tremendously to political will at the country level
to try and take care of this situation, because of the issue of price volatility.
So you take my country for example.
We import $67 billion worth of food that we can produce.
Itג€™s rice, itג€™s wheat for which we can substitute cassava, itג€™s sugar and fish.
These are all products we can produce.
This thing woke us up to say,
look, not only can we feed ourselves but we can feed neighboring countries also
depend on us, like Niger, Mali where there are some issues now.
So that plus a capable leader.
I mean, Bill talked about our new agriculture minister whoג€™s tremendously exciting,
has put forward a very specific plan of crop by crop.
By which we can not only substitute the 67 billion
but we can export 10 billion dollars a year, gaining back our position that we had in 1961.
So a capable leader, and then infusing the whole system with this will
and this excitement that they have in Brazil that we can do it.
Then bring in the partnerships together with the private sector, the foundations.
I think this is what builds the momentum.
Now, my last comment is that when you do that,
you do then need international community to also step up.
I mean, for Nigeria I think working with the partners we have we can do it.
But for other countries that have put down specific plans
and have the political will, through the GFSP, the Global Food Security Program.
Theyג€™re expecting the support of the international community to do this.
When that is not forthcoming itג€™s also a bit of a letdown.
So we need to bring all parties together to the table.
Thank you. Bruno?
Two very short comments.
The first one, the question of price volatility just to insist on the fact,
that this was at the core of the decisions and the discussions around G-20 leaders.
The fact that we improved transparency, the fact that we insisted on improving production,
are very specific answers to this question of price volatility.
Iג€™d like also to mention the risk hedging and insurance instruments
that have been created by the World Bank.
Iג€™d like to commend Bob Zurlick (phonetic) for the tremendous job he has made
to put his new instruments on the table.
Which are very specific answers to this question of price volatility,
because I share your view, this is a key point for the farmers all over the world.
Second remark on the question of political will.
There is political will and Iג€™m quite confident that with the Mexican presidency
there will be a very strong political will to go the way of fighting against hunger
all over the world.
There is a key point, which is the financial support to the practical measures.
We have to keep in mind that developed countries are facing a huge debt crisis.
Which means that we have to invent new financial tools, new financial support.
The fact that Paul and Bill are attending this round table,
shows that we are able to find new financial tools to support those practical measures.
Thank you. Jose, bring it all home, not to put too much pressure on you.
I will address only the last point because I found it very important,
how to afford the poorest people to buy the food they need.
I will start with that 75% of the poorest now live in rural areas.
That's saying three out of four.
Those people that are malnourished or hungry, already live in rural areas
and most of them are farmers. Very small farmers, subsistence farmers.
So I would say that at least three main actions.
The first one is to better access to natural resource, land and water are critical,
especially in Asia and Africa.
Second, better wages and better employment.
Most of the poorest work as temporary workers in agriculture or other sectors.
The salary they receive is very low,
especially when they are women, itג€™s very, very low.
Third, I would say that we need to bring the food price down.
The way to bring food price down nowadays, even in speculation,
it goes to the fact that production and demand are very tight, so our stocks are very low.
We need to improve production, but also we need to improve stocks.
Stocks to use in emergencies, but stocks also to give support to the prices.
Not to be so vulnerable to a country ban, or a draw in some area, et cetera.
We need better stocks,
and stocks regulation is something that we need a global institution to deal with.
In spite of what Bruno said about rapid response management,
we need to deal with stocks.
Thank you. I think we actually touched on every question.
This will be my last panel at Davos in my role as head of the World Food Program.
My term ends in April and Iג€™ll be joining the World Economic Forum as Vice Chair.
But I just want to take a moment just to say a special thanks
to Bill Gates and the Howard Buffet Foundation thatג€™s represented here,
for the support for Purchasing For Progress.
Today WFP buys 80% of the food we buy for Africa in Africa,
from poor farmers in Africa and throughout the world,
and this type of innovation in making them part of the solution and value chain.
The Purchasing For Progress looks specifically at farmers
who really would not have a chance to interact with markets,
so a subsection of really,
and itג€™s helping transform the face of hunger in some communities.
I want to thank you Paul,
because there is a group of CEOs whoג€™s changing the way we do business
on food and nutrition, security.
Also Stefan, this is ג€“ Iג€™ve got our band of brothers and Dutch band of brothers,
Fickey and Peter Bonker and the people here.
A lot of it happened at Davos and I want to thank you, Ngozi, whoג€™s a ג€“
and then Bruno for moving the world to get behind this.
We are on different ground than we were in 2008
when the food crisis hit and half the food drained from this cup
for the many, many millions, hundreds of millions of people in the world
who live on $1.25 a day. I didnג€™t know who to call.
Today we are organized, and we are focused, and countries like Saudi Arabia,
the Brick nations are playing a major role, not only in learning
but in contributing to the generosity of Europe, US, Japan, Australia and others,
Canada, whoג€™ve really stood behind this issue.
So Iג€™m feeling optimistic, I donג€™t believe it will be a Malthusian nightmare,
and I promise that weג€™ll keep this issue very much alive with Lisa and her team
here at the forum in the future. Thank you.
Iג€™m going to interrupt you because you should not thank us,
but I think we are going to speak for the panel,
because the dedication and the devotion youג€™ve brought to the World Food Program,
putting the interest of many, always ahead of your own,
bringing the cup to everybodyג€™s attention,
we should be thanking you because thatג€™s why weג€™re sitting here.
And I would say we can have much more cups.
Iג€™m bringing the cup to the forum.