When World Food Program executive director James Morris was in Ottawa last autumn in search of more Canadian help, he was trying to be diplomatic.
True, the WFP was warning that it is so short of money that the world is awash with hungry and starving people.
And true, while Canada remained one of the top 10 WFP donors, its contribution had slipped in recent years. The commitment slipped to $59 million in 2001 from $164 million in 1990.
But Morris, at least in public, was stressing the positive. Canada remained an important aid donor and inventive supporter of WFP projects, he said.
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Then he mentioned with enthusiasm a dinner the previous evening with international development minister Susan Whelan and their conversation about the official United Nations goal of cutting world hunger in half by the year 2015.
“She wondered why we were so unambitious,” he said.
In a recent interview, Whelan noted that at a 1994 conference in Washington, the goal was to cut hunger in half by 2010. By 1996, the Food and Agriculture Organization pledged a 2015 date.
While that would still leave an estimated 400 million people without adequate food, the FAO already is complaining that countries are falling far behind their commitment. Since 1996, the level of hunger in the world has been falling at less than half the rate needed to meet the target.
Whelan said she is committed to the goal and insists it can be met.
Canadian efforts to increase world food production and to use food as a development tool will be part of the solution.
“We may have fallen behind but I think there is still time to resurrect that,” she said.
“I fully believe we have the ability. We have food in the world. How do we get it to the right people and at the same time, how do we help them create productivity for themselves, increase their own production for their own sustainability?”
She said Canadians will have to be patient and trust that spending in the development budget will pay off.
“You won’t see overnight results,” she said.
“It’s going to take five or six years for these programs to work. Canadians want direct results to say how many people did you help today, what did you do for them? Well, it’s hard to say in the short term. We have to stick with it.”
