AT THE World Food Summit in 1996, an optimistic goal was set by the almost 200 countries and 10,000 participants: to halve the number of chronically undernourished people in the world by 2015. This was seen as more realistic than a 1974 goal to eradicate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition within 10 years.
Unfortunately, as nations marked World Food Day recently, numbers reveal the failure of rich countries to help the poor. Worse, they may even have harmed some of the countries that most needed help.
There are more than 800 million chronically undernourished people internationally. In the early 1990s, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated the number of world hungry was declining by about eight million people annually. To reach the ambitious 1996 goal, a reduction of 20 million hungry people per year would be needed.
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Recent years have barely dented world hunger because of social, political and economic instability. Poor infrastructure, policy errors and limited investments in agriculture also had an impact.
The main target is Africa, where the FAO predicts 28 million people will face severe food shortages this year.
As the world plans to discuss world trade agreements, there are mixed signals about solutions to world hunger.
Discussions on Parliament Hill last week reflected some of the debate.
Suzanne Vinet, chief trade negotiator for Agriculture Canada, promoted freer trade as an “essential ingredient” in reducing world hunger.
However, there are signs that freer trade may have harmed some countries.
The policy manager for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank gave an example. Stuart Clark said in 1981 Kenya was self-sufficient in white corn production, but when it was forced to remove import restrictions in 1992, cheaper corn from South Africa flowed in. Kenya’s domestic market was devastated.
Oxfam Canada has suggested attitudes must change about the one-size-fits-all formula to help developing countries. In the last few years, these countries were forced to remove trade barriers on imports in exchange for more market access for their exports. This did not create the wealth expected.
The United Nations agrees with this assessment. In a report issued in September, the UN Conference on Trade and Development tried to separate rhetoric from reality.
“Africa’s economic fortunes are unlikely to improve over the next decade; in fact, they will likely get worse. Plummeting commodity prices, severe food shortages, ineffective adjustment policies and the sometimes negative effects of trade liberalization all conspire against the laudable goal of halving poverty there,” it said.
Heading into the next round of WTO talks, the conference says “there appears to be a very weak relation between agricultural policy reforms and output growth. Deregulation of agricultural markets seems to have failed to trigger the expected supply responses in most countries.”
In the last two decades and particularly after 1997, terms of trade seem to have worsened.
“Declines in real commodity prices, particularly for agricultural commodities, and terms of trade not only siphon off the resources needed for investment and growth, but also constitute disincentives for private capital accumulation, particularly where government intervention in agricultural pricing and marketing boards have been dismantled and producers are left to face constantly falling real prices,” wrote UNCTAD.
Add drought and floods in the last two years, and the food crop situation has again become precarious.
The UN recommends an estimated $10 billion more each year from external sources to help Africa, elimination of external debt (the sub-Saharian debt is more than $200 billion), better terms of trade and re-examination of the impact of eliminating all market access distortions operating against developing country producers.
Unless the world commits itself to correcting “imbalances in the global trading system,” whether through WTO talks or other avenues, food security, poverty reduction and rural development in Africa and other places will remain a problem. Then the lofty goal of drastically reducing world hunger will continue to evade this planet as generations starve.
