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...Read "The World's Growing Food-Price Crisis...
...food crisis spurred global leaders into action. "There seems to be an awareness that [food security] is one of the fundamental issues in the world that has to be dealt with," says Christopher Delgado, policy adviser on agriculture and rural development at the World Bank in Washington. In a July report, a committee of British parliamentarians called on their government to invest in agricultural research and encourage local farmers to grow more fruit and other produce. The U.S., which traditionally provisioned food aid from American grain surpluses to help needy nations, is moving toward investing in farm sectors around...
...renewed focus on the farm is being driven by more than fear. Development experts believe a new approach to farming is crucial in order to lift up the world's remaining poor, 75% of whom live in rural areas. Swayed by the success of East Asia, the primary poverty-fighting method favored by many policymakers was to get farmers off their farms and into modern jobs in factories and urban centers. But that strategy has proven insufficient. Income levels in the countryside badly trail those in cities in many countries, while the FAO estimates that the number of poor going...
...part of the government's task. The farmers also need better training, technology and marketing opportunities. "Do we have any of these? Almost none," Shariff says. "The government program needs to be improved, and we need to devote a lot more resources." (See pictures of urban farming around the world...
...Tiwari's protectionist approach could actually hurt farmers. The World Bank's Delgado says that most projections show trade liberalization in agriculture would create significant increases in prices - as much as 20% for cotton and 7% for food grains. Not only would those gains increase the incentive for farmers to grow greater quantities of food, but they would also put more money in farmers' pockets, creating a new source of global demand. But with World Trade Organization negotiations on agricultural trade stalled on the issue of subsidies, it seems unlikely that farmers in Vidarbha and elsewhere will see these benefits...