Brussels, 05/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - If the international community fails to increase the share of development aid devoted to farming and rural development and if it fails to understand that only a 'village by village' approach will make it possible to meet the problem of hunger in developing countries, the World Food Summit (WFS, Rome, Italy, November 1996) target of reducing the number of malnourished people in the world by half by 2015 (based on 1990 figures) will never be achieved, explained Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Jacques Diouf, at a meeting of the European Parliament's Development Committee on Tuesday 3 October.
Some 854 million people in the world, one in every seven inhabitants on Earth, suffer from starvation. In some countries, a third of the population suffer from malnutrition. In other words, no real progress has been made in the past decade at global level, explained Diouf, highlighting the desperate situation in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of people suffering from malnutrition rose from 169 million in the previous decade to 206 million at the moment. FAO forecasts show that even if the proportion of people suffering from starvation fell sharply in developing countries to below half the 1990 figure by 2015, the WFS target would still not be met because the number of people forecast to suffer from starvation in 2015 would still be to the order of 582 million, compared with the FAO target of 412 million. There is more food produced in the world today than ten years ago and even more could be produced without causing excess pressure on prices, explained Diouf, arguing that this paradox (more food being produced while people starve around the world) is due to lack of political will on behalf of the international community to get the food to the starving. He explained that in 15 years, development aid for farming had actually fallen by half with only 6.5% of the most recent European Development Fund (EDF), for example, actually being used for rural development, despite the fact that 70% of the world's poor live in rural areas.
Jacques Diouf explained that how the aid is allocated is another part of the problem. In order to work, rural development programmes have to be carried out on a village by village basis, but that is not happening at the moment despite the fact that this has constantly been pointed out. Diouf added that most big institutions prefer big projects. Quizzed by several MEPs about the FAO's failure to take a lead in this connection, Diouf replied that the FAO was an advisory body and it was therefore down to governments to take action and change focus. Public investment in infrastructure at village level is required, said Diouf, like local management of water supplies, road networks and energy supplies. This in turn will attract private investment, he pointed out.
Answering a question from Frithjof Schmidt (Greens/EFA, Germany) on the impact of the rising cereal prices on the FAO's work, Diouf said that the rising prices complicated his organisation's work as it made it necessary to make greater use of emergency action plans. He put the price hikes down to four factors - the very low stocks of cereals, climate change (drought and floods), rising demand from emerging economies, and using farm products to make biofuel.
To a question from Alain Hutchinson (PES, Belgium) on the possible impact on the food situation of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) being negotiated between the EU and the ACP, the FAO director general was rather pessimistic. He said that the level of protection enjoyed by European farmers no longer existed for African farmers, and that the Common Agricultural Policy had provided some considerable protection for European farmers from import of food produced by African farmers. Hutchinson raised the issue of fair trade, to which Jacques Diouf replied that fair trade ought to be encouraged. He said it was a good thing but remained at present only a marginal proportion of global farm product trade. In this same spirit, he told Marie-Helene Aubert (Greens/EFA, France) that organic farming ought to be encouraged but it was certainly not a panacea when faced with the challenges of coping with the question of hunger in the world. In passing, Diouf pointed out that the FAO recommended avoiding excess use of pesticides. (ol)