Poor Farmers, Ignorant Westerners

The recent donation from Bill Gates to support poor farmers in developing countries might also help educate wealthy urbanites.

When addressing the issue of world hunger, governments are no longer going it alone. Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates recently gave millions to support poor farmers in developing countries.

The effect of this public-private cooperation will likely reach far beyond where the money itself is going, to a vital area that thus far has been neglected by world policy-makers: educating affluent westerners about the realities faced by poor farmers and the importance of developing farm production worldwide.

The publicity afforded by Gates' generous donation may be a first step towards crossing the urban-rural divide, a cognitive cleft that separates even well-meaning policy-makers from the understanding necessary to confront global hunger in efficient and sustainable ways.

Truly, many and various challenges must be overcome in order to help poor farmers. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently estimated that one in five citizens of the developing world still suffers from chronic undernourishment, despite dramatic gains in overall farm productivity in poor countries brought about in the 1960s and ’70s by the Green Revolution.

Farmers make up the largest share of these malnourished citizens. Most of the world's poorest farm producers subsist on less than $1 per day. Even the $15 billion in aid promised by most rich countries last year at the World Food Summit in Rome would not completely solve this problem, and, because of the global financial collapse, most of that funding has yet to be delivered.

In developed countries such as Canada, public institutions and policies are generally well-equipped to monitor social and economic hazards that accompany the commercialization of agricultural products. In turn, the agricultural industry generates consistent economic growth.

Public institutions in developing countries, however, generally lack the capacity to play a similar supervisory role. These institutions are prone to oversights when implementing new policies and vulnerable to outright corruption by more powerful political or private-sector actors. Keenly aware of such problems, some governments in the developing world stop foreign aid from going to their farming systems entirely, diverting it towards other political purposes.

It can also be difficult to hold public institutions in many developing countries legally and politically accountable. When public decisions are made regarding new policies to support farmers in Canada, a measure of accountability is ensured through institutions such as the press, democratic elections, institutionalized political access for stakeholders, and the rule of law. In many developing countries, such institutions are nascent or stunted.

Any government or individual aiming to support farmers in the developing world will surely continue to face these impediments for the foreseeable future. Yet the public efforts of Bill Gates are not in vain. Illustrious personalities can make a relatively lacklustre subject matter like farming more appealing to a broader audience. Developing global farming is hindered not only by obstacles to helping farmers in the Southern Hemisphere, but also by the need to convince the western world that farming capacity everywhere is of crucial importance.

Many agree that the root cause of these problems is the rural-urban divide, a phenomenon that is founded on economic and political inequality among world citizens. Arguably, neither segment has ever clearly understood the other. This divide stalls our ability to move towards providing this economic sector with sound and sustainable policies. The usual method in the West – subsidies – is unfortunately a quick and dirty way of helping farmers that is unlikely to result in longstanding improvements.

We should stop providing farmers with subsidies without any clear vision of what kinds of agriculture we, as both farmers and urbanites, need. Most governments in the western world believe political dividends are certain when providing farm subsidies to rural communities. To an extent, this is regrettably true. Yet, when governments promise to send aid to farmers who are not part of their constituencies, the promises are often forgotten. G8 countries made unfulfilled aid pledges to the developing world many times before Rome. Better education and awareness about farming in cities may bring more attention to this short-changing.

Bill Gates' involvement in this crucial issue should resonate with many city dwellers who have never seen a live chicken, visited a hog production facility, or appreciated the vastness of a field of wheat or rice. Such an announcement may forge better connections between two ways of life that are somewhat but not entirely dissimilar.

It will remain difficult to help poor farmers in less-endowed countries, but by promoting understanding that transcends the divide, more of us may come to agree that these initiatives are vital to the future of humankind.