World Hunger Series Hunger and Markets

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World Hunger SeriesHunger and Markets

• Summary and Concluding Remarks
• Steven Were Omamo and Erin Lentz
• Cornell/IFPRI/WFP Symposium
• IFPRI Headquarters
• April 24, 2009

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• Themes
• Puzzles and Challenges
• Conclusions Silver Linings

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Themes - 1

• Market failures (efficiency) vs failure of
  markets (distribution/equity)
• Connecting farmers to markets is not an end in
  itself, but rather as a way to expand
  opportunities for enhancing welfare and
  generating rapid and broad-based growth and
  poverty reduction
• Wrong question How can we make markets work
  for the poor?
• Right question How can we help the poor make
  more of markets?
• Improve information flows
• Decrease volatility
• Volatility
• New sources
• Integration of food with non-food markets
• Fuel
• Finance
• Low stocks
• Climate change
• Old consequences
• Underinvestment in productivity enhancing
  practices
• Poverty
• Hunger
• Social unrest

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Themes - 2

• Holistic approaches
• Natural resource management, especially soil
• Pro-biological low input intensification
• Adequate access to affordable nutrition
• Capacity development
• Context-specificity (heterogeneity) vs.
  scalability
• Differences in vulnerability and outcomes, based
  on transmission mechanisms
• Safety nets productive or not?
• Who will pay? How? How much?
• In cash
• In lost livelihoods

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Puzzles and Challenges - 1

• How to accommodate local political economy while
  serving global market needs?
• Prioritizing and sequencing investments
• Where to spend the next dollar?
• Social protection vs. productive sectors?
• Infrastructure, value chains, contract farming,
  ?
• Pro-poor market interventions
• How to reduce transaction costs while expanding
  reach?
• How to reduce imbalances in market power?
• How to design bounded but holistic systems?
• How to ensure demand for nutritious food
  delivered through markets?
• How to respond to the special needs of consumers?
• Market constraints vs. other shocks (e.g.,
  weather-related) which are more important?
• Safety nets for the excluded
• Are safety nets complementary to growth? Is
  there a tradeoff?
• Well-targeted, scalable interventions?
• How to prepare for/avoid the next crisis?

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Puzzles and Challenges - 2

• Who will pay? How? How much?
• In cash
• In lost livelihoods
• Who should pay?
• Information
• Understanding market fundamentals
• How to get relevant/definitive/high-quality
  information into play in a timely fashion?
• How to build strong monitoring systems?
• How to improve coordination among agencies?
• Price transmission, especially within national
  borders?
• Household coping strategies?
• Nutrition impacts?
• Gender differentiated impacts?
• Tradeoff
• Communication easier
• Compromise harder

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Conclusions Silver Linings - 1

• Less ideology, less dogma
• Using history productively
• Avoiding old mistakes
• Science
• Information technology communication easier
  among global actors in food systems
• Falling transaction costs
• Low input intensification approaches
• Biotech and GMOs???
• Attempts to integrate safety nets into growth
  strategies
• Some countries appear to have adequate fiscal
  space
• Even at this time, some rural households, in some
  countries, are benefiting from agriculture
• Benefits are generated in/mediated through
  markets
• Its true that market-oriented diversification
  confers both protection and opportunity
• Uganda/Ghana vs. Zambia

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Conclusions Silver Linings - 2

• Seizing opportunities offered by crises
• Never waste a good crisis Emmanuel
• Complex responses to complex crises
• New momentum and sharper focus on hunger, with
  market elements fully in the frame
• Flowering of knowledge and debate about markets
  and link to hunger
• Beyond food aid
• Not just food production, but also access
• Not just hunger, but also poverty