BMGF and agriculture

The main conclusion of the agriculture chapter — BMGF’s work in agriculture has not succeeded — is valid but the chapter is weak in parts. The chapter covers 3 issues: (i) the role of BMGF in research and development work to benefit low-income country (LIC) agriculture, chiefly in Africa; (ii) the places of modern biotechnology and of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in science seeking to benefit LIC farming; and (iii) the governance of the global effort to promote agricultural productivity and better nutrition in poor countries.

On BMGF’s role in LIC agriculture, Schwab gets it largely right. BMGF has spent a lot with questionable achievements. Much of BMGF’s failure has been in channeling its support through AGRA (the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa), which has been ineffective. AGRA’s project cycle—how it defines, prepares, supervises and evaluates projects—is obscure. Many projects supported by AGRA appear to have been generated through personal contacts from politicians and AGRA management. It is difficult, in many instances, to find full project-cycle documentation of AGRA-supported investments (as can nearly always be done with such projects supported by the World Bank). Where there have been external projects evaluations by qualified reviewers the results of AGRA supported work have been poor. A telling point about AGRA, and indeed about much of BMGF’s work in global agriculture, is that the data to replicate existing evaluations or to study projects that have never been publicly evaluated, are not available. Schwab could have strengthen his argument substantially by mentioning another important form of BMGF assistance to global agriculture, beyond its role in AGRA—the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). BMGF has long been a lead donor to the CGIAR and as the lead promoter of the CG’S latest failed reform (known as “OneCGIAR”), bears significant responsibility for the decline in the CG’s impact in this century. In my own work, I have written a long critique of OneCGIAR and recently published a shorter one1. Neither BMGF (nor USAID nor the World Bank), the leaders of the OneCGIAR mess, have replied in any way to these, and other, critiques, so one may assume that they cannot reply and have taken silence as the safest course.

I do not think that Schwab quite understands what modern agriculture has achieved in low income countries or what the alternative—business as usual with traditional plant cultivars and with low levels of added water and plant nutrients—implies. The alternative implies continued low productivity, and hence lower incomes, less food security, and poorer nutrition, compared to the temperate and tropical regions that use modern methods. Schwab’s description of the Green Revolution (eg, p. 289) is not well-informed and his contention that « and many  (if not most) observers] see it as a net failure whose harms outweighed its benefits. » is wrong. His citations of  Mark Dowie’s work on foundations and agriculture are not reliable (notably the passage on « the first forty years [of the Green Revolution] ».

Schwab tends to blame BMGF  for pushing modern high-input methods with the goal of spreading genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) across Africa, but the facts are these. Modern agriculture has been quite successful in poor countries and that success has had little to do with GMOs. Where growth of agricultural productivity has been weak (eg, in sub-Saharan Africa) compared to other LIC and MIC situations, it is because modern levels of purchased inputs have remained low. Now one may say that that “agroecological” or “low-input sustainable” models are somehow superior but this is not true in the tropics mainly because such approaches are forms of recycling (eg, use of animal manures in place of mineral fertilizers is a way of moving crop nutrients from pastures to planted fields within a mixed plant-animal system). Schwab stresses « biotechnology » far too often without really defining it and allows the reader to think that biotechnology in agriculture always requires GMOs. This is not so. Modern biotechnology in agriculture is largely plant breeding with the goal of raising output per unit of input (land, water, mineral fertilizer) while improving resistance to, or tolerance of, biotic (pests, diseases) or abiotic (heat, aridity) stresses. The most successful examples (rice, wheat, cassava) have not involved GMOs for nearly 60 years. Recent gains with drought tolerant maize in sub-Saharan Africa, achieved after decades of close collaboration among global, regional and national research programs, do not involve GMOs but depend on more or less traditional plant breeding approaches and higher fertilizer inputs.

Schwab is guilty of some lemon picking about the external domination of governance of agricultural development efforts in Africa. All of the national research programs in Africa and all of the regional programs (eg, FARA, CORAF, etc) have been led by Africans for decades. Yes, much of the funding for those programs is foreign but one reason for this is that African political leaders have refused to fund their own agricultural development efforts (research, extension, roads, power, water). The international programs in SSA, such as the CGIAR, which spends about half of its budget  in SSA, are often led by Africans2 at the global and African levels.

Schwab has done very good—and very brave—work in bringing forth the truth about the tax evasion, bad governance, and, in places, poor portfolio quality of BMGF (and others like it). The book’s powerful critiques would have benefitted from some advice in its references to the problems of global agriculture and food security.

=======

Get more from John McIntire in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app