AGRICULTURE: Forum Calls for Eradicating Hunger by 2015

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

MATURIN, Venezuela, Aug 14 1997 (IPS) - In its final declaration, the II Ibero-American Forum on Agriculture highlighted commitments to eradicate hunger in Latin America, declare agriculture and the rural area strategic sectors and consider food as a basic human right.

Ministers and other official delegates from 19 Latin American countries plus Spain and Portugal participated in a three-day gathering in Maturin, roughly 500 kms southeast of Caracas. Representatives of agrobusiness and small farmers held parallel meetings.

The decisions of the Forum, one of the run-up conferences to the VII Ibero-American Summit, to be held in November on the Venezuelan island of Margarita, will be taken up there by the 21 heads of state and government.

The gathering, which opened Monday, culminated Wednesday in the Declaration of Maturin “for the consolidation of agriculture and the rural sector as pillars of democracy,” an action plan for the implementation of the commitments assumed in the first forum, and proposals put forth by the agrobusiness sector, members of cooperatives and peasant farmers.

The Forum’s host, Venezuelan minister Raul Alegrett, underlined that all participating countries agreed that Latin America had the capacity to overcome hunger by 2010 or 2015 – the goal laid out by the November 1996 World Food Summit in Rome for the halving of the number of people in the world who are chronically hungry today – more than 800 million.

According to Severino de Melo, the regional representative of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 15 percent of Latin America’s 200 million people have no access to a minimal diet.

FAO urged Ibero-American countries to dedicate at least 22 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to agriculture, considered by the U.N. agency the minimum level necessary for the eradication of hunger.

Participants decided to eliminate from the Venezuelan proposal that served as the basis for discussion in Maturin the mention of political elements such as the negative impact of drug trafficking, guerrilla fighting, corruption and legal and personal insecurity on rural development.

Guatemala and Costa Rica expressed their opposition to the reference to guerrillas, Chile opposed the mention of corruption and Mexico the reference to drug trafficking.

But all participants, from small farmers to ministers, agreed that globalisation was an unavoidable phenomenon, while indicating the need for innovations and capacitation for the most vulnerable sectors in order to achieve the necessary levels of competitiveness.

The final declaration points out that since more than half of Latin America’s people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture, social development and the reduction of the enormous inequality in the region depend largely on the development of that sector.

The forum also agreed on the need to bolster all the mechanisms designed to fortify agriculture and the rural sector that have been accepted as fair practices by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The three sectors present in Maturin coincided that training, the real transfer of technology, mechanisation, access to credit in reasonable and accessible conditions, provision of infrastructure and environmentally-safe agricultural practices were the means of strengthening the sector in a balanced manner.

Venezuelan minister Alegrett underlined that food security should be reached through regional rather than strictly national efforts. But while that aim, based on the concepts of integration and the liberalisation of trade, is not disputed, no precise plan has yet been reached, he added.

Food security can no longer be seen as a concept based on national self-sufficiency, but must include the achievement of an agricultural surplus, said the seven ministers and other delegates.

“The important thing is to achieve high levels of self- sufficiency through a common national and regional effort, and to limit the tendency towards third parties,” said Alegrett, referring to the markets of the industrialised North, which – he added – slap on protectionist surcharges as soon as a country becomes more competitive in a product.

Now that Brazil has reached new levels of efficiency in its agricultural production, for instance, the United States has applied a 400 dollar per tonne tax on its orange juice, a 29 percent tariff on chicken and a 300 percent tariff on tobacco.

Meanwhile, rich countries, which demand the total opening of Latin American markets and the elimination of all protective measures, maintain incentives and subsidies designed to protect the competitiveness of their own exports, added Alegrett.

He also admitted that although there is consensus on the need for integration, not everyone agrees on the pace. The Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), for example, wants an abrupt and total opening of markets, leaving producers dependent on their degree of efficiency.

The Andean countries and Mexico, on the other hand, are in favour of liberalisation, but at a gradual pace, with a slower transition for vulnerable links in the chain of production such as small farmers.

And Central America is pushing for an even more gradual approach, which would give it time to overcome the impoverishment and damages to the productivity of the rural sector caused by the armed conflicts that have finally come to an end in the region.

During the gathering, Mexican Senator Beatriz Paredes, the secretary-general of the National Peasant Confederation which links four million small farmers, urged direct support for small producers as a key to their insertion in the globalised economy.

The proposal for the strengthening of rural cooperatives and other forms of associations presented by the parallel meeting of small farmers and members of cooperatives was taken up by the official delegates. The small producers also called for government authorities and bodies that support peasants to push for gender equity as a condition for, and agrarian reform as an instrument of comprehensive development.

Paredes told IPS that advances had been made over the past few years in terms of concern for small farmers and support for improved productivity and efficiency with a view to their insertion in the opening of markets. But, she added, more must be done, given that “we are the poorest of the poor” and “food security depends on us.”

A delegate of the Pan-American Health Organisation, Eutimio Gonzalez, told IPS that chronic intoxication by agrochemicals was the new scourge of Latin American peasant farmers. Due to today’s new demands for competitiveness, productivity and efficiency created by the opening of markets, he said, small farmers use excessive doses of pesticides, which they mix improperly and apply “without protective clothing or masks.”

Agrochemical suppliers, meanwhile, do not care if peasant farmers die or their children are born with deformations, he maintained, because the dollar is the bottom line.

Gonzalez underlined that Latin American governments must tackle the excessive use of pesticides, caused by a lack of access to adequate information, as a new epidemic with serious social and health consequences.