Report Slump in UK aid At the time when it was most needed, UKgovernment aid has shifted away from helping the African farmers to increase their productivity and output. This is one of the stark conclusions of the book by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Overseas Development, UK Aid to African Agriculture, publishedin October last year. ’

The UK government frequently asserts that the country is doing a great deal to help African agriculture, points out the group, and even that this sector has priority in aid alloca- tions. The parliamentarians test the record against the rhetoric - and they find that rhetoric has largely replaced

action. Their report states that the real

value of UK aid to African agriculture has slumped by a third since 1979; the UK’s overall aid has fallen by 18% in this time. In 1983, Britain gave f69 million directly to African govern- ments for agriculture projects, while a further f38 million went through multilateral channels such as the World Bank.

Against overall UK aid of El100 million ‘this does not look a generous figure, and suggests a mismatch be- tween robust policy statements in favour of aiding the renewable natural resources sector in Africa and the relatively modest level of financial allocations made available’.

Aid projects of direct benefit to farmers have been run down, with the UK taking virtually no major initia- tives in recent years. There have been no new allocations to rural develop- ment since 1982, and projects begun in the 1970s are now continued ‘mainly on a shoe-string basis’.

Support for tropical agricultural re- search has been cut, and the supply of UK manpower aid to African agricul- ture ‘has declined alarmingly’. Aid for roads and power projects has been held up, money for seeds has slumped to zero and assistance for agricultural services is only one-sixth of its 1979 level.

To compile their report, the parlia- mentarians conducted a thorough ex-

FOOD POLICY February 1986

amination of the aid figures and also travelled widely in Africa to assess for themselves whether aid is being wisely spent. They visited Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia.

The most significant feature of UK agricultural aid to Gambia, Kenya, Sudan and Tanzania ‘is the continuing low allocation to subsistence farming’. Little aid is supporting the majority of African farmers who grow food for their own consumption, using primi- tive technology. ‘There is little sup- port also to the large number of herders holding small numbers of livestock.’

Aid to people like this is not only small, it is getting smaller, while assist- ance for agricultural research in the four countries ‘is suprisingly modest given the UK’s long experience in tropical agriculture’. The small amount of aid for research has been well used, leading to the adoption of new crop varieties.

Indirect aid

By contrast to the limited aid for small and poor farmers, the group found that ‘large infrastructure projects - indirect aid to agriculture - appear to be growing in importance’. In two countries at least, investments by the Commonwealth Development Cor- poration (CDC) dominate the UK’s agricultural support. The CDC is noted for its successes in promoting export crops. But the parliamenta- rians say that, ‘However successful

CDC has been it is unrealistic to imagine that under its style of opera- tion it can make very many inroads into the vast problem of declining per capita food production in Africa’.

Instead of going to agriculture, UK aid to Africa is going to large construc- tion projects where there is a pay off for British firms. ‘The government has been conspicuously successful in en- suring that UK commercial interests are promoted’, point out the parlia- mentarians. The question they ask is whether Africa’s agricultural interests are well-served by such priorities.

The parliamentarians, who were made up of four Conservative MPs, two Labour MPs, an SDP Peer and an Independent Peer, urge the UK gov- ernment now to make a clear state- ment of its aid policy towards African agriculture, saying where it stands, for example, on complex issues such as the food versus cash crop controversy. They recommend that it takes action to stem the aid decline and allocates a substantial proportion for long-term development; ‘the government must match its robust claim to be helping African agriculture with substantial new initiatives’.

Expertise

The UK has ‘a wealth of resources and expertise to offer in this field much of which can be directed to help avoid future famines’, and they recommend that ‘more resources be directed to support the African peasant farming community, particularly in the food production sector’. They believe that more aid could go through non- government organizations which have a good record of helping the poorest people - the ones most at risk of famine. And they warn that the gov- ernment would be ‘ignoring reality if it assumed that further cuts in aid spend- ing had general public support’.

Only two days before the publica- tion of the parliamentarians report, 20 000 British people had travelled to parliament to tell their MPs that they want the government to give more aid to help increase food in developing countries, and also provide more trad- ing opportunities.

The 33% cut in UK aid to African agriculture is the sharpest cutback made by any major western donor country. However, recently released figures from the Organisation for Eco-

83

ReportlConferences

nomic Cooperation and Development into account, that meant a decline in show that the leading 17 western aid to agriculture of around 20%. donor countries are nowgiving less aid to Third World agriculture than in 1980.

John Madeley Reading, UK

In 1983, the 17 donors gave $4.5 ‘All Party Parliamentary Group on Over-

billion to agricultural projects, about seas Development, UK Aid to African

the same amount as they gave in 1980. Agriculture, Report of Working Party,

In real terms, after taking inflation Overseas Development Institute, 10-l 1, Percy Street, London, IJK, 1985.

Conferences Rethinking the American farm problem

The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Meeting of the American Agricultural Economics Association, Iowa State University, IA, 4-7 August 1985

On 27 July 1910, a group interested in farm management met on the campus of Iowa State College and agreed to organize the American Farm Manage- ment Association. Its principal objec- tive was ‘to promote the investigation and teaching of farm management’. In 1917, the more academically oriented American Association of Agricultural Economists was established, and a couple of years later the two were merged into the American Farm Eco- nomic Association. By 1968, another change in title was in order, and the present American Agricultural Eco- nomics Association (AAEA) was borne. As of June 1985, there were 4403 members.

On 4 August, some 2075 agricultu- ral economists (including spouses and children, graduate and undergraduate students) moved into the dormitories and the auditoriums of Iowa State University to celebrate the AAEA’s 75th anniversary - a fitting location, in that this campus was the birthplace of the profession in 1910.

The annual conclaves of American professional organizations are predict- ably alike in several respects - invited papers, selected papers and organized symposia. One could listen to a paper with the exciting title of ‘Variability of regional purchase coefficients: a note for regional I-O modellers’, or move to a different room in the attractive Scheman Center for Continuing

84

Education and listen to a presentation on ‘Evaluating El Salvador’s land re- form: has it made any difference to the campesinos?‘. Nor was the useful fan- fare of lunches and dinners neglected, culminating in a pig roast one evening - most befitting in that Iowa is the nation’s major hog producing state.

There was, however, a kind of paradoxical atmosphere to the whole proceedings. The rural Midwest is suffering through the worst case of economic doldrums that it has experi- enced since the mid-1930s. The agri- cultural economists were certainly highly knowledgeable as to the pre- vailing economic climate. Indeed, tens of thousands of learned words have come forth from their pens and word processors as to what can be done to cure, or at least alleviate, the peculiar cycle which seems to eventuate about each decade into ‘the American farm problem’.

But this is a frustrating period in the history of US agriculture and of the agricultural economics profession. The basic, intrinsic economic difficul- ties in rural America are largely those that the agricultural economists can define and diagnose, but the solutions do not lie within the boundaries of their professional domain. A heavily overvalued US dollar, an incredible US budget deficit, an oppressively unfavourable balance of trade and stubbornly high interest rates are lead-

ers in this list of major culprits. But the agricultural industry can take only marginal actions to alleviate the in- tense economic pain which has struck a considerable number of US farmers, as well as many rural communities and agribusiness concerns.

There were at least a few agricultu- ral economists who, in private con- versation, would admit to the real possibility that their profession may have been a significant contributor to the current crisis. The glorious days of most of the 1970s had led to an incredible increase of US farm ex- ports, from some $7.7 billion in 1971, to over $41 billion by 1980. The agricultural historians proved to be wiser in this instance, and preicribed caution, remembering the 1920s and 1930s. But the American farmer pre- ferred a path of gold to one of thistles, although it could be argued that the agricultural economists should have been issuing more precautionary dec- larations.

Nor does the near future show many signs of hope and relief. Two econom- ists presented the AAEA annual out- look survey (of economists primarily involved in agricultural outlook fore- casting). The essence of their predic- tions was that ‘agriculture is not out of the woods, and the next couple of years are likely to be worse years financially than the last few, which have not been good years’. Also, the reports of a senior economist for the Federal Reserve Board and a deputy undersecretary in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) were decided- ly lacking in optimism. In the words of the latter, ‘difficult and uncertain times’ are ahead for American agricul- ture.

Surely one of the most provocative (and thereby interesting) papers was presented by a senior, and highly respected, member of the profession - Willard Cochrane. Even his title aroused curiosity - ‘The need to rethink agricultural policy in general and to perform some radical surgery on commodity programs in particular’. The basis of his argument was that ‘we should eliminate the price and income support features of the commodity programs as quickly as possible’.

His justification of this recom-

FOOD POLICY February 1986