With the world’s pop­u­la­tion due to rise by a third by 2050, even more peo­ple will be hun­gry in addi­tion to the 1 bil­lion peo­ple who are hun­gry now. Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the imme­di­ate need is the steady rise of food prices back to the highs of last year.

From the Econ­o­mist comes this exam­i­na­tion of the prob­lem and some warn­ings of what to avoid.

It may be too late to avoid another bout of price rises. Despite a global reces­sion and the largest grain har­vest on record in 2008, food prices are head­ing up again. Still, coun­tries have a brief win­dow of oppor­tu­nity in which to set long-term pol­icy goals with­out being dis­tracted by panic mea­sures. They need to do two things: invest in the pro­duc­tive capac­ity of agri­cul­ture and improve the oper­a­tion of food markets.

Gov­ern­ments have done one but not the other. Over the past year invest­ment has risen faster than any­one expected. But dis­trust of mar­kets and a reac­tion against farm trade are grow­ing. Unless gov­ern­ments restrain those impulses, they will under­mine the gains from ris­ing investment.

For most of the past 25 years, invest­ment in agri­cul­ture has declined relent­lessly. In 2005 most devel­op­ing coun­tries were invest­ing only around 5% of pub­lic rev­enues in farm­ing. The share of West­ern aid going to agri­cul­ture fell by around three-quarters between 1980 and 2006. This dis­in­vest­ment laid waste to pro­duc­tiv­ity. Dur­ing the Green Rev­o­lu­tion of the 1960s, staple-crop yields were ris­ing by 3–6% a year. Now they are ris­ing by only 1–2% a year; in poor coun­tries, yields are flat.

For­tu­nately, the food-price spike of 2007-08 shocked gov­ern­ments out of their quarter-century of neglect. The World Bank and many rich coun­tries have dou­bled the money they put into poor coun­tries’ farm­ing. In the poor coun­tries them­selves, agri­cul­ture has gone from being a sideshow for the government—something the min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture does—into its main event, which every­one needs to worry about. This is as it should be: farm­ing is far and away the sin­gle most impor­tant eco­nomic activ­ity in most poor places.
…

There is, how­ever, a dan­ger inher­ent in all this gov­ern­ment activ­ity: the temp­ta­tion of self-reliance. The food-price rise of 2007-08 made all coun­tries worry about “food security”—quite rightly. But over the past year “food secu­rity” (ensur­ing every­one has enough to eat) has shaded into “food self-sufficiency” (grow­ing it all your­self). Self-sufficiency has become a com­mon pol­icy goal in many coun­tries (see article).

In itself, self-sufficiency is not bad. If poor coun­tries have a com­par­a­tive advan­tage in pro­duc­ing their own food, they should do so (and that will often be the case). The prob­lem is that the new rhetoric of self-sufficiency coin­cides with a grow­ing dis­trust of mar­kets and trade. Grain importers no longer trust world mar­kets to sup­ply their needs. “Land grab­bers” are snap­ping up land abroad to use for food pro­duc­tion. Every­where, gov­ern­ments are more involved in farm­ing through input sub­si­dies. In these con­di­tions self-sufficiency could eas­ily sprout pro­tec­tive walls.

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