Committee:  World Food Programme (WFP)
Topic B:  Challenges to Small Farmers

Photograph by B. Wolff / Source: United Nations Photo
A tractor being used to plough a field near Dodoma, Tanzania.

        The Green Revolution of the 1950’s was markedly the most significant agricultural revolution in the entire world. By utilizing technology on a large scale for the first time around the world, global crop yields were greatly augmented. The global scale of food production, storage, and supply, increased substantially to “250 percent over 35 years” (Green Revolution). This period left the United Nation, and all other nations, wondering if the problem of global hunger could be solved. Studies from the Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Food Programme have shown that although agriculture and agricultural stabilization has vastly increased, the global population increase as well as ‘over-production’ has led to growing problems. Additionally, the FAO Chief in Asia has noted, “ Recent studies had shown that there was a yield decline of one to three percent per year on some fields using the Green Revolution technique”. Additionally, over-allocation of agriculture has led to widespread deforestation, water conflicts, and diminishing supplies of fertile soil due to erosion, monoculture (one crop farming, and heavy use of pesticides. 

        Land which saw a dramatic increase in farming during the Green Revolution was not the land with emerging problems. Arable land once fertile in eastern Africa, as well as sub-Saharan Africa and the region of Punjab in Asia was also subject to crippling problems which limit productivity. “The challenge to small farmers, who utilize farm land the most, comes to a very specific focus. They must produce more and more food for consumption while facing reduced resources such as water, soil, and even education. Today, these challenges are particularly severe, and the aspirations of young people on small farms have changed. Globalization and the integration of international markets are stimulating intense competition, offering some opportunities but also new risks. In light of these pressures and others, many of the world’s millions of small farmers are simply not making it. Indeed, half of the world’s undernourished people, three-quarters of Africa’s malnourished children, and the majority of people living in absolute poverty live on small farms” (“Future”). The FAO estimates that the next twenty years of growth will force current food production to increase from 70 to 100 percent of what it is now. Additionally, there must be 30 percent more fresh water than now and 50 percent more energy. This is to meet the rising demand for the estimated 9 billion people that will inhabit the planet in 2050 (A/59/224).

        The WFP, as the leading humanitarian aid agency, has tried to provide for these unprecedented problems with new programs and methods. While the WFP’s primary goal is to provide food and aid during emergency crises and periods of food insecurity, the WFP has recently (since 2005) been able to pioneer very new applications to also develop a country’s resources and methods to provide food security on their own. One newly developed program is called ‘MERET’ (Managing Environmental Resources to Enable Transition), which also happens to be the Amharic word for “land.” A joint venture between the Ethiopian government and WFP, the MERET program gets chronically food-insecure communities involved in environmental rehabilitation and sustainable income- generating activities that improve livelihoods. “Under MERET, chronically food-insecure communities participate in environmental rehabilitation and income generating activities designed to improve livelihoods through the sustainable use of natural resources. Its primary objective is to build resilience to the kind of shocks that struck Ethiopia in 2008.Some of those shocks were economic, such as high food and fuel prices, while others were environmental, like the prolonged drought that was related to climate change, according to experts. Among the programme’s many activities are measures to build and rehabilitate feeder roads, reforest barren hillsides, restore springs and rainwater ponds, and reconstruct and refurbish agricultural terraces” (“MERET”). By preparing underdeveloped countries, the WFP hopes to meet some of the rise in demand for agricultural stability. 

        Not only do farmers in poor countries face challenges, but even developed countries such as the United States and the UK have met with problems. The growing reach of agribusiness has also had detrimental effects on the topographies of both countries. In the UK, vast scale corporatization of farms has led to jumps in prices of food. The FAO has recorded in 2011 the highest price index for food on record around the world (“Price Index”). The WFP has also provided a novel initiative in this manner, connecting small farmers directly to markets. This program, called Purchase for Progress, “uses WFP’s purchasing power to offer smallholder farmers opportunities to access agricultural markets, to become competitive players in those markets and thus to improve their lives. By 2013, at least half a million smallholder farmers – mostly women – will have increased and improved their agricultural production and earnings. By raising farmers’ incomes, P4P turns WFP’s local procurement into a vital tool to address hunger” (“Purchase”). In Afghanistan, Guatemala, Kenya, Mozambique and Zambia, P4P is helping smallholder farmers to access the private sector food processing market. Through the Warehouse Receipt System in Uganda and Tanzania, smallholder farmers deposit their crops in a certified warehouse, and receive a receipt for about 60% of the market value of the commodities which can be exchanged for cash at a local financial institution. The final balance is paid once the commodities are sold.

        By using funding to promote community well being in underdeveloped areas, the WFP hopes to ignite the awareness of the issue of food security in underdeveloped areas. By combining education to improve farming and a novel form of economic aid, the WFP has provided incentives for small farmers to continue farming, and continually refine tactics to meet the storm that is to come. Overpopulation has strained the food production capacity already, but by constructing programs to guide techniques and aid to the agricultural system, the fear of hunger could finally be extinguished.


                                                                       Questions

1. Did the Green Revolution impact your country? What is the future of agriculture in your country?
2. What makes farming different than agribusiness? Why (or why not) should small farmers get more aid than agribusiness?
3. What are the problems that farmers face in developing countries relative to those farmers face in developed countries?

“Green Revolution”  http://www.energybulletin.net/node/25315“MERET“MERET”  http://www.wfp.org/disaster-risk-reduction/meret.

“Millennium Development Goals”  http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml.

“WFP’s Policy and Stance” http://www.wfp.org/policy-resources.

“The WFP Annual report 2008-2009” http://www.wfp.org/content/annual-report-2009.

“The WFP Annual report 2010-2011”                                                                                                 http://www.wfp.org/content/wfp-annual-report-2010-english.

“The Green Revolution in Punjab” http://livingheritage.org/green-revolution.htm.

“FAO Price Index” http://www.wfp.org/stories/rising-food-prices-infographic.

“Future” http://www.ifpri.org/publication/future-small-farms-poverty-reduction-and-growth.

“Purchase” http://www.wfp.org/purchase-progress.

“UN Resolution A/59/224”