Presenting our technical paper on repurposing subsidies to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development
On the 22nd November 2022 the Global Panel held a meeting at the House of Lords, Westminster, hosted by Lord Ewen Cameron of Dillington. Prof Marco Springmann, co-author, presented the findings from our technical paper, Exploring Potential Benefits of Repurposing Agricultural Subsidies in sub-Saharan Africa, which aims to inform the debate around rebalancing and repurposing agricultural subsidies and fiscal resources.
A question-and-answer panel followed Prof Spingmann’s presentation where attendees in the room posed questions to Prof Springmann, Sir John Beddington and Helen Walls, Associate Professor of Global Health and Food Systems, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
A group of around 35 attended this event, which included professionals from LSHTM, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Greenwich University, DEFRA, Chatham House, FCDO, FAIRR, Imperial College London and GAIN.
To create this paper, scenarios in which sub-Saharan Africa can meet their goal of increasing national spending on agriculture were analysed and found predicted changes in production, economic outcomes, and avoidable deaths, with promising results for policy makers. For example, increasing subsidies, especially for horticultural products could increase their production and consumption and thereby reduce dietary risks and greenhouse gas emissions, whilst also increasing agricultural incomes.
The Global Panel’s next steps are to disseminate the findings with partners in sub-Saharan Africa which this paper focuses on. It is hoped that these findings will encourage further research into how to best implement the results into policy-based interventions.