Short on help for the hungry
THE 3-day UN World Food Summit held in Rome last week, attended by more than 60 heads of state and government and with participation from 192 countries, was a disappointment. FAO failed in its bid to establish a target for eradicating hunger by 2025 and to get rich countries to commit to spending $44 billion a year -- 17% of their foreign aid budget, in agricultural development aid to developing nations.
Instead of the binding goals, the summit declaration reaffirmed its commitment to the UN millennium development goal of halving the number of hungry by2015 but failed to pledge specific funds.
Yet, in July, the G8 nations promised $20 billion in agriculture aid over 3 years. The FAO director general regretted the absence of a deadline for the total eradication of world hunger. Oxfam decried the outcome of the summit as a "massive wasted opportunity, and unfunded and unaccountable." Besides, none of the leaders of the G8 countries, except for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, even attended the summit.
According to UN estimates, the number of the hungry in the world crossed one billion this year; almost one-sixth of the global population does not have enough to eat. Pope Benedict, speaking on the occasion, was critical of the opulence and waste in the industrialised countries, and blamed the greed of speculators in the food market for soaring food prices and aggravating world hunger. He could not be more correct.
Developing countries are often vulnerable to manipulation and movements in international food markets, which are used as political bargaining chips. Farm subsidies in the EU and America benefited consumers in rich nations, dumped farm surpluses in developing countries, depressed the prices of farm produce of poor farmers and drove them out of work to join the swelling ranks of nameless and faceless slum dwellers in the cities.
Bangladesh had the bitter experience of famine in 1974, when shipment of PL 480 food aid was deliberately delayed. Once again, our nation faced a hard time in procuring food in the wake of the devastating cyclone Sidr in 2007.
Meanwhile, India has been stockpiling rice and wheat for its own food security. This is a national political issue for India, and as a result India dithered in living up to its promise of supplying 500 tons of rice to Bangladesh to meet our food crisis in the aftermath of Sidr.
Recent food price increases led to violent protests in Latin America, Africa and South Asia. In, 2008, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia agreed to form an organisation of rice exporting countries, Orec, a rice cartel similar to Opec's oil cartel, to be set up by 2012. Food price spiral and world hunger are inevitable with projected rise of world population to 9.2 billion in 2050
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's summit call for a "fair and equitable food governance system," and the statement that "only production of food alone could not guarantee food security" seemed a trifle out of synch with the current focus of the UN on the debate on food security.
There has been an international strategic shift of policy in fighting hunger, away from the age-old system of dependence on food aid handouts to helping farmers in poor countries to produce enough to feed their own people.
Food aid is indeed not what developing countries need. They must be offered agricultural aid to build their capacity to produce abundant and healthy food; aid that is managed by the countries themselves within their own policies to increase farmers' access to modern technology, irrigation, and fertilisers.
Local age-old practices to produce high yield seeds must be encouraged, and not the genetic modification aberrations of multinational Monsanto. Improved rural infrastructure and roads for the easy transport of inputs and marketing are also essential and require development.
Food security and climate change are interconnected. The world cannot achieve food security without tackling global warming. Food security is held hostage to climate change that produced a high incidence of droughts, floods, cyclones and earthquakes. A deal on climate change is crucial for fighting global hunger.
The prime minister succinctly drew the attention of the international community to the urgency of giving attention to the adverse effects of climate change, particularly for the least developed countries, when she underscored the need for a special fund for them to mitigate their sufferings.
Developing countries need development funds and policy tools to boost agricultural production and productivity, the key to overcoming hunger and poverty. The current food crisis is the result of 20 years of underinvestment in agriculture and neglect of the sector.
Directly or indirectly, agriculture provides the livelihood for 70% of world's poor. Sustained investment, especially in smallholder agriculture, key to poverty reduction, is critical to developing food security. UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon was right when he said: "Our job is not just to feed the hungry but to empower the hungry to feed themselves."
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