Our current global food system is broken.
Relying on a network of materials and products that are externalised and manufactured by hard labour hundreds to thousands of miles from where they are used or consumed, our food system is unsustainable for humans, corporations, and our planet. It is inefficient. Most importantly, with close to 193 million people acutely food insecure across the globe, the highest peak in recorded history, our food system is clearly failing us.
We desperately need to move to the next era of onshoring, on-demand, and localisation when it comes to our global food system.
After all, how can a single country like Ukraine contribute 42% of the total sunflower oil, 16% of the total maize, and 9% of the total wheat traded on our global market? Why does Ukraine, a country half the size of South Africa, supply major key crops to the African continent, which contains 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land? How is this possible? How have we gotten to this point?
This week, I had the privilege to discuss our global food system, which is the core of these questions, with my fellow distinguished panellists Erez Galonska, Founder & CEO of Infarm and H.E. Dr Muhammad Sulaiman Al Jasser, Chairman of the Islamic Development Bank Group (IDB), along with Bloomberg’s Jennifer Zabasajja at the 2022 Qatar Economic Forum.
Throughout our panel Food Security in Peril, a brilliantly accurate title, we had a productive discussion on the future of food security. The ultimate question we were posed, and that shaped much of our discussion, was whether we need to make tweaks to our existing food systems or completely uproot them to tackle global food insecurity?
In a system with a tyranny of interest rates, meaning our poorest pay more than our richest, thus falling heaviest on our farmers - the unsubsidised smallholder who produces most of our food - it is clear we need to change our ethos when it comes to food security, uprooting our current system.
The entire panel agreed.
An example of the much-needed change within agriculture is the use of vertical farming, a process in which crops are grown indoors in stacked layers, allowing the farmer to control the environment, through lighting, temperature, and water provisions.
During our panel, Erez Galonska discussed the need for this innovative process, especially in regions with small amounts of arable land and inadequate weather conditions. Focused on urban farming, vertical farming is one of the many methods Infarm is exploring as they attempt to make farming more efficient and attainable.
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In Africa’s mega cities, including Lagos and Kinshasa, vertical farming would revolutionise the food system and economy. With completely indoor farming facilities spread across the city and a controllable environment, anyone could be a farmer. Spurring on the urban farming movement, these cities could develop urban farmers' markets, relying on local produce rather than importing it from nearby cities or countries.
Innovative solutions like vertical farming are a great initiative, but in regions with a considerable amount of arable land, such as the non-urban developments across the African continent, there is a simpler solution.
As stated by my fellow panellist H.E. Dr Muhammad Sulaiman Al Jasser, finding a solution isn’t rocket science. What we need is to create a farming ecosystem that keeps people on the farms to produce the goods they, and our urban population, need.
I completely agree. Our solution to building a successful farming ecosystem, and thus food system, is to show young people that they can make a profit and enjoy farming. It’s as simple as that.
Unfortunately, this is not currently the case.
At the moment, more profit is made by the individuals who transport the food than the ones who cultivate it over months or years. Further, in Africa where the average farmer pays a great deal of annual interest, less and less profit is earned. As a result, farmers are failing to feed their families, let alone educate themselves and make themselves prosperous.
It is due to our current global credit system that these annual interest rates are so extortionate. Currently, our global credit system is determined by global rating agencies, such as S&P and Moody’s, who asses the relative long-term credit risk associated with certain countries and assign them a rank or score.
While these assessments are determined by qualitative figures, there is certainly a highly subjective aspect of these rankings, especially when it comes to countries that have little to no public data, like many African nations. As a result, due to disparities in perception risk, many African countries have been given low credit ratings, which in turn affect their national interest rate.
Under this system, which until the middle of March considered Ukraine to represent a safer investment than Malawi, a country without war for over 40 years, it is clear how Africa’s food system and further our global food system has gotten to this breaking point.
This needs to change. We need to stop looking at Africa as a victim in the food game but rather as an underutilised resource for food.
If we support African farmers, particularly smallholder farmers, through accessible and affordable capital access initiatives, then we have a chance to combat global food insecurity. These initiatives are simple and include having fair interest rates and available credit for farmers along with the certainty of purchase for produced goods.
At Tingo, we aim to provide fair funding to all our farmers, offering accessible access to capital to assist smallholders. In turn, we hope to encourage other private corporations to do the same, making agriculture and farming profitable and thus attractive to young people.
However, we cannot solely focus on private initiatives since, as H.E. Dr Muhammad Sulaiman Al Jasser rightfully pointed out, shark lenders will always exist. So, while our entire system needs to shift to create accessible and affordable capital for African farmers, it is important that governments also take it upon themselves to create an ecosystem that supports small lenders that ultimately provide capital to our smallholder farmers.
To combat global food insecurity, we need to create a system that puts African farmers first by giving them easy access to funds, allowing them to farm on the hundreds of acres of uncultivated African land.
We need to make the farmers, especially our smallholder farmers who produce the best food for value, the heroes. If we support these farmers and don’t harvest them, but help them harvest our food, then we have a fighting chance at feeding ourselves.
