Agroecology urged as Mideast crisis deepens food insecurity

[NAIROBI, SciDev.Net] Accelerating the shift to agroecology is vital to building resilience in low-income countries amid growing food insecurity fueled by geopolitical tensions such as the Middle East crisis, experts say.

The US-Iran war has disrupted global food systems, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz causing oil prices to surge and restricting shipments of fertiliser, which many farmers rely on.

Agroecology advocates say the sustainable farming approach, which relies on organic methods such as crop rotations, compost manure and nitrogen-fixing plants, should be part of the solution.

During a press briefing on Friday (17 April) organised by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and the global food systems thinktank IPES-Food, food security experts emphasised the need for lower-income countries, especially in Africa and Asia, to wean themselves off chemical fertilisers and cushion themselves from supply chain disruptions.

“We have already today 673 million people who are hungry in Africa [and …] it is anticipated that as a result of the higher prices in the next few months perhaps 45 million additional people will become hungry in the continent,” IPES-Food co-chair Olivier De Schutter told the briefing.

Agroecology can reduce dependency on chemical fertilisers using plants that transfer atmospheric nitrogen to the soil to maintain and improve their natural fertility.

“Plants such as chickpeas, beans, lentils, pulses as well as some feed stock plants such as alfalfa or clover have this capacity,” De Schutter said.

He also recommends shifting to local production to meet local consumption needs—reducing the need for processing and packaging of food and encouraging diets based on fresh, local produce.

“In a nutshell, produce more of what we consume locally and consume more of what is locally produced,” he said.

The impact of the war in the Middle East continues to reverberate through the global food supply chain, amid a fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and UN World Food Programme all warned last week that the war will cause rising food prices and hunger.

According to the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD, the Strait of Hormuz is vital to global trade, with around a third of shipped fertiliser exports passing through it.

Barnaby Pace, senior researcher at CIEL, said Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia were particularly vulnerable due to their reliance on food and fuel imports.

“Some countries that specifically make fertiliser from liquefied natural gas like India and Pakistan are going to have the impact of fertiliser shortages compounded,” Pace told the briefing.

He noted that countries like Kenya, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Sudan import a lot of fertiliser from the Gulf.  “This is going to impact nitrogen-intensive crops particularly hard, like rice, maize and wheat,” he explained.

Shocks like this are becoming increasingly frequent, Pace noted. “This is the third major supply shock in the fertiliser trade in the last six years,” he added, citing COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which “both led to massive hunger issues”.

Africa depends heavily on imports to satisfy its consumption of chemical fertilisers, with 20 to 50 per cent of its fertilisers from the Gulf region, according to De Shutter.

“In Malawi it’s 52 per cent, in Uganda 27 per cent, in Tanzania 31 per cent. These are countries that rely heavily on the import of fertilisers from the Persian Gulf,” he stressed.

He believes there is an urgent need to improve the production of local bio-fertilisers, made from organic waste such as black soldier fly larvae, as seen in the Philippines.

The African Union’s Africa Fertiliser and Soil Health Action Plan 2024-2034 aims to improve the production of fertilisers on the continent, but De Schutter criticises its limited focus on biofertilisers as an alternative.

In south Asia, chemical fertilisers remain heavily subsidised by governments.

Swathi Seshadri, an energy specialist focused on petrochemicals in South Asia, at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), says Indian government subsidy for chemical fertilisers is expected to hit US$12.7 billion this year up from US$10.9 billion last year.

“This is a massive impact on the state’s availability of funds for organic fertilisers,” she told the briefing.

Fadhel Kaboub, associate professor of economics at Denison University, in the US, says chemical fertilisers could, in theory, be removed from the system “overnight”.

“Can it technically be done? Absolutely. We can transition to a clean and sustainable agricultural system that can feed the world,” he said at the briefing.

But the issue, he says, is whether it can it be done in a global trade system dominated by four corporations that control 70 per cent of the global grain market, plus fertilisers and logistics.

“Those corporations are not interested in losing their control over the global food system and they’re deeply embedded into the petrochemical industry,” he added.

“So, these are the battles that we have to fight in order to clean up the system […] and transition away once and for all from fossil fuels in the energy system, from fossil fuels in the food system, for the sake of health, prosperity, sustainability, clean air, clean water, clean soil.”

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk.