Despite all the progress that has been made, the world food situation is still marked by mass hunger: According to the FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), around 840 million people in developing countries suffer from hunger and chronic undernutrition. Especially in sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia the deficits are dramatic so dramatic that even a slight shortfall can have catastrophic consequences: Ethiopia for many years one of the few success stories in the agricultural development of Africa slipped to the brink of starvation in the spring of 2000 as a result of a single dry period.

In Zimbabwe, for decades one of the few “corn granaries” of Africa, a despotic regime with no regard for human values is depriving many people of the minimum of food security that remains to them. While the world population is on the increase and there is growing pressure on rural areas to produce food in sufficient quantities, of good quality and at low prices, the natural resources that are needed for food production are declining:

• Arable land

Every day, about 20,000 hectares of arable land are lost – through wind and water erosion, land development or overfarming. The fertility of the soil in developing countries is gradually declining to the point where substantial harvest losses are occurring. Broad swathes of land are already severely damaged and in many farmlands of the southmore goodness is continually being taken out of the soil than is being added to it through the use of appropriate farming methods or fertilizers.


• Water

Water too, the source of all life, is becoming increasingly scarce. More than a quarter of the world’s population and a third of people in developing countries live in regions under threat of severe water shortages. The regions most at risk are precisely those areas with the highest yields. The coming years will see demand for water increase very much faster than the supply. In the foreseeable struggle for distribution between industry and urban households on the one hand and agriculture on the other, the agricultural community is unlikely to get its way. Water shortage in particular puts food security at risk, because in many countries of the Third World almost 60 percent of arable fields are under irrigation. By 2025, 80 percent of demand for food in developing countries will come from irrigated crops. But if the quantity of water available stagnates or – which seems more likely – declines, the average harvest yields will fall.


• Global climate changes - global warming

  The effects of the climate changes that today are considered to be likely are still difficult to predict. However, if an increase in average surface temperatures (global warming) occurs on the scale which is regarded today as possible, this would bring additional problems for agriculture in many developing countries - with dramatic consequences for the food security of people in low-income countries in the central to southerly latitudes of the globe.
  

• Stagnating and declining harvest yields

  The situation will be further exacerbated by a development that is highlighted in the debate surrounding gene technology and biotechnology: it would appear that a further increase in the yields of corn is no longer possible using conventional cultivation techniques. Harvest yields – with very few exceptions – are showing a measurable decline. Even the difference between the yields obtained in test stations (maximum potential) and those obtained by the best farmers in the best crop-growing regions is narrowing. At the same time, the expectation is growing for farmers in the future to produce higher yields from smaller areas of land and poorer quality soil with less water.
  

• More local production - not more international distribution

  The FAO estimates that, to secure food for the world population, global food production will have to double in the next twenty years. If the estimates of the FAO are to be believed, this production goal can be achieved at the global level. However, the summary of global food production conceals widely varying regional and national production trends those regions where problems are greatest today can also be expected to show the greatest problems in the future.
  
  I do not share the view of some representatives of aid organizations that the world food problem can be solved by redistribution: To ensure adequate food supplies for the growing populations in Asia, Africa and Latin America without increasing their dependence on international markets or food aid, more food has to be produced above all in those regions where the food is consumed. Imports are suitable at most as stopgaps to cope with short-term bottlenecks or as relief in acute emergencies. Imports are no substitute for local production. The redistribution of cereal crop surpluses from the USA, Europe, Australia or Argentina, which is often recommended, not only founder on the immense logistical deficits in Africa and Asia, but also overlook other major problems.
  
  Agriculture as a productive employment sector
  The agricultural industry in developing countries is far more than just a food producer. In most poor countries, 60 to 80 percent of all people in employment continue to earn their living in agriculture. This does not only apply to farmers and farmworkers, but also to those employed in upstream and downstream sectors of industry and also in light industry. These sectors provide employment for landless labourers, shopkeepers or workers in cottage industries. A flourishing agricultural sector is not only the best weapon against rural poverty. The entire economic development through industry and services sectors would hardly have been possible in any country of the world without a flourishing agricultural sector as the driver of growth.
  
  Agriculture is land conservation and cultural heritage
  Agriculture also helps to preserve ecologically intact structures. Fields that are worked prevent erosion and preserve the natural environment. As the term “agri-culture” implies, it is also indispensable as a “custodian” of the multifaceted cultural heritage of developing countries.
  

• No easy way out.

  Problems with multifactorial causes call for solutions that address a variety of different aspects. Anyone who is seriously concerned with the future of food security for poor countries is faced with a highly complex set of challenges. On the one hand, major reasons for the widespread insecurity of food that prevails in many developing countries lie in a national agricultural policy which attaches an inappropriately low value to domestic food production. As a result, agriculture receives far too little when it comes to sharing out the budget. The situation is exacerbated further by the fact that, within the poorly funded agriculture sector, the smallholders who produce 85 percent of all agricultural products fare particularly badly.
  
  They farm the poorest land under insecure circumstances in terms of land laws or land utilization or under poor tenancy conditions, and they have virtually no access to agricultural advisory services or to processing and marketing institutions. Without property or land, they have no securities and thus no possibility of obtaining credit in order to invest in modern forms of farming. The infrastructure for education and healthcare in rural regions is also noticeably poorer than in the urban agglomerations. Food deficits are always closely associated with poverty. In rural regions especially it becomes clear that this involves not only a shortage of income, but also a lack of access to vital services. Poverty also always entails a lack of co-determination, always entails a lack of rights, exclusion and violation of human dignity.
  
  This is especially true for the women in poor societies: Poverty has a female face. Those who carry the greatest burden in their societies for the production, processing and preparation of food have the least rights and are additionally handicapped by disease, lack of education and undernutrition. Sustainable success can only be achieved by addressing all the elements in the whole constellation of problems and adapting the solutions from country to country – in many cases even from one region to another within the same country. It is a question not of having to cut through the "Gordian knot", but of painstakingly putting together a complex puzzle of political, social, economic, ecological, biological and technological pieces - and doing this in close collaboration with the relevant local partners based on their cultural knowledge.
  
  

What kind of contribution can we realistically expect from the private sector and its access to cutting edge technology in helping to solve the problems of world hunger? No single actor and even less a set of new technologies can make up for lack of political will to implement tried and trusted reforms. Where long-overdue reforms of land or tenancy rights founder on the political power of large landowners, smallholders will not be able to benefit from any technological progress. Where smallholders have no access to agricultural advisory services, they cannot use the opportunities offered by technology to increase their harvests and will remain among the "working poor". Where credit is only given to those who actually do not need it, while those who need it most get nothing or are dependent on the extortionate practices of traditional moneylenders, rural development will stagnate at the lowest level.

There is and must continue to be a clear societal division of labour and responsibility:
Pluralistic societies are highly complex systems. They are based to a large degree on a set of shared values and an efficient and cost-effective division of labour. The individual members of such a civil society are bound together in a relationship of mutual dependence. To ensure that there is a maximum level of synergy - or at least a minimum amount of friction, the various players in the theatre of society tacitly expect that everyone by and large observes the rules. In today´s world, observing the rules is no longer good enough to gain the acceptance of major stakeholders. For many stakeholders, at least the degree of social acceptance depends on whether or not individual members or institutions are seen to contribute to solutions of the significant problems in a society. Hunger, malnutrition and undernutrition are clearly such significant problems.

As the roots of today´s food insecurity are so complex and as sustainable solutions need so many efforts of so many stakeholders at different places, "Feeding the world" is going to stay a challenge to many actors of civil society for many years to come. What exactly is the Role of the Private Sector in improving food security? No one in a society is responsible for everything, no one has sweeping rights and no one is beholden for all the duties of society. Experience shows that a nation’s economic, social and societal success is at its greatest if there is both a clear division of labour and responsibility between the different members of civil society and a common understanding with regard to shared values and the overall goals of society including a fair equilibrium of duties and rights. The private sector and all companies, be they national or multinational have specific and fairly clearly defined "duties and responsibilities" in society’s division of labour. These are:

• To provide goods and services that succeed in meeting effective customer demands and can be sold at prices that are competitive and in the best interest of the corporation. The goods and services that are sold provide society with different kinds of value added in the case of agricultural companies it is providing products and services which help farmers to sustain and improve yields as well as food quality. A company can do this through chemistry, biology, biotechnology, and genomics. Being a successful agricultural corporation therefore not only means being profitable, but also raising the income of farmers, avoiding shortages of agricultural goods - and at the same time reducing the pressure on the environment.
  
  
• It is not only the right of a corporation to strive to be as profitable as possible; I firmly believe that it is part of its social responsibility and its duty within the framework of its corporate citizenship to be as profitable as possible. Sustained profitability resulting from sustained competitiveness on global markets is the precondition for a corporation to assume sustained responsibility towards society as a whole - i.e. to be a good corporate citizen. All societies in the world are best served by successful enterprises, because only they can offer a sustainable basis for

• providing goods and services of high quality;
• keeping, hiring, and competitively remunerating employees;
• paying taxes; and
• being a good corporate citizen by contributing towards pension and insurance systems and other social purposes.

In this era of globalization it is as true as ever to stress that anything which goes against the principles of economic propriety cannot be correct from a more holistic corporate responsibility point of view. And this is not a problem, because there is no principal trade-off between good economic performance and good corporate citizenship: Yes, the management of a corporation is under an obligation to satisfy the shareholder - after all, it is the shareholder who owns the company. But there is equally no doubt that they are beholden to other stakeholders, including the communities in which they operate and the citizens who live there. Anyone who invests and wants to attract the best people on the job market for his company needs favourable conditions in which to operate, and this means at least the certainty of law, fairness in the way people live and work together in society, and a social climate that is favourable to business. Anyone who spends a lot of resources to do research and development for innovative products and services will have to be aware of the social acceptance of potential products resulting from that research.

For this reason, any intelligently managed company will include the expectations and concerns of society in its business considerations and decisions. It will therefore recognize the interest of its shareholders, employees, customers, neighbors, the authorities and the public at large in its societal behavior, and the health, safety and environmental as well as social impacts of its business. Such a company will not act selfcentered but provide relevant information and actively listen to all relevant parts of civil society and seek dialog with all relevant stakeholders. Where possible and desirable, such a corporation will - in order to get better, more cost-effective or faster solutions - cooperate with all other actors of civil society. Successful cooperation beyond a narrow definition of roles and responsibilities, however, depends on partners sharing a basic set of common values:

Everywhere in the world, people accept a certain framework of standards for living together without conflict and for settling differences of interest without violence. These are mostly norms which have served for thousands of years as a compass to guide humankind in all their different forms of culture and religion. Whether we read e.g. LAOTSE, the Gospels, the Koran or Hindu writings, we find similar views on what is considered good and correct human behaviour and on what constitutes a meaningful human existence. There is no reason to call these views into question in this age of globalization.

Simple observance of the“Golden Rule”, either in its passive interpretation (Book of Tobit 4.15) or even in its active interpretation (Matthew 7.12), would be sufficient to qualify both individual and corporate actions for a seal of approval that would leave most of today’s criticisms without foundation. Double standards low ones for oneself and high ones for everyone else are ethically untenable. Hence if virtues such as
      • openness in values, attitudes and philosophies
      • transparency with regard to objectives, expectations, strengths and weaknesses
      • flexibility as well as resilience, and last but not least
      • honesty are high in demand as shared values and aspirations.

As it is so important, we must add another precondition for success in partnerships that is a frame of "Good Governance". At the end of the day all good intentions are worthless if countries and those being responsible for their policies and politics are not getting the fundamentals right by:
      • establishing a clearly defined legal framework which provides stability and predictability          as well as procedures for the peaceful solution of conflicts
      • maintaining a non-distorting policy environment for all players in civil society
      • investing in basic social services and infrastructure
      • caring for the vulnerable and protecting the environment.

Sustainable Development relies on empowerment and co-operation, and political institutions acting as partners, catalysts, and facilitators. Good Governance is therefore not a luxury for rich countries - it is an absolute precondition for sustainable economic and social development - and this again are the most important preequisites for food security: Today, more people go hungry due to bad policies and despotic politics than due to any other cause. All empirical data show that poverty is the main reason for deficits in food security and as all empirical data show that economic growth is the single most important contributor for the alleviation of poverty and economic empowerment of lower-income groups, it is obvious that national governments must act as a facilitating and enabling factor for economic development.

As rapid economic growth does not automatically translate into sustainable improvements in living standards and social conditions for the broad base of the public, the benefits for the poor depend to a large extent on a government’s ability to strike a balance between giving incentives for improved and merit-based economic performance and protecting the vulnerable by appropriate safety nets. If there partners sharing a basic set of common values and if there is willingness to co-operate, fundamental opportunities arise.

Different actors of the civil society have different concepts, skills, techniques, experiences and different resources. They are also driven by different motives. Although there is a rational and natural division of labor and responsibility, synergies through the co-operation of different actors for unorthodox purposes are feasible. As a result of its different background and experience different actors are likely to analyze the issues and appraise the problems as well as opportunities differently. Modified or altogether different solutions become probable under such circumstances. Innovative research partnership for sustainable agriculture could be one area where joint ventures for the benefit of resource-poor farmers could become a reality. The fact, that in today’s world, some of the most dynamic and powerful research capacities are situated in the private sector makes private corporations and research institutions potential candidates for such partnerships.

If we look at the most dynamic areas of agricultural research, genetic engineering and biotechnology, two thirds to four fifth of the research and development is currently carried out in the private sector. On the one hand, this is desirable as it offers the opportunity to reorganize public research portfolios and focus on activities that are best done within the public domain. The public sector should cease activities wherever the private sector can do things better or more cost effective.

On the other hand, the strength of the private sector gives rise to public concern, as technologies needed to develop and apply agricultural biotechnology are overwhelmingly in the intellectual property domain of a small number of life science corporations in the North. Patented results are in all likelihood too expensive for the resource-poor farmer in a less developed country. This may be regretted but regrets won’t change much.

The only sustainable way out of this situation is more and more intensive cooperation between the private and the public sector. There is evidence that many agricultural corporations and private research institution while focussing their research on areas where a competitive return on investment can be anticipated are willing to provide research support for resource poor farmers for free or at very favourable conditions. Novartis and Syngenta are two such corporations since many years. But more and closer partnership will not come automatically there are some preconditions:

First of all, a substantial improvement in the overall relationship between the potential partners is necessary. As long as the private sector is routinely and undifferentiatedly denounced as a greedy, irresponsible, and socially insensitive crowd of »couldn’t-care-less« Manchester capitalists, nobody should be surprised that corporations are not queuing to commit their funds and technology. It goes without saying that those who go on record with "hate sites" insinuating criminal activities of those who lean positively towards genetic engineering and biotechnology, and support vandalism and slander disqualify themselves as potential partners.

Second, a pre-appraisal seems necessary. There is a pronounced need to identify and—if possible—quantify what under which conditions and in what areas there are opportunities for partnerships. For agricultural research partnerships the CGIAR could be an institution to do such a pre-appraisal, as its initiative to explore the interests, strengths, investments and future roles of the public and private sector in agricultural research represents today’s state-of-the-art.

Third, we must look for win-win-situations for such partnerships—to rely on charitable attitudes as the driving incentive for cooperation makes partnerships vulnerable to the ups and downs of business cycles. Win-win-situations also take the temptation away from potential recipients, that there is a corporation who wants to pay indulgence-money for the forgiveness of sins committed in its normal business activity. Given the range of opportunities and the potential win-win-situations in public-private co-operation, partnership is no longer just a political or societal option. It is a necessity for costeffective sustainable development - however, private-public-partnership is not the "silver bullet" for the solutions of all problems. There still is and will continue to be a necessity for contributions that are outside the normal business sphere.

As private corporations must compete to appear attractive to the international financial community, their research priorities are determined by the financial returns on investment, and hence the needs of those who wield purchasing power in the relevant markets. To put this another way, it is not very likely that these corporations will be willing to fund research for drought tolerance, tolerance to soil and mineral toxicity, or other characteristics of relevance to the typical resource-poor farmer family in poor countries. Even if they were to make progress in these areas, the costs of developing useful products would be high and hence the products would remain out of reach for those who need them most. Part of the explanation for this is intellectual property rights—the knowledge and technologies, including DNA sequences, research tools, and output traits are today largely proprietary. This, according to the CGIAR´s TAC, has partly impeded secondary innovation and led to conflicting proprietary claims and high transaction cost.

The alternative to private-sector research is public research. There the emphasis can be given to plant species that are most relevant to poverty reduction and income generation of specific ecoregions, and research can focus on losses caused by biotic and abiotic factors and on stabilizing yields on poor soils. The fruits of public research can be passed on to small farmers at cost or, via subsidized government channels, even free of charge to the end user. As in the past, the CGIAR, with its focus on the needs of developing countries, will have to play a conspicuous role in such efforts—in close cooperation with the different national agricultural research systems. The record shows how much has been achieved in the past 30 years through CGIAR and its local partners (Anderson and Dalrymple, 1999, CGIAR, 2000)ii

In order to make cutting-edge biotechnology available to small farmers, more public research has to be financed. The private sector can do a lot to support that kind of research by providing not only funding for projects that focus on ressource-poor farmers but in addition giving access to cutting-edge technology and giving permission to use it for the benefit of resource-poor farmers for free or at very favourable conditions. The Insect Resistant Maize for Africa Project—which involves the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture—could serve as a pilot for more projects with different constituencies (www.syngentafoundation.com).

Last but not least, the private sector should take a lead in reviving dialogue and consensus-driven action: Pluralism of opinion is normal in modern societies it makes them dynamic and thriving. Also the assessment of new technologies occurs within this pluralistic structure; simple answers and undisputed processes for consensus are therefore not at hand. But within this pluralism, the negative tunes have taken over in way that is not comensurate with reality and this has negative consequences for future generations in the developing world:

The widespread negative public perception in Europe (things still look a bit different in the US) is no incentive for politicians to use public funds for biotechnology research— be it for the South or the North. A negative spillover with regard to funding agricultural research in general is certainly possible. The cumulative circular interdependence of negative Green Revolution myths, genetic horror stories, and globalization uneasiness is likely to perpetuate the negative tone in the debate.

The current impasse is only to a small degree due to lack of information. It is much more a matter of attitudinal rejection. There is already a wealth of information on all important aspects of agricultural biotechnology, and there is excellent advice for all parties on how to deal with this information (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 1999, IPGRI, IDRC, 2000).iii But more information alone is not the answer. Rather, those of us who are convinced of the potential benefits of biotechnology and genetic engineering must engage in spreading the “gospel” through dialogue and cooperation. To turn the situation around, we need a number of changes. First and foremost, research in agricultural biotechnology must come up with results that are more tangible and more easily understood by a wider public. Empirical social science suggests that laypeople strongly believe that some scientific developments are beneficial and others are not. While characteristics such as insect or herbicide resistance might warm the hearts of some researchers or farmers, most consumers will neither understand nor appreciate the blessings of this technology. With items like the "Vitamin A" rice, with tomatoes having a high content of anti-oxidants, with a banana that contains vaccines against polio or tetanus or with other crops that express health-related properties, the picture could change much faster.

Public dialogues on the costs and benefits of genetic engineering and biotechnology alone will not suffice—there must also be “dialogue through cooperation,” cooperation in the highest professional quality and greatest possible transparency. Common research can lead to positive case studies of societal learning for different constituencies, including scientific committees, science journalists, and other interested stakeholders. When people join together to work on a concrete project to achieve goals that are judged to be important to everyone, prejudices eventually disappear and labels that have been acquired lose their importance. The cooperation in the laboratories and fields allows differentiation between justifiable hopes and worries and unjustifiable ones. The opportunities, mechanisms, and limits of such cooperation are made clear in the Tlaxcala Statement on Public/Private Sector Alliances in Agricultural Research initiated by CIMMYT (www.cimmyt.cgiar.org)

The process of moving from ignorance through arrogance and then to tolerance of different views of the world cannot be delegated. It has to be lived. It is a unique opportunity to discover parallel perceptions of reality, to cope with them, and to combine them to form a larger whole. The ability to engage in constructive teamwork will separate the chaff from the wheat: anyone who is not capable of breaking free from the kind of friend/enemy thinking anchored in dogma and of working toward coalition, who prefers demarcation to teamwork for political reasons, will have to put up with the slur of being a fundamentalist.

Those who have broader shoulders must exercise visible solidarity in a consistent way. First and foremost, in view of today’s limitations, capacity and institution building for biotechnology must be supported and funded by development assistance resources. Only if there is a national absorptive capacity to understand the technology and deal with it safely can the benefits of technology transfer be maximized and its risks minimized. This support—consisting of all kinds of software and hardware—can range from consulting for state-of-the-art biosafety regulation, best practices of capacity building, and clearinghouse advice to genetic material and laboratory equipment. Support from the private sector can also make a major contribution to putting constructive partnerships into practice in developing countries and this should be done.

It is in the interest of companies to be guided not only by their own individual and short-term self-interest but also by respect for the common good and the needs of the less fortunate for this reason, it is an entirely rational decision for a company to act in a sense of enlightened self-interest and go beyond what immediate business interests demand.

If all the players in civil society politicians, entrepreneurs, researchers, and others assume their specific responsibilities as local and global citizens with the highest possible standards, and if all institutional players in civil society - be they political parties, corporations, NGOs or others - co-operate in a constructive manner, the synergism created is likely to allow for a bright economic, and therefore social, and therefore political future. But it will not come about automatically, as Karl Popper notes:

The future is wide open. It depends on us on all of us. It depends on what we and many other people do and intend to do now, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. And what we do and intend to do depends on our philosophy; and on our desires, aspirations and fears. It depends on how we view the world; and how we perceive the wide-open possibilities of the future. This represents a major responsibility on the part of us all.