Countries must make policies to mitigate crisis from tariff wars: Nigerian farm scientist Ademola Adenle

Eminent agriculture scientist and policymaker based in Nigeria, Ademola Adenle, who won the first M.S. Swaminathan Annual Award for Food and Peace last week, told The Hindu in an interview that every government should engage all the key stakeholders and come up with appropriate policy to mitigate the crisis from unnecessary tariffs being imposed on developing countries. “If you don’t have a policy in place that can mitigate this crisis, then it’s going to be very, very difficult,” he said, adding that governments were not doing enough to improve the quality of farmers and farm products within the system so that imports could be restricted. An expert in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) technology, Prof. Adenle said a strong base in scientific research, proper regulatory mechanisms and adequate legal systems could allay the concerns over the use of GM crops.

Prof. Adenle said global agriculture was facing a lot of challenges such as land degradation, climate change, poverty, water scarcity etc. and technology was going to play a big role in fighting these problems. He said destruction of food systems during conflicts, war and trade imbalance and other factors were leading to supply chain disruptions, price hikes, shortages, and instability in local and global markets. “The most important aspect of that is to look at the policy, at the national, regional and international level,” he said.

Trade imbalance

Terming the recent tariffs announced by United States President Donald Trump as a manifestation of trade imbalance, Prof. Adenle said Mr. Trump was increasing tariffs by 20 to 50% on some countries. “If you don’t have an existing policy that addresses long-time effect of tariffs, that is being imposed by another country, then it becomes a problem. It becomes a crisis. You must have a very comprehensive policy that mitigates effects of other policies from other countries. Otherwise, the response will be retaliatory — doing the same thing. I don’t know whether it is the best approach,” he said, maintaining that governments were not doing enough to improve the quality of farmer within the system. “The quality problem has to be addressed and you have to have a policy that discourages import.”

Prof. Adenle suggested that to ensure nutritional quality, India needed bio-fortified crops. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be genetically modified. Improved varieties can address nutritional problems. You have to preserve those traditional crops and improve them,” he said, pointing out that by 2050, the agriculture production was being projected to increase by 70% to meet the demands of growing population and there was a need to invest in research and development programmes to adopt new technology. “If you are not investing in R&D, it will be difficult to compete with China, United States, and some European countries, because some of these countries have invested a lot of money in various programmes such as AI, genome editing, modern bio-technology, including GMO,” Prof. Adenle said. Policies prescribed by multilateral agencies of the United Nations and global banks should be aligned with the interest of national development of individual countries to achieve the overall objective of agricultural production.

He said the GMO was quite controversial and it had a lot of advantages and it had potential risks too. “It can reduce the amount of chemicals. However, there are concerns about biosafety, ecological impacts and market control. That is why it is important to work with the local researcher. The regulations are very important. We came up with the idea of F3 approach, which is fibre, feed, and food. The idea of fibre started with cotton for textile production; it is not for consumption. Then you move on to feed. If the GM feed, after all necessary risk assessment, is safe for animals, then you move on to GM food. F3 framework is to allay concerns of farmers that GM products are actually good for human consumption,” Prof. Adenle said.