世界粮食奖基金会前主席:疫情或对全球粮食生产酿成灾难性影响
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世界粮食奖基金会前主席:疫情或对全球粮食生产酿成灾难性影响

若发生粮食危机,非洲将受严重冲击。

春耕时节农民却无法务农,大批农产品加工厂开不了工,多国暂停大米、小麦等口粮出口……

疫情之下,全球粮食安全似已隐隐亮起红灯。

若粮食危机爆发,哪些国家将最先倒下?如何避免危机?

针对这些问题,世界粮食奖基金会前主席肯尼斯·奎因近日接受了中新社国是直通车专访。

世界粮食奖,国际上在农业领域方面的最高荣誉,由诺贝尔和平奖获得者美国人诺曼·博洛格博士1986年设立,每年由总部在美国艾奥瓦州得梅因市的世界粮食奖基金会颁发一次,目的是奖励那些“为人类提供营养丰富、数量充足的粮食作出突出贡献的个人”,得奖者可获得250,000美元。中国科学家何康、袁隆平、崔振岭先后获此殊荣。奎因于2019年底卸任该基金会主席。

国是直通车:受疫情影响,现在越来越多国家开始限制粮食出口。您认为全球会爆发粮食危机吗?

奎因新冠肺炎疫情暴发还不到6个月,要判断它蔓延到农村地区的程度还为时尚早。截至目前,疫情引发的死亡病例还主要集中在人口稠密的城市而不是农村。在美国,以农业为主的州,比如我所在的爱荷华州,确诊病例要比纽约和新泽西州少得多。而且绝大多数都在大一点的城市里。

但是,作为一个曾经密切跟踪过2008年国际金融危机引发的全球粮食危机,以及2014年埃博拉疫情的人,我认为新冠肺炎病毒对全球粮食安全的影响需要密切关注。欧美发达国家的人口结构或许有助于防止病毒蔓延到人口相对较少的农村地区,但在非洲和南亚国家,在农村从事种植业的人口比例要高得多,这也许会给病毒深入到发展中国家农村地区大开方便之门。

国是直通车:如果粮食危机真的爆发,哪些国家或地区可能最为脆弱?

奎因:考虑到这种病毒的高传染性,当年埃博拉在利比里亚和塞拉利昂蔓延造成的重大冲击可能重演,而且传播范围更加广泛,有可能席卷非洲,造成大批人死亡,并对粮食生产酿成灾难性的影响。

直到今天,我依然记得利比里亚农业部部长佛罗伦斯•切诺韦斯(Florence Chenoweth)在2014年世界粮食奖基金会举办的一个研讨会上那令人痛心的发言。她谈到了埃博拉是怎样横扫这个国家,给农民和农场工人带来灭顶之灾的。她说,为了重建这个国家的农业系统所付出的大量努力,在短短几周内就因为埃博拉完全反转,化为乌有。

当年,得益于国际社会的巨大努力,埃博拉被遏制了。但是,要遏制新冠肺炎病毒也许更难。如果这股祸水在大批非洲国家的农村地区肆意横流,可能会造成难以想象的重大伤亡,对农业生产造成毁灭性打击。

在这种情况下,粮食运输体系可能会遭受更大压力,导致情况进一步恶化。由此导致的城市粮食短缺反过来会催生政治动荡和潜在的暴力事件,正如2008年全球粮食价格危机人们所经历的一样。

国是直通车:要避免这样的情况出现,您认为当务之急是什么?

奎因:现在不少非洲国家已经在加紧准备,防范新冠肺炎病毒在这片大陆上广泛传播。在当前这种充满不确定性的情况下,国际社会也需要进一步发挥作用,支持非洲。

如同世界银行原行长佐利克处理2008年全球粮食价格危机时那样,现在积极发挥国际领导力也是很重要的。屈冬玉,联合国粮食及农业组织(FAO)总干事,他正处在这样一个位置上。此外,中美两国政府也应当协调合作,共享疫情防控经验,为帮助非洲农业应对疫情冲击提供支持。

发达国家现在正全神贯注应对新冠肺炎病毒对本国人口生命健康造成的威胁。不过,考虑到病毒给全球粮食体系可能造成的破坏,以及非洲、印度、东亚几十亿人口粮食安全将因此受到的影响,现在是紧急作出计划并采取措施应对的时候了。

中国、美国与非洲能否共同努力,有效应对新冠肺炎病毒以及未来可能威胁我们整个星球的其他传染病,将是我们能不能成功应对人类历史上这场最大挑战的关键。

以下为英语答问原文:

TopNewsExpress: Affected by the epidemic,more and morecountries are beginning to restrict grain exports. Do you think this will leadto a global food supply crisis?

Kenneth M. Quinn: Since the Coronavirus pandemic is lessthan six months old, it is still too early to know with certainty just howdeeply it may spread into rural areas. Thus far, it has largely been an urbanphenomenon causing deaths mostly in densely packed cities. In the UnitedStates, farming states, such as Iowa where I live, still have very limitednumbers of cases of Covid-19 compared to metropolitan areas of New York and NewJersey. And most cases in Iowa are in larger cities.

Nonetheless, having closely followed the2008 global food price crisis and the Ebola epidemic in 2014, I believe thereis significant reason to be concerned about the ultimate impact of Covid-19 onglobal food security. While the population structure of European and Americandeveloped societies may keep the virus from penetrating more lowly populatedrural areas, the much larger percentage of the populations of African and SouthAsian countries that are located and involved in rural farming may facilitatethe spread of the disease deep into the countryside of developing countries.

TopNewsExpress: which countries do you think will sufferthe most from the crisis?

Kenneth M. Quinn: Given the apparent high contagiousness ofthe virus, it is possible that the devastation wrought by Ebola in Liberia andSierra Leone could be replicated by the Coronavirus, but across a much broaderswath of Africa with large numbers of fatalities and disastrous implicationsfor food production.

I still recall the extremely painfuldescription given by Florence Chenoweth, the former Liberian Minister ofAgriculture, at the 2014 World Food Prize symposium about how Ebola literallywiped out the farmers and farm workers in multiple villages across thatcountry. She said that a decade of effort to restore the country's agriculturalsystem had been completely reversed in just a few weeks. IFAD President KanayoNwanze powerfully reinforced her testimony about the potential for similarcatastrophic results in other African countries.

With significant international efforts,Ebola was halted. Coronavirus, however, may be more difficult to bring undercontrol. If this pernicious scourge were to spread broadly throughout ruralareas in multiple African countries, it could have an unimaginably high loss oflife and devastating impact on food production. In such a situation, the foodtransportation system could simultaneously become severely strained furtherexacerbating the situation. The resulting food shortages in urban areas couldin turn lead to political upheaval and potential violence, just as was the casein 2008 during the global food price crisis.

TopNewsExpress: What should countries do now to avoidsuch a crisis?

Kenneth M. Quinn: Africa is preparing to mitigate thepotential for disaster when Coronavirus reaches a broad level of penetration ofthe continent.

In this precarious situation, there is animportant role for the international community to become significantly involvedin supporting such African efforts. Just as World Bank president RobertZoellick was at the forefront of dealing with the 2008 global food pricecrisis, so now there are important roles for international leadership. QuDongyu, the new Director General of the UN-FAO is well placed to do this. Thereis also a significant opportunity for US and Chinese government officials tocoordinate and work together sharing experiences about confronting the diseaseand providing support to programs to help sustain African agriculture.

While developed countries areunderstandably pre-occupied with the short term health threat to their ownpopulations from Covid-19, given the potential disruption to the global foodsystem and the concomitant implications for the food security for billions ofpeople in Africa, India and South Asia, urgent planning needs to be going onnow.

AnAfrican- Chinese-U.S. joint endeavor to develop the most effective responses toCovid-19 as well as to any other future pandemic that might threaten ourplanet, would be an essential element in determining whether we succeed inmeeting this greatest challenge in human history.

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