The U.S. has announced that they will spend $3.5 bil­lion dol­lars to help farm­ers in the devel­op­ing world increase their yields. The announce­ment is part of a pledge ful­fill­ment made by the G-8 to com­mit $20 bil­lion dol­lars to the cause.

With more and more peo­ple going hun­gry and more peo­ple fill­ing the earth, the invest­ments in agri­cul­ture are greatly needed. From the Voice of Amer­ica, writer Steve Barag­ona intro­duces us to one farmer that has ben­e­fited from farm­ing improvements.

Grace Ndung’u may pro­vide an exam­ple of what the aid could mean for developing-world farm­ers. Ndung’u farms about one hectare in Murang’a, Kenya, an hour or so out­side Nairobi. She says that, like many African farm­ers, she used to grow just one crop: maize.

Suc­cess through diversification

That’s a risky strat­egy that puts farm­ers at the whim of weather, insects, dis­eases, and fluc­tu­at­ing mar­kets. But about three years ago, Ndung’u started work­ing with a non-governmental orga­ni­za­tion that helps edu­cate farm­ers and improve their pro­duc­tiv­ity. With the program’s assis­tance, she says, “I’ve diver­si­fied. [Before,] I was grow­ing only maize. But now I grow beans….I also grow hor­ti­cul­ture prod­ucts [like] toma­toes, kale, indige­nous veg­eta­bles, and also var­i­ous types of fruit.”

And she says she is grow­ing more maize, too. “Before, I used to get about eight bags of maize,” she says, “but cur­rently, I’m able to get about 17.”

And because of all this, Ndung’u says she’s mak­ing more money – enough to buy another farm and hire more workers.

Experts say if you want to end world hunger and lift peo­ple out of poverty, this is the kind of pro­gram that deserves sup­port. And they believe that invest­ing in farm­ers does more to reduce the num­ber of poor and hun­gry than any other investment.

Agri­cul­ture is a good investment

Joachim von Braun, Director-General of the Inter­na­tional Food Pol­icy Research Insti­tute in Wash­ing­ton, says if agri­cul­tural research and devel­op­ment were to increase from $5 bil­lion a year to $15 bil­lion, “10 years later we will have…300 mil­lion [fewer] peo­ple among the hun­gry poor. This is the largest ben­e­fit one can achieve with this type of investment.”

But invest­ments in agri­cul­ture have fallen sharply in recent decades. For exam­ple, inter­na­tional donors devoted about 17 per­cent of their aid bud­gets to agri­cul­ture in the 1970s, com­pared to about 5 per­cent today.

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, heads the Food, Agri­cul­ture and Nat­ural Resources Pol­icy Analy­sis Net­work, a non-profit con­sult­ing group. She says the decline in agri­cul­tural aid bud­gets is partly behind the recent food cri­sis in Africa.

“As a result of dimin­ished resources and lack of funds for agri­cul­ture,” she says, “we saw declines in pro­duc­tiv­ity, we saw peo­ple mov­ing out of farm­ing to rely more on com­modi­ties like min­er­als, and rely more on imports of food rather than pro­duce their own.”

Food prices in parts of Africa today remain sig­nif­i­cantly higher than they were before the food crisis.

U.S. plans

Speak­ing at a sum­mit on food secu­rity at the United Nations Sat­ur­day, Sept. 26, Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton said the U.S. hopes to reverse the recent trend away from agri­cul­ture investment.

“Inter­na­tional sup­port for agri­cul­ture has declined, while con­tri­bu­tions to emer­gency aid have increased,” she said. “We will con­tinue, of course, to invest in the crises and the emer­gen­cies. But we want to begin to try to alle­vi­ate the crises and the emer­gency by once again enabling peo­ple to feed themselves.”

The strat­egy Clin­ton sketched out includes many of the ele­ments experts say devel­op­ing– world farm­ers need most: invest­ments in research and devel­op­ment, access to improved seed and fer­til­izer, insur­ance pro­grams for small farm­ers, as well as improved infra­struc­ture such as roads and stor­age facil­i­ties to help farm­ers get their prod­ucts to market.

The Obama administration’s $3.5 bil­lion com­mit­ment is part of a $20 bil­lion pledge made this sum­mer by G8 group of indus­tri­al­ized nations at their sum­mit in Italy. Many in the agri­cul­ture com­mu­nity wel­comed the declaration…to a point.

“It’s not a big amount”

Ajay Vashee farms 1000 hectares in Zam­bia and is pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tional Fed­er­a­tion of Agri­cul­tural Pro­duc­ers. When he heard about the G8 pledge, he says, “My reac­tion was, ‘Great, at least it’s on the agenda. Peo­ple are think­ing about it.’”

His wish list for agri­cul­ture aid lines up pretty well with what Sec­re­tary Clin­ton has said the U.S. wants to do. But he says the G8’s pledge of $20 bil­lion over three years won’t be enough.

“If you look at the num­ber of devel­op­ing coun­tries spread over the num­ber of years this kind of money will be avail­able,” he says, “it’s not a big amount. I’m not say­ing it in a con­de­scend­ing way or in a neg­a­tive way, or being ungrate­ful. But what I’m say­ing is, the impact which peo­ple might think it’s going to gen­er­ate might not happen.”

Vashee adds that cli­mate change is expected to take a toll on African agri­cul­ture in par­tic­u­lar. So while experts wel­come the renewed inter­est from the United states and other coun­tries, they say invest­ments in agri­cul­ture must be both seri­ous and sus­tained if the war on hunger and poverty is ever to be won.

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