Professor Tim Benton
Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, everybody. My name is Tim Benton. I’m chairing this event at Chatham House and we’re very, very pleased to be able to welcome Director David Beasley of the World Food Programme today to talk about the hunger epidemic on a global basis. Now, you know, thinking back, my time being involved in food systems dates 20/30 years or so. At the time of the Millennium Development Goals, we had real hopes for abolishing acute food insecurity and hunger on a global basis. But for the last few years, unfortunately, that hope has started to be dashed, as conflicts such as Sudan, Ethiopia, the Sahel in general, climate change impacts, including heat and drought, even locusts and perhaps even COVID, has started to disrupt the ability for people to have access to a basic diet and hunger levels around the world has increased.
And of course, COVID itself has really laid bare the inequalities globally of our food system, reversing a decade or so of gains, 200 million more people in acute food insecurity, 25% increase in child deaths relating to hunger and so on. Looking ahead, the prospects seem even worse, perhaps, with the driving issues of greater inequality and climate change and environmental degradation and moving away from a period of what looks back – looks like, looking backwards, a period of global stability.
So, today we’re going to be talking about the relationships between the world as it is, the hunger epidemic, COVID and the future, and as I say, we’re very, very pleased to have Director Beasley with us here. Before we get on to David, just a few bits of housekeeping, if I can find my bits of paper. The meeting is on the record, so it’s not covered by the Chatham House Rule. So, you can talk about and report anything that is said in the meeting today. It’s also being recorded so that people can have access to it at a later date. Please, please do, as a relatively small and select meeting today, please do feel free to ask questions throughout the event. If you put your question in the Q&A box and it fits into the schedule, we will ask you to deliver the question. If you want to make a, kind of, general comment to the group as a whole, then feel free to use the chat function, but keep your questions in Q&A, please. The way this session’s going to run is I’m going to hand to David in a minute to give some opening remarks. Then I’m going to have a bit of a conversation with him, and then we’ll move into the final third of question and answers. Though, of course, if you do put in some very good questions and an – questions during the event, then we might well move to the question session sooner, rather than David just listening to my questions.
So let me introduce David, Former Governor of the United States State of South Carolina, Executive Director of the World Food Programme. He continues his life’s work bridging political, religious and ethnic boundaries, to champion economic development and education. At WFP, Mr Beasley has put into use four decades of leadership and communication skills to mobilise more financial support and public awareness for the global fight against hunger. These efforts were recognised and well recognised last year with the award of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize and clearly, it is a brilliant institution. We wish it wasn’t necessary, but the work it does is absolutely fantastic. So, without further ado, David, over to you for your opening remarks.
David Beasley
Yeah, Tim, it’s great to be with you this morning, this afternoon, this evening, wherever you are in the world. I happen to be in the United States, the East Coast today, and I watched a very, I guess, from your perspective, a very sad game yesterday, from the United States, and yeah, so anyway, my condolences for the loss yesterday of the UK fans. What a game.
But anyway, to something that is dear to my heart, is food security at this stage in my life, and quite frankly, the situation, Tim, is really pretty bad. It’s deteriorated substantially in the last few years. It’s hard to believe that so much progress was being made in the past 200 years, actually, and this is one of the things I tell a lot of my young people who seem to be wanting to tear things down. I said, “Wait a minute, you know, 200 years ago, there was 1.1 billion people on earth and 95% of the people were in extreme poverty. So, in the last 200 years, to 7.7 billion, less than 10% in extreme poverty. So, systems and institutions and programmes have been designed, built, implemented that’s actually sharing more wealth than at any time period in world history.” And so – but trying to explain that to the 10% or a little bit less, that aren’t experiencing this sharing of wealth, that don’t have the food they need, who are in extreme poverty. Now, what we don’t need to do is tear down the system that’s helping the 90. What we’ve got to do is stay focused, continue to work as hard as we have in the last couple of hundred years, and especially in the last 50 years, to reach that last 10%.
Now, all the success that’s had in the last 150/200 years, remarkable, but in the last four years, we’re going backwards. When I arrived at the World Food Programme in the United Nations, the world’s largest humanitarian operation, and I have to admit, kicking and screaming, ‘cause I really did not want a job, did not need a job, I loved the private sector, and – but here I am, and as my children say, “Dad, this is the greatest job you’ve ever had,” you know. But when I arrived, Tim, there were 80 million people that were on the brink of starvation, in what we call IPC level 3/4/ 5, 80 million. Then right before COVID, that number had spiked to 135 million. Now you ask the question, “Well, why?” Well, the answer to that is really basically, fundamentally, man-made conflict. Now, on top of that is climate change. Now, that’s pre-COVID. Post-COVID, the number went from 135 to 270 million people marching toward starvation, IPC 3/4/5.
I’ll just give you a couple of examples. DRC, just a few years ago, was 7.6 million, today 27 million people in IPC 3/4/5. Afghanistan was 7.5 million, now 17 to 18 million. Ethiopia, 8 million, now 16 million. I could keep going through these numbers. And so now, because of conflict, man-made conflict, climate change, compounded by the economic deterioration and the ripple effect through the supply chain systems around the world, we see that number go from 135 to 270 million people, and so, that’s a pretty serious situation on our hands. And if we don’t do anything about it, then you will have mass famine, destabilisation of nations, and 3) mass migration. And I can tell you, it’s a hell of a lot more expensive to wait after the fact than it is to address root cause and get in beforehand.
You know, I think the Europeans learned that lesson very clearly in the Syrian conflict, because we could feed a Syrian in the middle of a war for about 50 cents per person, and that’s more than the norm, but you know, when you’re moving supplies through a war zone, it costs more money. But that same Syrian ends up in, let’s say Brussels or Berlin, instead of 50 cents, it’s €50-100 per person per day for the humanitarian support package. And guess what? We feed about 115 million people on any given day, week, month. When you feed that many people, we survey people all the time. People don’t want to leave home. They don’t want to leave their homeland and what we saw in Syria is just typical of people in these types of disruptive atmosphere, environments. They will move two, three, four, five times in their motherland, their homeland, they will go to their aunts or uncles or grandparents or cousins or friends, before they’ll actually leave. But if they don’t have food security and some degree of peace, they will do what any of us would do for our children, and that is go find some degree of hope. And so you saw the mass migration at 100 to 1,000 times more expensive than it would be if we come in and address root cause. If we can eliminate migration by necessity, then you’re left with migration by choice, and that’s a small number of people.
It’s a pleasant debate, versus the more contentious debate that we’re dealing with. And I tell a lot of my friends in the US Senate, US House, I said, “You know, it’s like you’ve got leaky waterlines in the ceiling, and you’re all fighting over where to put the buckets. You know, it’s a lot cheaper just to go up there and the fix the leaks. In other words, root cause, versus you wait, you wait, you wait, and they you’ve got to replace the oak table, the flooring, the carpet, the curtains, and everything, because you’re really not dealing with the root cause.”
And so, COVID has just compounded it. So last year, I think it was about March, Tony Blair called me. He said, “David, what are you seeing out there?” And I said, “Tony, I’m very, very worried, because the world leaders are making decisions about COVID in a vacuum.” I said, “You can’t do that. If you do, the cure it going to be much worse than the disease. We’ve got to handle this balancing a health pandemic with a hunger pandemic at the same time, and if we integrate it properly, we can get through this.” And so he said, “You’ve got to go speak to the world leaders about this, what you’re seeing.” ‘Cause he said, you know, “You go to more countries around the world than anybody. You see more than anyone sees out there on the ground.” And like you know, as I said earlier, when you feed 115 million people, I can tell you what’s going on in the neighbourhood. We can tell you what’s going to happen over the next 12 to 24 months. We can usually predict destabilisation in areas of concern, you know, like Northern Mozambique or the Sahel. I’ve been banging the drums for four straight years on the Sahel, only to see the world leaders not respond in time, and of course, now, like in Northern Mozambique or what you see in Burkina Faso, in Mali, Chad, yadda, yadda, there’s a 100 to 1,000 times more, especially when you’ve got to bring in military, you know, operations.
And so, what I did, after talking with Tony, was I went and spoke to the United Nations Security Council and I said, “You need to understand the reality of what we are facing. If we don’t address immediately, you will have famines of biblical proportions. You will have mass destabilisation of nations and you will have, in fact, a mass migration.” In fact, the pricing that we’re now seeing, Tim, compared to Arab Spring, if you remember in the years of Arab Spring, when you do the economic, financial analysis of where were food prices, what was happening in inflation, we’re now past those numbers, except we now truly have a major global economic deterioration.
I think the number of jobs lost now is about 225 million, give or take, that you calculate in the last year, is that the world leaders responded to, I don’t want to say just to my request, anybody could have – to the point of interest here is that, you know, they implemented 27/30 million – trillion dollars’ worth of economic stimulus packages, debt relief or debt referral for low, middle-income countries, allowing those debt payments to go to safety net programmes inside countries during this interim time period, as well as many of the countries stepped up substantially in the humanitarian sphere, allowing us to truly bring countries, what I would say probably a good 25/30 countries that are absolutely fundamental last year to the increase in funding that we got, allowing us to really stabilise, avert famine, avert destabilisation and mass migration.
Now, the good news is we responded in 2020. The bad news, we thought COVID would be in our rear view mirror. We thought it would be behind us and the economy would be back turning, and things would go back to normal, only to see COVID recycle itself. We all are familiar with that, you are in the UK for sure, as well as other nations around the world. And so now, the financial opportunities we had in 2020, because you had a 2017/18/19, strong economies, you had plenty reserves, plenty money, we were able to respond, but those monies have been spent. So, now we don’t have those monies for 2021. Monies available is not as much. So, we’ve truly got a perfect storm crisis on our hands, Tim. It’s a bad situation.
Of course, you know the political dynamic in the UK with regards to foreign assistance, I mean, it’s quite difficult. Fortunately, the United States, Germany, the Nordic countries, many of the other countries, have been stepping up, but still it’s not enough to overcome, particularly, the gap that we’ve experienced, because of the UK funding situation. And we’re very appreciative. The UK has normally been our third highest contributor, about $6-700 million last – year before last, and about 5/600 last year. But this year, I think we’re a little over 100 something million dollars, and we’re halfway through the year, and so somebody’s got to fill in that gap.
But I start looking at the numbers, just to give you an example, Lebanon, 47 million, this year we got 13 million. Ethiopia, 25 million in the past from the UK, we got 5 million. Yemen, 79 million in the past, zero this year. I could keep going, but you see these are major numbers. It’s not like we’re talking about buying, you know, shoes and cars, we’re talking about food, and you can get exposed to COVID, and the chances are you will be okay, you don’t eat for three weeks, you’re going to die. I mean, it ain’t complicated.
And so, obviously, what’s most important – the most important vaccine against COVID or any other infectious disease, is a good immune system, and a good immune system is built upon a nutritious diet and this is an area of grave, grave concern. In fact, I think about three.something million people died in the last year from COVID, nine.something million died from hunger and starvation. This year that number could double or triple. But anyway, we can do it together if we work – Tim, I could keep going on and on and I’ve got so much I can talk about, but I would dominate the whole time period. There’s a lot I’d love to explain and talk about, but I’m going to flip it back to you if you don’t mind, and answer any questions that you have.
Professor Tim Benton
Thank you, David, that was, as ever, eye-opening and full of energy and, yeah, really very, very powerful. So, you kept on mentioning tackling ‘root cause’. How do we tackle root cause? Because in a sense, humanitarian assistance, giving people food on a daily basis, is a sticking plaster to the root cause. So, how do we do that and what should we actually be doing to tackle root cause? And, just as an aside, I mean, I’ve been watching your Twitter feed with interest, as I always do, and you pointing out to Richard Branson and all of the other billionaires now going into space, that a very small portion of what they’re spending on their joyrides could actually deal with some of the root cause issues. But first question, so root cause, which are the root causes that you would deal with and how?
David Beasley
Yeah, and Tim, obviously this is not a one size fits all, every country and every situation is different.
Professor Tim Benton
Yeah.
David Beasley
But, quite frankly, eliminating famine is not complicated at all. That’s just money and access, that’s all it is. You know, there’s – when you don’t have access, because of lack of money or because, let’s say, a terrorist group is not giving you access to an area, but otherwise, it’s just about money. Now, root cause is a different dynamic, and so, when I joined the World Food Programme, my goal is to put the World Food Programme out of business. You know, when I arrived, coming back from the private sector and having been a United States Governor, I asked a lot of questions that didn’t make – that didn’t – that made some people feel a little uncomfortable. I would be, like, “Well, how long have you been in this country, 30/40 years? Maybe it’s not working. Maybe you need to back up and rethink your approach.” Because my goal is not just to put the World Food Programme out of business, it is to have an exit strategy in every country. So, in other words, what is it going to take to create resilience, sustainability for the population in this country or in this area of that country, whatever it may be? While philanthropy is important and especially right now, because we’re having a one-time perfect storm crisis, and I’m asking the billionaires, actually, to step up. I’m not asking you to do it, annualise, I get that, ‘cause the long-term solution is not charity, is – and that’s important. The long-term is root cause with programmes that work.
Let me give you some examples. Like in the Sahel, for example, where you’ve got climate extremes pushing down the Sahara, you’ve got extremist groups, and if you look at the Sahel, if you’ve ever been in the Sahel, it is pretty tough territory, and so, it’s all about water, water, water, and of course, the extremist groups, like Isis, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab on the East Coast, but they exploit these situations. I’ve had more mothers tell me, “My husband didn’t want to join Isis or Al Qaeda, but Mr Beasley, my – our little girl hadn’t eaten in two weeks and what were we supposed to do? We can’t jump in a car and drive anywhere. They don’t have opportunities.” So – but when we’re there, rehabilitating the land, doing, I mean, old-fashioned water harvesting projects.
For example, in the last few years, we’ve rehabilitated – and I say ‘we’, I don’t mean WFP per se, but WFP working with the beneficiaries. Because my rule of thumb is that any able-bodied beneficiary should be involved in a community improvement project and I’ll tell you, they want to be. They don’t want handouts. They actually want programmes that will create independence and self-sufficiency and so, in the last few years, we planted with beneficiaries, 6 billion trees, rehabilitated 3½ million acres of land. Land that otherwise was degraded has now – is being used to grow crops or gardens or whatever the case may be. Feeder roads, we built over 79,000km of feeder roads, 50 something thousand dams, holding ponds, reservoirs. The bottom line is – and I remember standing in this hillside in – small hill, in a tough area in Niger, and this woman proudly said, “Mr Beasley, because of the World Food Programme, we are harvesting the water,” and we call halfmoons and [Saeed – 21:59] type projects, “and now we’ve rehabilitated this land. I’ve just now bought five more acres of land, and I’m no longer feeding my family, I’m feeding my village, and now I’m going to be selling it to the marketplace,” and it’s amazing.
When we come in with a programme like this and then complement it with a school meals programme, here’s what happens. Migration drops off the chart. You can put an economic figure on that right there. Number two, teen pregnancy and marriage rate by 12/13 year olds, drops off the chart. Recruitment by Isis and Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, etc., drops off the chart and so, it’s just a lot cheaper to come in with structured programmes, and then we back out and move onto another area. But if we could scale up, we’ll be out of there in three/four/five years, and they won’t need us, except maybe in an extreme shock situation. But otherwise, my goal is to introduce them to the private sector dynamics and how do we integrate big businesses, farming opportunities, with the small?
And that’s a whole other discussion in itself, ‘cause I’m trying to bring in companies around the world to come in and – you can’t put them in a battle zone, that’s not – of course, it’s – but in areas that are fragile, you can take – I can go from the Cargills, the Unilevers and – we’re looking at bringing, for example, about 15 top CEOs around the world into Sudan in a few months, and say, “Hey, I need your expertise to come in here, tell me what’s it going to take, so that we no longer need to be there.” Anyway, I know that’s real simple, but we’ve got solutions, long-term, short-term, so that people can survive the shocks, whether it’s political or, you know, man-made, for example, or whatever the case may be. So, let me throw back to you Tim.
Professor Tim Benton
Yeah, so yeah, I fully buy that, and kudos to you for the work that you’re doing. But as you look ahead, with increasing degradation of the land, biodiversity loss, you know, locusts being an example of a climate change impact, we’ve just been doing some work in the Southern African countries, and looking ahead in 20 or 30 years, the rates of crop failure are likely to at least double because of extreme heat.
David Beasley
Yeah.
Professor Tim Benton
Is the problem – are you, kind of, running on a treadmill that you’re not quite able to keep up but will fall further behind, or do you have the confidence that deploying the things that you’re doing, we will deal with the problem? Or is it a situation that the situation itself is running away from us and we need radical new interventions?
David Beasley
You know, I think what we’re facing, 2020/2021, is a unique situation, I really do. It’s just a – it’s a perfect storm. If we can get through this and it’s going to require, for example – and I haven’t mentioned this number to you, Tim, yet, but out of that 270 million of what we call IPC 3/4/5 – IPC 4/5, those are people on famine’s door. IPC 3, you don’t know where your next meal’s coming from, but you’re surviving, you’re making it, you’re not – I mean, and you’re unhealthy. But 4 is – there are 41 million people in IPC 4. This is unprecedented. We have never seen anything quite like this before and this COVID economic ripple effects supply chain disruption. Just to address that 41 million, is $6.something billion.
Now, this is why I’m asking the billionaires, because governments are stretched. You know, Bezos and others who’ve made, you know, 40/50 billion in net worth increase last year, the average net worth increase per day for the billionaires in 2020 was 5.2 billion per day. I’m saying, “Hey, give me one day’s worth of your net worth increase, that’s all I need. I’m not going to ask you every year for this. This is a one time off.” But I am concerned, though, long-term, while we get COVID in our rear-view mirror, economy starts to turn around. When you start looking at population growth, climate change, the number of people that we’re looking to be displaced by 2050, I think it’s something like 1 billion people, 1.something billion people, just by climate alone.
Just this past year, to give you an example, there were 40 million people internally displaced. 30 of those, 30 million were climate change. And so, you know, you might debate what’s causing the climate to change, but you can’t debate it’s changing, that’s a given. I’m out there every day, I tell my conservative friends, I say, “Hey guys, look.” They go, “Yeah, but the water, the rainfall was the same, average.” I said, “Well, it might have been the average for that country, let’s say for example, that year, but the amount of rain you got in the fall was substantially different than the norm and the amount of drought you had in the spring was substantially different than the norm.” And I said, “It’s changing out there and we’ve got to give the tools to the smallholder farmers to survive while industrialised nations come up with a solution. These people, they can’t eat theory. They got to eat, and so, we’ve got to give them the tools to survive.” Back to you, Tim.
Professor Tim Benton
So, is it too strong to say that if it weren’t for COVID, you would be optimistic that we would get back on the dealing with the – this issue on a global basis, and then, does the assumption that we’ll tackle it in the long run depend on whether or not we have another emerging disease like COVID in ten years’ time, or 20 years’ time, or five years’ time, or whatever, given that COVID is likely to have come from some integration between land use change and climate change itself?
David Beasley
Yeah, I think clearly, we’re on the right path, and COVID has created a definite dynamic situation. And I think the world has truly mishandled COVID, it really have, and I’m not an expert in the field, but at the same time, where are the containment mechanisms for breakout of diseases like Ebola, you know, we come in with food security and contain the situation. This is – there’s a whole different dynamic. But, as I had said to the world leaders a year ago, “If you shut down the economies and don’t handle this right, and disrupt the supply chain, you’re going to kill more people that way, so you’ve got to balance this out.” I do think the world leaders have learned from that experience and I would like to think, if we have another type COVID, that the world leaders would respond more quickly and strategically in supply chain. You know, when the airline industry, for example, last year, pretty much has shut down.
Professor Tim Benton
Seemed to have – yeah.
David Beasley
You know, you got to move COVID supplies, you got to move food. And so we were of the number – I was told, that we were the world largest operating airline at the height of COVID. I don’t know if that was true. I actually don’t care for that to be true. But we were the ones that were delivering supplies, COVID ventilators, testing equipment, PPE, yadda, yadda, around the world, all over about 170/80 countries, and we were also provide – moving the passengers for Doctors, Nurses, you know, healthcare professionals, out in the African countries, things like that, and the airline industry began to figure out how to work through this. There’s still a lot of disruption out there, as you can imagine, but honestly, I hope we’ve learned. To tell you the truth, you know, the reaching zero hunger by 2030, not going to happen, even without COVID.
Now, the question really is why? Man-made conflict. Man-made conflict is driving the hunger rates up. As I mentioned before, when the 80 million to 135 million, that was man-made conflict coupled with climate. But I think if we could end the wars, I do believe that we could actually have zero hunger by 2030, but we’ve got to end the wars, and this is one of the things I tell a lot of the leaders in private. I said, “You know, nobody is solving these big wars, these big conflicts. Everybody’s running around like, you know, the little kids’ game, whack-a-mole, you go around, this pops up, you pop that one. Everybody’s just running around popping it on the head and we’re not – let’s go solve Syria, let’s go solve Yemen, and get those two out of the way. Let’s just go solve – you know, let’s just keep going, South Sudan.
Professor Tim Benton
Just keep going, Ethiopia.
David Beasley
You know, etc.
Professor Tim Benton
Yeah.
David Beasley
Solve ‘em, get ‘em in our rear-view mirror, because that’s a lot of money going to man-made conflict areas, whereas climate change areas, if we can come in with the rehabilitation programmes, we can solve their problems. We can give them some hope. But the money’s being siphoned off to greed, corruption and man-made conflict.
Professor Tim Benton
Right, well, I think now’s a good time to start opening the floor to questions. We’ve got a number, and as I say, I will ask for the mic to be opened and the person at the other end, if you’re still around, to ask the question itself. And segueing from David’s last riff on conflict, I’d like to turn first to a Marek Conry to ask the question about conflict. Are you there? Hi, Marek Conwy – Conry, hello? If you take yourself off mute and…
Marek Conry
Hello?
Professor Tim Benton
Yes, hello.
Marek Conry
Hello.
Professor Tim Benton
Hello. Please ask your question.
Marek Conry
Hmmm hmm, yeah, I had a question on the access on endangered zones due to armed conflict, or to bring aid to population when the situation is quite complicated, I mean, thinking to safety and access. And I’m thinking to the situation in Congo, that has happened a few weeks ago with the UN Ambassador that has been attacked in the Congo. Thank you for your quest – answer.
Professor Tim Benton
So, David.
David Beasley
Could you repeat the question?
Professor Tim Benton
Yeah, so the question is about when you have conflict, how is the best way to deliver food security in a conflict zone where anybody intervening is increasingly at risk? So, how operationally, I guess, is the best way to deal with that?
David Beasley
Well, 65% of all the people we help are in conflict areas. 80%, give or take, or our expenditures are in conflict areas. So, we know how to operate in conflict areas, whether it’s all-out war, and you’ve got moving battlefronts that are shifting and changing, but you’ve still got to move supplies, and how do we do it, whether it’s in Syria or South Sudan or Yemen? And then you’ve got extremist groups, which really gets complex. And not to get into a lot of the details here, but – and some of it is, as you can imagine, extremely sensitive of – because if there’s a battlefront about to take place, a major donor – or an offensive about to take place, then if they will confide with us, so that we can move supplies around, we can’t be telling – you know, you imagine, this gets real tricky.
But one of the things that I have found when it comes to food security in complex conflict areas, is as much transparency as you could possibly have, meeting with the different factions, or the warring factions, or the parties to the conflict, explain that “We’re not here taking sides, we’re independent, we’re neutral, we’re impartial, and we will not play games with you, we just want to reach the innocent people.” And it’s really quite amazing – ‘cause we’ve spent a lot of money on training our people to talk with actors in conflicts, explain to them why we need access down this road or this river at this time. You know, if you shut down a distribution point at a certain point in time and the trucks are just coming in, and they’re shut for a month, well, the food’s going to rot, people going to starve. So, you’ve really talk through these issues.
We really had this in COVID, when unintentional dynamics, when Ministers of Trade and Congress were shutting down ports, and I’m, like, “We’ve got ships coming in. Do you understand what’s going to happen? You’re not going to have any food for your country in the next three/four weeks.” And so, how do you work through these complex issues? It requires a lot of time management, but being as straightforward as you can, convincing all parties that this is a matter of the heart, this is – we want to help people, and we’re not here to play games or take sides. And of course, there’s always a lot of propaganda out there and we ignore it to the degree you can. Every now and then you have to respond, but as you can imagine – like in Ethiopia, I mean, moving food supplies in Ethiopia with the complexity in the Tigray area, we just had 40 big trucks just move through in the last couple of days. We need to be moving 400 trucks. And you’ve got a [Hayk – 35:24] situation, on the North East side, which is a complexity that moving supplies through, and if you only have one route into a country, for example, and that country’s, you know, massive, the logistics costs go up out of the roof, and so we’re looking – people are, “Well, you can do airdrops.” Well, it costs us seven times the amount of money to do airdrops and right now, when we’re so short of money for the world, I mean, we’re $6/7 billion short of what we need, I need to be as efficient with every dollar as I can. So, as we explained to conflicting parties, is that “If you don’t allow us this road, we’ll have to spend another 14/18 hours driving or more.” Like in Madagascar, you can only imagine what it takes to move food down the South, this is unbelievable. And so these costs determine how many children you feed, and so – anyway, back to you, Tim.
Professor Tim Benton
Yeah, brilliant. There are a number of questions coming in about the, kind of, balance between, broadly, public and private sector. But if I can turn to Hilda Rapp to ask the first question that you put in the chat about the relationship between development monies and sustainability. So Hilda? You’re still on mute.
Hilda Rapp
Can you hear me?
Professor Tim Benton
Yes, can now, thank you.
Hilda Rapp
Thank you. David, that’s absolutely brilliant, you know, that you have paid so much attention to the complex interrelationship of different factors that impact on food security. And I just wanted to just pull out another one, which has to with, and you’ve mentioned this already, subsequent to my putting the question down, to environmental degradation through – by what turns out, effectively, to be perverse investment strategies, whereby you actually invite people to grow crops in unsustainable ways or to have industrial products that pollute. And so, all the work you’re doing on building dams and on regenerating environments is absolutely fantastic, but there’s also the possibility, isn’t there, where you said “not aid but helping communities to rebuild themselves and to become sustainable,” there are things like, sort of, public interest companies, where investors invest in – with the community and the community can buy back the shares as they become sustainable? So, there are many things that you’re probably all already doing, and they’re just infinitely more complicated, obviously, in a conflict situation. But is there any direct way in which the Food Programme itself can exert an influence on investment strategies and development strategies?
David Beasley
Yeah, repeat to make sure I got it right, if you would. I think I got it, but…
Hilda Rapp
Oh no, I can’t hear anything.
Professor Tim Benton
Hello, hello, can you hear me?
Hilda Rapp
Yes, I can hear you now, good.
Professor Tim Benton
So David says, can you precis it and repeat your question, just in simple terms?
David Beasley
I think if I got the simple – the simplicity of it was, how do we engage the private sector in better investing in these fragile areas, not necessarily war zones. Is that…?
Professor Tim Benton
Well, it was more that some of the development industries’ investments lead to environmental degradation through, largely, industrialisation. So, how do you avoid that shortcut that by investing in the short-term you make things worse in the longer term, and what sort of routes…
David Beasley
Ah.
Professor Tim Benton
…round are – around that are there, I think? Thank you, Hilda.
David Beasley
Yeah, you know, obviously this is a very complex area, but as I was mentioning earlier, that we’re now – I’m sitting down with more CEOs around the world and talking through with them, the big, big, big companies, the Unilevers, the Bayers, the Cargills, and the DSMs, the Yaras, etc., etc. Two things there, at least, one is, you know, their expertise. But what I’ve seen in CEOs in the last few years, is a really, a major shift toward environmental protection, a greater appreciation for the environment. There’s a lot more that can be done, but I have just seen – and I don’t think with the CEOs that I’ve been talking to, it’s just a matter of, “Hey, let me say things to get by politically,” so to speak. It really – when you sit down, there’s a genuine, heartfelt change about how do we shift our way of thinking to truly protect our environment? I know that’s general in a lot of ways.
But here’s what I’m asking CEOs to do. You know, private sector, obviously, is just not in the business of losing money. You know, you can’t survive that way, right? But – and I’m not opposed to making money, capitalism, but I am very supportive and pushy when it comes to, you’re making money, now help redistribute it to create sustainability and resilience in poor countries, and so, this is what I’m asking a lot of the companies to do. And I’ve been in banking, in private sector most of my life, and so I get it. But if you take your traditional investment model and how much you expect to have return on investment, in a particular product, project area, this is that standard, whatever it might be. But that’s not going to work in Chad and in many other – I’m not talking about war zones, but it’s not going to work in a lot of low and middle-income countries.
You’ve got to be able to have a more extended return on investment, little less return on the investment. Don’t take extreme risks, I get that. And I’m not talking about charity here. But come in and work with the smallholder Farmers, work with the governments, maintain your highest standards of transparency, ethics and commerce, because this is the problem in a lot of countries where you have corruption. It is a number one problem in the countries that we’re talking about. And if their companies will come in and hold these high standards, but work with the smallholder Farmers, don’t displace them, integrate them. Yes, be a little bit less efficient, a little bit less profitable over the short haul, but it will help bring systems in place and stability in place and the long-term investment globally will just, in my opinion, be tremendous.
So you’ve got to talk to your shareholders, say, “Hey, we’re going to come into this country, and we’re going to really integrate, and we’re going to make less money. We might not make any money for the first four or five years, or even ten years, but we’re not going to lose so much.” I know that sounds simple, but quite frankly, it is that simple. And until the CEOs take this approach, and this – and I’m having some hard, private conversations with CEOs right now about this, you’ve got to take ownership of success in these areas. It’s critical that you do that, and you’ve got to hold your teams on the ground to these high standards of ethics, transparency, in a lot of these countries. Quite frankly, if you pick just five countries that aren’t in tremendous conflict, that aren’t getting the private sector development, go ask five companies why they’re not there. And when they tell you those regions, there’s your solution, because why are they not there?
It really is that – when I took – in my economy, when I was elected Governor in 1994, our unemployment rate was the, arguably, I think, the number one worst unemployment rate in the United States. Within the third year, our unemploy – our employment rate was the number one or the number two best in the United States. And the whole economy of the US was going up at that time, but how did we go from here at the bottom to the top? Well, we inspired the private sector, we got strategic, we got real, we got down on the ground with ‘em and we worked out a plan that involved so many different dynamics, and the private sector stepped up, and we worked with those on welfare, etc., etc. It’s doable, but the private sector’s really got to engage. You’ve got to call upon them to engage.
Professor Tim Benton
So, thank you very much. You’ve largely been talking about major corporations, multinationals. There is a question from Barry Bain. Barry, do you want to ask you question?
Barry Bain
Yes, thank you very much. What initiatives are there to involve local SMEs in tackling hunger?
David Beasley
Tim, repeat that for me?
Professor Tim Benton
“What initiatives are there to involve local SMEs in tackling hunger?” So, rather than the multinationals that you were largely talking about, how do you build the business community locally to face this issue?
David Beasley
No, no, this is the key. I mean, you’ve got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of millions of smallholder Farmers and institutions out there. You know, I don’t mean to focus strictly on the big multinational. I’m just trying to really, I don’t want to say shame them, but truly inspire them to engage, you know. Because the solutions on the local level, working with smallholder Farmers, small businesses, you know, when we’re in a true, just short-term emergency, that’s different. You know, we’ve got a cyclone comes in, you’ve got a volcano, you’ve got an earthquake, you’ve got whatever it might be, port explosion like in Beirut, whatever the case. But we’re working with smallholder Farmers and businesses at the local level and so, whatever country you may be in, just contact us, and we’ll see, and you’ve got a lot of different programmes out there, but I’m trying to shift the UN to this way of thinking. It doesn’t happen overnight.
The UN historically shunned the private sector. I mean, other than they want money. And it didn’t integrate the private sector, and quite frankly, and I’m not talking about multinational companies here, it’s all small business, medium sized businesses, local institutions, etc., they all have to be involved. And the UN, I think, has a new awakening, realising that we’ll never solve poverty and hunger without the private sector being strategically involved in inspiring and empowering. I mean, that’s what I believe, you’ve got to empower the private sector. And I’m talking about smallholder Farmers when I say that, not just multinational corporations, but that’s the key.
And so, we – our Food for Asset Programmes and – where we help the local community with tools and ideas and concepts and a lot of ordering systems, this is where the World Bank and other institutions need to come in with us. Let’s meet with the local businesses, local smallholder Farmers, what’s it going to take? Just pick an area. You know, everybody likes talking in general terms. I’m like, “No, let’s just pick an area, a geographical spot, and say, how’s it going to work right there?” And so, “Okay, World Bank, we need our – it’s 1,000 foot, you’ve got to drill a $200,000 borehole, and we’re going to build a community around that borehole.” That’s in simple terms, and I’m thinking of a place like Chad or Niger or Mali, versus you get into other areas where water is more available, and that’s where how do you deal with feeder roads, systems?
We do what we call a programme called Farm to Market Access, working with smallholder Farmers and businesses in the local area, hundreds of thousands, so how do you do before and after, inputs, outputs, getting the fertilisers they need, the right seeds they need, etc., etc? Getting the feeder roads, getting to markets, how do we do that? How do we use cell phones? Follow the Farmers, when to plant, when to do what, how to define the best prices in the market so they’re not subject to one buyer that takes advantage of that situation. But anyway, we don’t have time to get into all those dynamics here, but…
Professor Tim Benton
Okay, I’ve got a question here from Stephanie Blair, who doesn’t want to ask the question, ‘cause she’s in a very noisy environment, so I’ll read it out to you. “I can hear there are a lot of worries that keep David awake at night. If he were to look at his – to get out his crystal ball and look into it, what does the future of food security look like in the next five to ten years?” Given where we are, given the direction of travel for global geopolitics and slightly more instability than we’d like to see, given the trends in climate and so on, where will we be in five to ten years’ time?
David Beasley
Yeah, you know, I was doing a show with 60 Minutes, I don’t know how many of you know that programme, 60 Minutes, but Scott Pelley – we were – it was a hard show we had just done on Yemen. At the end, Scott was – we were taking off the microphones and we were through filming, and Scott looked at me, and he said – he says, “Governor,” he calls me Governor, and he said, “You’ve got the greatest job on Earth,” he said, “Keeping people alive.” I said, “Well, Scott, I appreciate that, I really do, but I will say something to you that’s going to bother you, you haven’t thought about.” He looked at me, like, what in the world could that be? You know, and I said, I says, “Scott, when we don’t have enough money or the access we need, we have to choose which children eat or don’t eat, which children live, which children die.” And I said, “Scott, how would you like that job?” And he looked at me, like, oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me. I said – he said, “I never thought about that.” I said, “Well, we have to think about it every day, ‘cause we have to make decisions every day when we don’t have the monies that we need, and it’s heart-breaking when you think there’s $400 trillion worth of global wealth today, and the amount of money that’s needed just to solve the hunger problem is really not that much money in a global context. You know, just the 41 million, $6 billion, for example.
Now, having said all that, if we can end the man-made conflict, COVID, I do believe, that will be in our rear-view mirror soon, and even though a lot of people are going to die in the meantime from COVID and more so from hunger, let’s get past that. If we can end the man-made conflict, I think with the experience, the expertise and all the development that’s taking place in food security, better seeds, better fertilisers, better practices, I do believe that we can end hunger. Now, as the population increases, there’s several other things the world’s got to really get serious about, like waste, for example. There’s $1 trillion worth of waste. I mean, just, [inaudible – 51:00] third of the waste in developing nations at the table. One third in the developed – I mean, the developed nations, you know, United States, etc., etc. In the developing nations, one third is lost at the field to the market. So, you can see what we’re talking about here.
Now, it’s not also just about better seeds, better fertilisers. We’ve got to change our habits in terms of what we grow where, particularly, like, in Southern Africa, where maize production is going down because of the temperature going up. Well, okay, we need to move to sorghum and other products that are actually more nutritious and more heat resilient. Also, home grown gardens, hydroponics, there’s a lot of this area where, in urban areas, where I believe people are going to have to start growing, you know, little leafy products like lettuce and things like this in their homes. There’s a lot of things that we can do while we continue to build better systems around the world.
When you look at what Africa, I mean, not Africa, but China’s done in the last 50 years, holy mackerel, and look where India’s heading in terms of productivity, but you’re still left with about 80 countries that need some significant improvement. But – and that still begs the question of making sure we don’t just produce more food, because the issue’s just not more food, it’s more quality food, with nutrition and at the same time, taste good. You know, you can get a lot of food at the market now, it’s like, ah, it has no – oh, that beautiful red tomato, you know, it just was tasteless, you know, but anyway, anyway.
Professor Tim Benton
Okay, well, we’ve got three minutes left. I just want to ask you a final question, and that is, obviously, as you’ve mentioned, WFP is part of the UN family, and over the last decade or so, the functionality of the UN family has been undermined by various things, and the world is changing, and the role of non-state actors is perhaps becoming more important. What do you think is the future for global governance in this area? You know, you’ve said some time ago you wanted to, effectively, get to the position where the WFP becomes redundant. Is that going to happen under the current, kind of, governance systems, or would you like to see something change?
David Beasley
Well, there’s – the UN does some really great things. And I’ve told the Secretary-General, who’s just been re-elected, and I have a great respect for him, that particularly with COVID and the hunger pandemic we’re facing, UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP, WHO, if we can’t prove the relevance of the UN at a time like this, you’ll never prove the relevance of the United Nations, and it’s for times such as this. And I do think, the United Nations does some things extremely good, I mean, UNICEF and WFP etc., etc., and I do think the United Nations needs to do a better job of messaging that. When I joined the United Nations four years ago, I remember, I probably shouldn’t say this, but…
Professor Tim Benton
Oh, go on.
David Beasley
But I was sitting in one of my first meetings, and after about six hours, I just got up and walked out. I was, like, “I don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about, all these acronyms.” I’m, like, “What are they saying? What is this? It’s not even English.” And then I saw the Secretary-General, and I said, “Antonio, I thought you said English was the primary language,” and he said, “Well, it is.” And I said, “Well, I just sat through six hours and all these acronyms, I don’t know what they’re talking about.” You know, he knew I was, kind of, being facetious. And so, I started messaging the more common-sense language the average taxpayer can understand. ‘Cause you talk about the VAM rate, the BAM rate, the SAM rate and these, kind of, things, people are, like, “What are you talking about?” you know, IPC level 3/4. So I changed the vernacular to a more common – you know, so that the people, the taxpayer in the UK, the taxpayer in Germany, the taxpayer in the US, can say, “Oh, okay, I see what you’re doing,” and people started responding. Our funding level started going up, because when I’d speak to Members of the Parliament of the UK or Germany or the US, they are like, “Ah, I see what you’re talking about now,” versus otherwise.
So, I think the UN’s got to message better. I do think it does a lot of things good, but I think it has some weakness and particularly in the development area, and that’s an area that is has to be more strategic. And sometimes the UN, it needs a little more flexibility in bringing in outsiders that ask the hard questions and sometimes outsiders are not too welcome, but, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve sensed a tremendous shift with the Secretary-General saying private sector is vital to the future. So, it’s not going to be an easy fix, but I think we’re moving in the right direction and I think we need to give the Secretary-General more discretion and authority to be able to put the right leadership in, restructure some of the agencies. Some of the agencies probably need to be merged. Some of the agencies, I think their governance platform is not where it needs to be, it creates more discombobulation, versus direction in leadership execution, so you can truly be held accountable at the top. But anyway, that’s, again, that’s a lot longer discussion…
Professor Tim Benton
Discussion, yeah it is.
David Beasley
…than just for about a minute or two.
Professor Tim Benton
I know, it was very naughty of me to put it in right at the end. Right, well, I think we’re out of time, so, enormous thank you to you, David, and a personal thank you from me, really engaging, thought-provoking presentation and answers to questions. Thank you to the audience for turning up and sorry that we didn’t get through all of the questions. And very much, as always, thanks to the behind the scenes team for dealing with some of the technical issues that we had right at the start, and, you know, everybody leave here, ponder this. David is relatively optimistic, I think, reading between the lines and so, fingers crossed that we will have a better food system in five to ten years’ time when COVID is behind us. Thanks very much everybody and have a safe week. Goodbye.
David Beasley
Thank you, Tim, great being with you.
Professor Tim Benton
Bye.
