SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who do you actually represent? It would seem that a large farm in North America would have radically different interests than a small subsistence farmer in Africa.
Wilkinson: We are made up of national farm organizations. A third of our members are from developed countries with two-thirds coming from the developing world. It is a very broad cross section. But we don't have any agro-industry companies among our members.
Commodity prices, especially for rice, have been rocketing upwards in recent months.
Wilkinson: We came to the agreement a long time ago that export subsidies should be eliminated, and even European farmers agree. There was recognition that such subsidies were doing damage to third country small-scale farmers, particularly in the developing world. We are not against subsidies to farmers. We are against subsidies to farmers that damage farmers in other countries.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Like those in place in the European Union under the Common Agricultural Policy?
Wilkinson: Some of the EU subsidies that are in place are very good subsidies. A farmer gets paid for producing food. A fisherperson gets paid for fishing. They don't get paid in the developing world to protect habitat. In Europe and North America, there are a number of subsidies in place that allow farmers to set aside and rehabilitate marginal lands that are incredibly important from a biodiversity point of view. If you don't have a subsidy that supports that kind of activity, it doesn't happen. It is way too simplistic to say that all subsidies are bad.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: In Germany, Gert Sonnleitner, president of the German Farmers Association, is doing what he can to maintain subsidies that protect the income of farmers. That is hardly the kind of environmental protection subsidies you are talking about.
Wilkinson: Just because you have a subsidy that helps stabilize the income of farmers doesn't mean that it will by definition hurt the developing world. The problems come when subsidies support commodity production resulting in surpluses that are then dumped cheaply, destroying the opportunities of an African or Latin American or Asian farmer to make a living. The Common Agricultural Policy reforms in recent years have dramatically changed the negative impact of such subsidy programs. Part of the problem is that a lot of economists and editorial writers do not bother to keep up on agricultural policy. It is more convenient for them to remember the damaging programs from the past that no longer exist.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Developing countries, though, don't seem to be any better off, especially given the extremely rapid rise in food prices in recent years.
Wilkinson: Now governments in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world are concerned about their poor urban consumers. Their concern should be, now that we have strong commodity prices for the first time in a decade, how they can put an agricultural strategy in place to allow their farmers to increase their production so they can feed their nation and supply regional markets.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You mean that climbing food prices -- prices for rice alone climbed by 80 percent last year -- are not necessarily the awful thing that they have been made out to be in recent months?
Wilkinson: There is a perfect mid-spot where a farmer earns enough from farming to make a living and yet the urban consumer is not paying an unreasonable amount of money for it. Prices needed to change from where they were, but prices overreacted simply because the shortage caught some people by surprise.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The recent price explosions then were simply a necessary correction?
Wilkinson: Low commodity prices meant that farmers were interested only in feeding their own families. Higher prices will facilitate needed investment. Let me give you an example. In many countries, storage problems and other issues lead to post-harvest losses of up to 30 percent of the crop. We know right now, with modest expenditure, how to eliminate most of that loss. Instead of cutting down more forests to grow more crop only to lose 30 percent, why are we not putting a major emphasis right now on saving all the crop that we grow? Additional money allows farmers to invest in more efficient practices.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Still, you make it sound as though the higher prices are little more than a blip in the market and nothing to be terribly concerned about.
Wilkinson: On the contrary. This should be a wake-up call. We have 53 countries in Africa and about three of them are growing enough surplus food that they can export to the region. It doesn't have to be that way. The fact that we have 250 million malnourished people in Africa is a scandal. And the challenges will only become greater. Because of dietary changes and population growth, agricultural needs are growing by at least 4 percent a year. Climate change adds additional pressure and the amount of water available per person is dropping as well.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How dangerous is the pressure being put on arable land by biofuel crops?
Wilkinson: Biofuels are certainly an additional pressure. But I think it's unfair that some NGOs are saying 'if only we didn't have biofuels, the world would be a perfect place.' It is reasonable to ask whether any agricultural land should be growing non-agricultural crops. But biofuels are not the only such demand on agricultural land. Uruguay, Chile and Argentina grow trees for export to Europe on agricultural land. Even barley for beer could be questioned. I'm not being flippant here. I put biofuels in the same category. It has become a mantra that biofuels are the enemy, and I say that we need to put it into context.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do you think of the idea of setting up a World Food Bank to coordinate supply and demand centrally as a mechanism to control shortages in one part of the world and surpluses elsewhere?
Wilkinson: We've been there before. We had a set-aside program in Europe for many years which involved taking agricultural land out of production to regulate the surplus. There was a program in the United States that involved the government buying surplus and storing it for use when needed. But the US moved away from that because the surpluses were being taken to Africa as part of the World Food Program, landed free of charge, and discouraging farmers in those regions from ever developing a commercial market.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How else can world hunger be eliminated?
Wilkinson: The best way to achieve global food security is through strong and organized farm communities working together to develop cooperative marketing and local food enterprises. We need to utilize farmers and their productive capacity at home, beginning at the local level. We have enough land, we have enough farmers. We just need good agricultural policies.
Interview conducted by Susanne Amann, Charles Hawley and Michael Kröger
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