China is indeed an intriguing potential role model for developing nations in quest of rapid economic growth and successful poverty reduction. It has not only sustained an average annual GDP growth rate of 10 percent between 1980 and 2011, it has also been extraordinarily successful at reducing poverty, taking more than 650 million people out of extreme poverty over the period. These are two extraordinary feats. It is, however, often said that China is a unique case, with few transposable lessons due to its exceptional size and past. With Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) at a time of economic takeoff and in need of sustained growth and massive poverty reduction, finding out if at least some lessons from the Chinese experience are transposable can be a useful contribution. There are no better researchers to inform us on this than Scott Rozelle and Jikun Huang. So, what they have to say is indeed important. In what follows, let me try to qualify and extend some of the lessons they are proposing.

President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget proposal promises significant food aid reform that will enable the United States to feed about 4 million more people without a significant increase of the current $1.8 billion spent on feeding the world's most hungry. Since the food aid program's inception in 1954, the U.S. has helped feed more than 1 billion people in more than 150 countries, and remains the largest provider of international food aid.

The intention of the reform is to make food aid more efficient, cost effective, and flexible. It aims to use local and regional markets to lower the cost of food and speed its delivery, and calls for the use of cash transfers and electronic food vouchers.

The proposed reforms would also end monetization—the sale of U.S. food abroad to be sold by local NGOs for cash. This practice has been criticized for hurting vulnerable communities by depriving local farmers of the incentives and opportunities to develop their own livelihoods. Several studies, including one by the Government Accountability Office, found monetization to be costly and inefficient—an average of 25 cents per taxpayer dollar spent on food aid is lost.

Barry Riley, a food aid expert and visiting fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, discusses his perspective on the importance of these new reforms, their chances of passage, and the country's current role in international food aid.

Why is local procurement such an important addition to food aid reform?

An increase of funding for local and regional procurement is the most important programmatic element of the proposed reforms. It would help managers working in food security-related development programs to determine for each emergency what commodities are most appropriate and where they can be procured most quickly and inexpensively. Some studies have shown local and regional procurement of food and other cash-based programs can get food to people in critical need 11 to 15 weeks faster at a savings of 25-50 percent. Equally important, local procurement is less likely to disrupt local economic conditions, but rather promote self-sufficiency by increasing demand (often for preferred local staples) and incomes of local producers. The move to 45 percent local (and 55 percent tied) procurement is a BIG step, and one to face strong opposition from American commodity interests and U.S.-flag shippers. 

How difficult is it to ensure vouchers and electronic cash transfers are getting into the hands of people that really need the aid?

Vouchers (and similar urban coupon shops) have been used many times over the past decades as a food transfer mechanism (also sometimes used in food for work programs) enabling the recipient to trade the voucher(s) for foodstuffs when it is most convenient or when they are most needed. Electronic vouchers are new, and how well they work depends on local situations. In places like urban Latin America, Africa and India, it probably could be made to work quite well; the technology is evolving quickly that would enable this sort of transfer mechanism.  

Rural Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Malawi – probably not so well. I’m admittedly skeptical that electronic transfers of purchasing power to remote areas would be sufficient in most cases to motivate traders to move food to these hungry areas. Their risks are extremely high and, in my experience in Africa, traders will only deliver food to remote rural areas (inevitably over very bad roads) if they can command prices considerably higher than costs plus a high risk premium.

Why aren’t international food aid organizations more in favor of direct dollar support for local operating costs?

There is (and has long been) opposition among many of the NGOs to the President’s proposal to replace “monetization” with a promise of on-going direct dollar support for the local operating costs of NGO food security-related projects. They believe it will continue to be easier to get Congress to approve money to buy American food commodities to ship overseas than to get approval for dollars to ship overseas, particularly in light of tightening budgets. These NGOs have tended, over the years, to receive a sympathetic ear from Congress.

The proposal shifts oversight of the food aid program from the Agriculture Committees within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to the Foreign Affairs/Relations Committees of the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). What is the likelihood of Congress approving this transfer?

The chance of that happening, in this of all Congresses, is about the same as winning the Power Ball Lottery. Crusty committee chair-people are extremely sensitive to reductions in their empires and the agriculture committees – especially in the Senate – are powerful committees. On top of that, there are so many elements in the overall 2014 federal budget creating heartburn on the Hill that food aid considerations are far, far, far down the line. The best the President is likely to get in the present divided Congress are hearings and a continuing resolution of some sort.

What did you wish to see in the food aid reform proposal that was not addressed in this budget?

Change, if it ever comes, will likely be incremental and halting. I’ll be happy to see any step, however small, in the right direction. The total end of tied procurement would be at the top of my wish list. Even more important, perhaps, iron-clad, multi-year commitments of funding to food security programs intended to overcome long-term institutional impediments to achieving enduring food security in low income food deficit situations…and sticking with such commitments for 15 years.

What role does food aid play in advancing American foreign policy goals?

Most importantly, by being the single largest source of food commodities to the World Food Program in confronting disaster and emergency situations. Food support to American NGOs has been under-evaluated over the past 40 years. I’ll be talking about this later in the book I am writing, but these small projects were all that kept agricultural development (and early food security efforts) going in many small countries during the “dark decades” when international finance institutions and bilateral donors were not financing agricultural development. There are valuable on-the-ground lessons in that NGO food-assisted experience still waiting to be assessed.

Let me add, given what we know about the onset of serious climate change in the decades to come, the need to supply large amounts of food to populations suffering severe food deprivation will probably grow in the future. Where will the food come from and who will pay for those future transfers?

While the U.S. remains the largest provider of food aid, what can the EU and Canada teach the U.S. about food aid policy?

Donors hate to think that other donors have something to teach them. But, of course, they always do. The Canadian and European experience with food aid is best summed up in the way their objective has come to be restated over the past 15 or so years: not “food aid” but “aid for food.” The purpose of assistance intended to improve food security is to improve either, or both, availability and access over the long term (leave nutrition aside for a moment).

European and Canadian assistance can be much more flexible in choosing the instruments – food, cash, technical assistance, training, institutional strengthening, public policy, public-private cooperation, etc. – required to achieve a realistic food security goal which I would describe as pretty good assurance that most people can get their hands on the food they need most of the time. Commodity food aid, in some form – or the promise of its ready availability when needed – will probably need to be part of the total array of inputs required for the several years needed in particular food insecure countries to achieve that “pretty good assurance.” Europe and Canada are closer to understanding this and have become appropriately flexible in concerting resources to get it done. That’s the lesson.

China’s commitment to agricultural development over the last thirty years has dramatically transformed the country’s economy. Rural income per capita has risen an astounding 20 times after 30 prior years of stagnation. Its poverty rate (US$1.25/day) has dropped from 40 percent to less than five, and 350 million rural people between the ages of 18-65 are now working in the industrial or service sector, enjoying rising wages and new economic opportunities.

This rapid transformation is largely the result of three key agricultural policy decisions: putting land in the hands of farmers, market deregulation, and major public investment in the agricultural sector. Although China must now contend with extreme inequality, high levels of pollution, and an aging farming sector there are still lessons to draw from China’s experience that could hasten the transformation of other developing countries.

China expert and agricultural economist Scott Rozelle broke these lessons down at FSE’s fourteenth Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series last week, opening with an underlying theme of the series.

“Growth and development starts with agriculture,” said Rozelle. “Agriculture provides the basis for sound, sustained economic growth needed to build housing, invest in education for kids, start self-employed enterprises, and finance moves off the farm.”

To prove this point he referenced China’s ‘lost decades’ (1950s-1970s) when 80 percent of the population lived in the rural sector and relied on communal, subsistence agriculture. Poor land rights, weak incentives, incomplete markets and inappropriate investments left the average rural farmer poorer at the end of 70s than they were in the 50s with almost no off-farm employment growth.

So what changed? Incentives, market deregulation and strategic investments by the state were key.

Creating the right incentives

In 1978 the Chinese government broke the communes down into small “family farms” such that every rural resident was allocated a small parcel of land. A family of five farmed an area the size of a football field. While they did not own nor could sell the land, they had the right to choose what crops and inputs they used and the right to the income generated from their land.

“Incentives are important, and can be enough in the short run,” said Rozelle. “Hard work led to money in the pockets of farmers and China was off.”

“Every two and half years China added another California in term of agriculture,” said Rozelle.

Between 1979 and 1985 productivity for wheat, maize, and rice went up 50 percent using the same amount of labor, land and inputs. Agriculture across the spectrum has grown at an astounding rate of 5 percent since 1988 (about four times the population growth rate). Livestock and fisheries have grown even faster – accounting for most of the output of the agricultural sector by 2005.

Income growth from farming enabled family members to begin to seek work off the farm. Between 1980 and 2011, off-farm work increased 71 percent with more than 90 percent of households reporting that at least one family member worked off the farm.

Increasing efficiency through liberalization and investment

Another key policy decision was China’s commitment to market liberalization and investment in public goods.

“Markets can be an effective, pro-poor tool of development,” said Rozelle. “A remarkable partnership is formed when you let farmers do production and government do infrastructure…let markets guide decisions.”

The government dismantled state-owned grain trading companies and deregulated trading rules. Prices were set once a week the same day across China to better integrate markets, and eventually prices for major crops closely mirrored those of world prices. Villages began specializing in crops and livestock and incomes of the poor increased. By not providing government input subsidies (e.g, pesticides, fertilizers), traders were incentivized to participate in the market.

“Giving land to farmers and letting the private sector emerge is an easy thing for governments, even without a lot of money, to do,” said Rozelle.

The government provided more indirect market support by publicly investing in better roads, communications, and surface water irrigation. Groundwater was left to the private sector. There were no water or pumping fees nor subsidies for electricity, keeping it completely deregulated. As a result, 50 percent of cultivated land in China is irrigated, compared to 10 percent in the US and only four percent in sub-Saharan Africa.

Finally, China has invested heavily in agricultural research and development (R&D). One percent of China’s agricultural GDP is now invested in agricultural R&D while US investment has fallen over time. US$2 billion alone goes to investments in Chinese biotechnology.

Despite major investment, China only has one major success story to show for so far. The introduction of Bt cotton led to a significant drop in pesticide use (with important health benefits for farmers), and drop in labor and seed price; resulting in a huge 30 percent increase in net income.

“GM technology benefits exist but big policy decisions still need to be made in the face of much resistance both in China and elsewhere in the world on its application,” said Rozelle.

Status of China’s economy

China has largely solved the country’s macro-nutrient food security problem at the household level (>3000 Kcal/day/person) and millions have been lifted out of poverty. Practically all 16-25 years old are now working off the farm.

“This is a real transformation, and one that could not have happened without a major investment in agriculture,” said Rozelle.

While China’s agricultural accomplishments have been major, Rozelle recognizes the system is far from perfect. For starters, there are serious food safety concerns due to lack of traceability. An astounding 98 percent of Beijing consumers think their food is tainted, said Rozelle.

Water is being pumped like crazy and farmers are aging. The younger generation is neither willing nor interested in following in their parents’ farming footsteps. To make up for a labor deficit farmers are applying huge amounts of fertilizer on their land with serious environmental consequences. As a result of changing demographics and an increasing demand for meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, China is likely to be a net importer of food in the long run.

China also faces major urban and rural inequality issues. Even though wages have risen, inequality has not fallen, largely a result of China’s decision not to privatize rural land.

“Rural people have no assets on which to build wealth while urban people were given assets in the form of housing,” said Rozelle. “Housing prices in major cities in China now rival those in the Bay Area!”

The Chinese government fears losing control of the land, but this comes at a price of less individual incentive to invest and inability to build larger farmers. As agricultural growth slows, Rozelle worries high levels of inequality could lead to instability.

Adding fuel to the fire, investment in rural health, nutrition, and education remains far from sufficient. Only 40 percent of the rural poor go to high school resulting in 200 million people who can barely read or write.

“What’s going to happen in 20 years when low skill manufacturing jobs move to other countries?” asked Rozelle. “The rural, uneducated poor are going to become unemployable.”

China’s record leaves room for improvement, but presents a strong case for supporting smallholder agriculture. For those countries emerging out of their own lost decades, smallholder agriculture should remain a primary focus of investment and development.

Actors in government, civil society, and academia have been pioneering innovative approaches to advance transparency, accountability, and democracy around the world. Citizen engagement is at the forefront of democratic practices worldwide and a key pillar to support civil society is access to information.

Andrea Sanhueza, a 2012 Draper Hills Summer fellow, shares her success story of how a group of civil society organizations helped advocate for improved environmental governance cooperation across government and civil society in Latin America and the Caribbean region.

Sanhueza has been an active civil society stakeholder in the Summit of the Americas process, which works to build regional cooperation among governments of the Western Hemisphere. In 2009, Sanhueza drafted a strategy for the Organization of American States (OAS) to structure participation of civil society organizations in OAS activities. From 2001-2010, she served as the executive director of PARTICIPA, a Chilean NGO that works in the democracy field on issues of elections, transparency, access to information, and citizen participation.

What is The Access Initiative?

Founded in 2000, The Access Initiative (TAI) is a global coalition of civil society organizations that work towards the implementation of the right to access of information, participation and justice regarding environmental issues. These rights —known as access rights — are included in Principle 10 of the Río Declaration that was signed at the first Earth Summit in 1992.

Why are access rights important?

Access rights are key for democracy and governance because they are the foundation for exercising human rights. If a person can have access to information about a public issue (education, health, or pension) and can participate in a meaningful way, then he/she will be able to effectively exercise their rights. Without access to information — which is the major building block — it is almost impossible to exercise human rights.

Since its founding, TAI has been dedicated to improving citizens’ access to environmental decision-making, strengthening the enforcement of environmental law and policy, combating corruption, and realizing human rights.

What has been one of The Access Initiatives' key milestones?

In June 2012, the second conference on sustainable development took place in Brazil, known as the Río+20 Summit. TAI came together to advocate for the advancement of access rights for countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

I visited the government of Chile — specifically the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Ministry of the Environment — to let them know about the TAI proposal for a regional convention. The proposal included evidence-based advocacy to encourage collaboration across government and civil society and promote innovation that advances transparency, accountability, and inclusiveness of civil society at all levels.

The government of Chile submitted the TAI proposal for a regional convention on the Principal 10 Declaration to the U.N. The governments of Jamaica and Brazil also submitted the TAI proposal and showed their support. This was a milestone in the longer process.

How were you and your partners successful in convincing other governments to support TAI?

TAI was successful in getting other governments on board to support the initiative through a strategic partnership with the government of Chile who was key to getting other governments to sign the declaration.

TAI and representatives of the government of Chile started advocating during the preparatory meetings of the summit to other governments. We encouraged them to join this proposal for the advancement of access rights for countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region. After two years of advocating for the relevance of a regional instrument in the declaration, we had 11 governments supporting our proposal for the development of a regional instrument to strengthen access to information, public participation, and access to justice in sustainable development decision‐making. These governments include: Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.

What was the outcome of this collation of governments in the Latin American and Caribbean region?

The signatory governments committed to drafting and implementing a Plan of Action 2012-14, to work towards an international instrument. The U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is serving as the technical secretariat for the process.

In November 2012, ECLAC hosted the first meeting of representatives appointed by the signatory governments in Santiago, Chile. The representatives agreed on a roadmap that defines the next steps for the collation and appointed a steering committee composed of the governments of Chile, Dominican Republic, and Mexico to coordinate the process.

What role does civil society play in advancing environmental democracy?

The participation of civil society in the development of a Latin American and Caribbean Principle 10 instrument is essential to the process. There now exists a real opportunity to advance environmental democracy and access rights in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Civil society's participation would ensure that the instrument is capable of actually strengthening public institutions in the region, and ensure its legitimacy and viability as a tool to strengthen environmental governance for sustainable development. Governments have committed to a participatory process, but this commitment will not materialize if civil society lacks the actual capacity to participate in the relevant meetings of the process.

What does the future hold for TAI?

We are very excited about the possibility of creating a regional instrument for the efficient implementation of access rights in Latin American and Caribbean region. Today there is a real opportunity for both governments and civil society to promote good environmental governance through implementation of the LAC Principle 10 Declaration. The dec­laration is still open for signature by other Latin American and Caribbean countries, and it is expected that more countries will join the process and lend increased vigor to this innovative approach to regional coopera­tion on environmental governance.