Brief on FAO Committee on Food Security

Rome, 30 October - 4 November 2006

 

Introduction

“Chairperson, I do not share the FAO’s view that we will achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) by 2015. The facts show that poverty is not decreasing anything like as fast as it should in order to be halved by 2015. And hunger and malnutrition in the world has actually increased since 1996. We now have 854 million citizens of the world that do not have access to enough food to sustain their life and work” said IFAP President during the thirty-second Committee on Food Security (CFS).

 

At the World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996, governments committed themselves to halving the number of undernourished people in the world by 2015 by implementing the WFS Plan of Action (WFSPoA) to eliminate hunger. For the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World Food Summit Plan of Action see:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/w3613e/w3613e00.htm

The 2000 Millennium Summit set the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of halving the proportion of undernourishment and extreme poverty.  See the UN Development Goals at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

 

A special forum of a regular session of the CFS involving active participation from governments, relevant international organizations and actors of civil society, was held during the thirty-second session of the FAO Committee on Food Security, to review the global and regional situations regarding undernourishment, with identification of the underlying causes.

 

Since 1990–1992, the baseline period for the WFS target, progress in reducing the number of undernourished people has been negligible. According to FAO estimates, in 2001–2003 there were still 854 million undernourished people across the globe; 820 million in developing countries, 25 million in transition countries and 9 million in industrialized countries. The developing world reduced hunger by only 3 million, far less than the reduction of approximately 206 million expected by 2001–2003. This contrasts starkly with the reduction of 100 million between 1979–1981 and 1990–1992. Moreover, the most recent trends are cause for concern. A decline of 26 million between 1990–1992 and 1995–1997 was followed by an increase of 23 million up to 2001–2003.

 

Though there are disparities in the regions, in most of the developing and countries in transition the numbers of those undernourished has risen compared to the WFS baseline. Success in meeting the WFS target will require a reversal of recent trends in the numbers and a sharp acceleration in the rate of reduction of undernourished people. Indeed, even if the MDG target is reached globally by 2015, the WFS target will still be far from met. In order to attain the WFS target in the developing countries the number of undernourished people must be reduced by 31 million per year between 2001–2003 and 2015.

 

Lessons learned

The first lesson is that there is a real need to invest in solving the hunger problem as “a well-nourished individual is able to take better advantage of economic opportunities. Investing in hunger eradication is also an investment in economic well-being, with high rates of return, and in improved health and education” (FAO) and this means there is need for safety nets to take care of the chronically hungry people.

 

The second lesson is agricultural growth is critical for hunger reduction in developing countries where three-fourths of the poor live in rural areas. Increasing the productivity of agriculture stimulates demand for non-agricultural goods in the rural areas and a boost to the non-farm incomes.

 

The other lesson is that improved technology can be a powerful means for increasing agricultural production and thus improving the livelihood activities of small and poor farmers. It also reduces the cost of food items, which can benefit hungry households. There is however, a problem of access to technology for the poor households. 

 

Public investment in infrastructure, agricultural research, education and extension is essential for stimulating private investment, agricultural production and resource conservation. Here the trends are also discouraging; throughout the 1990s public investments targeted for agriculture declined in countries where the prevalence of under nourishment was highest. See complete report on Mid-term review of achieving the World Food Summit target:

http://www.fao.org/UNFAO/Bodies/cfs/cfs32/index_en.htm

 

The important thing to note is that these lessons are what IFAP has been asking for all along on the Policy on IFAP Recommendations for eliminating rural poverty and achieving food security.

 

IFAP Contribution to the CFS

IFAP delegation led by the President Jack Wilkinson and composed of:  Jacques Bonou (Benin) Chair IFAP African Committee, Samba Gueye (Senegal) representing IFAP Development Cooperation Committee, K. P. Singh (India) Chair IFAP Asian Committee, and Mr. Rishi Wahi, Member of IFAP Executive.

 

The President made a presentation during the Opening Session citing farmers’ disappointment in lack of progress in reducing hunger in spite of great commitment and conferences. He said “Those countries that have made progress and improved the situation of the poor have developed a partnership with farmers and their organisations. If farmers are given access to the resources they require to produce crops they excel. When producers organise themselves in the market, they are able to improve the incomes of their families”. For complete speech see:

http://ifap.org/en/newsroom/sp_wilkinson_fao_30-10-06.html

 

He was also a panellist in the panel on Trade and Globalisation during the Special Forum. He said globalisation has resulted in different players in the market place and above all high levels of concentration on agri-food chain. Farmers are loosing their markets and incomes in the market place. Farmers all over the world are witnessing shrinking incomes and this trend needs to be reversed. Farmers need to be active players in the market place with ability to negotiate with the new actors in the market. This is a big challenge in developing countries where the supermarkets are taking over at an alarming rate and displacing the back yard markets of the farmers. At the same time farmers are not yet prepared to negotiate with these private sector actors for better prices. There is an urgent need to invest in the farmers organisations so that they are not displaced in the food chain by the industry. Farmer leaders are asking “how do we really engage farmers in the market in a profitable way to respond to the industry concentration that has taken place? How do we organize producers to meet the food safety/traceability requirements to sell to the today’s retail sector and, for small scale producers, and how do we give special attention to their needs?”  These questions need to be answered by all of us.

 

Mr. Samba said liberalisation has not benefited the majority of farmers in Africa. It has resulted in their loosing their market to cheap imports. He said the liberalisation of trade for African farmers is “immature and too fast” as farmers still face many obstacles. They lack the tools to carry out their farming, there is no appropriate technology, no availability of financial help of any kind in form of credit or subsidy and the little support that came to farmers from the public sector had to be stopped due to decline in support to agriculture.

 

He said many farmers have been made poor by globalisation as they cannot produce anymore. He called on governments to address the plight of farmers by giving them the means to produce and an enabling environment to earn income from their work. There is a need for African farmers to be able to compete but they need support to develop their agriculture and organise themselves to be a force to counter the forces in the market place.

 

Development Policy Coordinator was a panelist on Aid and Investment panel. She said donors need to consult at the country level with farmers and government through instruments like the Private/ Public Dialogue (PPD) to ensure that there is clarity of why one approach works and another one does not. Too many projects are stopped without a clear understanding of what would have been improved or why they have been stopped many times due to donors’ change of policy. However, recipient governments also need to reform, to improve accountability, transparency and the protection of human rights. This can only occur with a strong civil society to put pressure on governments and to be involved in the development process. However, aid and investment alone cannot bring about change it has to be a part of coherent development strategy, but it is a main part of the solution. In any development process, support for food need is the place to start as food is a basic human right acknowdged by FAO in adopting the “Guidelines on Right to food”:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/meeting/009/y9825e/y9825e00.htm and also enshrined in the Universal declaration of Human rights of 1948: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

 

Mr. Jacque Bonou on the same subject said there is an urgent need to make resources available to farmers to be able to produce food as it is the desire of every country to produce as much as they can for their own need.

 

On the panel on Agrarian reform Mr. Singh Chair Asia, gave a clear detail of the nature of farmers’ organizations in developing countries and the fact that they still need to be fully strengthened to be free from manipulation by politicians to meet their political needs. The need for access to land is urgent for the majority of the poor who have no land rights and are therefore not able to invest and grow. The governments need to be clear for productivity we need to start with provision of the necessary resources and land and water is the number one resource for food production by the poor.

 

The Special Forum fed into the CFS with a report taking into account what the governments and the civil society organizations had to say. There were several side events to which we participated and emphasized the messages delivered. Of particular interest is the side event on “More and Better Campaign” to which the Development Policy Coordinator made the keynote speech. Others were the Alliance Against Hunger side event and a good look at the facts around hunger and poverty by the action Aid.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, only ten years remain to the 2015 deadline all the participants were in agreement that to make progress we need to redouble our efforts and focus them in locations and on actions where they can make a concrete and significant difference in a relatively short time. A more focused strategic approach is needed. These will include: focus on hotspots; concentrate on the long term while responding to immediate needs; create an environment conducive to private investment, enhance productivity of smallholder agriculture, combine poverty reduction with increased provision of global public goods, access to markets for the poor, ensure complementarities of resources, domestic and international for agricultural and rural development, and increase effectiveness of Official Development Assistance. Farmers have to continue putting the pressure needed to achieve change at the national and international level.