[Music]
The Green Revolution was driven by the introduction of things such as hybrid
maize in Mexico of semi dwarf wheat and
rice varieties in Latin America parts of
Latin America and Asia.  And, it led to
significant increases in cereal crop
production and productivity.  This raised
the incomes of smallholders and enabled
structural transformation through the
creation of manufacturing and other
relatively high wage jobs and it was
assisted by world to urban migration and
urban agglomeration economies. Standards
of living throughout the Green
Revolution countries improved
dramatically for both rural and urban
residents.  So why can't we do that?  Well
today's transformations will be
different.  They will be different for
several reasons.  First, the declining
agricultural terms of trade.  So real food
prices are going to be about a third of
what they were, a quarter to half of what
they were at the outset of the Green
Revolution which means the same
productivity increase on the farm now
generates about a third of the impact on
gross farm revenues that it did at the
beginning of the Green Revolution.  The
lengthening food supply chains.  So, at the
start of the Green Revolution farmers
captured a large amount of the consumer
value, the consumer dollar spent on food
retail.  Now in Africa, for example farmers
capture about forty percent of the
consumer retail value because of the
lengthening of the food supply chains.  In
South Africa over a four or five year
period, the percent of bread value captured
in the farmgate wheat price was about
thirteen to eighteen percent which means
if you double the efficiency of farm
wheat production you're affecting about
a seven or eight percent decline in the
price of urban food.  That's not a huge
decline in urban food.  That's not going
to drive a wage that can all of a sudden
feed people because of the improved
price of urban food the way it did it
during the Green Revolution.  So,
we need to work on supply chains beyond
the farm as well as in the farm.
Demographics:  in South Asia there is a
youth bulge.  In Africa there is an actual
youth explosion.  The population pyramids
in Nigeria are just exploding out.
There's no bulge.  They're exploding out
and the projections in 2050 are that it
will still explode out, but at a
significantly higher number of young
people of youth.  And so, that has some
significant implications about the
ability of large urban areas to
accommodate this youth population.
Meaning we're going to need to do more
in rural areas to keep them employed and
these youth bulges, youth explosions may
have additional unintended side effects
on people migrating to the urban areas.
In the sense, an example of Addis Ababa,
population of probably three to four
million, about 20 million poor people in
the countryside in Ethiopia and already
with a limited migration you're seeing
urban unrest as migrants settle on
occupied agricultural land.  They squat on the outsides of the city.  And so,
what are you going to do if were
moving 20 million people into really the
one large city in Ethiopia.  It's going to
be an issue.  So we need to figure out
solutions based on both urban and rural
complementarities to provide these
people with livelihoods in locations
where they can grow and earn incomes.
We're going to see this issue of rural
populations in sub-Saharan Africa
continuing, as far as the projections go
which is 2050, even though urban
populations eventually exceed rural
populations in sub-Saharan Africa.  The
absolute number of the rural population
is projected to continue to increase.
This problem is not a three-year problem
that will go away when a youth
bulge ages up.  This is a problem for the
foreseeable future.  Deindustrialization
is the phenomenon of declining
manufacturing employment often
attributed to mechanization.  All of the
advanced economies for which data are
available have experienced long
term declines in manufacturing
employment.  Even South Korea and Taiwan
where manufacturing output has expanded
far more rapidly than in the United
States, factories require fewer total
hours of labor than was formerly the
case.  So the implication is that high
wage manufacturing growth is not going
to drive African job creation and
possibly not urban growth processes.
Global climate change:  we know a lot
about adaptation and mitigation to
global climate change.  So, adaptation
requires more sustainable and resilient
practices.  Mitigation limits some
agricultural opportunities, but also
opens up new agricultural opportunities.
And yes, this photo of the solar-powered
irrigation pump is a Feed the Future
photo from one of our projects.  Global
climate change also affects urban growth
patterns which will affect the ability
of urban areas to create jobs and remain
a destination for urban migrants.  So, what
will drive today's agricultural
transformation?  On the farm it is no
longer about increasing cereal crop
production so that farmers can feed
their families and maybe have a little
extra to sell.  It's about commercializing
smallholder agriculture as part of an
integrated livelihood so that farmers
can earn a reasonable return on the
resources they invest in smallholder
agriculture and can produce and purchase
a healthy diet for their family.
Increased farm productivity remains
essential but we're going to be looking
more and more at value productivity here.
How do you generate the greatest value
for the smallholder relative to the
amount of resources that the smallholder
is able to put into that agriculture.  A
coordinated approach between staple crop
productivity and value creating
Agriculture is thus necessary.  Beyond
the farm, it is about value chains and
food systems that can provide access to
affordable nutritious foods for both
rural and urban consumers so critical to
this, both urban and rural consumers, they
have to achieve food and nutrition
security through markets.  And so, you're
going to have to
have markets with the ability to deliver
diverse affordable nutritious foods on a
year-round basis.  Hunger itself we know
acts as a drag on growth.  In Ethiopia the
estimates are that hunger decreases
gross domestic product by as much as
sixteen point five percent.  So reducing
hunger makes workers more productive, it
increases economic growth and it
initiates a virtuous cycle, but with
today's economy we have to reduce that
hunger through the availability of
nutritious foods and markets.  Beyond the
farm, it is about rural job creation.  So
smallholders and their children do not
have to rely on farming as their sole
source of income.  They can have
integrated livelihoods and youth have the
option to move off the farm into
remunerative employment.  It's about youth
gaining human and financial capital
through rural farm work and experience
because this does two things.  One, it
greatly increases their ability to stay
in a rural area and provide for the next
generation, but second if you have an
impoverished youth with no physical
capital, no financial capital, no human
capital and they move into a city, guess
what?  They are going to stay poor and
evidence supports this.  If you give them
some job skills through rural employment,
from some financial capital, some human
capital, they are far more likely to move
into maybe a secondary city, earn some
additional skills, get some gainful
employment and maybe eventually move
into the primary city.  It's about
providing both food and other goods and
services to support urban growth
including growth of rural small cities
and towns as part of an agriculturally
led inclusive growth process.  So again, in
the Green Revolution we provided mostly
low-wage foods, some investment money
that allows the urban manufacturers to
invest and sell product to rural areas.
We're going to have to provide even more
linkages to urban areas in this new
system.  So these are generating clean
power, pollution remediation for cities
that cannot remediate their pollution,
clean water provision.  There's a whole
host of opportunities that are starting
to open up.  Carbon sequestration to
support urban growth processes.
These are new and exciting opportunities
that we can take advantage of as we move
forward.  With the multiple drivers of
today's agricultural transformation we
can invest in those drivers that help
feed the future countries achieve their
visions out of what they want from their
transformation.  [applause]  Thank you.
[music]
