Thank you.
The food crisis that the previous two witnesses have so adequately and so well described is not new. This is almost a repeat of what happened in 2008 with food prices becoming sky-high, countries putting on export restrictions and millions of people forced into poverty. At that time we saw that infant mortality rose. In order to go to work, people pulled their kids out of school, and there were food-related riots in dozens of countries. This happened 14 years ago. The causes were slightly different. It's happening again now. This should be no surprise, because there are problems with the global food system.
One of the biggest problems is that many developing countries have been relying on food imports instead of building up their own agriculture. An example of this is that across Africa, the average yield of corn is only one to two tonnes per hectare. Compare that with 10 tonnes per hectare in Canada. There are lots of opportunities to increase yields and to increase productivity in developing countries, but the investment has not been there.
One of the reactions to the food crisis in 2008 was that the G7 and other countries agreed to invest billions of dollars in food security in developing countries to address what they referred to as a decades-long lack of investment. Canada doubled its aid for agriculture at that time. Unfortunately, that priority lasted only three years. By 2013 the aid dollars had dropped back down to their precrisis levels. In developing countries, the crop yields remained low, livestock diseases took a toll, and the brightest young people saw their future anywhere except on the farm.
In 2008 the crisis was caused largely by weather factors. This time it's being caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but we're seeing the same thing, this low investment in agriculture.
I want to focus on what Canada can do to help developing countries, because that's what our expertise at the Foodgrains Bank is in. Our goal is to have a world without hunger. Last year we served nearly one million people in 33 countries through a program working with food assistance, nutrition, agriculture and livelihoods.
Your study is asking what the impact of global food insecurity is and what can Canada do. I won't repeat the numbers of people who are hungry—the previous witnesses did that very well—but let me remind you that those numbers are going up every month.
In Ethiopia, the cost of a food basket for a family rose by 64% between 2019 and March of this year. In Kenya, we're seeing that cooking oil has doubled in price. The commodity suppliers we go to used to guarantee their prices for six months. Now they guarantee them for only one or two months, if at all, because prices are so volatile. This means that Canada's aid reaches fewer people than before, even though more people need help.
People are making tough choices. Some are shifting away from protein-rich foods and just focusing on starch—rice and corn—and nothing else. It fills the belly, but family nutrition suffers. People pull their kids out of school. They borrow money at high interest rates. They sell their livestock. These things help in the short term, but they have long-term costs.
I have two recommendations for Canada to deal with this crisis now.
In the short term, Canada needs to increase humanitarian assistance, especially for food. Canada commits money for food assistance through an international treaty called the Food Assistance Convention. Our minimum commitment is the same now as it was nine years ago, even though the drop in the value of the Canadian dollar and the rise in food prices mean that money feeds only half as many people. Canada should bump up food assistance and consider something like pegging our food assistance to the food price index that Mr. Cullen talked about. As food prices rise, we give more.
Second is that, in the long term, Canada should focus more on agriculture and food security in the aid program and on helping developing countries become less dependent on imports. Our own organization, Foodgrains Bank, for decades has worked with tens of thousands of farmers across Africa, most of them with two hectares or less of land. From our own experience, we know that these small-scale farmers can significantly increase production. In fact, most smallholders can expect at least a doubling of yields in only a few years. That's more tons of grain grown in Africa. It's also better livelihoods for poor families, and it's improved climate resilience.
Thank you. I'll end my comments there and await questions.