Crop science, poverty and the family farm in a globalising world

Family farming, crop science and ‘globalisation’ together largely determine progress against poverty. Faster in 1960-90 than at any time in world history, such progress has slowed down. So have ‘land reform’ and science-based rises in small farmers’ staples food productivity, while aid to agriculture has fallen by over two-thirds and farm prices have been further forced down (and farm science distorted) by EU and US farm policies. All these things hang together. Most of the world’s poor are in, or employed mainly on, family farms. Big gains for all main groups of dollar-poor need, first, a special type of growth in farm productivity; partly by luck, the Green Revolution was of the right type. To resume and spread such processes, the tasks and organisation of pro-poor farm science need radical reform, especially for the crops and soil-water regimes of rainfed Africa, allowing for the new water crisis. Yet farm supports in Europe and the USA (apart from directly undermining developing countries’ farm incentives) misdirect world farm science, shifting its goals away from the needs of the poor for employment-intensive, robust and water-economising farm yield growth. Privatisation of research has sharpened this misdirection; science requires new incentives, if the great hope of biotechnology is to cut world poverty. Today, paradoxically, the relative-poor among family farms in rich countries cause their governments to depress world farm prices. Partly by distorting science, that makes it harder to renew or spread the attack on absolute poverty. Remedies are urgent, to use a ‘window of opportunity’ in developing countries due to changing population structures, and to realise the poor’s large, but too often subverted, gains from globalisation. Media Summary Most of the worlds poor are family farmers. Globalization brings opportunities and treats to their situation. Poverty reduction demands crop science which targets the circumstances of these poor, is largely public, has funding levels restored, and is not misdirected by the influences of developed world farm subsidies.