John Powell is Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian agency. In 2007, WFP provided food assistance to 73 million people in 78 countries, most of them women and children. In addition to feeding people in such troubled regions as Darfur, Chad, Congo, and Afghanistan, WFP aids the victims of natural disasters, families affected by HIV/AIDS, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children. Powell, who has been with WFP since 1990, has also worked for the World Bank and the Australian government. Gourmet Deputy Editor Jocelyn Zuckerman spoke with him about the skyrocketing prices of wheat and rice, the riots engulfing cities from Port-au-Prince to Dakar, and the short- and long-term priorities of his organization. (For more information about the World Food Programme, including details about the kinds of food the agency provides and where it comes from, visit wfp.org.)
Q. In a recent story in the New York Times, economist Jeffrey Sachs was quoted as saying the current global food crisis is “the worst of its kind in more than 30 years.” Do you agree with that, and could you talk a bit about how this crisis is different from crises your organization has faced in the past?
A. The situation that confronts the World Food Programme is essentially of two parts. The first part is the impact of high food and fuel prices on our current programs and operations. To give you a sense of what I’m talking about, at the end of 2007, these programs were estimated to cost around 2.9 billion U.S. dollars. As of today, that number has risen by 756 million U.S. dollars, purely as the result of increased fuel and food costs. There is not a single additional person reached. And the first dilemma that faces WFP is how to raise the additional resources to be able to meet the needs of people who are already among the poorest and most vulnerable in the world. And without additional support, we will simply be forced to either feed fewer people or provide less food to those people.
Q. A few weeks ago, the World Bank President, Robert Zoellick, called on the international community to coordinate its efforts and come forward with an extra $500 million. I know Bush recently came up with $200 million. Where do you stand overall?
A. The number 500 million mentioned by Zoellick is the same number as our 756, it’s just that in the intervening period, between February 25 and today, the costs have escalated further. So in terms of where we stand today, we have received contributions from a number of member states, and, for example, Spain, Germany, and a number of governments have made clear to us that they will respond to the executive director’s urgent appeal positively and very shortly. We’re in conversations with these member states, and it would really not be appropriate for me to quote specific numbers. But the response is very forthcoming.
Q. Now I want to back up a little and talk about the factors contributing to the crisis. We’ve been told it’s the result of any number of things, including the West’s increase in ethanol production, the drought in Australia, climate change, the growth of the middle classes in India and China, and the war in Iraq. Can you talk about which of those factors you think is playing the biggest role and why?
A. We see four main drivers to the soaring food prices. The first is the sharp increase in fuel and energy costs, which has an effect on every step in the value chain of agricultural production, whether it be diesel, fertilizer, seed, et cetera.
Factor number two, of course, relates to economic growth, particularly in Asia (led by China), and this is essentially brought about by a change in consumption patterns. As citizens in these countries have increased their domestic income, their dietary habits have changed, and this has affected food markets: As your income rises, you tend to eat, say, more beef than maize, and typically about eight kilos of maize converts into one kilo of beef, so that’s the kind of chain we’re talking about.
The third element is climate. This crop year, for example, we have the impact of drought in Australia, hurricanes in Central America, and so on. This is a cause for increasing concern, because the number and frequency of climate-related events—and the numbers of people affected by them—have increased sharply over past decades. The number of natural disasters has quadrupled, for example, and the number of people affected used to be 160 million in the 1980s, typically; it’s up to 250 million now, just to give you an order of magnitude. And the compelling point is really that 98 percent of the people who are affected live in the developing world.
The fourth element is the competition for agricultural production from biofuels. The International Grains Council estimates that in the year from 2007 to 2008, 100 million tons of cereals will be diverted from the food chain to the fuel chain. So, for the first time, we actually have a situation where the price of food is linked to the price of fuel. To give you a very specific example, in some countries where palm oil is used for cooking, the price of that palm oil is being set by those concerned with ethanol production, at the price they are willing to pay. So it’s set in a different market. So much so that Professor Joachim von Braun, from the International Food Policy Research Institute, said that if, miraculously, agricultural production were to increase by 20 percent tomorrow, nobody knows whether more people would be fed, or more fuel would be produced. All we would know is that the food, the product, would go to the area that was willing to pay the highest price.
Q. There are people who are calling the West’s focus on fuel at the expense of food a crime against humanity. Would you agree with that characterization?
A. WFP takes a completely neutral stance on the issue of biofuels. Clearly, governments and the international community need to be able to strike the delicate balance between those sets of policies which will protect the environmental health and well-being of the planet and its population for the future, at the same time as we deal with providing sufficient food for the population of the world today—with the knowledge that in the next 30 or 40 years, we’re going to increase that population from more than six billion to around nine billion people. We would also say that, perhaps for the first time in 40 or 50 years, small farmers, particularly in Africa, stand the chance of getting a fair price for their products. And what would be wrong with that?
Q. Aren’t there trade deals, and isn’t there a system in place globally that is going to preclude them from getting a fair price?
A. With market demand so high for food commodities, and with world cereal stocks at their lowest levels in 30 years, there is a real opportunity for small farmers in developing countries to participate. It’s not easy, and it’s not quick, but this does present opportunities as well as risks to small farmers.
Q. But isn’t so much of the problem the productivity of the land in the developing world? And that the farmers don’t have access to the seeds or the fertilizers they would need to boost their yields?
A. This is one of the reasons why we do not believe that all of a sudden higher food prices have translated into boom times for small farmers, particularly in Africa. Because the prices of almost everything on the input side—seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, fuel—have gone up. Yet on the production or productivity side, there has been no improvement: the roads are no better, the warehousing is no better, the market opportunities are no better. So it will take a substantial focus on setting the right agricultural policies, and the level of investment in the agricultural sector, which in developing countries has been underinvested in perhaps the last two, three decades.
Q. That’s what I was going to ask, because I know the World Bank recently said it was going to double its agricultural lending to Africa, to $800 million, but it is true, isn’t it, that in the past couple of decades the World Bank and the IMF have been cutting aid for agricultural infrastructure in Africa?
A. It is clearly time for a substantial raising of the level of investment in the agriculture sector, and for those who call for a new green revolution in Africa—and our voice is among them—it’s important to bear in mind that the level of agricultural infrastructure in Africa today is less than it was in Asia 40 years ago, when the green revolution took root there. So that’s what we mean when we say this needs to be done, and done urgently, but it is not a question of decision taken today and result tomorrow.
Q. But there are a lot of people who would say that the green revolution in India wasn’t much of a success at all, and they point to all the Indian farmers committing suicide now because they’ve gone into such debt buying seeds and fertilizers from the multinationals. Isn’t there a danger of that happening in Africa as well, and of further marginalizing the poor farmers there?
A. The history of the green revolution in Asia is one of absolutely massive increases in food production, coupled with the absence of famine. In that macro sense, it has clearly been a quite outstanding success, and is an absolutely glorious tribute to Dr. Borlaug and his team of scientists who promoted the technological and scientific breakthroughs which led to the green revolution in Asia. That is by no means to claim perfection, and indeed you are correct in saying there are serious concerns that the Indian government is addressing, particularly relating to the number of suicides of small farmers in India. Dr. Swaminathan, for example, of the Swaminathan Institute, who was a key figure in the green revolution, is one of the people dealing with this issue. It is one of the key planks of the government’s new five-year plan.
Q. Isn’t there something ironic about all this money and all these resources going into fertilizers and new seeds—not to mention GMOs [genetically modified organisms]—in Africa, whereas in places like Europe and the U.S. and Australia, everybody’s turning increasingly toward organics and paying more money for food that is the opposite of what we’re promoting to the rest of the world?
A. Globally, the situation is that last year we had the second-best cereal harvest on record, and notwithstanding cereal stocks at their lowest levels, soaring food prices, etc, there still is sufficient food for everyone in the world to have a fully nutritious diet. The notion of a new face of hunger is directly attributable to what we’ve been seeing recently, that is soaring food prices.
Q. Meaning it’s not so much that there’s a lack of food but that it’s so expensive that people just can’t afford it?
A. That’s the group I’m talking about. These are typically the urban poor, they are the rural landless, pastoralists, and those who own a little land but do not produce enough food to provide for themselves and their families. So there may well be food in the market or on the shelves, but these people simply don’t have the income to be able to buy it. Let me begin by saying that in the United States and Canada, Australia, Japan, etc—in the developed world—typically a family would spend 15 percent of its income on food. For a poor person in a developing country, that number goes to 60 to 80 percent of income. So rising food prices, while much debated in the developed world, have a massive impact in developing countries, because most of these people we’re talking about earn less than a dollar a day.
Now what happens when a family is then hit with soaring food prices? The first thing they do is take their children out of school, so that they can avoid paying school fees, buying books, and so on. The second thing is that they visit the doctor less, or go to the clinic less, to avoid charges and costs for medicine. The third thing is that they eat fewer meals and shift to less-nutritious food. So the long-term implications, particularly for the young, can be potentially devastating in terms of health and education. Which is why we have been arguing so strenuously that the international community needs to come together and support developing countries with stretched financial resources, to strengthen or put in place social safety nets to protect the most vulnerable in their communities—essentially, the new face of hunger.
Q. Which is also an angry one, right?
A. Absolutely. And so the first part from a humanitarian perspective is the need to deal with the new face of hunger. The flip side of that is what you are reading about and seeing on your TV screens, the food riots in Morocco, in Cameroon, in Senegal, the military distributing food in the Philippines, the disturbances in Indonesia, the riots and change of government in Haiti, the military bakeries in Egypt … this is what happens. Now, unless we’re able to help developing countries with limited resources to deal with this problem, we’re likely to find a phenomenon whereby the riot happens on a Saturday afternoon, and the government has a new set of policies by Monday morning. And they’re highly unlikely to be best.
Q. I know a lot of places are imposing price controls and banning exports.
A. About a third of the world is now living under this regime, and as Secretary General Ban [Ki-moon] has said, these simply distort markets and disrupt the normal course of commerce.
Q. But is there any way to get these governments to stop doing this?
A. The first best way, or one of the first best ways, would be to assist governments in developing countries to be able to provide the social safety nets to protect the most vulnerable, so they’re not inspired to take this kind of action.
Q. When you’re going to these wealthier nations, it seems to me not that big a leap to go from angry people to refugees and terrorists. Wouldn’t these nations be inclined to give more money than they’re giving, given the likely outcome of hunger around the world?
A. Yes!
Q. So why do they seem to be so short-sighted?
A. Well, let me begin with a quote that you might find useful, because it summarizes a point that you were making. It was made by President Obasanjo, of Nigeria, a few months ago, when he said, “A hungry man is an angry man.” Joachim von Braun [of IFPRI] has a quote which says something to the effect of, “The world food system’s in trouble, the hot spots of food risks will be where high food prices combine with shocks from weather or political crises. These are recipes for disaster.” So the answer is, yes, this is an issue, a real issue, and it requires urgent action. But that action needs to be measured. The simple fact of the matter is that rising food and fuel prices affect every country. But different countries have different capacities to deal with the problem.
Q. Could you talk a little bit about climate change and the developed world’s culpability and/or responsibility for that?
A. Our position on climate change doesn’t begin with who’s responsible and why. If the leading scientific minds of the world are basically correct, then we face a situation where, in the coming decades, we are going to see marked changes in weather and climate, and we may well see, as John Holmes, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs for the U.N., has said, what we have been experiencing, in terms of the number, frequency, and scale of people affected by the disasters, may simply be a harbinger of the future, a curtain-raiser. In a number of countries in Africa, for example, the International Panel on Climate Change suggests that there may well be quite serious, distinct changes in agricultural production patterns, and this has important consequences both for, one, the volume of production and what might be produced; and two, the number of people who may need assistance.
So we see the four planks of the climate change agenda as extraordinarily important: mitigation, adaptation, science and technology, and financing. We think that it is very important to be able to work as a public agency in the international community to support that agenda.
Q. So the U.N. as an organization doesn’t take a stance on the responsibility of those nations that are emitting the most greenhouse gases?
A. The U.N. is of course the consortium of all nations, but the U.N. is focusing on those four areas: adaptation, mitigation, science and technology, and financing. As an institution, we are not engaged in who bears the greater responsibility, or who should be responsible for what particular policy. This is very much a matter on which the member states need to reach consensus. The issues of climate change and higher food prices are on top of the agenda.
Q. A few weekends ago, at the spring meeting of the World Bank and the IMF, Zoellick talked about the Doha round of trade talks and about changing the policies of the United States and Europe. He suggested that getting rid of agricultural subsidies would go a long way toward addressing the global hunger problem. Do you think that’s likely to happen?
A. Well, firstly, let me say that the WFP couldn’t agree more with what President Zoellick said. The Doha round, which covers agriculture, was designed to be a pro-development round, and an early closure to that round offers enormous possibilities for the whole world to benefit, so we have strongly endorsed that viewpoint.
Q. And are you optimistic? I mean, there are still the American and European farm lobbies, right?
A. Well, there are a whole range of lobbies, and it depends on where you sit and where you stand on some of these issues. I don’t think WFP has a position on whether we’re optimistic or pessimistic, because we’re not a party to the deal. We would certainly hope that a deal could be struck.
Q. But doesn’t it seem to you that instead of having to respond to all of these crises, maybe the problem has more to do with these bigger policies of the Western world?
A. There are enough reforms to go around for all countries, developed and developing alike, to play their part.
Q. What would you have the developing countries do to play their part? Just better governance and more transparency?
A. For example, you would expect agricultural reform, by a WTO consensus, to lead to freer agricultural trade. This wouldn’t only deal with imports, it would deal with exports, and it would have clear implications for price controls and for subsidies. A more liberal trade regime, particularly in agricultural products, is likely to be in everybody’s best interest.
Q. I heard you speak at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines in October. I don’t know if you were there when Roberto Rodrigues, former Agricultural Minister of Brazil, gave a talk about the benefits of sugar ethanol, but he was very optimistic about the potential of biofuels for southern economies, and the sort of re-organization of geopolitics based on southern nations getting rich from biofuels. What do you think about that prospect?
A. To go back to an earlier point that we discussed, which is why we’re agnostic but neutral on the issue of biofuels: Essentially, biofuels come from biomass, and there is no necessary reason why a different form of biomass can’t be used and…
Q. Other than a food crop?
A. Yeah—jatropha [a plant native to tropical areas whose seeds can be used to make biodiesel] being a case in point. So advances in the area of alternative fuel sources could potentially have very positive effects in a whole range of areas.
Q. During your speech, you talked about this perfect storm approaching the food aid community, which is of course playing out right now. Do you see an end to it? How do you feel looking forward?
A. The storm is upon us a little more quickly than we had anticipated. The rate of increase, the acceleration, has been more than I think anybody had anticipated. For WFP, it’s incredibly important to be able to do two things at the same time. The first is to deal quickly with the urgent needs of the present, if you like, the caseload of internationally vulnerable people, the folk in Afghanistan, the folk in Darfur, the folk in Chad. We need simultaneously, of course, to find ways to help developing countries and support them as we deal with the new face of hunger.
So that’s the immediate problem for today. We need to address both of those in a way that helps to solve the problem for tomorrow. Part of it is giving governments in developing countries the policy space to think through what are the best set of policy options for them, and which they are unlikely to have if they are dealing with food riots. It’s difficult to have this kind of conversation. The temptation therefore is to be pre-empted or pushed into urgent action rather than necessarily the best action, and that could well make the situations worse, which is our concern about the increasing number of countries which are imposing export bans and price controls.
Similarly, unless the issue of subsidies is dealt with equally intelligently, this can lead to a situation where it places an impossible financial burden on the government budgets. So these are the areas where governments in developing countries may need particular help. So we need to deal with this issue simultaneously as the world deals with longer-term issues, about strengthening science and technology input to be able to increase productivity, and a sharp increase in investment in the agricultural sector, and the kind of broad-based policy reforms—including a successful early closure to the WTO round of trade negotiations, particularly those covering agriculture—so that we can have a set of policies best-suited to trigger the supply response to increase agricultural production and to get the balance right between that and protecting the health and the well-being of the planet in the longer run. That’s why you can’t do this over a weekend, between the Saturday-afternoon riot and the Monday-morning policy announcement.
Q. It seems like it would be very grim work, what you’re doing right now. Do you feel like you can see any light at the end of the tunnel?
A. The good news is that this issue is one that affects all countries, albeit somewhat differently. So the issue of hunger and food prices is very high on the international agenda. It will be on the agenda for the G-8; it will be on the agenda for the Tokyo International Conference for African Development in Japan, and so on. And that offers it a profile which simply demands attention, and these are the folk best suited to lead the world through the issues. So I’m in fact quite optimistic, given the prominent profile of the issue, and the engagement of the world’s leaders, across Africa, across Asia, and inclusive of the G-8. We, the world, have needed to deal with these issues before, and when we’ve come together, we have done so.