Covid-19, global food security and the CAP

With the coronavirus pandemic, concerns about global food security are resurfacing. As a recent note from the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) states, “the COVID-19 crisis is causing instability in local and global food markets, disrupting food supply and availability.” This instability results from shocks affecting food supply and demand, and particularly affects the poorest. The HLPE issued a series of recommendations to governments, including this one: “National governments should support local communities and citizens to increase local food production (including home and community gardens) through appropriate stimulus measures (financial and in-kind) to strengthen food resilience, minimize food waste, and avoid over-purchasing to ensure equitable access to food for all.”

There is no doubt that increasing local agricultural production, including for self-consumption and through urban agriculture, can strengthen food security, even if the major factor in this regard is access to food through sufficient income. The issue is particularly acute in the least developed countries, where a significant portion of the population, generally the poorest, works in the fields. But we also know that the search for food self-sufficiency faces several obstacles, starting with population expansion, which often make the use of imports essential. The prospective study carried out by the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), at the request of the Pluriagri association, thus anticipates a sharp increase in food imports for sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, even if it manages to triple its agricultural production compared to 2010.[1].

Trade therefore makes a crucial contribution to global food security. The challenge for states is to find the right balance between developing their own agricultural production and opening up to trade. But it is also to ensure that their agriculture, when it can, and under conditions that do not unduly distort competition, can meet international demand and export food to countries that are unable to produce enough to meet their needs. However, there is reason to be concerned about the potential evolution of agricultural trade in the medium term.

The INRAE prospective study shows that by 2050, the concentration of global agricultural exports could increase further. This would primarily benefit a small number of countries or regions where climate change would have a positive impact on agriculture and which could thus increase their cultivated areas, as well as crop yields. The main beneficiaries of this development would be the former USSR and North America, far ahead of Europe (table).

In other words, in the coming decades, the main food-importing regions, namely Asia and Africa, risk becoming increasingly dependent on a handful of exporting countries. They would therefore be particularly vulnerable to health shocks likely to affect these countries, for example, due to a bacteria or virus dangerous to humans that would disrupt food supply chains as it is doing today, or due to a crop or livestock disease that would significantly reduce their agricultural production potential. Added to this is the fear of shortages, which encourages withdrawal.

Already, Russia has stopped exporting processed grains; Kazakhstan has suspended deliveries of flour, sugar, sunflower oil, and some vegetables; Vietnam has restricted foreign sales of rice… Other embargoes, comparable to those imposed during the 2007-08 crisis, are likely if the crisis continues, although the current level of grain stocks, considered overall, is far from alarming.

This is a measure of the importance of the evolution of European agriculture in the medium term. This depends in particular on the direction of the new reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), initially planned for the period 2021-2027, but whose implementation has been delayed due in particular to a lack of agreement on the Community budget.

But it is an understatement to say that the CAP is under fire.[2]Accused on March 8 by 3,600 scientists from around sixty countries[3] to finance practices "that destroy biodiversity on a large scale, contributing to climate change and soil and land degradation", and also to favor large farms, it has long been under attack from a growing section of civil society and the political class. Who forget that the CAP ensures food security in Europe and seem to want to inflict on it, according to a partial interpretation of the Green Deal[4], a fatal blow.

And yet.

The reform of the Common Agricultural Policy would be truly harmful if, under the guise of addressing climate and environmental challenges – which are obviously very real – it resulted in a reduction, as some would like, in Europe's agricultural production. On the one hand, Europe's withdrawal from export markets would reduce the diversity of supply sources and weaken the food security of purchasing countries – especially since Europe itself would have to import more.[5]On the other hand, it would accentuate the expansion of cultivated land in other regions, particularly in Africa.[6], thus exacerbating the decline of forests and biodiversity, while increasing greenhouse gas emissions[7]Thus, Europe's refusal to play a role on the global agricultural scene would only shift the ecological crisis, without resolving it.

Across the planet, an agroecological transition in agriculture is essential to address the challenges posed by climate change and environmental degradation. It involves rethinking, even disrupting, agricultural practices and public action. But it cannot be achieved at the expense of local and global food security. Yet these three challenges are closely linked. They require a balanced response and political arbitration to forge an acceptable compromise. This must also take into account—and is too often overlooked—the impact on farmers' incomes.

[1] Study available on the site https://www.inrae.fr/actualites/agricultures-europeennes-horizon-2050

[2] Thierry Pouch, “Goodbye CAP… You are no longer welcome in Europe”, Economic Letter, Permanent Assembly of Chambers of Agriculture, No. 402, March 2020.

[3] https://usbeketrica.com/article/3600-scientifiques-appellent-reforme-pac-ambitieuse-climat-ecologie

[4] The Green Deal, presented by the European Commission in December 2019, is intended to be a "new growth strategy" that is greener and more inclusive, aiming in particular to make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050. It is supposed to define the roadmap for all community policies, including the CAP.

[5] In the INRAE study, the increase in European agricultural exports (including intra-community trade) between 2010 and 2050, expressed in food calories, represents, depending on the scenario, 20 to 27 % of the increase in global agricultural exports projected during this period.

[6] According to the INRAE prospective study, the increase in cultivated areas in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050 could vary from 75 to 264 million hectares, depending on the scenarios, while according to certain estimates, the availability of land that is still truly unexploited and likely to be so in environmentally sustainable conditions would be approximately of the order of 50 million hectares (FARM blog of February 24, 2020, https://fondation-farm.org/prospective-2050-forte-pression-sur-les-terres-en-afrique/). INRAE shows how European agricultural exports could alleviate land tensions in Africa.

[7] According to the researchers, biodiversity would suffer the most from increased cropland expansion and agricultural intensification in developing tropical regions in Africa, Latin America, and Asia (Zabel F. et al., “Global impacts of future cropland expansion and intensification on agricultural markets and biodiversity,” Nat Comm 10, 2844(2019)). But the expansion of agriculture in boreal regions, particularly in northern Canada and Russia, thanks to global warming, would also lead to a massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions (Hannah L. et al. (2020). “The environmental impacts of climate-driven agricultural frontiers.” PLoS ONE 15(2): e0228305).