encouraging sustainable, responsible cocoa growing

Entry: Bill Guyton

Today I attended the AIARD 2008 Capitol Hill Forum and Riley Memorial Lecture in Washington, DC. The theme of this year"s annual forum was "Agriculture; The Fuel for Sustainable Development". Dr. Joachim von Braun, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) gave an interesting presentation on world food demand and supply equations. It is clear that prices are continuing to rise for key commodities such as rice, maize and wheat over the past decade. This is due to a number of factors including income growth, biofuels, and lack of technology to respond to population growth trends. In order to address the supply/demand imbalance, he outlined the following;

Harmful Actions:
*stop exports (create trade barriers)
*providing food subsidies to "vocal" middle class
*outdated production systems

Recommended Actions:
*global political attention at the highest level
*policy actions that protect vulnerable populations (example, food aid programs, school feeding programs)
*investment in services, rural infrastructure and financing for small farmers
*global research and development to accelerate productivity

Rob Townsend, Senior Economist, World Bank, spoke on the perspective of the "2008 World Development Report". He identifed the need of increased research and development, conservation of genetic resources, and reduction in transboundary animal and plant diseases. Dr. Townsend mentioned that over the past two decades, the portion of the overseas development assistance (ODA) budget for agriculture has declined from 12 percent to 3 percent today.

Janet Poley, President of the American Distance Education Symposium spoke on the delivery and access to education in our time of information technology.

Rounding out the program was an excellent presentation by Dr. Mark Keenum, USDA Undersecretary of Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services.

As I listened to the presentations, I couldn't help but think about the role of cocoa in agricultural development. A third of the crop is lost each year to diseases and pests, infrastructure in many areas are poor, and cocoa farming practices are outdated. The World Cocoa Foundation partnership programs are working, but greater attention needs to be placed on research and development. World Cocoa Foundation is planning an event in the next few months to challenge new thinking around applied technology and education to further our efforts. More will be shared on this in the next few weeks.