Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli

IT was once true that all roads led to this ancient capital. Today it is the furrows of maize, wheat and rice fields that take you to Rome, where the biggest global food organisations are headquartered, and the World Summit on Food Security (Nov. 16-18) is being organised.

The situation couldn't be more momentous.

"The global food insecurity situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat for humanity," says the summit website. According to the latest U.N. projections, the world population will rise from 6.8 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050 - a third more mouths to feed. Most population growth will occur in developing countries.

High food prices in developing countries, a global economic crisis affecting jobs, deepening poverty, and more hungry people combine to paint a bleak picture.

So, what are the expectations of the food organisations present in Rome?

Kostas Stamoulis, head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) agricultural development economics division, says this summit "is not a fund- raising exercise...the original position is that we eliminate hunger, preferably by 2025, although I am not sure if this will be the summit's objective, because the countries have yet to agree on the targets..."

One of the concrete issues on the table, he says, is "reform of the global governance of food security. It has to be better coordinated, because so far every crisis turns into a big disaster. Also, despite all the wealth in the world, we have seen chronically hungry people increasing since 1996."

A recent paper by FAO says that "producing 70 percent more food for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time combating poverty and hunger, using scarce natural resources more efficiently, and adapting to climate change are the main challenges world agriculture will face in the coming decades."

For Stamoulis, in order to produce more food, "we have to make sure that farmers are properly supported in the developed and developing countries, not at the expense of each other." So far we are not doing a good job, he says. "Developed countries support farmers tremendously, while developing countries do not have the means.

"Part of the objective too is to make sure that countries realise that a lot more resources have to be devoted to agriculture. Not necessarily during the summit...this is not a pledge summit. That happened in July, when the G8 pledged 20 billion dollars to support agriculture. This is a summit where countries, at the highest level, reconfirm their support."

At the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful countries, held in July in the Italian city of L'Aquila, they decided to mobilise 20 billion dollars over three years to fight the food crisis, and it was said the money could be used to promote agriculture rather than as aid. But people like Paolo di Croce, secretary-general of Slow Food International, were sceptical. "We have to change the model that caused this situation (of food crisis), not patch up the gaps with some crisis money," he said in an earlier interview with IPS.

For Stamoulis, this is a good point. The money should be invested primarily on small farmers, he says. Investments should be made too in infrastructure - roads, ports, storage facilities. "In terms of technology and access to markets, we have to make sure small holders take a fair share of this allocation, so they increase their productivity."

Considering that 30 countries are currently experiencing food emergencies, "another issue is to have a better early warning system and a better coordinated response," he says.

What is new in comparison with the food crises of the 1970s and the historic World Food Conference of 1974?

"Now we have the Committee on the World Food Security (CFS), which meets all the criteria to become a real world partnership from the bottom up," says Stamoulis. "One of the issues leaders will talk about is precisely the reform of the CFS, of which I have the honour to be the secretary-general."

According to Stamoulis, the CFS is undertaking reforms in order to involve civil society in the decision-making process, so it becomes "a real global forum for coordination of the various national and international initiatives on food security."

In the 70s, the summit took place under the pressure of the food crisis. "But here we are putting something together that will tackle not only the food crisis, but also more structural issues and chronic hunger. And this should be done with a lot of stakeholders' participation, not just a group deciding. That is a big difference. This time we have a better chance to succeed, because we are more inclusive."

The voices of the food organisations interviewed for this report seem to echo the tension between two crucial problems: the need to address urgent food emergencies right now, and the need to invest in longer-term structural solutions.

The host of the summit, the FAO, is one of three U.N. food agencies based in Rome. Each has different goals. FAO acts as a "neutral forum" where all nations meet to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO's staff includes agronomists, foresters, fisheries and livestock specialists, nutritionists, social scientists, economists and statisticians, "who collect, analyse and disseminate data that aids development."

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is another. Unlike FAO, IFAD specialises in financing rural development projects.

Kevin Cleaver, IFAD's assistant president, says IFAD has seen money for agricultural projects increase now to "the largest percentage ever."

"The economic crisis that began 2008 has affected developing countries' food production very negatively," he says. "All statistics point to that effect: in 2008 and 2009, the number of people globally suffering from hunger or malnutrition increased about 100 million.

"Things were getting better in the previous five-year period...but 2008 was a turning point," he says, due to a combination of factors: the financial crisis, fewer remittances, less income coming in, less money to buy food. "Credit dried up in the developed countries, so you can imagine what happened in the high-risk investment countries of Africa or other low income countries of Asia. It just disappeared. And that had a very negative impact on agriculture."

Then, the G8 meeting in L'Aquila happened. "One of the reasons why IFAD was so happy with the results was that the world leaders admitted that the food crisis was creating havoc in the developing countries and generating food insecurity," says Cleaver. "The increase of hungry people was unacceptable, but also a security threat. If hungry people become angry, it is more likely that they take up a gun, emigrate to Europe or the U.S...the G8 was admitting a security problem, and this is the first time we have seen such a thing."

Money was not only pledged, "some of these countries are starting to follow up, to deliver," he adds. "In the past we often had just words. Now we see some action."

IFAD was established as an international financial institution in 1977 in one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. Is the same sort of momentum building up now?

Cleaver says there are some important differences.

"IFAD was part of the response of the international community to a similar crisis," he says. "The prices of the major food staples and livestock products hugely increased in 1974 and 1975. There was a shortage of food; starvation. The international community got together, and created IFAD.

"It did some other things, like putting more money in research. A lot of bilateral aid agencies invested in agriculture. Even in the private sector, one of the things we saw is big investments in agriculture. The effect was that by the end of the 1970s, food prices had gone down dramatically. In the 1980s, there was an abundance of food even in developing countries.

"Real prices of food relative to other commodities continued to fall. The world went into abundance. The function of the World Food Programme (WFP) was to take some of this surpluses in industrial countries and distribute them in places in distress," he says. "There is no longer a global surplus.

"The world cereal stocks are at historic low," says Cleaver. "The real prices of food have increased dramatically. Look at the statistics: the rate of growth of agricultural productivity has declined to about a third of what it was. In other words, science and technology haven't generated growth, haven't kept up with people's growth. Supply is not keeping up with demand."

Why? "Complacency; we were so successful. Donors got out of the agriculture business. We also have seen less investment from the private sector. Institutions like the Inter American Development Bank and USAID, almost all of the bilateral agencies, have withdrawn from agriculture. This has destroyed agricultural capacity."

On top of this, climate change and other "serious slow environmental problems" combined to "crush agriculture". Cleaver mentions areas such as South Asia and China, dependent on natural irrigation, that are in danger now for lack of rain.

"What has happened in these areas is a salinisation," he says. "The extraction of water has been so great that the aquifers have disappeared. So, globally there are huge water shortages in irrigated areas. In Mexico, 50 percent of aquifers are totally exhausted. These areas are producing nothing. Uzbekistan had huge irrigated areas. Now it looks like snow, because the salt is so thick. Nothing can grow in that 'snow', not even weeds.

"We need to invest massively in a different kind of agriculture, less water- dependant, less destructive, less petroleum-based, less mechanised, a conservation agriculture, a complicated agriculture," he says. "The reason is: if we don't do that, we destroy the planet and everybody starves."

And that is what is at stake here, in Rome. [Courtesy IPS]

Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief

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Development: Plenty on the Plate-2

Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli

"FROM a current 6.5 billion population, a billion don't get enough to eat right now. Extrapolate that to 2020, and you begin to recognise why this is not just a moral problem, it is a national security problem that has much more to do with civil strife, warfare, terrorism, immigration... This goes far beyond food."

That is the issue on the plate for the World Summit on Food Security (Nov. 16-18), says Kevin Cleaver, assistant president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

And the results of the summit cannot be business as usual.

"I am not a NGO type," he says. "But I agree the current food system is fundamentally not sustainable. A billion people go to bed without enough food. Something has gone terribly wrong. In the developed world, obesity is the problem. Poor people (in rich countries) are malnourished."

What needs to be done?

For Cleaver, it is a clear, although not an easy choice. "Reallocate public resources to agriculture production in developing countries, where the epicentre of this crisis is. By the countries themselves, by the donor agencies run by the industrial countries, by the multilateral institutions like IFAD, the World Bank...A hard choice: it means shifting resources into agriculture, and taking them out of something else.

"Also, a lot has to be done in the area of policy," he says.

"We find that when the food crisis occurred in 2008, many developing countries made the wrong choices, tried to impose price controls on farmers. Argentina, for example, squeezed the farmers by taxes. The result is always that the farmers stop producing or start smuggling. A very inefficient, shortsighted response.

"Other countries did stupid things. The Philippines started to buy massive amounts of rice and stuck it in a warehouse. Each time they went to the market, the price went to the ceiling...so poor countries were crushed," he says.

"In industrial countries we have the most stupid set of subsidies...About 200 billion dollars a year are devoted to subsidies to U.S. and European companies, a bigger amount than all the aid of all institutions put together. We subsidise this tiny little group of corporate farms to the tune of gazillions. And what sort of farming do they practice? The kind the Slow Food movement criticises. Is this what we want to do with the money? No."

So what will happen during the summit?

"This is an effort by FAO to be relevant. They recognise the crisis, and they want to have a discussion at the global level to solve it," says Cleaver. "The problem with these big U.N. gatherings, however well intentioned, is that they don't actually change much. In 1974, there were some institutional changes. I hope this food conference leads to an equivalent kind of response. But my guess is it won't change much.

"The most we can hope," he adds, "is that it will raise awareness in the public about the stakes. The press is not reporting the issues, only pieces of it. They haven't quite caught on to the global dimension of this dilemma. This summit could manage to get the word out beyond a few bureaucrats."

Do others hope more from the summit?

The third big U.N. agency headquartered in Rome, the World Food Programme (WFP), specialises in delivering food to people who are caught in a humanitarian crisis, such as a drought, flood or war. "Simply put, it keeps people from starving to death," says the WFP site.

The most urgent problem facing the WFP now is the food emergencies in about 30 countries.

"Food prices on international markets reached a peak in mid-2008 and since then we have witnessed a decline. However, the cost of food in many markets in the developing countries where WFP works has remained stubbornly high," says Greg Barrow, global media coordinator of the WFP.

"For example, the FAO has found that in sub-Saharan Africa, 80 to 90 percent of all cereal prices it monitored in 27 countries remain more than 25 percent higher than before the high food price crisis began two years ago," he says.

"In Kenya, food prices have risen by 120 percent over the past year," according to INTERFAIS, the organisation that monitors the flow of food aid. "This makes WFP's work extremely challenging at a time when the numbers of hungry people are increasing...and when the international flow of food aid is at a 20-year low."

How come, when Kevin Cleaver from IFAD says money for agricultural projects has increased now to "the largest percentage ever"?

"It's important to make a distinction between food aid donations in kind, and cash donations for the purchase of food," says Barrow. "The disappearance of food surpluses is probably some part of the overall picture, but it is not the answer on its own.

"I cannot comment on IFAD's funding situation, but WFP is facing an almost unprecedented shortfall in its budget in 2009. We have barely one-third of the money we asked for at the beginning of the year, and are likely to fall far short of our 6.7 billion dollar budget to feed 108 million people in 74 countries in 2009."

WFP receives around half of the food it uses as donation. The remainder comes in the form of cash for food purchase. Of the 2.8 million metric tons of food (valued at 1.4 billion dollars) that WFP purchased in 2008, 78 percent was bought in developing countries.

So, what about the money pledged at L'Aquila?

"WFP has always advocated a twin-track approach that would see investment in long-term agricultural development at the same time as support for emergency food assistance to address urgent hunger needs," says Barrow. "However, it is important to note that even if food production can be improved, many of the poorest people in the world would still face difficulties accessing the food they require, and their needs should not be forgotten."

Barrow distinguishes between emergencies (floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes and conflict) creating the need for food assistance, and the "issue of access to food," which refers to the "difficulty that the world's poorest people have in accessing affordable nutritious food to meet their daily requirements. This challenge is likely to continue to exist even if food production increases."

Will they be forgotten at the summit?

"Any meeting that engages world leaders, policy makers and the humanitarian community in an effort to address the issue of food security is welcome," he says. "For it to be successful, the participants have to agree on a concrete programme of action...At the same time, there has to be a commitment from governments to provide the resources necessary to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people on the planet by 2015."

What do others say?

The concentration of the three big U.N. food agencies in Rome determines the presence of others. The International Alliance Against Hunger (IAAH) - born on World Food Day 2003 - is one of them. IAAH brings together international agencies, government bodies and civil society organisations "in voluntary partnerships" to advocate for concerted action against hunger.

"The fact that the number of people who are hungry continues to rise in spite of the commitments in successive summits...is appalling. It is as though leaders who come to these meetings believe that, simply by making speeches the problem will go away," says Andrew MacMillan, former Director of Field Operations Division of FAO and currently Special Advisor to IAAH. "Almost every nation on earth has pledged to end hunger, but only a handful have embarked on the hard work of putting properly funded national programmes in place.

"One lesson is that even the most eloquent commitment to a global goal is largely meaningless," he adds. "Each government that endorses the global goal should return home and make a national commitment to play its part, and agree to be held accountable for delivery. Then we might see some serious results."

The only "good thing" about this crisis is that "it has pushed the hunger issue up to the top of the international agenda, even if for all the wrong reasons," says MacMillan.

MacMillan says there are two dangers facing this World Food Summit.

"The first is that it will be used as an excuse for the international community to impose the wrong solutions to the problem. We can see this now in the emphasis being given to the use of ever higher levels of purchased inputs in small-scale farming communities without due regard to the environmental sustainability and nutritional consequences.

"The second danger is that other important themes, such as climate change, will move up the agenda and increasingly divert attention from the food issue, lulling people into the assumption that it has been resolved. The G8 might even be tempted to conclude that, by earmarking 20 billion dollars over three years to address hunger, it had absolved itself of any further responsibility.

"If the 20 billion dollars really become available and are spent on the right things, we should see improvements, but it must be put in perspective. It is the equivalent of about six dollars per year per hungry person. Will that really make a difference?"

According to MacMillan, even if FAO, WFP and IFAD "were to get their act together," it would not be enough. "Eradicating hunger and malnutrition by 2025 is entirely possible but it needs a supportive global policy environment and it depends on every country playing its full part," he says. The Rome- based agencies "must learn to work in genuine partnership" with other institutions, especially WHO (World Health Organisation), UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) and the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

On policy, "any reformed institution that brings them together" must have the authority to address major global issues affecting food and nutrition security, she adds. That means it would have "a significant say" in such issues as trading arrangements for food commodities; setting of targets for minimum global food stock levels; safeguarding natural resources for future food production, and setting the agricultural research agenda.

IAAH is working with civil society organisations on urging governments to involve themselves at the November summit. "But we are also calling on them to follow this up by making their own 'National Declaration of Commitment' and to deposit this and a national food security and nutrition plan to achieve the eradication goal by 2025, in an international 'Public Register of Commitment' for all to see," he says.

Bioversity International is the world's largest international research organisation dedicated to the conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity. It is also based in Rome. It began its life in 1974 as what was called a field programme within FAO, explains Ruth Raymond, Bioversity's head of the public awareness unit. "We didn't separate from FAO until 1994...When we became independent, we decided to stay in Rome because we wanted to continue to work very closely with FAO, our main partner."

"I am delighted that the Rome-based food agencies are expressing renewed interest in food security, and the commitment to fighting hunger is strong," says Emile Frison, Bioversity Director General, about the summit.

"My concern is that unless we invest more in agricultural research and development, we will not solve the long-term problems of sustainable food security, and will continue to need emergency relief," says Frison.

"The response of donors to acute famines has been exemplary," says Frison. "But in the face of climate change, growing populations, water scarcity and other threats, we need to invest in intelligent, sustainable solutions." [Courtesy IPS]
 

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