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The Cancún accords

I searched various news websites in vain for the text of what was agreed at Cancún. I eventually found them for download from the UNFCC. The text is dry and technical, but the document on 'Long Term Cooperative Actions' does contain some useful results:

1. Developing countries commit to emissions reductions in principle, to having them verified if they are funded by others and to
2. The funding commitment of $30b by 2012 is reaffirmed with a plea to make it specific and start spending it
3. REDD+ gets the green light, with safeguards to make sure that developing countries are in charge of the process, emissions reductions are verified and indigenous peoples consulted and protected. No doubt we will continue quibbling about the details, but now we can do so on the basis of funded pilot programs and research rather than speculation
4. Adaptation is given higher priority and actions are promised to sort out the funding for it, which in my experience is both slow and insufficient.

There are also some honest admissions: first, that the targets and commitments are still way too low and second that little of the money promised at Copenhagen has materialised so far. Maybe most worrying is that some developed countries now want to abandon even the pathetic commitments they made at Kyoto, which makes the chances of getting another legally binding deal look slim. (Japan? Seriously?)

Overall, a disappointing conclusion to another year of talking while the world warms, but a baby step in the right direction and an impressive achievement by the Mexican hosts to get anything at all. I am more convinced than ever that countries and cities need to move faster and that it is in our economic self-interest, even before the environmental consequences are taken into account, to do so, even if others don't.

Is anyone going to Cancun?

I am not - it's too far for someone who purports to care about climate change and with most of Europe under snow I probably wouldn't make it over anyway.

For anyone who does head to Cancun, though, I would recommend this article in China Daily by Bruce Au and Thomas Hale (disclaimer: Bruce is a friend, but I had nothing to do with the article!). Their point is a an interesting variation on the "let the willing countries and cities get on with it" argument: namely, that there are willing cities and industries in China whom we would do well to engage in whatever global efforts we can, while governments fiddle and the US Congress contemplates the abyss.

Meanwhile, has anyone worked out what North Korea's emissions are?

Private investment in African agriculture

I have been trying to estimate how much private investment is going into African agriculture. I can't find a comprehensive source, but on the private equity side, Reuters has a decent summary of private financial flows into agriculture.

The flows from institutional investors - sovereign wealth funds and the like - seem harder to track. I suspect that some small-scale investment by Chinese farmers is also dipping below the radar. This article in the People's Daily provides an interesting clue: 70% of Chinese investment in Africa is by private companies. However, I'm not sure I trust their numbers: can there really be only $32.3m of Chinese investments in Africa? Per day perhaps?

Theories of development and the World Bank's land report

Two long, fascinating pieces caught my eye today.

The first is by Owen Barder on three theories of development (a propos the MDG summit): a 'big heave' story, a 'improve accountability' story and one that focuses on inequality. The central insight of the last theory is that enormous poverty remains in fast-growing countries like India - and may even remain, if the China example is a guide, when it is a middle-income country. I was astonished recently to discover that malnutrition rates in much of India, especially the eastern states, are as bad as the worst parts of Africa: the Green Revolution and general lack of armed conflict notwithstanding. Does this contradict Amartya Sen's point that democracies do not allow famine? No - these are not famines. They appear to be chronic, underlying malnutrition, in years of good harvests and bad.

The second is a write-up of the World Bank's new report on "Rising Global Interest in Farmland". It tries to be an even-handed review of land grabs. Their press release is neutral, cautious even, simply noting that the surge in large land deals, especially in developing countries, reported in 2008 has continued unabated. The Financial Times interprets the same as "World Bank backs farmland investment". In reality, many of the early deals have been disappointing to all concerned: governments, investors and local residents. The Bank reckons a code of conduct with seven principles (transparency, fair compensation, etc) will do the trick. I like the principles, but I doubt they will be enough: enforcement will be key and when the land is remote and its natural owners weak, it will be difficult for governments to resist the pressure to flog it to the highest bidder.

Two things surprised me in the Bank report. One, the yield gap in African agriculture is just as great in densely populated countries like Rwanda and Malawi as in thinly populated ones like Sudan or Mozambique. How can this be? Either there is little or no value assigned to non-agricultural land (as forest, fallow or pasture), so farmers prefer to clear land over intensifying; or intensification is technically too difficult. The latter seems unlikely, since densely inhabited regions of Asia (Java, southern China) have farmed intensively for centuries. So if high-intensity agricultural techniques (as simple as legume rotations and human or animal manure) have existed for so long, why have they been so slow to spread in Africa?

Two, while it is well known that 70% of the increase in agricultural production since 1961 has come from yield increases, it came as a surprise to me that two-thirds of the land expansion (concentrated in Latin America, South-East Asia and Africa) came from smallholder farmers moving into new areas. The huge soya farms of Brazil or palm oil plantations in Indonesia are quantitatively less important than millions of smallholder rice growers in Myanmar or Thailand clearing forest or maize growers in Zambia converting pasture. Do the land grabs mark a shift in this trend away from smallholders to large commercial estates? Or could those estates become the hubs of a mixed farming model in which smallholders follow their lead? If large farms help seed smaller ones, the land expansion might become an attractive development path.

Mapping ethnic segregation and hubs of creativity

I just got back from a great trip to the US that left me feeling upbeat about life but downbeat about the US, at least in the medium term. One other consequence of my trip is a resolution to put up more frequent blog posts.

So here are two US-related snippets that caught my eye today. The first is a fascinating set of maps showing ethnic segregation in major US cities. Wonder why all your friends seem to live in the same part of north-west DC, central Boston or Manhattan? Because they really do all live there. Red is white, blue black, orange Hispanic and green Asian, are based on self-identification in the 2000 census, so are somewhat out of date (stand up Columbia Heights). Salt Lake City is 100% red, while you can actually see the city boundaries of Detroit.  Most interesting to me are the spots of diversity among the seas of red and blue: Cambridge, Hyde Park, most of Brooklyn, the Bay Area. While the macro-picture is of socio-economic segregation, there are countless neighbourhoods that are mixed in unpredictable ways - not all of them around colleges. Rather than bemoan the segregation, shouldn't we look at the exceptions and figure out if they work and why? While we're at it, is Europe is really so much better. I realize there are legal and practical obstacles to replicating this analysis for Paris or Berlin, but I wonder if anyone has tried doing it informally?

The second is a slightly less obvious piece of analysis on density hubs. This seems to say that the most human capital and creativity (as measured by educated people, patents, etc) seems to cluster in a small number of mostly coastal cities. The trend probably isn't surprising, the magnitude is. I am also surprised at the outliers and the cities that are left out. Ann Arbor is a notable hot spot; but where are tech hubs like Raleigh-Durham or Austin? Maybe they are 11 and 12.

Again, I'd love to know how this compares for Europe. My hunch is that there has been bunching over time. Compared with, say, the 1950s, there is probably a greater preponderance of bankers in London, students in Bologna and bureaucrats in Brussels than there were, as the best-educated Europeans are more mobile than they used to be and more inclined to move in search of like-minded people, interesting work and excitement.

Could the US overtake Europe on climate change?

I'm beginning to think the US may get its climate change act together sooner than Europe. This op-ed from the NY Times suggests that notwithstanding the poor show at Copenhagen and the cold winter, most Americans believe that climate change is happening and we need to do something about it. Sounds obvious, but a relief to know. Maybe the terrible oil leak in the Gulf, which has blown up the administration's "drill plus energy bill" tactic, could be a force for good in the long run, by reminding everyone what unpleasant stuff oil is.

In Europe, on the other hand, we may be losing it a bit. Especially the British (though I suspect this is mostly because British people enjoy being contrary for the sake of it). Fortunately the EU Commission is now proposing a 30% cut in our emissions irrespective of what the rest of the world does, when originally we only wanted to cut by 20%. Maybe if we can pass that and start acting on it we'll get taken seriously again. In the meantime, we can carry on selling solar technology to the rest of the world. A trip to Germany last weekend reminded me just how mainstream solar has become, if the subsidies are right. See picture above.

Collier versus Lovelock

Two contrasting points of view on climate change and sustainability this week from two very different academics: Paul Collier and James Lovelock.

Last week, Professor Paul Collier spoke at the LSE about his new book: The Plundered Planet. I bought the book, but haven't read it yet. It sounded like a development economist's belated recognition that the earth may have a carrying capacity, that we may be exceeding that carrying capacity and that this may be a problem for future generations. He was careful not to describe himself as an environmentalist - indeed, he was keen to stress that his analysis would upset many environmentalists - but rather as having grasped that unsustainable use of resources is both unfair and inefficient. In effect, by 'plundering' we are stealing both from other people and future generations who have a claim to their benefits.

Collier's insight may seem banal to anyone who has been working on climate change, agriculture or environmental questions - but some of the conclusion bear closer examination. First, natural resources should belong to countries, NOT local residents who are entitled to compensation, but no more. (Good luck explaining that in the Niger delta). Second, sharing the resources with future generations doesn't imply keeping it unchanged, but ensuring that the BENEFIT is shared equally. So if you convert a patch of forest to farmland, that's OK as long as there is an income stream for future generations (and an offsetting emissions reduction somewhere else).

A week later, I saw James Lovelock speak at the Hay-on-Wye book festival. It was less of a presentation, more of a chat: but like Collier, he managed to infuriate the environmentalists by pleading for urgent investment in nuclear power and admitting that we may be too late to stop serious climate change. There is a paradox here. His Gaia theory, which describes the self-equilibrating interaction between the earth's ecosystems and its atmosphere, predicts that life will eventually adjust to climate change, through a combination of adaptation and corrective feedback. So life, in some form, will survive whatever we throw at the system. Our particular species need not, however. Or at least, not in our present number or form. Lovelock can sound blasé when describing a future in which we have all adapted - but he describes something that most of us would find disastrous: namely, a population crash to below one billion, drastic changes to food and lifestyles, no more skiing in winter.

To give both thinkers credit, I suppose I should read their books as well as go to their talks. Meanwhile here is a good review of Lovelock's talk and Hay in general from John Harris in the Guardian and a not so good review of Collier's previous book, the Bottom Billion.

Agriculture links to think about

1. Is the world going to run out of phosphorus? (It's in all our bones and puts the P into NPK fertiliser). Answer: Probably not for 100 years, but we should look for supply shortages now and start recycling it before we get another disastrous spike in fertiliser prices.

2. 25 stories on African agriculture. Haven't read them all, but good news in no. 18 (Zimbabwe grows more maize), bad news for Kenyan horticulture in no. 9 (is that a climate-compatible industry?). The DR Congo award for "world ignores ongoing disaster" goes to no. 12 on Lake Chad drying up.

3. Interesting post on what to eat by a soil scientist. She has a few rules of thumb which she readily admits are imperfect and inconsistent and - because the budget constraint usually binds for grad students - "I can't always decide whether the cost of organics reflects the true cost of the food or whether I'm paying for the word 'organic'."

My rules of thumb are also imperfect and inconsistent: no beef, other meat or fish every other day not every day, seasonal fruit and vegetables because they taste better anyway. Organic milk, fruit and vegetables yes, free range eggs always BUT conventional wheat/rice/maize (where I think the yield benefit of conventional techniques outweighs the biodiversity loss - i.e., I'd rather have a factory farm next to the Amazon than no factory farms and no Amazon). Do I stick to them religiously? No. Do I try? Yes. Am I a hypocrite? Yes and so are you. If we were honest we'd all eat beans.

Thank you Sarah Holmes, Sue Murray and Etienne Pollard for pointing these out!

Eight ways the world should be spending its money

The MIT Poverty Action Lab has a fantastically simple, compelling list of seven ways to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. I'm going to print these and put them in my wallet.

My favourite finding is still that deworming kids in Kenya at 50 cents each adds a year to their schooling. It's widely known in the academic community, but not enough outside it (and are there any case studies outside Kenya?).

My nomination for an eighth high-impact way to spend money is REDD: Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation. If done properly this could make a big contribution to carbon emissions cuts and help improve the productivity of smallholder agriculture at the same time. I have high hopes that this will form part of whatever deal emerges at Copenhagen; paradoxically, it may be easier to get it through if the rest of the summit is a flop, because the world will be desperate for some good news (though beware countries who think they can buy their way out of climate change on the cheap. We still has to replace those coal fired power stations with something better) . See here for a new Economist article about it.

What doesn't make the list? Stimulus packages, the war in Afghanistan and bank bail-outs. Personally, I think all three of the above are necessary to avert worse disasters (after all a global economic collapse would also cut the amount we can spend on development) but the ease with which we shovel vast amounts of money down the banks' throats is still staggering.

Liberte, egalite et . . Francafrique

Depressing article from NY Times on French quasi-colonial policy in Africa. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

(I'm not being smug: US and UK aren't much better. Corrupt politicians not given US visas - unless they have oil and a villa in Malibu, of course)

Climate change in Australia vs healthcare in the US

I’ve spent the last month in Australia, working on the role of forests in combating climate change. It’s hard to avoid noticing that Australia is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide per head. Relying on coal for power and an energy-intensive lifestyle lead to emissions of 27 tonnes per person per year, higher even than the US. Australians have dragged their feet over climate change for years: they only signed the Kyoto Protocol in 2008 and while Prime Minister Kevin Rudd travels the world drumming up support for ‘global deal’, at home he is struggling to force through Australia’s first ever emissions trading scheme without watering it down to meaninglessness. Large chunks of the Liberal Party are oppose any kind of emissions trading and some of them happily proclaim they “don’t believe” in climate change.

There is a paradox here. Australians are among the most ecologically stressed people in the world. Every year, wild bushfires lay waste to coastal forests, but the fires in Victoria last year were the worst in living memory. The antipodean climate is harsh and unreliable: a decade of drought may be followed by torrential floods as the warm waters of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation wallow back and forth across the Pacific. European invaders cleared swathes of inland forest to make farms and pasture, but much of the thin soil is exhausted and the land has reverted to bush. Even the once-rich agricultural lands of the Murray-Darling basin are being abandoned as there just isn’t enough water to feed the fruits, vines and Adelaide at the same time. So how can any reasonable Australian doubt that climate change is a serious threat to their beautiful country and way of life? After all, most forecasts suggest that a warmer world will exacerbate the fluctuations of their climate even further.

Some of the people who should lose the most from climate change are therefore among its stoutest deniers – while the population of certain European countries, whose idea of a heat wave is a week above 30 degrees, are up in arms. Why this self-defeating short-sightedness? Are the people in the pockets of BHP Billiton?

The healthcare system in the USA is even more perplexing. The strongest opponents of healthcare reform in the US include many who should benefit from it: middle-class white people, whose employee-linked health benefits are more precarious than ever thanks to the recession, mass unemployment and spiralling costs. Almost any American, veterans excepted, risks losing their healthcare if they lose their job. Yet the right spent much of 2009 creating the impression that universal healthcare meant “losing your healthcare” – which is a bit like saying that a programme to end famine will make your family go hungry. I would love to find an unemployed Republican who cannot get insurance her- or himself, but continues to protest against the “government takeover” of healthcare.

Is this behaviour economically explicable? Selfishness does not explain why, in effect, people vote to increase the risk of bushfires or their chances of being undiagnosed with a disease for lack of insurance. Is it short-sightedness, a fear of uncertainty or simply a contrary instinct, one that assumes it is best to the opposite of whatever the government is advising? My current best guess is that it is to do with a long and tangled chain of causation. The link between burning coal in Australia and bush fires is evident, but as long as China opens two new power stations every week, an Australian might be rational in continuing to burn coal, as long as China does. How about Greenpeace stop trying to shut down nuclear power plants and blockade the port of Newcastle, the source of much of China’s coal, instead?

Can biotech cure world hunger?

Last week we learnt that there are now 1 billion hungry people in the world, more than ever, albeit a smaller proportion of the population than in the 1950s. I found this debate from the New York Times a useful guide to how to respond. On the one hand, it would be absurd to condemn millions to malnutrition because we don't like high-tech farming in Europe. On the other hand, genetic modification has delivered very little for poorer countries so far: herbicide-tolerant maize and soybean varieties, yes, but none of the drought-resistant crops that the biotech companies promised.

Beyond the biotech dichotomy, most contributors recognized that the solution to the food crisis will involve a combination of technologies, including some that don't exist yet. High-input farming depends on natural gas, which won't be around forever; water is running short in many grain-growing regions; a strictly organic world food system would be a disaster for forests, but many techniques from organic farming are useful and should be spread. It would probably help if the NGOs and corporations stopped insulting each other and worked together for a change.

If I could contribute to the debate, it would be on prices and the signals they send. High food prices are in general a disaster for development, but we need higher prices for meat, fish and air-freighted vegetables for richer people (not just rich countries) to change their destructive eating habits. We need to tax water and energy use in such a way that basic grains and vegetables are cheap enough for everyone, but beef becomes an expensive luxury for the Americas, Europe and Australia just as it is for the rest of the world. A serious carbon tax would stop us agonising between strawberries grown in Dutch greenhouses or flown from Kenyan orchards: they will be too expensive to eat anytime they're not in season.

In the absence of carbon and water taxes, more information can help: just publishing the emissions associated with beef burgers led 20% of diners to switch to chicken or the veggie option, according to this photo essay. Ultimately, though, the most powerful information is provided by the price.

Measuring economic growth from outer space

I love the satellite picture of the world at night - the one where Europe and America are seas of light, North Korea is invisible and the only lights visible in much of Africa are in South Africa and the oil flares in the Gulf of Guinea. Obviously, there is a strong correlation with economic development, or at least people having stuff to do at night.
J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard and Vernon N. Weil at Brown University take this insight a step further: why not use lighting levels to measure changes in development over time? This turns out to be a particularly useful method for countries where statistics are erroneous or missing, for example because of civil war. Governments can manipulate figures, but lighting never lies. Here are the two main findings (also summed up by the Wall Street Journal and Marginal Revolution):

1. Lighting is indeed a proxy for economic development and it goes down as well as up: there are some great pictures of changes in lighting levels in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Whereas Poland experienced economic growth of 56% and an increase in lighting of 80%, neighbouring Ukraine saw its economic activity decline by 35% and lighting fall by 47%.

2. Increases in agricultural productivity (from high rainfall years)raise economic activity and hence lighting in nearby cities. Are these farmers rushing to sell their goods at the market, buy TVs with the earnings or simply celebrating their good fortune at the bar?

I'd love to see some further work on this data set. One question I have is whether the data might be distorted by certain high-light activities: mining, for example, or oil refining. This might matter for, say, DR Congo, where light levels seemed to increase in the 1990s, in the middle of a devastating civil war. I'd also like to see the impact of power cuts, such as California experienced a few years ago or South Africa in 2008. Most power cuts don't last long enough to show up in GDP figures, but their short-run effect might be severe: think of what happened in Europe this January when Gazprom turned the heating off. Next time that happens, we might be able to measure its effect from outer space.

Climate change migrants in Ghana

When you travel north in Ghana, the climate becomes drier and the villages poorer, until you end up in the Upper East and Upper West regions - friendly, slow-moving places, dry for most of the year and becoming more so. In other words, exactly the sorts of places where you would expect climate change-related migration to begin.

Sam Knight in the Financial Times tries to unpick the climate change migration debate. Is climate change migration something entirely new, or merely a continuation of existing trends? It looks like the numbers will be greater than we have been used (the Stern review suggests anything between 200 and 500 million people over the next 50 years), but that doesn't mean that starving farmers from Burkina Faso or Bangladesh will be pitching up in European capitals. More likely, the children of the rural poor will migrate to coastal cities and the educated youth of the capitals will migrate to richer countries, as they do now.

So what can we do about it? Beyond the obvious priority of containing climate change, I can think of two helpful policies:

1. Invest in agriculture in vulnerable areas - whether it's drought-resistant seeds, irrigation, new kinds of crops that reduce soil erosion or thrive in drier (or more volatile) climates
2. Improve transport links between coastal and inland regions: that facilitates seasonal migration, which keeps remote areas alive through remittances and periodic visits. It will also bring down the cost of living and make it easier for people in the arid areas to sell whatever they grow to richer urban consumers

On the other hand, these two are unlikely to work:
1. Trying to restrict migration - through passports, ID cards, quotas, . People will still move, only they will pay more for it and people traffickers will collect the difference
2. Bribing people to stay at home through welfare payments, social services, etc. Investing in health and education in rural areas is a great area, but it's more likely to promote migration than discourage it

Climate-induced migration is nothing new: we've been at it since the Sahara was green. It may be that the last few millennia were the abnormality and human migration patterns will end up looking more like they did before we invented agriculture.

Sustainable cocoa isn't all it seems

The movement to certify cocoa has taken two steps forward in recent months. Consider these two stories:

1. Mars, which is the world's largest end-user buyer of cocoa, has promised to certify that all its cocoa will come from sustainable sources by 2020. Unfortunately, this article from the Financial Times does not tell us what a 'sustainable source' is, how it will be certified or why it will take over 10 years to complete the process. However, they do hint at the root of the problems of the cocoa sector: very low yields in West Africa, where two-thirds of the world's cocoa comes from. Mars seems to understand that since there is little primary forest left to cut down in Ghana or Côte d'Ivoire, the only way to increase cocoa production is to apply inputs to existing trees and replant them with higher-yielding varieties.

2. Cadbury, the UK's best-selling chocolate maker, has announced all its Dairy Milk bars will be certified 'Fair Trade' by the middle of 2009. The BBC reports this will mean tripling the volume of Fair Trade cocoa it buys from Ghana, to 15,000 tonnes. The more detailed press release points out that they are no longer relying just on Ghana's well-established 'Kuapa Kokoo' cooperative, but will help set up farmers' groups and cooperatives in other parts of the country.

Both Mars and Cadbury promise that chocolate prices won't rise, while promising higher farmgate prices for the cocoa growers. How can they do this without squeezing their profit margins? I can think of two ways. First, certified cocoa has been expensive in the past because it was a niche product. If certification becomes the standard, the economies of scale may make it cheaper to operate the tracing systems, audits and inspections required for certification. Two, Fair Trade (which Cadbury backs, but Mars doesn't) guarantees a minimum price to farmers, but when cocoa prices are as high as they are now, there is no difference between Fair Trade and the world market price. (There is a small 'bonus' for Fair Trade growers, but it's tiny and usually given to the cooperative for community projects, rather than individual farmers).

Will these schemes help cocoa farmers, then? I'd like to see more details of what Mars is planning, but there are some benefits. If certification works, it will make the supply chain more efficient and thus cut out some of the profits made by middlemen. If Fair Trade works, it will reduce the risk of a sudden crash in cocoa prices leaving farmers worse off. Neither of these schemes will do much to reduce poverty in cocoa-growing communities, however. To increase their income, they will need to raise productivity. Higher productivity will come from growing more and better cocoa on the same land, with higher-yielding trees and more inputs including fertiliser (sorry). You can do this through subsidised credit and government- or private-sector led replanting schemes; certification and higher prices alone will not be enough.

Interesting and disturbing food and agriculture news

First, this thoughtful number from Senegal, on the see-saw of global price prices.

Second, a mysterious plague of worms riddles Liberia. There is still no certainty on what they are and many upcountry farmers feel frightened and abandoned - but even though the spray teams from the Ministry of Agriculture come late, at least there are spray teams.

Third, another story on middle income countries buying food through barter deals. This time last year, it was because food was too expensive. This year, food is cheap, but they can't get credit to pay for it.

Cocoa prices hit a 'record high' - or do they?

The Financial Times reports a sudden increase in the cocoa price, as bad weather and black pod disease lead to lower-than-expected deliveries to ports in Cote d'Ivoire. Good news for cocoa farmers, if the price spike is passed onto them. My concern is, it won't be - the traders will take a profit and the underlying conditions that led to the price spike will return. In the medium term, prices are likely to fall anyway, as global demand for chocolate (and especially high-quality chocolate, such as that coming from Latin America and Ghana) flattens after years of steady increases. (See this from the same paper).

Viewed over the last 15 years, the current price of £1,820 per tonne certainly looks impressive:

















However, the current price may be less impressive than it looks, for two reasons. First, this chart reveals a similar spike in 2002 (presumably a result of the civil war in Côte d'Ivoire) that was followed by a 50% drop in prices and a 5-year slump. That would now equate to a price of around £900. Second, cocoa futures are priced in pounds, but the biggest cocoa producers and consumers use euros. Since the pound's value has declined from around €1.40 a year ago to €1.10 today, a cocoa price of £1,800 today is equivalent to around £1,400 a year ago - namely €2,000. The effective export price in Côte d'Ivoire, whose currency is tied to the euro, is some 10%-15% lower now than in July, when cocoa prices peaked at £1,700 (then €2,200 or $3,000).

In the meantime, what might be the effect of cocoa prices on the second round of Ghana's presidential elections, scheduled for 28 December? Probably very little, since the Cocobod fixed its annual price in August. But with only a percentage point between the two candidates, small psychological factors could make the difference. To all friends in Ghana and friends of Ghana, I wish you a peaceful Christmas and an even more peaceful election.

What to do about Rwanda?

Right now, if you're in development in Britain or America, Rwanda is a good place to be. Please note I'm not talking about economic growth or political stability (though it has both of those), but things like NGO presence, media attention, politicians visiting to show they care. If you have ever read accounts of the Rwandan genocide, or remember those dark days in 1994, Rwanda's peaceful reconstruction is surely something to celebrate. It even has the ultimate capitalist accolade: a business-school case study.

Unfortunately, there is a dark side to Rwanda: its role in the never-ending conflict in Eastern Congo. This disturbing account comes from the New York Times. Notice that the Rwandan officials do not deny that Rwandan citizens are crossing into DRC to fight, merely that their government is encouraging or paying them. But then who needs pay when mineral riches await?

I know very little about Congo and would not dare to take sides or argue that Rwanda's fears about Hutu extremists hiting in the jungle are unjustified. But I still feel wary about a country celebrated as a model of enlightended leadership in a troubled region intervening in its neighbour's affairs militarily. Yes, Congo is a threat to regional stability; yes, the Congolese government has failed to gain control of Eastern Congo or disarm the Hutu militia; but that is still not a pretext for unilateral military intervention, even by proxy. (As this guy, or this one, could tell their Rwandan friends).

It may suit Western governments to continue supporting President Kagame's regime (except for France); it may well be the best regime for Rwandans as well. But let's not allow the West's failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide become a pretext for inaction in the Congo, or get caught up in some stupid neo-colonial rivalry. We need a united approach and we need it now.

Rich countries buy up agricultural land: who benefits?

I'm back from an exhilirating few weeks on the Obama campaign and haven't thought, talked or read about much else for the last month or so. But as the President-elect's team takes shape and the economic news has settled into a consistently - but predictably - gloomy pattern, I'm trying to find out what happened to some of the big issues from earlier in the year.

One problem that hasn't gone away is the global food crisis. The prices of key commodities may have begun falling, but the structural factors that led to their sustained increase over the last few years haven't gone away. A timely article from the Guardian sheds light on the practice of small, rich countries buying land in large, poor ones to safeguard their future supply of food.

The Guardian journalists do not hide their distaste for the deals, in which cash-hungry governments from Laos to Malaysia to Ukraine sell land to investors from Korea, Abu Dhabi, China and Saudi Arabia to grow food on a large scale. For smallholders who are turfed off their land, or don't have access to the advanced technology of the commercial farms, it's certainly a raw deal. But could there be a benefit to these deals that goes beyond food security for a few small countries?

In principle, there could be. Here is where the land is being bought. If the effect of introducing commercial agriculture to Sudan and Madagascar is a dramatic increase in productivity, the global supply of staple crops like rice and maize will increase and their price will fall. (The rice grown in Madagascar may go straight to South Korea, but South Korea will be able to reduce its imports from other countries commensurately). This could be good news for urban Malagasies, though not for the rural (rice-growing) majority.

A second benefit might come from technological spillovers. Small farmers in Africa and South-East Asia aren't an attractive market for new seed varieties or fertilizer, but large commercial farmers could be. I realize these spillovers are difficult to capture in practice, but surely having more commercial agridealers would be of benefit to everyone.

I don't want to suggest that these deals are good for everyone: some poor people will probably lose their land, the productivity gains may not be spectacular and the global price effect will be too small to notice. I just think we should look at each deal on its merits. Like the Chinese infrastructure deals, some are better than others. Like the Chinese infrastructure deals, we need more research into which ones.