Ban calls for investment in food production, distribution
Written by Kabanda Chulu
Saturday, October 17, 2009 1:15:17 AM
UNITED Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon yesterday said there is urgent need for attention to respond to the needs of the hungry by ensuring adequate political and financial support for emergency food assistance.
And European Commissioner for development and humanitarian aid Karel De Gucht has said that food insecurity is posing a serious threat to achieving all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of ending abject poverty by 2015.
Commenting on the 2009 World Food Day whose theme is ‘achieving food security in times of crisis’, Ban stated that challenges of food security demand multilateral commitment, creativity and leadership.
“At this time of crisis, I encourage all nations to pursue coordinated and comprehensive strategies for agricultural development and effective social protection so that vulnerable people can get the food they need for nutritional security and well being,” Ban stated.
“Throughout the developing world, food prices remain stubbornly high. We must respond to the needs of the hungry by ensuring adequate political and financial support for emergency food assistance and the 2009 theme, emphasises the need for even greater efforts to respect the dignity of those affected by poverty and hunger and to support the committed women and men who often risk their lives to deliver help.”
He stated that food and nutritional security were the foundations of decent life, sound education and the achievement of the MDGs.
“Over the past two years, volatile food prices, the economic crises, climate change and conflict have led to a dramatic and unacceptable rise in the number of people who cannot rely on getting the food they need to live, work and thrive hence the need to invest in food production and distribution,” stated Ban.
And De Gucht stated that the World Food Day must serve to remind people about doing something to prevent more than a billion people from going hungry.
“To meet the challenge, the EU's 1 billion euros food facility is delivering fast and tangible results by giving small-scale farmers across developing countries the seeds and fertilisers needed to boost their agricultural production,” stated De Gucht.
“We will build on the experience we have gained in implementing the food facility to ensure the new pledge made at the G8 summit in L’Aquila is just as effective in battling global hunger. More than one billion people in the world are malnourished; that's 15 per cent of all humanity. This figure is on the rise in the wake of the food and financial crises. Food insecurity thus represents a real threat to achieving all the MDGs of ending abject poverty by 2015.”
Labels: BAN KI-MOON, FOOD, WORLD FOOD DAY
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A new approach to Global Food Security and Hunger
Hillary Rodham Clinton - Opinion
Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:56:00 +0000
FOR one billion people around the world, the daily effort to grow, buy, or sell food is the defining struggle of their lives. This matters to them, and to all of us. Consider the daily life of the world’s typical small farmer.
She lives in a rural village in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, or Latin America, and farms a piece of land that she does not own. She rises before dawn and walks miles to collect water. She works all day in a field, sometimes with a baby strapped on her back.
If she’s lucky, drought, blight, or pests don’t destroy her crops, and she raises enough to feed her family. She may even have some left over to sell. But there’s no road to the nearest market and no one there who can afford to buy from her.
Now let’s consider the life of a young man in a crowded city 100 miles from that farmer. He has no job—or a job that pays pennies. He goes to the market—but the food is rotting, or priced beyond reach. He is hungry, and often angry.
She has extra food to sell, and he wants to buy it. But that simple transaction can’t take place because of complex forces beyond their control.
Meeting the challenge of global hunger is at the heart of what we call “food security”—empowering the world’s farmers to sow and harvest plentiful crops, effectively care for livestock or catch fish—and then ensuring that the food they produce reaches people most in need.
Food security is not only about food. It represents the convergence of complex issues: droughts and floods caused by climate change, swings in the global economy that affect food prices and threaten the fate of vital infrastructure projects, and spikes in the price of oil that increase transportation costs.
But food security is all about security. Chronic hunger poses a threat to the stability of governments, societies, and borders. People who are starving or undernourished, have no incomes, and can’t care for their families are left with feelings of hopelessness and despair. That desperation can lead to tension, conflict, and even violence. Since 2007, there have been riots over food in more than 60 countries.
And the failures of farming in many parts of the world—the obstacles that separate that small farmer and that hungry young man—have a powerful impact on the global economy. Farming is the only or primary source of income for more than three-quarters of the world’s poor. When so much of humankind works hard every day but still can’t support their families, the whole world is held back.
The Obama Administration sees chronic hunger as a key priority of our foreign policy. Other countries are joining us in this effort. Major industrialized nations have committed more than $22 billion over three years to spur agriculture-led economic growth. And on September 26, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and I co-hosted a gathering of leaders from more than 130 countries to build international support.
The U.S. approach to food security will be informed by our experience with development. The truth is, we have spent too many years and too much money on development projects that have not yielded lasting results. But we have learned from these efforts. We know that the most effective strategies emanate from those closest to the problems, not foreign governments or institutions thousands of miles away. And we know that development works best when it is seen not as aid but as investment.
With those lessons in mind, our food security initiative will be guided by five principles, which will help us get to the roots of the problem and pursue lasting change.
First, we understand that there is no one-size-fits-all model for agriculture. So we will work with partner countries to create and implement their plans.
Second, we will address the underlying causes of hunger by investing in everything from better seeds to risk-sharing programs to protect small farmers. And since the majority of the world’s farmers are women, it’s critical that our investments in agriculture leverage their ambition and perseverance.
Third, no one entity can eradicate hunger on its own. But if stakeholders work together—coordinating on the country, regional, and global levels—our impact can multiply.
Fourth, multilateral institutions have the reach and resources that extend beyond any one country. By supporting their efforts, we will benefit from their expertise.
Lastly, we pledge long-term commitment and accountability. To prove it, we will invest in monitoring and evaluation tools that will allow the public to see what we have done.
This effort may take years, even decades, before we reach the finish line. But we pledge our full resources and energies.
While we pursue this effort, we will maintain our deep commitment to emergency food assistance, to answer the urgent cry for help when tragedies and disasters take their toll—as is happening now in the Horn of Africa, where drought, crop failures, and civil war have caused the worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years.
Revitalizing global agriculture will not be easy. In fact, it is one of the most ambitious and comprehensive diplomacy and development efforts our country has ever undertaken. But it can be done. It is worth doing. And if we succeed, our future will be more prosperous and more peaceful than our past.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton is the United States Secretary of State.
Labels: HILLARY CLINTON, WORLD FOOD DAY
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World food scarcity and the challenges of climate change and bio energy
Shobha Shukla writes this feature for The Zimbabwe Guardian as the world commemorates World Food Day on 16 October 2008
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:15:00 +0000
‘Rarely has the World Food Day assumed greater meaning than in present times, as rapidly rising food prices risk increasing the number of hungry in the world,’ according to the Food And Agriculture Organization (FAO).
FAO was founded in 1945 on the 16th of October - a day which is observed as World Food Day (WFD) in about 150 countries all over the world. The theme for this year’s WFD is ‘World Food Scarcity : The Challenges Of Climate Change And Bio Energy’ as there is a strong need to expand global awareness to reduce the effect of severe climate patterns on agriculture and the impact of bio fuels on food production.
Global warming and the bio fuel boom are threatening to push the number of hungry even higher in times to come. During 2007 alone, around 50 million more have been added to the rank of the world’s hungry due to rising prices, thus pushing the number of unfed to about 900 millions. The world seems to be further distancing itself from reaching the U.N. Millenium Development Goal of halving hunger and poverty by 2015. Poor harvests, high oil costs, bio fuels and a rising demand for basic staple crops, especially in fast growing Asian countries, have been cited as examples for the spiralling food prices which have sparked protests, even riots, prompting the U.N.Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to give a wake up call.
Global wheat prices have more than doubled during the past year due to poor weather conditions in some wheat producing areas (droughts in Australia and Europe); a shift by farmers to growing crops used in making bio fuels; and speculation by traders.
Though India is being touted as one of the world’s hottest economy, nearly 50% of the world’s hungry live in it. It is listed as a low income, food deficit country, with about 25% of its population subsisting on Rs.12 or less, a day and around 77% living on less than $1 a day ( according to the latest report of National Commission for Enterprises In The Unorganized Sector).
It does boast of having a burgeoning 350 million strong middle class with improved diets ( which was lamented by Ms.Rice and Mr.Bush to be one of the causes of the global food price crisis). Yet around 35% of its population is food insecure, consuming less than 80% of the daily minimum requirement and it has the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of malnutrition in children below three years of age in the world (about 46%).
Today, India faces an agricultural crisis and hunger, which are due to not only current high prices of basic staples, but skewed up government policies too. Her rapid economic growth and accompanying shortages have also fuelled prices. State support for agriculture and irrigation has been slashed, price support reduced and the public distribution system drastically curtailed.. While the GDP grew at the rate of 8.5% in 2006-2007, the growth in agricultural sector was a mere 2.6%.Also marginal land holdings have increased and total cultivated land decreased, especially as more and more agricultural land is being seized by domestic and international corporations in the form of ‘Special Economic Zones’ for industrialization (as happened in Nandigram and to some extent in Singur).
The results have been disastrous as many studies show that agricultural growth reduces poverty and hunger much more than urban and industrial development. A spate of farmer suicides ( about 150,000 during the last decade) is a rude reminder of our agrarian crisis and the grip of cash cropping on poor farmers, bolstered by seed and chemical agribusiness. India has belatedly sought to control prices by holding back essential commodities, curbing export of non-premium rice and waiving off loans of farmers. Obviously more needs to be done than mere cosmetic changes.
There is an urgent need to improve productivity of dry land farming (as 60% of India ’s agriculture is rain dependent) as well as a better implementation of the National Rural Employment Programme and the Public Distribution System.
The director general of FAO, Dr. Jacques Dious, has called upon governments to pay urgent attention to needs of agriculture and water management and also increased investment in agriculture. At the recent Rome Summit held in June 2008, he pointed out that in 2006 the world spent 1.2 trillion dollars on arms. He asked, ‘Against that backdrop how can we explain to people of good sense and good faith that it was not possible to find $ 30 billion a year to enable the hungry to enjoy the most fundamental human right to food and thus the right to life.’ Yet it has been estimated that there is enough food for all in the world, at least 2700 kilo calories per person, per day.
But it is the lack of purchasing power (more than food shortage due to population explosion and inclement weather conditions) which makes so many millions go to bed hungry every day. Hunger is linked to the denial of a living wage to the working poor. It is about denial of land to the landless. It is caused by socio economic policies that deny people the right to food. Resources are there to end hunger, but they are exploited by a miniscule few to the detriment of others So the real reason for all this hunger and poverty may well be policy and not scarcity; politics and not inevitability. The real culprits are economies that fail to offer everyone opportunities and societies that place economic efficiency above compassion.
As we Indians gloat over our victory in the recently concluded Nuclear Deal and as Ratan Tata and his Nano are hailed as an engineering marvel, let us do something sincere and concrete to put some food inside empty bellies. That then would be a truly Indian Miracle. Till then, let each one of us at least refrain from over eating and throwing away left over food in the dustbin.
Shobha Shukla
[The author teaches Physics at India's Loreto Convent and has been writing extensively in English and Hindi media. She serves as Editor of Citizen News Service (CNS).]
Labels: BIOFUELS, FAO, FOOD, WORLD FOOD DAY
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