Key Takeaways
- For BRICS+, the stakes are existential because hunger and climate vulnerability are clear domestic challenges, not distant risks. Investments in climate-resilient, regionally adapted crop research would provide self-insurance and also help stabilize neighboring fragile states, where food insecurity drives migration.
- The returns to investments will be greatest if they are accompanied by science-based regulatory reforms. Governments of economies wary of biotechnology should educate the public and reform regulations to reap the benefits of advanced agricultural technologies.
- BRICS+ have the scientific know-how, institutional capacity, and capital to underwrite a massive increase in public agricultural R&D funding. Doing so would be an opportunity to demonstrate that they are capable of providing global leadership.
Body
Cuts to agricultural development assistance and food aid by the United States and other advanced economies are creating a global vacuum just as climate change and conflict drive global hunger up. Many food-insecure developing economies with significant hunger lack the resources to self-finance agricultural research and development (R&D) and have had to depend increasingly on themselves—and one another—to meet rising food needs. Hendrix argues that the BRICS+ economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia—are well positioned to fill the world’s food security gap.
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