Global food production has to rise to meet demand by CNN / UN News / ABC News 11:25pm 5th Jun, 2008   June 6, 2008    Donors pledge $6.8 billion at UN Food summit.    Donors at the United Nations Food Summit in Rome have pledged $6.8 billion to fight hunger and poverty.    John Holmes, head of the UN task force on the crisis, said a "broad consensus" had built around an action plan which is to be presented at a Group of Eight meeting in Japan this month, and a G8 summit in July.    In a final declaration countries pledged to halve global hunger by 2015 and take "urgent" action over the global food crisis.    "We are convinced that the international community needs to take urgent and coordinated action to combat the negative impacts of soaring prices on the world"s most vulnerable countries and populations," it said.    "There is an urgent need to help developing countries and countries in transition expand agriculture and food production and to increase investment from both public and private sources," the statement added.    In the summit declaration, the leaders vow to "use all means to alleviate the suffering caused by the current crisis, stimulate food production and increase investment in agriculture". The world"s food production systems must be made resilient to climate change.    Among the immediate measures proposed in the plan are increasing nutritional and other feeding programmes, as well as supplying fertilizers, seeds, animal feed and veterinary services to help smallholder farmers in the current planting season. The plan focuses on the need for much greater investment in agricultural production in the longer term.    Mr. Holmes said the World Bank estimated that global food production had to rise by at least 50 per cent by 2030 to meet worldwide demand.    “Everybody’s attention has been grabbed, by the sudden dramatic increase in food prices over the last few months, but there’s a broader underlying problem about agriculture that lies behind that,” he added.    Governments need to find ways of helping small, independent farmers and fishers adapt to climate change, by giving them money and investment for new technology, the draft said.    The draft says countries must reduce trade barriers and "market-distorting policies" to help farmers -- particularly those in developing countries -- sell their products and increase production.    Commenting on the summit declaration, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Olivier De Schutter, said that the international community needed to address the questions of power and accountability.    “Hunger is man-made. What misguided policies have caused, better focused policies can undo,” he said.    UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said that extra resources will be required to address the global food crisis and will cost $US20-30 billion a year. For his part, the head of the FAO Mr Diouf"s estimate was $US30 billion.    "How can we explain to people of good sense and good faith that it was not possible to find $30 billion a year to enable 862 million hungry people to enjoy the most fundamental of human rights: the right to food and thus the right to life?" Mr Diouf asked in his keynote address at the summit. In 2006 the world spent $US1.2 trillion on arms, he noted.    Ghana"s President John Kufuor said that, given the urgency of the food crisis, "it would be disastrous for the survival of mankind if the conclusions reached suffer the same fate" as earlier fruitless international summits.    Senegal"s President Abdoulaye Wade said "There"s been a brutal rise in prices of food and we were told there was a threat hanging over the world" he told Reuters.    The summit was an "important first step" but not sufficient to tackle the global food crisis, British charity Oxfam said. Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking said that while leaders of the world"s richest countries had "acknowledged the importance of aid to agriculture", the global food crisis needed "a wide-ranging plan to resolve it".    "As the world"s most powerful countries, they must provide more money to deal with the immediate impact of the current crisis but also tackle some of the contributing causes by ending compulsory biofuels targets and providing more long term aid for agriculture," she said.    "The current crisis illustrates starkly that what we need is not business as usual but deep reform of the international trading system."    ActionAid"s food and hunger policy adviser, Magda Kropiwnicka, said the document lacked concrete proposals. Ms Kropiwnicka said the insistence by powerful states that the solution to the current crisis was the completion of the Doha Round of trade talks was misplaced. "This is just going to cause even greater havoc. Over the past 30 years, the privatisation of agriculture and disinvestment in the rural economy has left countries without the policy tools to deal with the crisis," she said.    The FAO has said it needs a tenfold increase in its budget - to some $30bn a year - to help farmers grow food for their communities and countries.    The UN special rappoteur on the right to food, was highly critical of the US biofuel sector, saying that far from offering an alternative to fossil-based fuels, it pandered to the country"s powerful agricultural lobbies.    He said the decision by both the US and EU to increase biofuels targets sent a "dangerous signal" to the market which would only fuel speculation on commodities.    "In the US, the main reason for the biofuel industry is not to combat climate change or create energy independence but to reward powerful lobbies. It is difficult to change the policies of vested interests."    Delegates left Rome without consensus on key issues such as the increased demand for crops to produce biofuels and the impact on world food prices, and there is also no agreement on the lifting of trade barriers and the issue of farm subsidies, officials said.    "As long as you have subsidies from rich countries combined with a free trade agenda in developing countries -- which means the poor countries open up to rich ones -- their farmers can"t compete with subsidized goods coming in from Europe and the U.S.," said Alexander Woollcombe, a spokesman for Oxfam. "When prices go up, as they are at the moment, that means people in these countries cannot afford food."    Food prices have doubled in three years, according to the World Bank. The World Food Programme said Wednesday it has given an extra $1.2 billion in aid to 62 countries hardest hit by the global food crisis.    The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the fight against food shortages is one that can not be lost.    "I"m therefore calling upon world leaders to leave Rome with the following commitments - to move ahead collectively with a sense of urgency and purpose to fighting hunger and promoting world food security," he said. But Mr Ban warned it will take much more than a token pledge to address the issue.    In fact, he estimates it will take $20-30 billion a year to boost food production to combat hunger.    * 3 Billion People who live on less than $2 a day are under threat from rising food prices Visit the related web page
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