Global Food for Thought

This Week’s Edition of the Global Food for Thought News Brief

Click here to view this week’s edition of the Global Food for Thought news brief.

Be sure to check out last week’s news brief, as well as our special edition devoted to the FAO World Summit on Global Food Security.

Expert Commentary - A Deficit in Political Will?

In response to the FAO World Summit on Food Security, the Global Agricultural Development Initiative solicited commentary by leading agricultural development and food security experts to provide expert analysis of the Summit's proceedings.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen

H. E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy, J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship, and Professor of Applied Economics, Cornell University; Professor of Agricultural Economics, Copenhagen University; Former Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)   Bio

The Declaration of the World Summit on Food Security agreed to by Summit participants on November 16, 2009, states as its first strategic objective to “Ensure urgent national, regional and global action to fully realize the target of Millennium Development Goal 1 and the 1996 World Food Summit goal, namely to reduce respectively the proportion and the number of people who suffer from hunger and malnutrition by half by 2015.”  Unfortunately, countries have already agreed to this commitment on many occasions, and little progress in alleviating the problems of global hunger and malnutrition has been made.

Expert Commentary - The Food Summit Distraction

In response to the FAO World Summit on Food Security, the Global Agricultural Development Initiative solicited commentary by leading agricultural development and food security experts to provide expert analysis of the Summit's proceedings.

Robert L. Paarlberg

Betty Freyhof Johnson Class of 1944 Professor of Political Science, Wellesley College; Associate, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University  Bio

Rome has always been the wrong place to hold “Food Summits.” The world’s most urgent food problems are not visible in the Eternal City, where you cannot get a bad meal.  These problems also cannot be corrected through un-funded, consensus-based resolutions, which are the leading product of United Nations conferences.  At the current World Summit on Food Security, the delegates negotiated a compromise and approved a watered-down “final declaration” in the opening hours of the first day, hoping to send a reassuring message of global harmony.

FAO World Summit on Food Security

World leaders convened at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome for the World Summit on Food Security unanimously adopted a declaration pledging renewed commitment to sustainably eradicate hunger, with the 192 countries present endorsing the strategy adopted by the Group of Eight nations at July’s L'Aquila Summit.

Countries also agreed to work to reverse the decline in domestic and international funding for agriculture and promote new investment in the sector, to improve governance of global food issues in partnership with relevant stakeholders from the public and private sector, and to proactively face the challenges of climate change to food security.

Of  the sixty leaders attending the meeting, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was the only leader representing the Group of Eight. Some of those who attended, including Pope Benedict XVI, called for increased access to international markets for products coming from the poorest countries, and urged delegates to keep the “fundamental rights of the individual” in mind when shaping new agricultural strategy. Others, such as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, called for an end to the purchase of African farmland by food-importing nations, describing the practice as “new feudalism” which could spread to Latin America as well.

During the negotiations of the draft declaration, the FAO, with support from Latin American, Middle Eastern and African nations, proposed the idea of setting a timeline for the eradication of hunger by 2025, but the idea was reportedly rejected by the U.S., the European Union, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Countries also failed to agree on a target to increase agriculture’s share of official development aid, which peaked in 1980 before gradually falling. The FAO had hoped the meeting would set an agriculture aid target of $44 billion annually toward helping farmers in poorer countries. To meet demand by 2050, agriculture output needs to grow by 70 percent, the organization said.

The final declaration restated the United Nations target of halving world hunger by 2015 and said that eradicating hunger should come “at the earliest possible date.” According to officials involved in the negotiations, diplomats from wealthier countries argued that creating a deadline for eradicating hunger was unrealistic.