In the light of soaring food prices, Jaques Diouf, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO convened a three-day Summit. Delegations from 182 nations followed his call, with 42 countries sending delegations lead by their Heads of State or Government. The Final Declaration adopted at the end of the High Level Conference was felt to be disappointing, because it lacked strategies for long-term food security.

At the latest since World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned about the serious food crisis at the Spring Meeting of the Bank, this issue has taken a top place on the political agenda all over the world. FAO Director General Jacques Diouf therefore changed the planned annual conference into a food summit. Heads of states and governments from all regions of the world followed his call. In their statements they all pointed to the alarming developments taking place on the world agricultural markets, the drastically diminishing food stocks and the escalating food prices. Participants made the impacts of climate change and the expansion of bio-energy cropping primarily responsible for these developments. Many government representatives criticised on the one hand the restrictive export policies of certain developing countries, that lead to a further rise in food prices on the world markets, and on the other hand the unchanged agricultural protectionism which the EU and the USA continue to follow which is causing distortions on the world markets.

Ban Ki Moon demands emergency measures to combat hunger

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who recently set up a High Level Task Force at the UN headquarters in New York, warned that another 100 million hungry people will soon join the current 850 million already suffering from famine in our world. The drastic increase in food prices particularly hits the poorest, who already spend more than two thirds of their income on food. Ban energetically advocated rapid food aid, particularly in the form of vouchers,direct cash transfers or by the supply of seed and fertilizer.
In its Comprehensive Framework for Action presented by Ban Ki Moon at a press conference, the Task Force set up by the UN Secretary General proposes not only emergency measures but also numerous medium and long-term measures to secure the nutritional basis. These measures mainly target the development of infrastructure, investments in economically viable smallholder agriculture, research into higher-yielding food crops and better animal production systems, and adapting known technologies to existing food chains.

Final Declaration – The UN is no step further

The general public were very disappointed with the results of the summit. The Final Declaration, adopted with delay and following a hard discussion between representatives of the developing countries on the one hand and the industrialised nations on the other, does contain numerous commitments to invest in and promote sustainable smallscale agriculture and to support the integration of smallholder agriculture into local and regional market mechanisms and the need to invest in research and development, so as to make agriculture more resilient to the consequences of climate change. The declaration also calls for a more intensive analysis of the interaction between food production and biofuel cropping and the corresponding measures to be taken. But these issues were only treated vaguely.
Instead, the UN-bodies fall back on traditional measures such as food aid by the World Food Programme, the distribution of gratis “combi-packs“ (seed,fertilizer and pesticides),the distribution of vouchers or direct cash transfers.

Criticism from civil society and research

Displeasure was aired loudly by the numerous NGOs who had attended the conference but were only able to participate on the fringe, and in particular were not included in the negotiations on the final declaration. The NGO Welthungerhilfe, for example, criticised at the end of the conference that no binding agreements had been made on the development of agriculture and the sustainable development of rural areas. Concrete measures to fi ght hunger were limited to the usual emergency measures, said Dr. Rafaël Schneider of Welthungerhilfe. The distribution of cheap seed and fertilizer only leads farmers into new dependencies.
Joachim von Braun, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) also had critical comments. While he sees it as progress that the Food Summit closed with a strong statement on agriculture, it nevertheless failed to adequately address trade, biofuels, safety nets and implementation.
With regard to export bans, IFPRI research has found that the elimination of export bans would stabilise grain price fluctuations, reduce price levels by as much as 30 percent, and enhance the efficiency of agricultural production. The food crisis asks for immediate action, but this action must go into the right direction to assure long-term food security for the world population. The food summit failed to reach this goal.

(Angelika Wilcke)