“Water and food security for all: the role of international trade in food and virtual water"
Baseline conference for the CGIAR challenge program on water and food. Opening Plenary Session
Nairobi, Kenya, 2 November 2003
Presentation by Jack Wilkinson, President of IFAP
Mr. Chairman,
It is a pleasure for me to participate in this event on the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food. I am a farmer from Canada producing grains, oilseeds and beef cattle, and I am President of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, IFAP.
IFAP is the world farmers’ organization. It is based in Paris, and currently has in membership 100 national farmers’ organisations, representing over 500 million farm families.
IFAP is a platform organisation, or forum, where farmers meet to share experiences and ideas. And by focusing on the many things that we have in common we try to make a contribution to policy developments at the global level.
One of the greatest challenges we are facing is dealing with the increasing pressure on the planets resources, especially water resources. Farmers are particularly sensitive to this issue since water is essential to all agricultural activity. Farmers are also conscious of the fact that 70 per cent of global freshwater resources are used in agriculture.
Any discussions on food and water must involve farmers. We therefore very much welcome the desire of the scientific community to involve civil society, and particular the farming community, in discussions such as these held in Nairobi linked to the CGIAR AGM. Up to now, discussions and decisions on crucial issues such as water were exclusively considered as technical issues. Now, there is a growing awareness of the usefulness, and the importance of involving other stakeholders as key players, including the users themselves, in order to find solutions to the challenges posed by such a scarce resource as water. Governments and scientists need the contribution of the farmers to be able to assure “food security for all”.
IFAP is convinced that the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food is an excellent forum for interaction between the research community and farmers. This framework will promote dialogue on the different concerns and try to come up with practical ways of implementing actions. We hope that the other Challenge Programs of the CGIAR will follow this model and also involve farmers and other stakeholders.
How do farmers relate to these issues of water, food security and trade on the international scene?
Food security means access to enough food to sustain life and work. For many people in the world, this means having secure access to resources - especially to land, water and seeds – so that they can produce food for themselves and their families. Most farmers in the world are subsistence farmers, and women farmers are on the front line in this regard. We all know the figures - out of 6 billion people living on the planet, 2 million live in poverty and 800 million still suffer from hunger. The great majority of these people are subsistence farmers who are struggling to survive.
For those farmers who are able to supply commercial markets, most of the food that they produce is consumed locally. Less than 10 percent enters international trade. Thus food security essentially depends on local food production in local markets, using local water supplies.
The issue of food trade and virtual water is also a subject for this panel. This is an area that relates to the whole issue of environmental accounting. It is true that environmental accounting is on the international agenda, but as yet there is no operational framework to deal with it. Farmers are entrepreneurs, and respond to financial incentives. If there is a profitable market for irrigated crops, they will produce them, and export them.
The core issue here is not about trade as an end in itself. Trade obviously remains one of the key tools to achieve sustainable development. However, trade must contribute to global development. Yet there are many cases where deregulation and liberalisation have resulted in severe pressure on producer prices and increases in the margins of the traders.
What we should be looking at when we talk about food security, water and trade is how to eliminate poverty in rural communities? How do we turn subsistence agriculture into “commercial agriculture” and therefore break the circle of poverty within the farming community? What do we need to do so that farmers can decently live from their work, while at the same time using water in an efficient way?
The real issue here is to get agriculture to be a priority for national governments. Over the last 10 years, the neglect of local agriculture has aggravated problems of hunger and poverty. Nearly all international attention has been focused on international trade issues, in other words on the less-than-10 per cent of agricultural production which enters international trade, while food security and rural development concerns fell off the agenda. This is unacceptable.
Farmers urge national governments to give priority to water in their national budgets. Some countries allocate 9 percent of their budgets to water while others allocate only 2 per cent. Governments need to set clear priorities in terms of water use, especially for achieving food security and rural development.
To be successful, the Challenge Program on Water on Food needs to look at how to encourage investment in water infrastructure, and it needs to give attention to building farmers’ capacities to use and manage water supplies efficiently. This investment should be directed first to meet the market needs at the local level and then at the national and regional levels.
Agriculture is not the only sector that needs water. Farmers understand that agriculture must also respect environmental needs and the water requirements of natural ecosystems. Water and ecosystems are interlinked. Water management activities affect ecosystems, which in turn affect the livelihoods of the people that depend on them. Users in a river basin are interdependent. IFAP therefore fully supports the promotion of international river basin cooperation. We are pleased that the Challenge Program promotes a dialogue at river basin level among different stakeholders to address water, food and environment issues. Our Federation will contribute case studies on good farming practises in terms of the efficient use of water to advance this dialogue.
We are glad that the Challenge Program will address the issue of river basins. International basins cover 45 percent of the land surface of the Earth. They affect about 40 percent of the world’s population and account for approximately 80 percent of the global river flows. For this reason, IFAP feels that it is important to strengthen its involvement in the Dialogue for Water, Food and Environment - a consortium of different experts in these fields.
This Challenge Program on Water and Food should identify synergies and exploit complementarities that exist with the Dialogue for Water, Food and the Environment. Some consortium members are well advanced in the development of Dialogue activities within different river basins, including with farmers’ organisations. We hope that the Dialogue’s activities will be linked to the Challenge Program agenda.
The demands of agriculture for limited freshwater supplies will continue to grow. FAO predicts that it will be necessary to double world food production over the next 25 years, using essentially the same land area and water resources. At the same time, more than 3 billion people will face water scarcity by 2025.
Currently, about 70 per cent of the world’s freshwater supplies are used for agriculture. It is clear that in the future agriculture will be called upon to increase the efficiency of water use – that is to produce “more crop per drop”.
The challenge we face is to produce more food to meet the needs of a growing population, while using less water. This is where partnerships with researchers, have a crucial role to play. Farmers need knowledge and technology in order to adopt production methods that minimise the need of water. In this regard, there is a need for the use of appropriate technologies adapted to local conditions, by building on traditional and indigenous knowledge. More resources therefore need to be invested in strengthening water research and extension services, through partnerships between the scientific community and farmers.
How do we produce more food with less water? What are the farmers’ needs? What is the role of the international community in this regard?
Protecting the quality of water is a prerequisite for sustainable development. The responsibility for protecting water cannot be put only on farmers. All stakeholders and water users groups must share the responsibility of protecting this scarce resource. This should be done through voluntary agreements between local/regional authorities or water stations, and the farmers’ organisations or user groups.
Farmers need secure water supply rights in order to assure them equitable access to water resources so that they can plan their operations correctly. These must be governed by transparent legal frameworks that take into account the local socio-economic, cultural and hydrological situation.
Water has a specific nature and cannot be considered as a tradable good. Even if public authorities face difficulties to finance the water supply system, total privatisation of access to such a critical resource as water is not acceptable to farmers.
One way of addressing structural financial impediments is the promotion of public/private partnerships. Such partnerships should make possible investments to finance the working and maintenance of the distribution networks. These partnerships would be a concrete contribution to the Johannesburg Summit implementation plan.
In order to be equitable and sustainable, water management and development has to be conducted on a participatory basis through consultation frameworks.
All water users and stakeholders including farmers, men and women, young and old, both in developed as well as in developing countries, should have a say in decision-making pertaining to water management. This participative approach contributes to increase the effectiveness of river basin organisations because it increases the motivation of local communities in order to enhance their living conditions.
Farmers must be organised to participate in decision-making processes. IFAP has committed itself to meet this challenge by strengthening its capacity building work with farmers’ organisations. Through a new development cooperation initiative, farmers’ organisations in the industrialised countries are helping to strengthen the organisations of their colleagues in the developing countries. We will also strengthen partnerships with others working in the field of agriculture and water management, particularly at the regional and country level.
Concerning the role of the international community, the United Nations background paper on water, written for the Johannesburg Summit set indicative targets of improving water use efficiency in agricultural sector by 5 percent by 2010 and by 10 percent by 2015. In order to achieve this target, farmers call for additional financing from international financial institutions for sustainable water infrastructure. They also call for mobilisation of all available sources of public funding and private investment, as well as increased development assistance to promote water use efficiency. There is also a need for increased coordination of donors and international financial institutions to avoid duplication of resources. Therefore, we propose the creation of an International Solidarity Fund to support sustainable water management initiatives in developing countries.
In conclusion, farmers look forward to this event being a good start for a long-lasting collaboration between farmers, researchers, governments and other stakeholders to make the best use of the scarce water resources of the planet.
By addressing the issues of:
- equitable access to water,
- participatory management of catchment areas and river basins,
- adequate investment in water supply systems, and
- application of the best knowledge and technology,
I am confident that we can meet the challenge of doubling world food production over the next 25 years, conserving precious water resources, while at the same time protecting the environment.
Thank you for your attention.