The head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has urged governments around the world to stop subsidizing grain cultivation, saying the practice gives such crops an unfair advantage over fruits and vegetables, and leads to unhealthier diets.

Dr. Shenggen Fan

IFPRI director general Dr. Shenggen Fan told www.freshfruitportal.com the supply and demand sides of food markets were not well linked, prompting the "wrong" dietary patterns with either undernutrition, a lack of micronutrients or overnutrition with the latter prompting obesity.

"Policy has failed. Governments have subsidized the production of grains, such as rice, maize and wheat, and that makes it easier for these crops to compete with the cost of vegetables," he said.

"Right now we don’t have the right price. The price is distorted for grains; they've been distorted because of the over-subsidization of grain production, and the taxation of fruits and vegetables."

While such policies are well known in the U.S., Fan said the issue was even more distorted in developing countries where governments pursued self-sufficiency policies in staple crops.

He said the second area where policies had failed was in education about nutrition, emphasizing more could be done through knowledge dissemination with young children, schools and also parents.

"Everybody deserves nutritious foods, it's a human rights issue, but also it makes economic sense," he said.

"If we can make our children well nourished, they will be more productive, more intelligent in the future, so that will create future productivity through innovations, through more educated young generations that will come back to help economic growth.

"All the different stakeholders - the private sector, the researchers, governments, NGOs, the media - should all work together to achieve that goal."

He said the impact of such efforts would be much greater than what has been done in the past.

"If we can spend so much money on defense or entertainment, why don’t we just spend a certain portion of that money to educate our children, educate schools and educate parents?

"It is essential to communicate knowledge and information to the political constituents and general citizens so that they are empowered with knowledge of over-subsidization of certain staple crops being not good for our health, not good for our nutrition, not good for our children.

"Then they will push the governments to change their policies. They will push the politicians to make the right decisions."

For Fan, this also implied better and more transparent nutritional labeling regulation.

"I think it’s more important in some of the developing countries right now where the consumers still don’t know the nutritional content of different food items; vegetables and fruit, or staple crops and wheat.

"Almost all developing countries lack that. If you go to any supermarket, wet market, you don’t see anything about the nutritional content.

"You don’t know whether they’re safe from pesticide residue, contamination of heavy metals, so traceability is a serious issue. It’s not only about nutrition but food safety, and that needs to be regulated."

Thirdly, the director general said poor infrastructure in areas such as roads, cooling facilities and electricity was preventing people's ability to market fruits and vegetables in urban centers."

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