Annual Report: CIRAD 2008

Economic growth, urbanization and lifestyle changes are altering consumers’ food habits. New public health problems are arising as a result of food-related diseases. Competitiveness, subsector organization and exclusion issues are coming to the forefront as the agrifood sector evolves. Food security is thus a major challenge of our time, with the spotlight being placed on the healthiness, practical features of processed products, origin, environmental and social conditions of food production and trade.

Following the food crises that occurred in conjunction with the sharp increase in staple produce prices in 2008, the French government put forward a proposal to set up a global partnership for agriculture and food security. CIRAD was associated with this initiative and marshalled its expertise to conduct various analyses to interpret the situation, assess the impacts and gain insight into the mechanisms underlying agrifood markets and their economies. A model developed in collaboration with INRA proved effective in this task—it reproduces the crisis scenario according to the ”natural” functioning of recently deregulated markets. This model showed that losses due to market volatility were greater than gains achieved through enhanced use of global resources due to market liberalization.

CIRAD, by designing crop management sequences tailored to the constraints facing farmers in developing countries, is constantly striving to contribute to the production and marketing of good healthy foods. Promoting local produce on domestic and export markets is a key challenge. A CIRAD team thus used a model which showed that ripe mango quality could be predicted on the basis of the growing conditions, harvest stage and fruit storage methods. This is an essential tool for improving marketed produce quality and farmers’ income. As another example, what alternatives are there to antibiotics that are massively used in aquaculture to control infectious diseases? Malagasy essential oils were found to have interesting antimicrobial properties that could prevent the development of resistant bacterial strains, thus reducing consumer health risks.

In the field of technology innovation, it is now crucial to integrate all cost and quality constraints in order to strike a balance between technical processing performance, subsector competitiveness and food security, while also fulfilling consumers’ taste expectations.