FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf Appeals for a New World Agriculture Order

19 November 2008, Rome--

Addressing a special session of the FAO’s 191-member-nation governing Conference, Diouf declared that a 2009 World Summit was needed because, “After more than 60 years [since FAO’s foundation] it is essential to create a new system of world food security.”

Saving humankind from hunger

The Summit should also “come up with $30 billion per year to build rural infrastructure and increase agricultural productivity in the developing world,” he said. Proposing to commit such a sum to save humanity from hunger was not unreasonable given it had taken only few weeks to find more than 100 times that amount to deal with a global financial meltdown. The amount was modest compared to $365 billion of total support to agriculture in OECD countries in 2007 and 1 340 billion in world military expenditure the same year by developed and developing countries.

Late last month at the World Food Day celebration in New York, in the presence of President Clinton and the UN Secretary-General, and earlier this month in his message of congratulations to US President-elect Barack Obama, Diouf suggested that the United States take a lead in convening the Summit.

At the proposed Meeting, State and Government Heads should also agree to create an “Emergency Intervention Fund” to provide rapid-reaction resources to boost food production in poor countries heavily dependent on food imports, Diouf said.

Diouf stressed that FAO knew very well what had to be done to eradicate hunger from the world and to double world food production by 2050 to feed a population of nine billion. “Plans, programmes and projects to resolve the problem of food insecurity in the world do exist,” he underlined. Achieving those goals was a political and funding problem rather than a technical one, he noted.

http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/8569/icode/