Rome: World Summit on Food 'Just Another Talk-Fest'

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2744994.htm
Radio Interview by Eleanor Hall on Australian current affairs show, The World Today:

(audio available)

pictured: Jacques Diouf, Director General of Food & Agriculture Org, U.N. since 1994


ELEANOR HALL: Around 60 world leaders are attending the World Summit on Food Security in Rome and have vowed to take urgent action to combat global food shortages.

But already the meeting is being dismissed as another talkfest.

The leaders are not promising more money to deal with the hunger that afflicts a billion of the world's people and as Barney Porter reports the leaders of some of the world's wealthiest countries are not even attending the summit.

BARNEY PORTER: The summit was opened by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and he got straight down to business.

BAN KI-MOON: The food crisis of today is a wakeup call for tomorrow. By 2050 our planet may be the home to 9.1 billion people, over two billion more than today.

BARNEY PORTER: If that happens, he says, we'll need to grow 70 per cent more food at a time when weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable.

He's called for a more coordinated approach to the problem to build trust, saying the poorest people in the world are in a vicious cycle that threatens millions of lives.

BAN KI-MOON: We must ensure safety nets for those who cannot afford food. We must transform agriculture development, markets and how food is distributed.

BARNEY PORTER: Even the Pope had a say.

POPE BENEDICT XVI (translated): Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty. Opulence and waste are no longer acceptable when the tragedy of hunger is assuming ever greater proportions.

BARNEY PORTER: Josette Sheeran is the executive director of the World Food Programme.

JOSETTE SHEERAN: The world has to come together, not only to reach the hungry but to make sure we're producing enough food. So I think now most of the leaders of the world have declared this to be on the top of the agenda, but it is the time for action.

BARNEY PORTER: And that's what they've promised to do.

In 2000 the United Nations set a target of halving world hunger by 2015 and ending it by 2025.

The declaration issued on the first day of this three-day meeting has vowed "urgent action" to combat a problem affecting more than one billion people.

It outlines five principles including direct action to help the most vulnerable.

The document calls on wealthy nations to honour pledges made at a group of eight gathering last July of $US 20 billion in aid over the next three years.

But so far there are no new financial commitments from this summit or new targets.

That's angered Jacques Diouf, the head of the UN's food agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

JACQUES DIOUF: I'm satisfied by what they have achieved positively. I'm not satisfied with the fact that if we set a target, we have to get it quantified.

BARNEY PORTER: And while everyone agrees there's a problem, the solution is harder to settle on.

FAO professor Paul Munro-Faure says the answer to end world hunger is more investment in capital, labour and technology to improve food production.

PAUL MUNRO-FAURE: Money tends to come from a whole range of sources, individual farmers and their families. Money can come domestically or it can come from international sources but I think that the concern at the summit is that the levels of investment are inadequate to underpin the growth in production that is required to feed the world population.

BARNEY PORTER: But it's not that simple.

Activists holding a forum in parallel to the UN's summit have criticised multi-national food companies for buying up farmland in developing countries.

Henry Saragih is the coordinator of La Via Campesina, an international advocacy group for small farmers.

HENRY SARAGIH: Many our land has grabbing by the transnational corporations. They grow the palm oil and they grow the maize yeah. This is not to the people but to feed the cow. They export orientation.

BARNEY PORTER: The agricultural rights group, GRAIN, says the UN summit broached the issue of land grabs, but without proposing viable solutions.

Australia channels money through the FAO and recently committed $464 million over four years.

Kelly Dent is from Oxfam Australia.

KELLY DENT: There needs to be more done to ensure that this money does get to small farmers in particular and also to ensure that our food aid system is better coordinated, does better monitoring, there is increased money to agricultural aid and areas.

BARNEY PORTER: How do we achieve that?

KELLY DENT: A better multilateral food system where we see better coordination amongst UN agencies, better targeting of where that aid is going and better monitoring to make sure that that aid is actually going where it is needed.

ELEANOR HALL: That is Kelly Dent from Oxfam Australia, speaking to Barney Porter.