Two news items last Friday afternoon reminded me that there’s
a lot more complexity to the world of agriculture and food than my own
experience of it, especially in Asia and Africa.
1. Reuters reported
on a new study from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for the
Copenhagen Consensus Center. It calculates enormous benefits to reducing hunger and
malnutrition from what might seem like an unlikely source: better roads and
refrigerators (cold storage to keep food from spoiling). I’ve spent many hours bumping
over roads and stuck in traffic across Asia and Africa, tending to dwell
primarily on the inconvenience to me and where I want to go. But all of that time also has an impact on
the availability and affordability of important food products in developing
countries, because of the cost of transportation and high rates of spoilage
before it even gets to a market.
According to the Copenhagen Consensus Center, the needed
investments in road, rail and electrical infrastructure:
… will cost $240B over the next 15
years but reduce the number of hungry people by 57m, and avoid malnourishment
of 4m children. This generates $13 of economic benefits.
2. The other report I saw, which came from another one of the
terrific family of international agriculture research centers, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), calls attention to the importance of the ubiquitous
‘fresh markets’ (or ‘wet markets’) that are found in every village across Asia
and Africa.
Commonly found in the form of open air pavilions housing a collection
of small stalls, these informal markets sell fresh fruit and vegetable produce,
as well as fresh poultry, meat and seafood. They are usually chaotic and very ‘fragrant’.
Before I moved to Asia, I’d only ever seen meat wrapped tidily in plastic,
well-chilled or frozen in a supermarket. But here whole or half-butchered
animals often hang near a small portion of meat available to purchase. Sometimes
a fan has been rigged with small ribbons overhead to keep the flies off.
This important (and fascinating) research shows firstly, just how important fresh
markets are for income generation and food security in developing areas. The
second key finding is that policies designed to ensure the safety of food
available in informal markets must be very carefully crafted and implemented so
that they do not cause more harm than benefit. According to ILRI:
...A new compilation of 25 studies in Africa
finds that informal markets provide essential sources of food and income
for millions of poor, with milk and meat that is often safer than
supermarkets.
Misguided efforts to control the alarming
burden of food-related illnesses in low-income countries risk intensifying
malnutrition and poverty — while doing little to improve food safety.
Blunt crack-downs on informal milk and meat sellers that are a critical
source of food and income for millions of people are not the solution.
More reasons to want good roads, more reasons to support wet markets!
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