"Within a decade, no child will go hungry, no family will fear for its next day's bread, and no human being's future and capacity will be stunted by malnutrition". Then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the World Food Conference, Rome, November 1974
At the 3-5 June 2008 World Food Security Conference in Rome called by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), we saw that there is a growing consensus that radical measures are needed to deal with the current world food crisis. These measures will have to be taken in a holistic way with actions going from the local level of the individual farmer to the national level with new government policies, to the multi-State regional level, embodied, for instance, by the European Union or the African Union, and the world level with better coordinated actions through the United Nations system.
Today, cooperation is needed among the UN family of agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations, and the millions of food producers to respond to the food crisis which has already led to destabilizing food riots. There is a need for swift, short-term measures to help people now suffering from lack of food and malnutrition due to high food prices, inadequate distribution, and situations of violence. Such short-term action requires additional funding for the UN World Food Programme and the release of national food stocks. However, it is the longer-range and structural issues on which we must focus our attention. The world requires a World Food Policy and a clear Plan of Action.
The June 2008 FAO World Food Security Conference had been prepared by a number of meetings of national agricultural specialists since January. Their main aim had been to look at the longer-range consequences of climate change on agricultural production. It was to be a conference of specialists with a handful of Ministers of Agriculture present to show that climate change was being taken seriously. However, food riots in different parts of the world with resulting political instability changed the nature and the make up of the conference.
Food riots in Haiti brought the issue of hunger to the front gates of Haiti's presidential palace and death to a UN peacekeeper from Nigeria who was shot by the crowd surging from a slum area of Port-au-Prince. The Prime Minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, was forced to resign for having failed to act despite sharp increases in the price of food over the past several months, pushing people who are already poor into deeper poverty. The President of Haiti, René Préval, who was trained as an agronomist and should have recognized the consequences of food shortages earlier, nevertheless, promised to use foreign funds originally destined for development projects to lower the price of rice.
Rising food prices are a global concern and have led to riots against high food prices in a growing number of countries such as Egypt, Senegal and Cameroon. Using government funds to lower prices can only be a short-term policy. Egypt already spends more on subsidies, including gasoline and bread, than on education and health combined. The United Nations food specialists indicate serious food shortages in many countries of Africa, such as Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Mozambique, and Eritrea in East and Southern Africa; Mauritania, Senegal, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon in West Africa.
In Rome there were, thus, 43 heads of government, and the Ministers of Agriculture headed the other delegations. The world's funding agencies were all there pledging increased funds. There were representatives from inter-governmental organizations and international institutions such as the European Union as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and a larger-than-usual press corps.
However, the agreements reached during the preparatory phase on longer-range planning in the light of climate change were largely put aside and attention given to the current crisis. As these crisis issues had not been at the center of the preparatory phase, no important agreements could be reached. It is impossible to negotiate with over 180 delegations present, often headed by political leaders who want to make a speech useful for domestic reasons and then leave. The political speeches, however, give a good indication of what issues are central and where agreements may be reached later. Thus Spain proposed to host a follow-up conference in Madrid in December. Between now and then, government specialists will work on formulating policies on which agreements can be made.
Thus, the period to November 2008 is crucial for NGOs interested in a world food policy. It is impossible for NGOs to modify the policies of governments during a conference. It is during the preparatory phase that governments are willing to consider new ideas. Many of these ideas are, in fact, not new. They have been lying around for some time but not put into practice and not structured in a holistic way. As the US economist Milton Friedman wrote "Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, and to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable".
During the Special Session devoted to the food crisis of the Human Rights Council on 21 May, I presented for the Citizens of the World the following five considerations for a world food policy: "For the formulation of a dynamic world food policy, world economic trends and structures need to be analysed, policy goals made clear. There are at least five areas that should be of special concern: climate change, energy costs, ethanol, the food production and export policy of major agricultural production states and the role of speculation in commodities.
1) There is a need to intensify action on climate change. This year (2007-2008) there has been bad weather in key growing areas. Australia, normally the world's second-largest wheat exporter, has been suffering from an epic drought. This may be a result of particular weather conditions this year or may be a sign of climate change. It is necessary to analyse the impact of climate change on long-term food production and see alternative strategies.
2) Higher prices for food are in part a reflection of the higher price of oil and energy costs. Much modern farming is energy-intensive for producing fertilizers, running tractors, and transporting farm products to consumers, often at long distances. Oil prices are influenced by the violence and social breakdown in Iraq and heavy speculation on the oil markets. There is need both for short term measures to bring oil prices down to a reasonable level based on production costs and transportation as well as longer-range energy policies to free countries from oil dependence.
3) Higher prices for oil have encouraged a greater use of ethanol and other biofuels, often without consideration of the impact of the production of biofuels on land use and food production. While biofuels are likely to be useful, their use should be limited at present so that its consequences can be studied and biofuels developed from non-food sources.
4) Governmental food and agriculture policies need to be analysed and reviewed carefully in a world food policy perspective. The agricultural policies of the European Union and the larger food-exporting countries - USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia - need to be reviewed along with the impact of agricultural subsidies and export encouragement.
5) There needs to be a detailed analysis of the role of speculation in the rise of commodity prices. Banks and hedge funds, having lost money in the real estate mortgage packages, are now investing massively in commodities. At present, there is little government regulation of this speculation. There needs to be an analysis of these financial flows and their impact on the price of grains.
A world food policy for the welfare of all requires a close look at world institutions and patterns of production and trade. As Stringfellow Barr wrote in his 1952 book Citizens of the World "Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some men die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live".