| I spent this week in San Jose at the Kellogg Food and Society conference. The experience was fantastic, but for me, the best part of the whole conference was a presentation by Molly Anderson. Molly's name and email address were on my "to do" list because I was interested in learning more about the IAASTD report, and she was one of the lead authors of the report. It may not sound that interesting just by the long acronym of a name, or even the entire name spelled out (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development) but this is a MAJOR report that EVERYONE should know about.
Here's what happened. The countries of the world came together and accidentally did something REALLY good. Well, not quite so accidentally. For some it was on purpose. But I think those who are usually in power actually let it happen by accident (those are my words, not Molly's). After all, the result was what Al Gore might call "An Inconvenient Truth." So inconvenient that the U.S. (under Bush), Canada, and Australia did not approve the report. Every other country involved did.
As it turned out, Molly was doing a presentation on the report at the conference I was at. The report is a look back over the past 50 years in agriculture and at the next 10 years. In looking at agriculture, the goal of the report was to improve poverty, hunger, nutrition, health, and environmental and social sustainability. It covers the entire world in one section, and then breaks up the world into 5 separate regional reports. And - here's the real surprise - it calls for sustainability! REAL sustainability, not greenwashing. That might be common sense to us but it's a MAJOR shift from current U.S. agricultural policy or from the policy of most of the powerful entities that set the course for agriculture around the world.
So here's what Molly had to say... |
Who Wrote the Report
The IAASTD report is largely due to a man named Bob Watson, who was in a high enough position at the World Bank to get the ball rolling. Molly emphasized that his leadership and vision were crucial in every step of the project. The report was sponsored by the World Bank and 5 U.N. agencies. It had a three year timeline and a very unique organizational structure. Molly said, "It was set up to be as fair as we could do it."
A bureau came together to make many of the key decisions about the report and the overall project. The bureau included consumers, producers, NGOs, representatives of the private sector, institutions, and government representatives. The members of the bureau were intentionally chosen to ensure a balance of genders and world regions. The governments represented on the bureau were: Egypt, Iran, Kyrgyz Republic, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Australia, China, India, Japan, Philippines, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Uruguay, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Ireland, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, Benin, Gambia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, and Senegal. The bureau decided about who were the authors of the report and many of the other parameters of the report (particularly about the process to research and write the report).
What Are the Reports
IAASTD consists of 6 reports, written simultaneously. As I mentioned before, one covered the entire world. The other 5 were split up into: 1) North America and Europe, 2) Latin America, 3) East and South Asia and the Pacific, 4) Sub-Saharan Africa, and 5) Northern Africa and Western Asia. Molly thinks that "we're onto something" because the reports, although written simultaneously, were all very similar.
Those writing the report wanted to make sure they weren't just looking at scientific info but indigenous knowledge, farmers knowledge, all of the places knowledge can come from. They examined issues as diverse as food safety, biotechnology, the role of women in agriculture, the implications of peak oil, the potential (or not) of biofuels, obesity, climate change, rising consumption and issues related to that, new demands on farmers, new and resurgent diseases, and markets and trade.
Then they laid out a set of options for the future. The options are NOT framed as recommendations. After writing the report, they also came up with highlights for policy makers to make the information from the report more usable. In doing so, they found five common messages shared among all 6 reports:
- We need to redirect and increase overall investment in agriculture - especially to women & small holders. We must strengthen women's organizations, help women and small landholders cope with climate change and price volatility, and we need to use regional resources for emergency food aid. (Molly said there's a strong sub-message that's coming through about the importance of strengthening and making sure we aren't undermining regional food systems. Many of the problems being faced by people in agriculture are common across the globe.)
- We need to improve the way knowledge is being created and used. We need to be integrating traditional knowledge better with scientific knowledge. We need to set up equitable, participatory relationships, so that farmers and scientists are on more of an even balance rather than an expert-driven "we will tell you how to solve your problems" approach. We also need to invest in education and technical assistance for women. (Molly said this raises another challenge: How do we do this? And what does it really mean to integrate traditional and scientific knowledge? Understanding how to do this is an entire research agenda that will take years.)
- We must institute more democratic decision making and fair equitable access to ownership of resources and markets. We need to revise methods of ownership and access such as intellectual property rights so it's not weighted in favor of people who in power today. That means we should implement the competition laws already in place and explore whether they need to be strengthened.
- We should actually manage for multi-functionality by doing things that strengthen social, environmental, and economic aspects of agriculture like empowering marginalized stakeholders, restoring and protecting ecosystems, and relying on fair trade.
- We must manage for resilience. We need the ability to persist through continuing development in the face of change. You want to be able to transform a system, to learn when a system is under stress, so the system can become better when it hits these stresses. We should build the capacity for self-organization, and build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation. We should promote diversity at all scales (seeds, fields, crops, businesses, governance) so that we have alternatives, so we have innovation popping up all over the system, so that we're transforming it by having a lot of models at all times. And we should establish food reserves so we don't have vulnerability to price volatility. We need to decentralize our food system so we have regional and local food systems.
Molly said:
Agriculture as best viewed as a multifunctional business. It's not just about creating food, fiber, florals, and fuel. It's about livelihoods, environmental services, quality of rural life, whether people can remain in rural areas or have to flood urban areas. We have to look at these multiple interconnected roles of agriculture. In order to do this effectively, we need to reshape agricultural knowledge systems and reconfigure government framework and reconfigure funding.
The Reactions to the Reports
How did the world's super powers react to the report? Well... it made the U.S. government very uncomfortable. Many countries came together in Johannesburg in April 2008 and as I said before, only 3 did not approve - the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The specific people from the U.S. government who went to Johannesburg were from Bush's State Department, not the USDA. The US was really concerned with implications on trade and things that would jeopardize rules that the US had been instrumental in shaping. The hot spots were anything that used the term "multifunctionality." To them it was a code word for protectionism.
The U.S. also hated what the report said about biotechnology. There were some recommendations about the use of new and emerging technology and the major recognition was that these need to be carefully, comprehensively assessed by all stakeholders. This is not embraced by the biotech industry. The report did not promote biotechnology and say that it is THE answer to hunger or that you have to be using biotech if you want to reach goals.
During the actual writing of the report, Syngenta's representative took her ball and went home. She had been invited to write a section of the chapter to present her perspective. The hope was to strengthen the report by showing that different worldviews result in different approaches to agricultural development. However, the Syngenta representative left the project instead of submitting her section of that chapter.
CropLife International also decided to walk out because the report did not support biotech as THE answer. Then they wrote letters to Bob Watson's boss and his boss's boss. They asked to have Bob fired and wanted a new process put in place. The letters were posted on the ag assessment website. Bob Watson's boss gave him the letter and asked what to do and Bob put it on the website to let people know how CropLife felt. I checked the website and could not find the letter. |
