C. Peter Timmer -- Failed Policies Lead

World food prices are pushing higher—the United Nations overall food index shows a 28.3% annual increase, with cereals up 44.1%—sparking concerns that a new food crisis may be emerging, just three years after the last one. Does this mean the world is running out of food?

The quick answer is that the world does seem to be running low on cheap food. There is still an ample potential supply of foodstuffs; it’s just not getting tapped, thereby creating low current supply even as demand shoots up with the rise of large emerging markets. This supply shortage stems from the failure of governments and donors over nearly three decades to fund the basic agricultural research, investments in rural infrastructure, and training for smallholder farmers necessary to push out the productivity frontier.

Until recently, world food crises have been relatively rare events—occurring about three times a century, usually three to four decades apart. The last one to have truly global ramifications, occurred in 1972-74. Over those two years, real rice prices rose 206.3% and real wheat prices rose 118.2%, both setting historic highs. The food crisis of 2007-08, although scary at the time, was relatively mild by comparison. Prices for wheat, rice and maize—the staple foods that provide well over half the world population’s energy intake directly and a good deal more indirectly via livestock products—rose 96.7% between 2006 and 2008, not approaching the spikes in the mid-1970s when corrected for inflation. Yet here we are just a few years later, talking about food prices again.

Sudden spikes in food prices also have a political dimension. Nothing can bring angry people into the streets faster and more spontaneously than a rapid run-up in the costs of food staples in urban markets. Leaders in Tunisia and Egypt learned this lesson the hard way. That’s why politicians in many developing countries are highly sensitive to the level and rate of change in food prices. A food-price crisis focuses the minds of political leaders on a quick, short-term resolution. But this focus comes with a real cost to longer-run investments and policy initiatives, even if this cost is hardly noticed at the time.

Policy makers who forever live in the short run, putting out the brush fires from banking crises, food riots, or the palpable fear they are about to lose their jobs, do not focus on long-run needs. Because of this tendency, agricultural research and rural infrastructure is getting neglected in most countries. The price of that neglect is there for all to see. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s public agricultural research expenditures did not expand at all in Sub-Saharan Africa, whereas they grew by 5% per year in Asia. The differential impact on agricultural productivity per worker was dramatic—increases in Africa between 1990-2002 and 2001-03 of just 7%, whereas the increase in Asia was 36%.

We can do better. In the greater scheme of things, agricultural research is not that expensive. A group of experts convened by the Asia Society and the International Rice Research Institute calculated that the productivity of rice growing on a global basis could be raised by 8.5% over baseline trends through an annual investment of $120 million between 2010 and 2030—an investment that is about 0.0002% of global GDP. Similar opportunities exist for most of the world’s important food crops. It is hard to imagine investments with higher payoffs.

常玉田 译:

农业政策不力，世界粮食短缺

彼得·蒂默

世界粮食价格正在推高——联合国食品综合指数显示年均上涨28.3%，其中谷类上涨44.1%——引发人们担心可能会出现又一轮粮食危机，尽管距离上一场危机只不过才三个年头。那么，粮价上涨，是不是意味着全世界的粮食快要吃完了呢？

现成的回答是，全世界的廉价粮食确实在减少。造成这种供应短缺的原因是，过去近三十年来，各国政府和各类资助机构未能大力资助鼓励农业基础研究，对农村基础设施投资不足，对小农提高农业生产率所需要的培训也不够重视。

直到最近几年，世界粮食危机一个世纪之内发生三次，相对而言并不频繁。2007—08年间的粮食危机当时虽说很吓人，但比较起来也不算多么严重。小麦、大米和玉米——向世界一半以上的人口直接提供了口粮，并向更多的人口通过肉食品间接地提供了食物——的价格在2006年—08年之间上涨了96.7%，扣除通货膨胀因素后并没有达到上世纪70年代中期的最高点。然而，仅仅几年之后，我们又在谈论粮食价格了。

粮价突然上涨往往具有政治意义。没有什么能比城市市场上主要粮食的成本的快速上涨更快地把饥饿的人群带到大街上。这就是许多发展中国家的政治家对粮价的波动幅度和上涨速度十分敏感的原因。粮食危机致使政界领导人专注于迅速、短期的解决办法。但是这种专注会给比较长期的投资和政策的出台带来真正的代价。

政策制定者们的任职期限有数，所以永远生活在短线思维中，忙于扑救源自银行危机的山火，因食物短缺而起的骚乱，显而易见，还得压抑自家可能会失去官职的担忧。因此，他们并不专注于人口的长期需求。由于大多数国家的政策制定者都有这种倾向，故此都忽视了农业科研和农村基础设施的建设。这种忽略的代价有目共睹。上世纪80年代中期至90年代中期，公共农业研究开支在撒哈拉沙漠以南的非洲地区都没有增加，而亚洲每年增长了5%。这种差异对每个劳动者平均生产率的影响引人注目——1990年至2002年期间，非洲的生产率仅增长7%，而亚洲增长了36%。

我们可以做得更好。总的来看，农业科研并非那么费钱烧钱，农业科研的费用并没有那么高。美国亚洲协会（Asia Society）和国际水稻研究所（International Rice Research Institute）组织一些专家研讨过，他们测算出，如果在2010年至2030年年间每年投资1.2亿美元，那么稻谷生产率可在目前的基数上提高8.5%，而这笔投资只占全球生产总值的0.0002%左右。全世界主要的粮食中的大多数作物种类都有类似的机会。可以想象，还有比这更合算的投资吗？