Legislation and national strategies for the right to food by UN Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO) 3:41pm 11th Apr, 2010   Apr 2010    The right to food team at the Food & Agricultural Organization has made available on its website two important tools to help to follow up on progress made with respect to the implementation of the right to food.    The aim is to faciliate the exchange of experiences to bring an overview of the different strategies and laws adopted in 73 countries to create an adequate environment for the realization of this human right. You can now access a comprehensive Legal Database which was published together with the Guide for Legislating for the Right to Food and a Database on national strategies for the right to food.    Mar 2010    Briefing on the 13th session of the Human Rights Council and the right to food.    At the UN Human Rights Council meeting in March 2010 representatives discussed the economic and financial crisis, with the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food presenting reports of the countries he visited in 2009 as well as offering his analysis on Agribusiness and the right to food. He offered a set of minimum principles states should adopt regarding large scale land acquisitions. The reports are of great importance to see the advances and the challenges faced in the implementation of the right to food. They constitute a main basis for monitoring the progressive realization of this human right since they provide accurate analysis on the main steps for implementing the right to food at national level.    The recommendations that the Special Rapporteur provides at the end of the country-visit reports are a basis for states to improve their efforts towards the achievement of this human right. Public policies and programs, legislation and institutional settings are assessed in order to evaluate their consistency with human rights standards and obligations. FAO has been supporting the process in different manners. In addition to the country visit reports, analysis was provided on the current organization of the agro-food chain and its impact on the realization of the right to food.    An important message of the report is the need for reinforcing labour rights of farmers in rural areas. In addition, their access to food is being seriously compromised by high food prices they cannot afford. A main message of the report stresses the fact that the current food chain system requires being more inclusive and equitable in order to guarantee everyone’s access to food.    Apr 2010    Poor plundered for land, by Jo Chandler. (The Age)    Farmers in Africa may starve as their fields are bought to profit rich foreigners.    When people accustomed to foraging in supermarkets venture into the developing world, one of the great shocks is the visibility of the food chain - the pungent, intimate connectedness of land, animals and people.    Chickens scratch at rubbish heaps. Children tend livestock. Women work the fields. Consumer culture obscures such realities - the sweat, the slaughterhouse, the sleepless anxiety of waiting on good rains and fair prices. We don''t know the stories of where food comes from, and are disinclined to ask.    But as competition for food increases in a warming, drying, more populous world, the unappetising depths of the labyrinthine food chain and the markets that sustain us deserve our scrutiny. Do we dare look?    Since the 2008 global food crisis, some of the world''s hungriest nations have been targeted in a land rush by billionaires, investment funds, banks, speculators and states looking for arable land to produce food for export, for profit, for bio-fuels, and to secure their larders in an uncertain world.    In sub-Saharan Africa, nations identified in a new United Nations report as being fossicked for their acreage include Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Somalia - countries etched into consciousness for their cycles of ravenous hunger.    The same desolate landscapes familiar as the backdrop for stories of scarcity and suffering are now greedily eyed by big agriculture as fields for feeding the 9 billion people expected to inhabit the planet by 2050. More people, finite land, and everyone must eat. As an analysis of the agribusiness bonanza in Der Spiegel observed, every crisis has its winners. Land prospectors are also busy in Latin America, Central Europe and Asia.    But Africa is the focus. Land is cheap and much of it untitled, even if it has been worked for generations by farming smallholders. It''s close to rich markets. It lies within reach of precious water which rudimentary systems could never plunder. All it takes to become productive is massive investment in irrigation, high-tech seeds, fertilisers, precision farming and transport links. All the things locals might long have wished for to improve their lives.    For years the UN, the World Bank and development agencies have solicited for agricultural investment in the developing world. Now the concern is how to ensure the windfall does more good than harm.    In late 2008, as the rush gained steam, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warned it could create "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry. Since then, the FAO line has fallen into sync with the World Bank to encourage farm investment while, behind the scenes, agencies search for mechanisms to ensure that small farmers aren''t sacrificed to agribusiness margins.    An investigation published last month by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, recognises that agribusiness presents opportunities in the developing world - for markets, jobs, infrastructure and food. But it also raises human rights challenges, particularly where it ignores local land rights, he says. The tenor of his report is cautious, concerned, and appeals for the world to set caveats to protect the vulnerable from voracious market appetites.    De Schutter said he was "extremely doubtful and worried" by recent transactions involving maybe 20 million hectares of land. An investigation by the London Observer puts the figure at closer to 50 million hectares. The lease deals are often invisible, brokered by governments without consultation with their parliaments or with the people on the land.    "The human right to food would be violated if people depending on land for their livelihoods … were cut off from access to land," De Schutter says. An increasingly globalised food sector dominated by big corporate muscle puts small farmers at a pitiful disadvantage when they sell their crops. If they complain, they risk reprisal. "These imbalances of power in the food systems can and must be corrected."    The sort of forces underwriting his anxieties are plain in Der Spiegel''s report, which includes startlingly candid observations from the boardroom. "When food becomes scarce, the investor needs a weak state that does not force him to abide by any rules," says a New York investor now with a big stake in Sudan - the world''s largest recipient of aid. He argues his project will not only profit him, but deliver more jobs and food than the UN ever could.    In Ethiopia, where more than 13 million people need food aid, the government is offering 3 million hectares of fertile land to investors in the hope of modernising and capitalising. African governments are competing to entice investors with favourable deals instead of banding together to insist on safeguards for their citizens. "What is different about this colonialism is that countries are readily allowing themselves to be conquered," Der Spiegel observes.    Recognising that food is critical not just to wellbeing but to social and political stability, De Schutter urges a list of principles for all large land acquisitions or leases. They should be transparent; brokered with the consent of communities; pay benefits to the population; promote jobs and fair pay; respect the environment; protect local food security; and recognise indigenous land claims.    But if governments fail their citizens, and if corporates fail to recognise the rights of the people hosting them, then De Schutter asks the investors'' home constituency, the wealthy, to apply due diligence. In a hungrier world, obligation falls on consumers of investment products, stockmarket gains and food to ask: where did this bounty come from?    * Visit the link below for more details from the FAO. Visit the related web page
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