The United Nations’ top food official says nothing short of designing a new world agricultural order will be sufficient to deal with world hunger and food insecurity.
Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, told a Rome conference earlier this month that more than 60 years after the FAO was created at a Quebec City conference, a new sweeping agreement is necessary.
As well, FAO member countries need to commit $30 billion annually “to eradicate hunger from the earth once and for all.”
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His comments during a meeting of the organization’s 191 members came five months after representatives of those countries gathered in Rome in June to promise billions of dollars of investment in agriculture to help small-scale farmers expand production. It was to be part of the answer for high food prices that were driving tens of millions of poor consumers into chronic hunger.
Little of that promised investment has been made.
Diouf called for another world food summit in early 2009 and urged U.S. president-elect Barack Obama to take the lead on championing the summit once he takes office in late January.
“After more than 60 years, it’s essential to create a new system of world food security,” he said.
“We must correct the present system that generates world food insecurity on account of international market distortions resulting from agricultural subsidies, custom tariffs and technical barriers to trade but also from skewed distribution of resources of official development assistance and of national budgets of developing countries.”
Diouf said the call for $30 billion in annual investment in developing world agriculture and rural infrastructure is not unreasonable, considering that in a matter of weeks world governments came up with more than $3 trillion to cope with the turmoil affecting the global economy.
As well, developed country governments spend $365 billion every year to support agriculture and $1.3 trillion on their militaries.
Diouf also said that any World Trade Organization deal should achieve fair as well as freer trade, although he did not spell out how that could be achieved.
“We must have the intelligence and imagination to devise agricultural development policies together with rules and mechanisms that will ensure not only free but also fair trade,” he said.
One of the sticking points in trying to reach a WTO deal over the past seven years has been how to protect developing country markets and farmers from an influx of cheaper food imports while not giving developing countries a complete exemption from trade liberalizing efforts.
