35th World Farmers'Congress

Opening address by Mr. Gerard Doornbos, president of IFAP

 

Gizah, Arab Republic of Egypt, 29 May 2002

Your Excellency Dr. Mahmoud Abuzeid, Minister for Water Resources in Egypt,

Hon. Mohammed Idris, Chairman of IFAP's African Farmers' Committee and Chairman of CACU, our host organisation,

Distinguished representatives of international organisations, honoured guests, and farming colleagues,

It is a real pleasure for the International Federation of Agricultural Producers to hold its 35th World Farmers’ Congress in Gizah, in the Arab Republic of Egypt. We have been welcomed to Egypt on many occasions; however, this is the first time that our Congress has assembled here. I would like to thank my colleague Mohamed Idris, President of CACU, for making this possible. I would also like to thank Dr. Mahmoud Abuzeid, Minister for Water Resources in Egypt, for giving his support to this event, and for bringing to us the greetings of the President of the Republic.

We welcome the many representatives from international and national organisations who are following the work of this Congress. IFAP values highly its partnerships with you to bring better economic and social conditions to the farmers we represent.

Egypt is a unique country. It belongs to Africa by geography, to Asia by history and to the Mediterranean through the character of its agriculture.

This region of the world, the Middle East, has been too much in the news for the wrong reasons – for terrorism, war, conflict, poverty. Devastating events for all the peoples involved. Farmers have been the first to suffer.

I hope that through this Congress we can put this region into the news in a positive way, as a meeting place for the farmers of the world to work together to try to improve the situation of all those who live on and by the land.

IFAP must intensify its campaign to move agriculture up the list of priorities on international development agendas. We can give an example to the politicians of how working together can further the cause of peace. And we can demonstrate that agriculture is the cornerstone to achieving sustainable development worldwide. Farmers are the essential players for realising the economic, social, and cultural vitality of the rural communities, with the potential to generate the income that will take millions of small farmers out of poverty.

Over the last two years, since we met at our Congress in Hanover, Germany, the international agenda has been particularly intense. Global events are springing up everywhere, and are placing a severe strain on our resources to make sure that the farmer’s voice is heard in all places where agriculture is being discussed. However, these international events have given IFAP a platform to press for a much higher priority to be given to agriculture by national governments and international institutions, especially for agriculture in developing countries.

As a global organisation representing hundreds of millions of small family farmers throughout the world, IFAP provides an essential civil society link to the international institutions. However, it often seems that farmers are invisible in such institutions. My experience as President of IFAP is that we have to lobby very hard to make sure that farmers’ interests are taken into account. I find it extraordinary how, for example, the United Nations can make a millennium declaration, which commits 189 member states to actions to cut world poverty and hunger by half by 2015, and yet give so little priority to agriculture.

75 per cent of the poor live in rural areas, and most of them are farmers. How do they think that poverty can be reduced without working with farmers?

In order to achieve global food security, it will be necessary to increase world grain production by 40 per cent by 2020. Who will do this if not the farmer?

The UN has also agreed to a goal to protect the environment through conservation and stewardship programs. Since farmers manage over three quarters of the world’s arable land and freshwater resources, how can conservation efforts succeed without the contribution of the farmer?

For me, it is clear that governments must work with farmers to have any chance of achieving the Millennium goals.

As President of IFAP, I have also heard many declarations being made by governments at various international events. However, far too often the commitments made are forgotten when governments return to their national capitals. It is simply a disgrace that world leaders do not follow up more seriously on their international commitments. There is a singular lack of political will, and a lack of sufficient financial resources, to back up the commitments that are made. We do not need more big international conferences for governments to solve food and poverty problems, we just need governments to carry out those commitments that have already been agreed to.

At international meetings, it is becoming more and more common for the heads of international agencies to sound like NGO leaders in their public statements. Mr Wolfensohn, the President of the World Bank, for example, makes speeches on rural poverty that sound very much like IFAP speeches. However, when you go to the rural areas of developing countries, far too often we find that the speeches in Washington are not followed through by concrete actions to improve the situation of small family farmers on the ground.

How can the World Bank pretend that it wants to eliminate poverty - 75 per cent of which is in the rural areas - when it only gives eight per cent of its loans for agriculture?

How can national governments in developing countries hope to eliminate poverty, when many have not even drawn up a national policy for agriculture, or allocated a meaningful part of their national budget to agricultural development?

Resources provided by overseas development assistance are important to address problems of food insecurity, especially in low-income countries. Yet the level of development assistance has fallen significantly, especially for agriculture. Very few governments reach the internationally-agreed target of providing 0.7 per cent of GDP as development assistance. This must be changed.

IFAP must also increase pressure on the OECD Development Assistance Committee so that it revises its ‘poverty guidelines' to include agriculture. How they could leave it out is frankly unbelievable.

Next month, the FAO will hold its ‘World Food Summit five years later’ event in Rome. We will learn at this Summit that there has been little progress in achieving that target set in 1996 of halving the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Almost 800 million people do not have enough food to sustain life and work. Every day, 24,000 people die from hunger and related causes. 18,000 of these are children under five years of age. Yet priority for agriculture has fallen.

I propose to you that this Conference send a clear message to world leaders at the World Food Summit that farmers are very disappointed with their performance. We must put pressure on governments into stopping the drain of resources away from agriculture, and into raising the levels of development assistance and investment available for smallholders.

It is just not acceptable that agriculture, which remains the mainstay of most of the economies of the developing countries, ceases to occupy the high position on the development agenda that it did in the past.

On the positive side, there are some signs that development assistance may be slowly increasing again. The ‘Financing for Development’ conference held Monterrey, Mexico, earlier this year agreed to increase the amount of finance provided for development. The USA, for example, agreed to double its commitment in this area. The recent G8 meeting in Ottawa also saw increased commitments for financing for development, particularly through the special development program for Africa, called NEPAD.

The new approach of the World Bank towards rural development, which gives a much greater role for consultation and involvement of producers' organisations in the design and implement of rural development strategies, is appreciated. The World Bank has sent a delegation of five resource persons to contribute to our deliberations here in Cairo, and I would like to thank them for their participation. However, I regret that the President of the World Bank has again declined our invitation to meet with farmers at this World Congress.

Throughout these three days of plenary sessions, our discussions will focus on four main policy issues.

The first is rural poverty, sustainable agriculture and food security.

It is an honour for IFAP that the new President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Mr. Lennart Boge, has agreed to deliver the keynote address to this session. IFAD is strongly committed to working with farmers' organizations at the community level to eliminate rural poverty, and I hope that this Conference will lead to a much stronger operational partnership between IFAP and IFAD.

The creation of IFAP's Development Corporation Committee (DCC) at the last World Farmers' Congress in Hanover has given us the capacity to engage in such a partnership with IFAD. Capacity building for organizations of smallholder farmers is the core business of this Committee. Progress being made in this area is encouraging, and I would like to thank the agri-agencies which are partners in this Committee for the actions they have taken to strengthen the ability of IFAP to serve the many new member organisations that have come into IFAP through the DCC.

One of the keys to a successful fight against hunger is having well-organized partners to work with. Strengthening the institutional capacity of farmers' organizations, and involving them as partners in self-help development efforts, must be a cornerstone of any strategy for eliminating rural poverty.

Further, national governments must ensure a stable economic and political framework, and good infrastructure, to enable farmers to work to obtain a reasonable living for their families and for their rural communities. Market forces and private traders alone will not provide the multiple benefits that society rightly expects from its agriculture.

The second theme of this Congress concerns “Agriculture and the WTO trade negotiations”. IFAP had a delegation of about 50 persons in Doha – less than in Seattle where we had 200 – but enough to ensure that there is enough flexibility in the Doha negotiating agenda to take into account the wide variety of concerns of farmers from throughout our membership.

We are pleased to welcome Mr. Frank Wolter, Director of Agriculture and Commodities of the World Trade Organisation to lead a group of distinguished speakers on this subject.

IFAP is very much engaged in the Doha process. Our main ambitions for the new WTO Round are:

- to rectify the serious imbalances in the agricultural trading system against farmers in the developing countries

- to develop WTO trade rules that accommodate the diverse situations of agriculture in different countries, and the diverse aspirations of the people of those countries

- to ensure that farmers everywhere are able to achieve a reasonable standard of living for the work that they do, in both exporting and importing countries.

Agriculture is a high priority for most WTO members in this Round. The ambition of most negotiators is to go beyond what was already laid down in the Agriculture Agreement of the previous Round and to try to achieve progress in additional areas. IFAP is pleased that more attention is being given to strengthening special and differential treatment for developing countries. They did not get a good deal in the previous Round, and this needs to be corrected in the present Round.

Farmers need market opportunities. This means fair prices for their products, and a more level playing field in international trade. Farming is not only a way of life, but it is first and foremost an economic activity. Without remunerative prices and a reasonable level of income, more and more family farms will simply disappear.

Greater consideration should also be given to non-trade concerns, so that agriculture is able to fulfill the multiple functions that society expects from it.

For countries that rely heavily on export markets, it is also important to make progress towards replacing all forms of export subsidies with other forms of support, which are less trade distorting.

IFAP believes that farmers need a rules-based system for international trade, particularly to protect the interests of the smaller countries. Trade liberalisation can contribute to global economic development if it is managed correctly, but it should not be used as an excuse for governments to no longer assure sound domestic agricultural policies that are adapted to specific country conditions. Farmers are not against change. However change must be gradual, and carried out in a fair and orderly way.

The third theme of our Congress is "Food safety and quality". Peter Gaemelke's Committee has produced an excellent document for adoption by the Conference plenary. This is a critical subject for farmers. As the number of farmers decreases, consumers are growing away from the realities of farm production. This is leading to increased expectations from consumers concerning the way their food is produced. Farmers, therefore, need to better inform consumers about the efforts they are making to meet ever more stringent food safety and quality standards, using the best farming methods available, and managing their farms in a sustainable manner.

The fourth theme of the Congress deals with "Industrial concentration in the agri-food chain". The global food and agricultural system has become highly concentrated, with only a few firms controlling farm input markets, food manufacturing, food retailing, and catering. There is genuine concern in the farming community that world markets are not functioning correctly, and that world market prices are not reflecting true economic conditions.

Much attention has rightly been drawn to the market distortions caused by certain types of government policies. However, little attention has been paid to the market distortions caused by the high levels of concentration among the multinational corporations that dominate the agri-food system. IFAP is making efforts to change this situation, and place the issue of industrial concentration squarely on the agendas of the main international organisations.

Farmers need to learn how to live in more open global markets. However, these markets need to function fairly and competitively and so deliver a reasonable income to farmers. Today, this is not the case at the world level.

I complement Luc Guyau and his committee on the work they have done in producing an excellent policy paper on this subject for adoption by the Conference.

In closing, I would again like to thank our Egyptian hosts for the outstanding preparations they have made to receive us in Cairo. And I would like to thank the many conference speakers who are contributing their ideas to enhance our debates.

I hope that this Congress will lead to a strong call from farm leaders for the recognition of the contribution of farmers. This recognition will not happen just because it makes sense, in the fight to achieve food security, or sustainable natural resource management, or the elimination of poverty. Recognition will come if we are well-organized, work together, create coalitions, and fight for it.

I wish you all good work and a memorable Congress.

Thank you.