World Food Day on 16 October 2008 was dominated, as expected, by the current food (price) crisis. Numerous organisations presented research on the effects of the spiralling food and energy prices and discussed possible solutions. The facts are these: statements from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicate that the number of people going hungry worldwide rose by 73 million to 923 million in the past year. As a result of the continuing high food and energy prices there will be a further 44 million people going hungry in the coming year, according to the latest study by the World Bank. To make matters worse, the global fi nancial crisis which is raging at present is also aggravating the situation for the countries affected: if the donor countries reduce their aid to developing countries and implement protectionist trade measures, there is the risk of another hunger crisis in the coming year, warns Jacques Diouf, Director- General of the FAO.

The structural causes must be addressed

Clearly there was hunger even before the food and energy crisis. So, at an event hosted by VENRO, the German NGO Coalition, DIE (German Development Institute) and EADI (European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes) in Bonn, Germany, to debate “The global hunger crisis: is the EU meeting its responsibilities?”, Welthungerhilfe staff member Rafaël Schneider called for the structural causes of hunger to be addressed. It is not just food parcels that are needed, but a reworking of the development strategy, he said. Rural development is still the most important way to reduce hunger, yet the EU – as well as other donors – have cut back their grant aid to agriculture even further. Nevertheless, said Michael Brüntrup of DIE, the EU is on the right track with its strategic paper on the food price crisis, the dismantling of market-regulating instruments and its plans to increase investment in agricultural research. However, the research would have to be carried out in such a way that farmers in developing countries could also make use of the findings.

The reaction of small-scale farmers…

How poor states and especially the smallholders in the Sahel belt are affected by rising food prices and how they react to these was the subject of research by the German aid agency Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World) and the Germanwatch initiative. They presented their study “Will food become a luxury?” in Berlin to mark World Food Day. Mali was the example given: between January and July 2008 the price of rice, which is predominantly imported, rose by 40 percent there, with direct consequences for urban consumers, whose diet is dominated by rice. Some cotton farmers, especially near the capital Bamako, have started to move into maize production, thus profi ting from high prices on the world market. However, the majority of farmers produce millet for their own use, albeit not usually in suffi cient quantities to meet their annual needs. In order to obtain enough grain despite the high prices, many households are increasingly falling back on alternative sources of income, such as the sale of livestock, firewood and vegetables.

... and national governments

Another typical reaction to the rising cost of food is a drastic change in food habits: food is not only rationed, but staple foods like millet and rice are also stretched with less nutritious parts of the plants. This leads to malnutrition, a fatal development for a country like Burkina Faso, where half the children are already undernourished, as Michaël Yanogo of the Centre Ecologique Albert Schweitzer (CEAS) reported. In order to offset the negative effects of the price rises, the government of Burkina Faso has resorted to measures like cuts in import duty and the sale of grain from state food reserves at “social prices”. However, according to Yanogo this has had only a limited effect on prices and the plight of the needy. Help in accessing better-quality seeds and fertiliser is also part of the government programme, mainly in the rice-growing regions of the country, in order to reduce the dependence on imports of this staple. The research in Burkina Faso and Mali has demonstrated that small-scale farmers have the will and the potential to react to rising food prices, said Tobias Reichert, author of the Germanwatch study. However, it has also shown that these opportunities can only be realised when there is targeted support for these same poor farmers. Both organisations welcomed the decision of the German government to make a further 600 million euros available to support agriculture in developing countries, and said that it should also endorse the EU Commission’s proposal to donate a billion euros of unclaimed EU agricultural subsidies for this purpose.
 
(sri/ib)