支持中国提升保障粮食安全能力——专访联合国国际农业发展基金组织驻中国、朝鲜和韩国代表马泰奥（Matteo Marchisio）

2月封面文章

有困难也有办法 

2020年，新冠疫情和全球经济衰退使全球粮食安全受到影响。疫情过后，全球粮食安全将会面临哪些挑战？如何应对这些挑战？

2月5日，联合国国际农业发展基金组织驻中国、朝鲜和韩国代表马泰奥（Matteo Marchisio）先生就上述问题接受本刊记者采访。

《中国投资》：新冠肺炎疫情及全球经济衰退将会对全球粮食安全造成哪些影响？国际社会应当如何应对？

马泰奥（Matteo Marchisio）：新冠肺炎疫情对健康和经济的影响众所周知。截止到2021年2月5日，全球新冠病毒感染人数达1亿，病死人数超过220万。据国际货币基金组织统计，去年全球经济萎缩3.5%，是继第二次世界大战以来最严重的一次全球经济衰退。

现在看来，新冠肺炎疫情造成的危机仅限于健康和经济领域，但假如国际社会不能及时应对，此次疫情或将演变为一次攸关全球发展的长期危机。新冠肺炎疫情造成的经济后果可能导致全球贫困和粮食短缺问题愈演愈烈。据世界银行统计，受新冠肺炎疫情影响，全球新增极端贫困人口达8800万到1.15亿。《2020年世界粮食安全和营养状况报告》显示，2020年，新冠肺炎疫情使全球营养不良人数增长了8300万到1.32亿。 

如果没有任何外援，低收入发展中国家是最脆弱的。低收入发展中国家资源有限，制度不完善，无力在外部冲击下保持经济正常运转。低收入发展中国家的农村地区没有安全网兜底，在冲击面前最为脆弱；疫情期间，农村人口不便外出务工，农产品的生产和销售活动均遭受影响，外出务工汇款和农产品销售额大大降低，而农村人口正是依赖这些收入来源维持生计，各国采取的疫情防控措施使底子本就不好的农村地区雪上加霜。

疾病不分国界，假如全球粮食安全危机到来，其后果也会不加择选地波及到每个人。各国应尽的共同责任便是确保健康危机不要演变为粮食危机。为了提高粮食产量，创造就业岗位，为数百万生计受损的农村人口提供发展机会，加大对农村地区的投资力度十分重要。国际货币基金组织以及我供职的国际农发基金在扭转应对此次危机当中发挥着重要作用。

《中国投资》：为了应对粮食安全危机，特别是发展中国家的粮食安全危机，国际农业发展基金做出了哪些努力？您对预期成果有哪些期待？

马泰奥（Matteo Marchisio）：为了巩固过往几十年在农村地区减轻贫困、缓解饥饿的攻坚战中取得的宝贵成果，自新冠疫情发生之日起，国际农发基金便开始同政府、农民组织以及其他合作伙伴勠力合作。在全球新冠肺炎疫情肆虐的背景下，国际农发基金收到了我们工作过的三分之二地区发出的后续援助请求，这些国家位于非洲、亚洲、拉丁美洲和太平洋岛屿地区。我们的应对策略是将目前正在运作的一系列投资项目的资金转作他用，去投资能为小农户和农村贫困家庭带来立竿见影效果的项目。

这样一来，我们已转移既有项目中逾1亿美金资金，来帮助目标群体应对疫情。然而这么做是不够的。于是，农发基金注资成立了“农村扶贫抗疫基金”，以便在疫情环境下提高农民维持生计、抵抗风险的韧性。农发基金也投资了一些新项目，以确保农民能够获取转危为机所需的资源、市场、信贷和互联网信息。在“农村扶贫抗疫基金”的框架下，农发基金又投资了4600万美金，帮助49个国家逾160万小农户获得贷款，在手机上获取生产与营销的相关信息，恢复粮食正常生产销售。

这些措施有助于消减新冠肺炎疫情对农村人口的负面影响。国际农发基金将继续支持对农村人口具有长远意义的项目，帮助农村人口提高产能，更好地打入市场，并提高应对气候变化的韧性，使农村地区在面对未来不可预料的冲击时有的放矢。

《中国投资》：为了保证全球粮食安全，特别是低收入发展中国家的粮食安全，国际社会需要做些什么？

马泰奥（Matteo Marchisio）：全球最贫困国家和最脆弱人口受新冠肺炎疫情的打击最大，粮食不安全加剧仅是最直观的后果之一。疫情导致收入降低，进而导致家庭食品消费支出降低。各国实施出行限制造成市场环境萧条，供应链紊乱，自产粮食数量短缺、价格增高，易腐食品尤甚。世界银行粮食价格指数作为衡量全球粮食价格的指标，去年上涨了14%；同年一则调查显示，45个受访国家中出现大量人口缩减食品消费。

低收入发展中国家面临的处境是最恶劣的。如果没有外援，这些国家单凭一己之力很难复苏，国际社会于2020年“消灭饥饿”的发展目标也会沦为一纸空文。国际社会应采取哪些努力呢？首先需要明确的是，世上绝无一蹴而就的解决方案，我认为下述领域国际社会应予以重视。

首先，摒弃通过保护主义扭转粮食短缺、抑制食品价格上涨的念头。禁止采用出口限令，禁止大规模囤积粮食。鼓励地区内合作。

其次，增强社会保障安全网的效力，扩大其适用范围，特别是针对社会中最脆弱群体。目前全球范围内有近20亿小农户、个体工商户、农民工及其家人面临中等到严重的粮食短缺，在全球饥饿人口中占很大比重，他们受疫情的影响最为严重，最有可能破产并深陷粮食紧缺的困境。社会保障安全网通常是这些脆弱家庭在危机面前的唯一救命稻草。

第三，提高脆弱群体在冲击面前的韧性。

第四，各国需要始终关注社会中最弱势群体。做到这一点非常难，因为当决策者站在宏观层面、以高屋建瓴的视角思考问题时，会轻而易举地忽视掉这些群体。值得注意的是，各国需要根据任务性质的不同，制定长短期应急计划。例如，短期应急纾困计划是为了应对粮食短缺和粮价激增的短期影响；但这种短期方案需要辅之以一定的配套措施，以确保在中长期内，还能起到实现经济复苏、防范化解风险、提升经济韧性的目的。

《中国投资》：您如何看待中国的粮食安全问题？在新冠疫情的大环境下，中国应当采取哪些措施保障粮食安全？

马泰奥（Matteo Marchisio）：在我看来，现如今中国无须对本国的粮食安全太过担忧。中国很早之前就摘掉了“粮食危机”的帽子。过去的几十年间，中国在“全球饥饿指数”（GHI）上的排位稳步向好，如今中国的粮食危机水平已然很低，中国的粮食产量连年保持在极高的水平位，人均粮食产量高于世界平均，粮食储备远高于粮农组织设定的保底水平。过去几年，中国的粮食自给自足率保持在95%，三大主粮的自给自足率为97%到98%。

宏观经济指标显示，中国短期之内不存在严重的粮食不安全威胁，即便如此，中国不应忽视新冠肺炎疫情对农村家庭造成的冲击，小农户、农民工、女性这些最弱势群体受到的影响最大。中国农业科学院和国际农发基金就新冠疫情对农村经济的影响做了一次联合评估，初步结果显示，33%到40%的农村受访家庭表示存在一定程度的粮食不安全，疫情期间减少食物摄入的农村儿童比重几乎是城镇儿童的两倍之多。

中国应当抵制住采用保护主义措施的诱惑，中国一旦走出这一步，必然会引起他国效法。中国应当重建粮食供应链，解决物流瓶颈，提升存储能力，利用好数字化科技带来的机遇。中国应当保障最脆弱家庭对粮食的需求，确保社会保障体系覆盖到弱势群体。从长远角度看，中国需要不断增强农村社区的韧性，提高农民这个社会最脆弱群体抵御风险冲击的能力。为了达到这个目的，中国应当为农村地区提供更多创收渠道，并确保创收来源的多元化，应当增强金融服务可及性，拓宽农村家庭获取信贷与保险的渠道。国际农发基金也会通过拓宽社保和安全网机制的适用范围，进一步支持中国提高农村社区的应急韧性。

【英文版】

Help China Enhance Its Capacity to Ensure Food Security

In
2020, the impact of the epidemic and the global economic recession will
have an impact on world food security. After the epidemic, what
problems will global food security face and how to deal with it? What
challenges will global food security face? IFAD’s response measures,
plans and goals. On February 5th , 2021, Matteo Marchisio, IFAD
representative to China, DPRK and ROK, received an interview with our
reporter at China Investment magazine.

China Investment: What impact will the COVID-19 pandemic and the global economic downturn have on world food security? How should the world respond?

Matteo Marchisio: The
health and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are well known. As
of today, an estimate 100 million people have contracted the virus
worldwide, and over 2.2 million died from the disease. According to the
International Monetary Fund, the global economy shrunk by 3.5% last
year. This represents the deepest global recession since the Second
World War.

However,
what is today still considered by many as primarily a health and
economic crisis may soon become a long-term development crisis, if the
world does not act promptly. The economic impacts of COVID-19 are likely
to lead to an enduring increase in global poverty and food insecurity.
The World Bank estimates that COVID-19 has pushed an additional 88 to
115 million people into extreme poverty last year. According to The
State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 report, the
pandemic may have added between 83 and 132 million people to the total
number of undernourished in the world in 2020.

In
this scenario, without assistance, low-income developing countries are
the most vulnerable: they are already particularly vulnerable to
external shocks, and they have limited resources and weak institutional
capacity to support their economies in the face of a shock. Within these
countries, rural communities are the most vulnerable, as they are often
not covered by economic safety nets, and their livelihoods primarily
depends on activities that have been significantly affected by the
measures countries have implemented to contain the pandemic – e.g.
remittances from migrant labour, production and sale of agricultural
products. 

Diseases
do not respect borders, and the effects of a possible global food
crisis will affect everyone without distinction. It is our joint
responsibility to ensure that what begun as health crisis does not
transform into a food crisis. It is vital to invest in rural areas, so
that we can increase food production and create jobs and opportunities
for millions of rural people whose livelihoods have been affected by the
pandemic. Multilateral organizations such the International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD), the organization for which I work, have
a key role to play to prevent and address such crisis.

China Investment:
 In response to the food security crisis, especially in developing
countries, what has IFAD done? What do you expect to achieve?

Matteo Marchisio: Since
the beginning of the pandemic, IFAD has been working with governments,
farmer organizations and other partners to sustain the progress achieved
in the past decades in the fight against poverty and hunger in rural
areas. IFAD has received requests for additional support in view of the
impact of COVID-19 from two thirds of the countries where we work, in
Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific. We have responded by
repurposing ongoing investments, that is to say diverting existing
project funding to finance activities that could provide an immediate
response to the pandemic for our target group: smallholder farmers and
poor rural households. Over US$100 million within our projects have been
reallocated in such ways to help our beneficiaries to cope with the
pandemic. However, this was not enough. We have also launched the Rural
Poor Stimulus Facility, a multi-donor facility to improve the resilience
of rural livelihoods in the context of the crisis, and we are already
funding new initiatives to ensure farmers can access inputs, markets,
liquidity and digital information they need to see them through the
crisis. With the Facility, IFAD has invested an extra U$S46 million
dollars supporting more than 1.6 million small-holder farmers in 49
countries to continue growing and selling food, getting access to
finance, and receiving relevant production and marketing information on
their mobile phones. 

These
measures have helped containing the immediate negative impact of
COVID-19 on the rural population. IFAD will however continue to support
long-term activities aimed at strengthening the production capacity and
the capacity to better access markets of the rural population, and their
resilience to the impacts of climate change – so to enhance their
capacity to cope with and overcome other, unforeseen shocks in the
future.

China Investment:
In order to achieve global food security goals, particularly in
low-income developing countries, what the international community should
do?

Matteo Marchisio: The
poorest countries and the most vulnerable populations have been hit by
the pandemic the hardest. The rise in food insecurity has been one of
the most tangible consequences. The loss in incomes that followed the
pandemic translated into a reduction of households’ expenditure on food
consumption. Market and supply disruptions due to movement restrictions
have also created local food shortages and higher prices, especially for
perishable food. Global food prices, as measured by the World Bank food
price index, rose 14% last year, while a survey conducted in 45
countries showed significant percentages of people reducing their food
consumption.

The
situation is worst in low-income developing countries. What is clear is
that without external support, it will be difficult for these countries
to recover, and the development goal of achieving zero hunger in the
world by 2020 cannot be achieved. But what should the international
community do? Provided that there is no one ‘quick-fix’ or ‘magic
bullet’, I believe the following are the key priorities international
community should promote. 

First,
avoiding protectionist measures, to prevent food shortages and the rise
of food prices. Export bans and excessive food hoarding should be
avoided, and regional cooperation should be promoted.

Second,
enhancing and expanding social protection and safety nets, particularly
among the most vulnerable segments of society. There are about 2
billion small famers, producers, rural workers and their families who
represent a large proportion of the moderately to severely food insecure
in the world. They were the most severely affected by the impact of the
pandemic, and at most risk to fall or remain in a state of food
insecurity. Social safety nets often represent the only means for these
vulnerable households to cope with the immediate effects of a crisis.

Third, investing in building or strengthening the resilience of vulnerable groups to shocks. 

Last,
but not least, we need to ensure consistent targeting of the most
vulnerable part of our societies, which is easily overlooked when issues
are looked at from a macroeconomic perspective. It is also important to
remember that responses need different timeframes: immediate short-term
relief responses are necessary to deal with the immediate effects of
food shortages or increased prices, but they must be accompanied by
measures that aim at ensuring medium to long-term recovery, prevention
and resilience.

China Investment: Should China be concerned about food security? What measures should China implement to ensure food security amid COVID-19?

Matteo Marchisio: In
this particular moment, China should not – in my view – be too
concerned about food security at the national level. China has long time
ago ceased to be a ‘food insecure’ country. Its rating in the Global
Hunger Index (GHI) has steadily improved over the past decades, and –
according to the GHI – the level of China’s food insecurity today is
low. China’s food production has been extraordinarily high for the past
several consecutive years, per capita food production is above the
world’s average, and food stocks are well above the minimum level
recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). China has
maintained an overall 95 per cent food self-sufficiency level over the
past years, with 97 to 98 per cent self-sufficiency for the three major
staple crops.

However,
even though these macro-level indicators suggest that severe food
insecurity is of no immediate concern in China, the pandemic had an
impact on rural households, with the most vulnerable (smallholder
farmers, migrant workers, women) being greatly affected. The preliminary
results of a joint assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the rural
economy in China conducted by the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences
and IFAD has shown for instance that 33 to 40% of the surveyed rural
households reported some level of food insecurity, and that the
proportion of rural children who reduced their food consumption during
the pandemic is almost twice higher than that of urban children.

China needs to resist the temptation of
adopting protectionist measures, which could generate a chain reaction
among other countries. China should also re-establish disrupted food
supply chain, addressing transport barriers, improving storage
facilities, and taking advantage of the opportunities offered by digital
technologies. Finally, China needs to guarantee access to food to the
most vulnerable households and expand the social protection system to
vulnerable groups. In the long run, China would need to continue
strengthening the resilience of rural communities, the most vulnerable
part of the population, to shocks. This can be achieved by increasing
and diversifying the income generating opportunities in rural areas,
enhancing access to financial services – credit and insurance – to rural
households, and by expanding the coverage of social protection and
safety net mechanisms. IFAD will continue to support China in its effort
to foster rural communities that are increasingly resilient to shocks.

编辑 | 张   梅

 翻译 | 齐晓彤

设计 | 大   米