Speech
Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development, Sustainable Food Laboratory, Rembrandt Hotel
13 February 2007
“Air Miles: Roses and Ending Poverty”
Thanks. I’d like to reflect on some of the challenges facing agriculture in the developing world – and to talk about how what we do can make a difference.
It is a simple fact that virtually no country - be it China, India, the USA or indeed the UK - has achieved economic progress and improved the welfare of its people without first making progress in agriculture. Agriculture is the foundation on which both life and development are built. It’s at the heart of making poverty history.
Take Asia, as a result of the Green Revolution, it’s seen a tripling in cereal production over the last 40 years which has helped lift millions out of poverty. Increases in productivity have meant cheaper food, more jobs and higher incomes. In Bangladesh, the price of rice has halved since 1980.
Now, more importantly, evidence from Asia and Africa shows that with improvements in agriculture you also get improvements in other areas of the economy. Agriculture does this three times more effectively than other sectors, according to evidence from Kenya. In Zambia, every dollar of additional farm income creates a further $1.50 of income outside agriculture. So you can see the connection between the two.
We also know that increased agricultural productivity has the highest pay-offs in terms of reducing poverty. On average, every 1% increase in agricultural yields reduces the number of people living on less than a dollar a day by 0.8%.
But – whilst in Asia huge progress has been made – in Africa, agriculture has stagnated along with the continent’s economy, at least until recently. This has meant higher unemployment, worsened poverty and conflict, and increased migration into the slums of the expanding cities: one of the changes we will see over the next fifty years – first in Asia, then in Africa – is that the majority of people will soon be living in towns and cities, mirroring the process we went through in this country two hundred years ago.
So what needs to be done?
I launched our new agriculture policy paper just over a year ago. It identified the challenges facing African agriculture
The main one is about improving market opportunities. Bluntly, so that farmers can sell what they produce at a decent price. Which is what most farmers want. Unless markets work well and poor farmers can get access to them, there is little incentive for them or suppliers to invest in improved seeds and other technologies. So we are working with governments to help them develop better policies and public spending that supports rather than holds back agriculture.
Part of this is about access to markets in developed countries. One example: like farmers all over the world, African farmers have to meet increasingly stringent standards for food safety and food quality before they can sell to the supermarkets. Some of you here today represent organisations that help set these standards. You know how challenging it is to meet supermarket standards and I am sure you will appreciate how much more difficult it is for small-scale farmers.
However, our supermarkets offer good prices for high quality, and we and others are working with African farmers to help them meet our standards. One of the things we are trying to do is to work with those who set the standards to ensure that the costs of certification don’t exclude the poorest farmers – so that they simply can’t access the market in the first place.
But African farmers also have to compete with farm subsidies. Rich country subsidies in total are worth more than 4 times the aid the rich world gives the developing world. While the EU has begun to reform by de-linking subsidies from production, the Common Agricultural Policy – the CAP – still costs £33 billion in 2005, nearly half of the EU budget. And it costs UK households around £800 a year in taxes and more expensive food.
Much more needs to be done, and over a year ago the Government set out its view for the future of the CAP - one in which an internationally competitive agriculture sector does not have to rely on subsidies, but where state support is used to help bring the benefits that the market cannot deliver, such as maintaining the landscape and wildlife, and meeting the needs of rural communities.
If markets can be made to work I think the second challenge is getting systems right so that farmers can find the improved seeds and fertiliser they need. We’ve invested £20 million a year in the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research to help do this. It’s led to breakthroughs such as the new rice varieties for Africa which can double yields and reduce food imports. But the problem is not just a lack of good science.
Take Malawi. Where I happened to be last week. We’ve been looking at practical ways to make markets work for poor farmers. Training shop owners as dealers in seed, fertiliser and pesticides is one area that we are looking at. Commercial companies who would never have risked supplying these shops are now more confident to do so, thanks to credit guarantee schemes. And in less than 2 years, this network of 300 shops are selling six times what they used to, and are now the main source of inputs for poor rural people in Malawi. It’s one example of local success – but a very practical example which, like others, can be built on elsewhere.
Another step is to improve infrastructure. I remember going to Ethiopia where I spoke to a group of farmers who said that a bag of fertiliser cost half their annual income. I asked anyone who bought fertiliser to put their hands up. None did. And why is it so expensive? It turns out that the main cost is transport.
But the other challenge that I would like to talk about is climate change. We are now, more than ever, aware of its impact. In fact last year was the hottest on record in the UK, last month was the warmest for 300 years in the Netherlands – thanks to their good record keeping! And this year is predicted to be the warmest on record across the globe.
We feel the effects now and will do so in the future, but climate change is actually hardest felt by those least responsible for it – poor countries – and it has the potential to cause untold damage and harm far beyond the reach of any aid programme. The Stern Report made one thing very clear – the cost of dealing with it is substantial, but absolutely nothing compared to the cost of not dealing with it.
Now, what does this mean for poor people? Well firstly it will be about how to cope with the effects of climate change – which threatens floods in Asia and famines in Africa. It may force a tenth of the population of Bangladesh to leave their homes – equivalent to the entire population of Greater London – where are they going to go? In this interdependent world we all have to take responsibility because it will affect all of us. So, managing migration will be a growing challenge.
Nick Stern estimates that crop yields could drop by as much as 12% in Africa if we don’t start to tackle climate change. Higher temperatures and shorter rainy seasons in Tanzania are expected to cut the main food crop, maize, by a third, making poor people even more hungry, even poorer. Additional water conservation and irrigation can help – though we know that water too is becoming more scarce.
So, how do we address this problem while at the same time not turning round to developing countries and saying ‘you know the benefits we got – the wealth to pay for our health service, our education, the life we lead - you can’t have them because the world can’t take it anymore’. They’re going to say no to that. This is the dilemma we’ve got to wrestle with.
What we really need is a global framework. Kyoto takes us some way but not far enough. We need to deal with the whole of the problem with all of the countries. We need a deal – I was once explained this in terms of a bath tub. We need agreement on a stabilisation target for greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide – how much water the bath can hold. Then work out how much CO2 we can get down the plug hole – through so-called sinks, like the oceans and forests or carbon capture. The difference between how full the bath is and how fast it’s emptying tells us how much we can allow out of the tap. Then we need to decide on how to share out who can put more ‘water’ – in other words, emissions, in the bath on a fair and equitable basis. This will be a huge challenge.
Now, we will help developing countries minimise their contribution to climate change – it’s about reducing emissions as they try to grow their economies, create jobs and end poverty. Their demand for energy and a reliable energy supply is something which comes up increasingly when I speak to African Leaders. They need to run services – schools and hospitals – and attract investment. There is a huge thirst for energy. The World Bank led Energy Investment Framework is all about this – helping countries invest in clean technology so that as they grow, they won’t harm the planet in the way we have in rich countries.
We will also help poor countries adapt to the changes that are already inevitable – this is about helping the economies of poor countries and the jobs created, be more resilient and able adapt to the impact of droughts or floods or other weather related disasters that we know will happen. For instance - when building new roads – they are going to need drainage culverts that can handle storms never seen before, otherwise the roads will be washed away.
But I would like to use this opportunity to discuss how our own efforts here in the UK to prevent climate change, might actually harm poor people in Africa, even before its worst effects hit. I want to talk about the debate around “buy local” and the things we need as consumers to consider in making choices.
For consumers – for you and me - the Food Miles Debate poses a real dilemma. People say - “I want to do my bit to stop climate change. So, should I only buy local and boycott produce from abroad, especially things flown in - or should I support poor farmers to improve their income, to take care of their families, to work and trade their way out of poverty?”
The romantic amongst you may face this dilemma tomorrow. Because the flowers you’ll buy are likely to have been flown in. So, are you going to buy her - or him - a bunch of roses or not?
What’s the right ethical choice?
Well, let’s look at the poverty bit. The UK is the world’s biggest importers of flowers and almost a third of what we import is from Kenya. This is a country where half of the population live on less than 50p a day – they live in extreme poverty that’s hard for us to imagine. For you 50p means buying a small bar of chocolate for a snack, but for them, living on 50p means not knowing in the morning where the food for their children will come in the evening; or putting off treatment for a sick child because they can’t afford to pay for it.
Well, the flower industry in Kenya means jobs for poor people – over 70,000 are employed - mainly women – like Dorcas Kariuki who has worked on a flower farm in Naivasha for 10 years, educating her three children, meeting their health needs.
What about climate change in relation to this dilemma? Well, some recent research by Cranfield University – who compared the emissions from producing 12,000 rose stems in Kenya with those in Holland, including transporting them to Hampshire - and found that the emissions produced by Kenyan rose and flying them here can be less than a fifth of those grown in heated and lighted greenhouses in Holland. Why? Because Kenya is warm and sunny, and heating greenhouses in Holland uses enormous amounts of fossil fuels.
So, you can be a romantic, reduce your impact on the environment, and help make poverty history!
But the story is not always so simple.
What about all the fruit and vegetables that Africa exports?
In the UK as you know all to well, we rely on food imports and have done for centuries. Today, over 90% of the fruit and 38% of the vegetables we eat are imported. From the 1990s, UK supermarkets have led the way in developing African horticulture to supply our market – I understand it’s not so developed in other European markets – so UK customers can get fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the year. UK customers spend over one million pounds a day on fruit and vegetables from Africa.
In Africa this trade means that a million African farmers and their families benefit. Take Kenya again, people like the small-scale farmers who bring their beans to Kaviani shed in Machakos District in Kenya. Each week they sow, weed and pick green beans and each week they earn an income – around £20 a week - which they can spend on their families. Not 50p a day, but around six times that – and that means better education and healthcare, yes, but also a house with a tin roof that doesn’t leak, a bicycle, a radio – big, big changes in their standard of living from what seems a small amount of money to us.
For Africa, this export trade is a success story – and its Africa doing it for itself - creating jobs, trading with others - and it’s one of the reasons why African economies are growing around 5% or more. Although Africa needs to grow by 7%, if it to halve poverty, get its children into school and achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
But, this growth will contribute to climate change – it will take time to get clean technology in place, to make greater use of hydro-power, to change behaviour. And even when these changes happen, growth is likely to still contribute to climate change. Malawi gets most of its energy from hydro power, but it’s afraid that its main river will dry up or silt – and its just discovered brown goal and is wondering whether to use it for power. Those are the choices.
So how can we tackle poverty through trade without undermining it through climate change?
I think there are two things we can do.
First. We need to move to a system where the price of the things we buy – goods and services - includes their contribution to climate change – their carbon footprint. Living within your means in this century will take on another meaning. It will not just be about whether you are overdrawn at the bank, but will also be about living within your environmental carrying capacity. Are you overdrawn at the carbon bank. It would change the way we behave, but also industry and governments too. We must all work for a global deal that achieves this. A carbon market.
And as I said earlier, we need to agree a way of sharing, fairly, the emissions we produce. Because the truth is, if African economies are to develop and grow and reduce poverty they will need to increase their carbon emissions from their currently very very low levels. For this to happen, and for us to avoid dangerous climate change, we in the rich countries, will have to cut our emissions. We need to cut our huge carbon footprint, not force Africa to cut its tiny one.
Second – because we do not yet have this global carbon market - we need a better informed debate so that we can make up our own minds about how we can do our bit to reduce climate change and help make poverty history.
Air transport does have environmental impact and this is growing rapidly. But, air-freight fruit and vegetables from Africa account for less than one tenth of one percent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
But more than this, we should remember that people living in the vast majority of African countries are responsible for a tiny amount of carbon emissions. In Kenya, carbon emissions are 200 kg a head; here it is fifty times that. We should bear that in mind when making our choices.
This is social justice on a global scale. If we boycott their goods that are flown to the UK we deny our fellow human beings their chance to grow; their chance to reduce poverty. It’s like saying, we messed this planet up, but you can take the consequences.
There is a lot we can do that would make a difference, and not harm African farmers. If we all switched to an energy efficient boiler we would cut our household emissions by a third. We can insulate our loft. Get energy saving light bulbs. Use the bus or train where we can. Turn TVs and stereos off at the plug when we’re not using them. We can all do this – they are simple and easy things. Things denied poor people because they don’t have them.
Of course poor countries in Africa and elsewhere will have to work hard to limit emissions as their economies grow, but in a framework where they came from a much lower level.
I’m very pleased that Marks and Spencers and Tescos are working on these issues and helping their customers understand more about what they are buying. They are helping to get a better debate going. They’re going to label products that are flown with a symbol of a plane. It’s a start.
But I don’t think it’s enough. Does that really tell us about the environmental costs of producing and delivering all of the products that we might buy? Sometimes the costs of production outweigh the costs of transport. And as we’ve seen with flowers – in comparing Kenya with Holland - such a label would mislead you.
But if these products contribute to ending poverty, maybe they should put another symbol on too. A white band. The symbol of making poverty history. We need to think this through and talk about it.
Because let’s remember that with two thirds of poor people in Africa currently working on the land, let’s remember that agriculture remains the most likely source of economic growth and the best means of reducing poverty in most African countries. And let’s remember that we in the rich world – because we are very very lucky and we take so much for granted – that we need to remove rather than create obstacles that African farmers face in trying to make a decent living for themselves and their families.
You see, when we make decisions on buying imported goods, we need to weigh up the costs to the environment, but also the rights of people far poorer than us to a decent life – faces we have never seen, names we do not know – their right to be able to transform their lives because in the end that is what development is all about.
