OTTAWA – There is a fatal contradiction in the fact that rich food-surplus nations are benefiting from record-high commodity prices while cutting the aid they give poor food-importing nations, says the United Nation’s top food bureaucrat.
Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, told a news conference higher grain prices are a $3.4 billion problem for poor, importing countries. It has meant more hunger and starvation.
Yet food aid and development funding is falling as rich nations try to control their deficits. In Canada, for example, the Liberals have cut $1 billion from international aid spending since 1993.
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“We believe it is a contradiction,” said Diouf, who spoke generally and not about any one country cutback.
Sitting beside him at the news conference, agriculture minister Ralph Goodale conceded Canada has cut aid spending to fight the deficit but he said it continues to support international aid and development “at the maximum levels possible in the circumstances.” He noted Canada is committed to 400,000 tonnes of food aid per year for a minimum of three years.
Millions still starving
Diouf was in Ottawa June 7 to address an all-day meeting of Canadian government and non-governmental organizations who are working to prepare a Canadian position to take to the World Food Summit in Rome in November.
In a speech, he told the meeting the challenge facing the Rome conference and the world is that despite decades of development efforts, 800 million people continue to be undernourished, usually because of poverty.
He said the urgency of the conference has been enhanced by the fact world food prices have soared. It will help focus attention on the problem of shortages, despite years of having food surpluses perceived as the problem in many producing countries.
“The increase in prices … will show the situation of years of surplus stocks is not something that was permanent,” he told reporters.
Diouf insisted he believes the 1996 world conference will help find ways to alleviate the problem of hunger even though the last conference 21 years ago failed to dramatically reduce world hunger.
“I strongly believe it,” he said. “I’m head of an organization which is built on the conviction that the world is a planetary village.”
Emphasis on small projects
The FAO head said the aid and development projects of the future will more often than not involve small projects and local people. No longer will donors and organizations “just come and build things and say ‘there they are, at your disposal and it will solve your problem.’ “
Goodale offered an example.
He said since an FAO meeting last October in Quebec City when water was cited as a problem in many areas of Africa, Canada has been considering investing in some local projects, using the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration as a lead agency with experience on the drought-prone Prairies.
