Vieulpoint

commercial economy. But they are no solution to the problem of rural poverty, because they represent a wider extension of the very process of ‘modernization’ which is a major cause of poverty in today’s world.

Cheryl Payer,

Northwestern University,

Department of Political Science,

Evanston,

IL, USA

This is a summary version of a longer paper, ‘The World Bank and the Small Farmer’, which is available from the Rome Declaration Group, c/o Gartenhofstrasse 27, 8004 Zurich, Switzerland.

’ Mahbub ul Haq. ‘Changing emphasis of the Bank’s leading policies’, Finance and Development. Vol 15, No 2, 1978, p 13. ’ For example in this passage from the Bank’s Country Report on Papua New Guinea, July 14 1976 ~ continuously increasing wages without increased labor productivity may hamper Papua New Guinea’s agricultural export growth by reducing its competitive strength visa-vis other exporters of traditional agricultural products. The Government is, however, becoming increasingly aware of this problem [and has] assured the mission that it will continue to advocate wage restraint in the interest of satisfactory growth of Papua New Guinea’s agricultural exports.’ (Annex 1, p 4). ’ Rural Development: Sector Policy Paper, World Bank, Washington DC, 1975, pp 3-l 6. Author’s emphasis. ‘Agricultural Credit.. Sector Policy Paper, World Bank, Washington DC, 1975, pp 5- 20. Author’s emphasis.

The missing link in assistance planning

A major problem of past efforts to deal with food problems has been that both

bilateral and multilateral assistance activities have been piecemeal. The focus

has been on individual projects, each with limited objectives and a short time

frame. There has been a broad spectrum of types of projects, ranging from

specialized soil surveys for areas to be irrigated, to comprehensive rural

development. It has been taken for granted that the individual projects would

somehow add up to a net benefit in terms of national food supplies.

The assumption has often been that agricultural development was the essential route to improving national food supplies. Apparently, it was enough to encourage production; somehow the food would get to consumers.

Concern over the less than satisfactory results of the ‘project’ approach has resulted in efforts to look at the whole of the agricultural sector in developing countries. Sector analysis has had considerable emphasis within the US Agency for International

Development (AID) and the World Bank in recent years. The results of this economic model-building have been encouraging but modest. Unfortunately, there is an important missing link between sector analysis and the development of optimum sets of

68

projects for a given country. This link, a functional concept of a national food supply system, can be an integrating mechanism for the set of projects needed to assure adequate development of a nation’s food supply. A conceptual model of the structure of a nation’s food supply system is helpful in assessing individual project proposals as to their relative priorities for funding, as well as their timing and size.

Productive enterprises

A national food supply system consists of a set of interacting productive enterprises. It has a technological infrastructure and is supported by a set of common services. The productive enterprises are those commonly recognized as contributing to the

national food supply. Most visible are the farm units producing food products. A subset of enterprises provides production factors for farmers, including fertilizers, machinery, seeds, energy in the form of petroleum products or electricity, and breeding

animals. Also included are all those enterprises that are involved in assembling farm products, transporting them, processing them, providing storage for farm products or foods and distributing foods to consumers.

These enterprises may be in either the private or the public sector. Whether private or public firms, or cooperatives, their essential functions are the same. They perform one or more of the necessary activities involved in pro- ducing food and distributing it to consumers.

Across the spectrum of rich and poor countries there is an associated spectrum of sets of productive enterprises in the food supply systems. In the least developed countries, farm and other food-related firms tend to be small, and relatively specialized. They operate with relatively uncomplicated technologies and usually produce unsophisticated food products. There are usually not many links in the chains between farm producer and consumer. In the highly developed countries, on the other hand, productive enterprises in the food supply system tend to be relatively large, and often highly specialized. They most often operate with sophisticated technologies. Also, while in underdeveloped countries production processes and products tend to be traditional and unchanging, in the highly developed countries these are endlessly dynamic.

Family enterprises and simple partnerships abound in the less developed countries. In the industrialized countries, corporations, often multinational, are playing an increasing role in food supply systems.

While there are great differences in the productive enterprises in food systems of developed and underdeveloped countries, there are also striking differences in their technical infrastructure. In the most developed nations, these infrastructures are well organized and effective, while in underdeveloped nations they are poorly developed or non-existent. The absence

FOOD POLICY February 1980

Viewpoint

of an effective technical infrastructure is enterprises. It is regrettable that so little On the other hand, efforts to improve

a barrier to the development of attention has been given by international food supply systems in developing

successful productive enterprises in a and bilateral development agencies to the countries are almost always hampered

nation’s food supply system. This improvement of the essential technical by the lack of sufficient numbers of

comes about because of the nature of services for food supply systems in adequately trained technical personnel.

the infrastructure itself. It has four hunger-threatened countries. With very few exceptions, the hunger-

elements, most often all in the public threatened countries lack adequate

sector. Of first importance is some kind of

Research and training facilities for training the technicians required to make a science-based food

public mechanism for the formulation of A third element of the technical supply system work effectively.

national food policy and plans. This is infrastructure is a mechanism for the basic guidance mechanism that sets problem-solving research. To the extent the direction and pace of activity in the that food supply systems are based on

Institution building

food supply system and provides incentives that encourage activities consistent with the public interests. Most often there is no single governmental mechanism for this purpose. Instead various governmental entities, sometimes working in concert and sometimes not, perform this set of functions. It should be noted that these mechanisms are used in both market- oriented and centrally planned economies. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market works so imperfectly that all kinds of societies find it essential to provide some degree of guidance for the operation of the food supply system as a part of the national economy.

Technical services

A second element of the food supply infrastructure is the subset of mechanisms, almost always in the public sector, that provide essential technical services in the public interest. These include a variety of regulatory functions to exert controls on the behaviour of productive enterprises consistent with public needs; types of controls that do not result from the unguided functioning of an open market system.

Other publicly provided technical support functions are directed more to the needs of the productive enterprises themselves. Included are agencies to provide technical education and assistance to farmers, agencies to collect and disseminate information on soil or water resources, or the weather, and agencies to collect and publish statistics on farm output, food prices and related matters. All too often the inadequacies of, or absence of, such technical support services have resulted in the failure of efforts to stimulate development of essential functions by productive

traditional foods produced by traditional methods, little or no research is needed. However, when innovations based on modern science are introduced, the needs for a continuing research programme are immediate.

Problem-solving research is also innovation-creating research. Many times the introduction of a technological innovation makes it possible to introduce other innovations as well, and their introduction most often requires a certain amount of research for adaptation to local conditions.

Science-based food systems tend to be technologically dynamic. The ever changing varieties of crops, kinds and levels of fertilization, innovations in machinery and tillage practices, systems of irrigation or drainage, plus continuing change in the management of livestock enterprises all require that the supporting research be a continuing activity. It is true also that as food systems tend to become more sophisticated, the research requirements become more sophisticated. The relatively simple problems of countries in an early stage of development are gradually replaced by more difficult and complex problems, which demand the services of better equipped laboratories. Everincreasing investments in research are a necessary condition for sustaining the development of a nation’s food supply system.

The fourth element of the technical infrastructure is a capacity to provide the training for the many kinds of technicians, scientists and managers required by the system’s production entertprises and by the infrastructure units. The developed countries have extensive training facilities ranging from vocational secondary school programmes to advanced graduate programmes in universities.

A few years ago there was an unfortunate misjudgement by AID that this ‘institutionbuilding task was all but finished. It has only begun. There are many countries, especially in Africa, that have only the most primitive facilities for technical training. Most Latin American institutions are only beginning to offer graduate programmes in key agricultural specializations. In most developing countries around the world, colleges of agriculture are still putting primary emphasis on the train- ing of technicians for public agencies. The technical manpower requirements of the productive enterprises are still to be met. Moreover, as food supply systems in these countries shift to a base of science, the productive enterprises can be expected to follow in the pattern of firms in the food supply systems of industrial countries. They will grow in size, adopt more sophisticated production processes and become more dependent upon the skills of trained scientists. technicians and managers.

Food supply systems, like other elements of national economies, depend in part on certain common services. For many of the developing countries the most important of these are transportation and credit facilities. Reasonably adequate transportation, particularly road, rail and water, are crucial to agriculture because of its dependence upon the movement of bulky commodities including fertilizers, live animals and farm crops. In the USA the massive efforts of the 1920s and 1930s to develop a system of ‘farm-to- market’ roads serving rural arees have been all but forgotten. Large areas of Africa and Latin America are not yet served by any equivalent system of transport.

A perspective of a nation’s foods supply system, as a system, and made

FOOD POLICY February 1980

Viewpoint/Reports

up of a set of productive enterprises, supported by a technical infrastructure and making use of some key common services, can provide a basis for plan- ning more effective programmes of development assistance. It provides an analytical setting for appraising individual project proposals, and it suggests areas for priority attention. It gives a basis for judgement of the appropriate mix of capital and technical assistance needed.

Reconnaissance study

In recent years bilateral and international agencies have seemed to move in the direction suggested here. Agricultural sector assessments are now a required feature of AID country programme planning. However the agricultural sector, while being a convenient conceptual device for analysis by economists, is not a particularly useful concept in

connection with efforts to deal with the food problems of a developing country. As a basis for improving the effectiveness of development planning, the hunger-threatened countries would

do well to seek help in initiating studies of their national food supply systems. Such studies, even at a reconnaissance level. could identify current bottlenecks to improving the effectiveness of food supply systems, and be useful in planning of assistance projects.

It can be expected that, in most countries, a reconnaissance study would identify needs for further analytical efforts directed to the policy and planning needs of the host government. Donors should be prepared to support early efforts to strengthen the analytical capacities of ministries of agriculture in policy problems.

A reconnaissance study of a hunger- threatened nation’s food supply system would also reveal the extent to which the bottlenecks are problems of the productive enterprises, or of the infrastructure, or of the common service. It probably will be found that in most developing countries, too little attention has been given to the main elements of the technical infrastructure. When viewed from the perspective of the national food supply system and its effectiveness, the infrastructure is often a fruitful place for investment.

Reports

The Children’s Foundation

In 1968 a Congressional subcommittee and The Field Foundation reported

that hunger and ma~nutritian were a way of life for ien to fifteen rni~i~on people

in the USA. The report shocked many Americans. The Children‘s Foundation

was borne out of that study and for the past ten years has fought to feed

hungry children and their families in the USA by using the food assistance

programmes authorized by Congress and administered by the US Department

of Agriculture (USDA).

Most Americans are unaware of hunger as a domestic problem. Popular mythology would have it that every welfare family in the USA is fat and happy, every food stamp recipient eats steaks and every child who receives a free lunch throws it away and eats the ice cream. The reality is that 17.5 million children under the age of 18 live in dire poverty in the USA, which is

ranked 12th on international infant mortality tables; eight million children go to school inadequately fed each day; and another eight million low-income and pregnant women, their infants and young children face the danger of brain damage and death from malnourish- ment.

The Children’s Foundation’ works to turn these figures around by acting as

As a rule, the development of the infrastructure should accompany or precede substantial investment in a system’s productive enterprises. Speci- fically, donors should make sure that the development of capacities for problem-solving research, for training technicians and professionals, and for providing technical services is proceeding so as to serve adequately the needs of the developing productive enterprises. The development of the system’s public guidance mechanisms must also proceed if the public needs are to be met, and attention must be given to developing key common services, particularly road networks and agricultural credit systems.

John Blackmore,

Uni~ersjtv of ~jnnes5ta,

St Paul,

MN. USA

The author is grateful for the comments and suggestions of Vernon Ruttan, W.W. Cochrane, Terry Roe and J.K. McDermott on earlier drafts of this paper.

catalysts in communities throughout the country to reform and expand the food programmes. We concentrate on the following special project areas that correspond to those programmes:

0 The WC Advocacy Project monitors and promotes the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children. Popularly known as WIG, this programme provides free highly nutritious foods or food vouchers along with health care to low-income pregnant and nursing women, their families and children up to the age of five.

0 The Family Day Care Advocacy Project promotes the benefits of the Child Care Food Program (CCFP)

70 FOOD POLICY February 1980