An international coalition of non-governmental organizations involved with development issues is pressuring countries that provide the bulk of the world’s food aid, including Canada, to recommit to supplying food for the world’s most vulnerable.
They are afraid food aid supplies will dwindle because of declining world cereal reserve stocks and growing demand for cereals as a feedstock for biofuel.
“Food aid is made available in part as a humanitarian response to crisis but it also is related in part to how much excess supply is available,” said Stuart Clark, senior policy adviser at the Winnipeg-based Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
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“There will be pressure on available supplies because climate change will make supplies less reliable and the growing demand for grain for biofuels will take increasing amounts of what is available.”
A coalition of North American and European NGOs met in Ottawa recently and asked donor countries to recommit to food aid through a strengthened and renewed Food Aid Convention that was last written in 1999 and is now being extended one year at a time.
Already, food aid supplies are falling far below the need and Canada is the most delinquent.
In the 1999 agreement, Canada pledged to provide the equivalent of 420,000 tonnes of wheat equivalent each year.
By the last reporting period in summer 2005, Canada was 226,000 tonnes below its commitment.
Clark said there is a concern that the rapid growth of the biofuel industry in the United States, which provides 60 percent of the world’s food aid, will reduce the amount of American grain available for the aid program.
“We are concerned that with reserves already at 30 year lows and falling, food aid will end up being compromised.”
In a June letter to donor governments, the NGO coalition said that food aid remains a vital tool to fight hunger in crisis situations.
“We concluded that food aid, while not the only response needed, remains an important element in the fight against food insecurity.”
Clark said he thinks the new Conservative government under prime minister Stephen Harper will be “receptive” to the message of the need for stronger international food aid commitments.
The Canadian International Development Agency was recently reorganized to move the food aid program into an area of responsibility where it will have a higher profile.
“I think the Harper regime will be supportive of this,” Clark said.
One of the complications is that signatories of the Food Aid Convention – Argentina, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and the U.S. – have been waiting to see the result of World Trade Organization negotiations before renewing food aid rules.
One of the issues under negotiation is how to make sure food aid is not used as a disguised export subsidy that undermines commercial markets.
However, WTO talks are now stalled.
Clark said it is time that the food aid convention, which was supposed to expire in 2002 and has been extended year by year since, was rewritten to affirm commitment to the program.
