Zolia Morán Tun, from Tucurú, in the department of Alta Verapaz, in Guatemala, implements the piling trays to produce local plants, which they consume at the family level and sell the surplus. Initiatives like these help to move towards the goal of zero hunger. Credit: Luis Sánchez Díaz / FAO

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Oct 15 2018 (IPS)

Just three years ago, in September 2015, all United Nations Member States approved the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The eradication of hunger and all forms of malnutrition (Sustainable Development Goal number 2) was defined by world leaders as a cardinal objective of the Agenda, a sine qua non condition for a safer, fairer and more peaceful world.

Paradoxically, global hunger has only grown since then. According to the latest estimates, the number of undernourished people in the world increased in 2017, for the third consecutive year. Last year, 821 million people suffered from hunger (11 percent of the world population – one in nine people on the planet), most of them family and subsistence farmers living in poor rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

However, the growing rate of undernourished people is not the only big challenge we are facing. Other forms of malnutrition have also increased. In 2017, at least 1.5 billion people suffered from micronutrient deficiencies that undermine their health and lives, At the same time, the proportion of adult obesity continues to rise , from 11.7 percent in 2012 to 13.3 percent in 2016 (or 672.3 million people).

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO

If we do not call for urgent actions to halt the increasing obesity rates, we soon may have more obese than undernourished people in the world. The growing rate of obesity is happening at a huge socio-economic cost. Obesity is a risk factor for many non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer. Estimates indicate that the global economic impact of obesity is about USD 2 trillion per year (2.8 percent of the global GDP). This is equivalent to the impacts of smoking or armed conflicts.

This year, World Food Day (celebrated every 16th of October) aims to remind the international community of its fundamental political commitment to humanity – the eradication of all forms of malnutrition – and raise awareness that achieving a Zero Hunger world by 2030 (so in 12 years-time) is still possible. The experience of Brazil is a good example to have in mind.

According to FAO estimates, hunger in Brazil was reduced from 10.6 percent of the total population (about 19 million people) at the beginning of the 2000s to less than 2.5 percent in the 2008-2010 triennium, which is the minimum value in which FAO can make meaningful statistical inference. This reduction in the number of undernourished people was mainly possible due to the firm commitment of former President Lula and the implementation of public policies and social protection programmes addressing extreme poverty and the impacts of prolonged droughts in the northeastern part of the country.

In fact, governments have the most fundamental role in achieving Zero Hunger by ensuring that vulnerable people have sufficient income to buy the food they need, or the means to produce it for themselves – even in times of conflict.

However, world leaders have to bear in mind that the concept of Zero Hunger is broader and not limited to the fight against undernourishment. It aims to provide people with the necessary nutrients for a healthy life. Zero Hunger encompasses the eradication of all forms of malnutrition. So it is not just about feeding people but nourishing people as well.

Current global food systems have increased the availability and accessibility of processed food that is very caloric and energy-dense, high in fat, sugar and salt. Food systems must be transformed in a way so that all people can consume healthy and nutritious food. We need to address obesity as a public issue, not as an individual problem. This requires the adoption of a multisectoral approach involving not only governments, but also international organizations, national institutions, civil society organizations, the private sector and citizens in general.

It must be a collective effort towards healthy diets that include, for instance, the creation of norms such as labelling and the banning of some harmful ingredients, the introduction of nutrition in the school curriculum, the adoption of methods to avoid food loss and waste, and the establishment of trade agreements that do not hamper access to locally grown, fresh and nutritious food from family farming.

“Our actions are our future” is the message of World Food Day 2018. It is time to renew our commitment and, even more important, the political support towards a sustainable world free from hunger and all forms of malnutrition.

Excerpt:

Graziano da Silva with a group of women who are participating in a vegetable-growing project in Borno State, north-eastern Nigeria. Credit: FAO/Carlos Laorden

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Oct 3 2018 (IPS)

Everybody wants to end hunger. That is what all UN-member countries stated when signing the 2030 Agenda for a better world: the second of its 17 goals aims at eradicating all forms of malnutrition (which include overweight, obesity or micronutrient deficiencies) and ensuring that everybody has access to nutritious and healthy foods.

Along with these good intentions, we have in recent decades seen real efforts and concrete commitments that have led to steady progress in this battle. Recent reports produced by FAO and other UN agencies, however, give us little cause for celebration. In 2017, the world was home to 821 million hungry people, almost 2.2 billion overweight people and 670 million obese adults (and this number is rising). On top of that, at least 1.5 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies that undermine their health and lives.

What do we really need to do to eradicate all forms of malnutrition?

Governments can’t do it on their own, nor can those with deep pockets acting alone. The same applies to international agencies, NGOs, civil society and/or the private sector working. We really need to combine and align our efforts.

In the first place, we need to acknowledge that this battle should receive high priority. The fight against hunger should not slip down in the list of global priorities such as climate change, migrations or population growth.

Addressing those challenges must in no way mean that we put aside our efforts to guarantee every human’s fundamental right to food, especially as the latter has a strong impact on the other challenges.

Secondly, we need more funds. It takes money to make things happen and Governments —the real game-changers— need resources to pave the way towards environmentally, economically and socially sustainable food systems. With so many priorities arising, though, funding is not enough. (Some $24.7 billion were needed to address humanitarian emergencies in 2017 alone, according to UN estimates.)

Nevertheless, just as it’s not enough to buy seeds to assure a good harvest, allocating funds will not suffice to eradicate all forms of malnutrition. Achieving that goal lies in making sure that the public policies and actions we take are truly effective.

Investment effectiveness requires several preconditions: reliable and strong data that allow policymakers to make informed decisions and assess if things are really going in the right direction; qualified staff to put plans in practice; technical assistance and expertise…

In short, what’s needed is an enabling environment where funds can flourish and lead to significant progress. In other words, we do not just need to buy seeds, but to find fertile soil, prepare the ground, water the fields and take good care of them so that we gather big returns.

In this interconnected world, that is no task for anyone to do alone. Governments can’t do it on their own, nor can those with deep pockets acting alone. The same applies to international agencies, NGOs, civil society and/or the private sector working. We really need to combine and align our efforts. That is the aim, for example, of the FIRST Programme, which assists Governments to design policies and create environments where food and nutrition security can flourish.

In FIRST, an important partner like the European Union and FAO, join forces side by side with Government officials in around 30 countries (from Cambodia to Chad and from Honduras to Afghanistan).

Food production should be done in a way that is sustainable and generates dividends in other areas. Policies towards eradicating hunger need to address every element of the food system. For example, boosting Nile perch production and exports in Lake Victoria will have little positive effect on food security if the benefits of those activities do not reach local communities.

Likewise, giving Guatemalan family farmers technical and financial support will not contribute to alleviate undernourishment if it does not include a gender perspective and considers the challenges that female rural farmers face and their key role in their households’ nourishment. Similarly, focusing too much on producing staple foods like rice or forgetting to promote the availability of diverse and nutritious fresh foods will unlikely result in a better nutritional status.

Even when priorities pile up on our agendas, we must not leave aside food and nutrition, which lie at the heart of life, health and development. To be sure, we are equally obliged to make the most out of every euro we spend on this front, and ensure that it leads to sustainable and long-term positive effects that reach everybody, especially the most vulnerable. There is no time —nor money— to be wasted.

Excerpt:

Al Hudaydah, Yemen. Dairy cattle seek shade. Credit: FAO/Chedly Kayouli

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Apr 24 2017 (IPS)

People in Yemen are currently suffering from the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

More than 17 million people around Yemen’s rugged landscape are acutely food insecure, and the figure is likely to increase as the ongoing conflict continues to erode the ability to grow, import, distribute and pay for food. More than 7 million people are on the verge of famine, while the rest are marginally meeting the minimum day-to-day nutritional needs thanks to external humanitarian and livelihoods support. Large-scale famine is a real risk that will cast an awful shadow for generations to come.

Only a political solution can end the suffering in Yemen, as there can be no food security without peace. And the longer the delay to draft an adequately funded recovery plan, the more expensive the burden will be in terms of resources and human livelihood.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO

To prevent the food security situation from worsening, immediate livelihoods support – mainly agriculture and fishing – must be an integral part of the humanitarian response. This year, FAO Yemen is appealing for USD 48.4 million in funding to reach 3 million people.

While Yemen is widely noted as being dependent upon imports for almost all of its wheat and rice demands, people can and do produce a lot of food on their own. This requires the provision of seeds, fertilizers and fuel for equipment and irrigation to the 2 million households who currently lack access to such basic agricultural inputs.

In 2016, agricultural production and area under cultivation shrank by 38 percent due to this lack of inputs. Livestock production fell by 35 percent. The situation in 2017 is not expected to improve without the international community’s intervention.

Al Hudaydah, Yemen. A female dairy farmer milks her cow. Credit: FAO/Chedly Kayouli

These home production kits, designed to help feed a household of 20 people for six months, constitute cost-effective humanitarian assistance that can be scaled up to reach more people more quickly. This is especially pertinent for internally displaced people – who now constitute more than 10 percent of the population, and the vast majority of whom traditionally relied on agriculture and livestock. They now live in camps, with relatives or on empty lots and helping them relieve pressure on host communities can pay a double dividend in terms of food and social cohesion.

The kits also have the virtue of being simple, and in the case of Yemen – enduring a combination of several worst-case scenarios at once – simple translates into being implementable.

Simplicity is especially essential to support isolated rural households, almost half of whom live more than six kilometres from any local market at a time when travel is dangerous and roads have been destroyed. For many of these families, these food production kits are their only lifeline to food.

In a bid to restore agricultural livelihoods, FAO is also offering starter kits for beekeepers, replacing fishing equipment that has been destroyed or lost, and giving rural households modern butter churns that enable the production to increase tenfold and help offset Yemen’s serious dairy deficit.

Al Hudaydah, Yemen. A livestock market. Credit: FAO/Chedly Kayouli

Making Yemen’s food system more sustainable will be a long-term effort, requiring important changes to which crops are grown and the rebooting or creation of value chains and improved logistics for what is destined to be the country’s primary economic sector. Agriculture already employs more than half of the workforce and is the main source of income for around 60 percent of households.

Even in peacetime, Yemen will face huge challenges, as only 4 percent of its land is arable and water resources are extremely limited. However, its people can and must be enabled to create a viable and more sustainable food system. This requires a simultaneous approach of providing humanitarian assistance along with resilience-building initiatives.

There is no time to lose. The alternative is dismal and threatens to catalyse more conflicts in the future, for there can be no peace without food security.

Excerpt:

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Nov 7 2016 (IPS)

Migration is part of the process of development. It is not a problem in itself, and could, in fact, offer a solution to a number of matters. Migrants can make a positive and profound contribution to the economic and social development of their countries of origin, transit and destination alike. To quote the New York Declaration, adopted at the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants on 19 September, “migrants can help to respond to demographic trends, labour shortages and other challenges in host societies, and add fresh skills and dynamism to the latter’s economies”.

So far this year, already more than 320,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean in search of a better future. Thousands have lost their lives doing so. Those that have survived face uncertain prospects at their destinations. Many are confronted with hostility and inhumane new realities. Migrants and refugees are often perceived negatively in their host communities, deemed to “steal’’ jobs and drain financial and social services. At personal and collective levels, this creates a certain sense of disquiet.

Tighter border controls are not the solution. They have instead resulted in more deaths at sea and more human rights violations. Without adequate policies that respond to migrants’ need to leave and that offer accessible, regular, safe and affordable avenues for migration, countries risk being left alone to deal with very complex challenges, possibly falling into chaos and disorganization.

In many cases, this translates into the adoption of less than desirable informal solutions, where the risk of abuses of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers is high. What has been happening in the Jungle camp near Calais in France shows that the most vulnerable, such as unaccompanied children, are those most at risk.

The challenge is huge. If we do not act in a timely manner, tensions will only rise further.

We need to address the root causes behind large movements of migrants and refugees, bringing together humanitarian and development responses. We also need channels for regular migration, facilitating migrants’ integration and contributions to development.

FAO argues that investing in sustainable rural development, climate change adaptation and resilient livelihoods is an important part of the solution, including in conflict-affected and protracted crisis situations.

Forty percent of international remittances are sent to rural areas, indicating that a large share of migrants originate from rural locations. Globally, three-quarters of the extreme poor base their livelihoods on agriculture. And by 2050, over half of the population in least developed countries will still be living in rural areas, despite increased urbanisation.

Agriculture and rural development can help address the root causes of migration, including rural poverty, food insecurity, inequality, unemployment, and lack of social protection, as well as natural resource depletion due to environmental degradation and climate change.

Agriculture and rural development can create sustainable livelihood options in rural areas. This kind of support can also help prevent the outbreak of conflicts over natural resources, and help host communities and displaced people cope with and recover from shocks by building their resilience.

Youth deserve particular attention. One-third of international migrants from developing countries are aged 15-34, moving mainly in search of better employment opportunities. By making agriculture a sustainable and attractive employment option and developing food value chains, millions of new and better jobs could be created.

Together with its partners, FAO supports global and country efforts on migration, bringing its specialized expertise on food security, resilience-building and sustainable agriculture and rural development. It does so by generating data on migration and rural development, supporting capacity development at country and regional level, facilitating policy dialogue and scaling-up innovative solutions to enhance agriculture-based livelihoods, social protection coverage and job opportunities in rural areas, as well as to build resilience in protracted crisis situations.

Since 2014, FAO has been a member of the Global Migration Group (GMG). The GMG has played an important role in coordinating inputs from different UN agencies for the process of intergovernmental negotiations that led to the adoption of the New York Declaration during the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants.

GMG will assume the same role in preparation of the adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration by 2018. FAO stands ready to lend its technical expertise and share best practices, to ensure that the need to address the root causes of migration, including from rural areas, is taken into account in major global fora.

FAO will also enhance the collaboration with key partners in the area of migration and development, at global, regional and country level. In this regard, FAO is discussing ways to foster country-level collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Note on the terminology: FAO uses the term migration to refer to the movement of people, either within a country or across international borders. It includes all kinds of movements, irrespective of the drivers, duration and voluntary/involuntary nature. It encompasses economic migrants, distress migrants, internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees and asylum seekers, returnees and people moving for other purposes, including for education and family reunification.

Excerpt:

Refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the town of Idomeni. Credit: Nikos Pilos/IPS

By Andrew MacMillan and José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Jun 20 2016 (IPS)

European nations from which millions once left to escape hardship and hunger – Greece, Ireland, Italy – are today destinations for others doing the same.

Many people are on the move. The really big numbers relate to rural-urban migration in developing countries. In 1950, 746 million people lived in cities, 30 percent of the world’s population. By 2014, urban population reached 3.9 billion (54 percent).

By comparison, about 4 million migrants have moved into OECD countries each year since 2007.(*) And 60 percent of Europe’s 3.4 million immigrants in 2013 came from other European Union member states or already held EU citizenship. Those from outside amounted to less than 0.3 percent of the EU’s population.

Conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, along with the breakdown of law or of freedom in Libya, Eritrea, Somalia and South Sudan, have catalyzed a surge in asylum seekers – whose numbers climbed to 800,000 in OECD countries alone in 2014 and who, under international law, must be protected.

Growing apprehension in some recipient countries has led to calls for fences and walls to cut migrant flows. Barriers, however, are costly, can be circumvented, and are all too reminiscent of the restrictions on liberty from which many migrants are seeking refuge.

The urge for a better life is the main driving force for migration, both local and international. People are “pulled” by the belief that better prospects exist elsewhere. As mobile phones and internet access have reached the remotest corners of the world, such beliefs have proliferated.

For those countries wishing to reduce cross-border migratory pressures, the best option is probably to address the root causes. This entails actions that foster peace and security where there is conflict and oppression. It also implies closing the widening gaps in living standards, both between nations and between rich and poor in the countries that economic migrants are leaving.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

Some destination countries have cut social security allowances for new arrivals in a bid to reduce their attraction. But more fundamental policy shifts in wealthier societies towards deterring their own people’s most conspicuous consumption behavior are needed. This will not be easy. It could involve having consumers meet the full costs of the environmental and social damage incurred in the production and use of what they buy.

Extreme poverty is found mainly in rural communities, where most internal migration begins. Poverty is not simply a matter of low incomes but also of limited access to adequate housing, clean water, energy, decent education and health services. On almost every score, rural people are worse off than city dwellers and also more vulnerable to shocks. Paradoxically, the incidence of hunger and malnutrition is highest in the very communities that produce much of the world’s food.

Urbanization seems bound to further widen these gaps. Cash remittances sent by first-generation local and international migrants to their relations back home help, but are usually modest in scale.

Policies to eliminate rural poverty must respond to locally expressed priorities for improved access to infrastructure and public services, including competent and honest local government institutions. They also need to include social protection programmes, ideally based on regular and predictable cash transfers to the poorest households, ensuring that all people are, at the very least, able to eat healthily and cope with periods of shortages.

The European Union has endorsed the principle of addressing the root causes of migration from Africa to Europe and, at a November 2015 summit in Malta, declared that investing in rural development is a priority. However, the EU’s nearly 30 members approved only EUR1.8 billion in extra resources. This is trivial, given the scale of poverty. It is about a quarter of what they offered Turkey to stem the flow of migrants into Europe.

Andrew MacMillan

The link between the reduction of extreme deprivation and peace was acknowledged by FAO’s founders in 1945 when they wrote:
“Progress towards freedom from want is essential to lasting peace, for it is a condition of freedom from the tensions, arising out of economic maladjustment, profound discontent, and a sense of injustice which are so dangerous in the close community of modern nations.” (**) FAO today is guided by these principles in its ongoing work in rebuilding food security and creating greater resilience in countries torn apart by conflict.

Remittances and aid can help reduce inequalities but a more sustainable way of closing the urban-rural gap is offered by fairer trading in food, the main saleable output of most rural communities. When consumers begin to pay food prices that reward producers fairly for their investments, skills, risk exposure and labour, and for their responsible stewardship of natural resources, the market can become the main vehicle for eradicating the extreme deprivation and hunger that “push” migration. (***)

This move towards fairer food prices would be a first step towards harnessing the great power offered by the processes of globalization to create a world in which all people know they can, through their work, lead a decent life even when they choose to live where they were born.

(*) See OECD (2015), International Migration Outlook 2015, OECD Publishing, Paris

(**) See United Nations Interim Committee on Food and Agriculture, The Work of FAO, Washington DC, 1945

(***) Contrary to most predictions, the food price rises of 2008 and 2011 reduced extreme poverty in the long term in both rural and urban communities. See Headey, D., Food Prices and Poverty Reduction in the Long Run, IFPRI Discussion Paper 01331, Washington DC, 2014

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, May 5 2016 (IPS)

After its remarkable success in reducing hunger, Europe must now rise to the challenge of making sure food assures more than survival and furnishes healthy lives. As head of a global hunger-fighting organization, nothing gives me more satisfaction than to see a vast region of the world achieving food security for its people.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO

With 53 member countries and one member organization, Europe and Central Asia is FAO’s largest region, stretching across 13 time zones from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Our data show that in almost every country, this region has succeeded in driving down food insecurity to below 5 percent of the population. The absolute number of hungry in the region has fallen by at least 40 percent since 1990.

Unfortunately, the story does not end here.

Malnutrition – as distinct from undernourishment (caloric insufficiency) – is a concern that cuts across the entire region. It takes many forms: micronutrient deficiencies, stunting, wasting, overweight and obesity. In fact, most countries in the region have alarming rates of obesity – more than 20 percent in adults. Malnutrition has health, social and economic costs that no society can afford to bear.

Why is this happening? Because just as countries emerge from the age-old problem of hunger, people’s diets and lifestyles are being influenced in negative ways by globalization, nutrition transition, and other changes.

Economic and social transformations – including higher incomes in many poor and middle-income nations, and the easy availability of over-processed foods at relatively cheap prices – are leading to changes in eating patterns that are driving up obesity rates. Other lifestyle changes, such as reduced physical activity, have made the situation even worse.

Ensuring access to adequate, nutritious and safe food for a growing population is one of the major challenges of our times. The problem is compounded as competition for scarce natural resources intensifies, and the adverse long-term effects of climate change are felt.

For Europe and Central Asia, the challenge now is to pass through this unhealthy interim stage as quickly as possible, into diets and eating habits that are diverse, nutritious, safe, and sustainable.

We took a firm step in the right direction with the Second International Conference on Nutrition in November 2014, when countries adopted the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and a framework for action on ending all forms of malnutrition. Countries committed to enhancing sustainable food systems by developing coherent policies from production to consumption and across all relevant sectors to provide year-round access to food that meets nutrition needs, and to promote safe and diversified healthy diets.

To succeed, countries will need to put the right policies in place to reform the food system, reduce food losses and waste, make it easier for consumers to make healthy food choices, empower people with nutrition education, provide accurate food labelling, promote cultivation of crops like pulses, develop small-scale, local agriculture, and connect those farmers with markets.

Next week, the countries of Europe and Central Asia will tackle the issue of unhealthy diets and other food- and agriculture-related issues when they convene in Antalya, Turkey for the 30th FAO Regional Conference for Europe. Ministers and other delegates and representatives of civil society and the private sector will discuss both problems and solutions and set priorities for FAO’s work across the region in the coming two-year period.

The societies of Europe and Central Asia today have the opportunity to choose a healthy future, and FAO is ready to support them in that choice.

(End)

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Sep 23 2015 (IPS)

The next 15 years will be decisive for our planet’s future.

During this period we will face some of the 21st Century’s greatest challenges, amidst an ongoing and profound transition in the global economy.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

In other words, social inclusion must become the backbone of development. Yet we will achieve neither social inclusion nor development, unless our choices are guided by sustainability.

We are the first generation that can end hunger and make food and nutrition security truly universal. And perhaps we are also the last generation in a position to avoid irreversible damage brought about by climate change.

The political framework needed to move us in the right direction requires an unprecedented degree of political commitment.

One critical step in that direction will be taken later this month, when the international community endorses the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with an ambitious agenda to change the world for the better in the next 15 years.

This new global pact for the future crucially includes ending poverty and hunger by 2030, mitigating and adapting to climate change and finding more sustainable ways to make supply meet demand.

The choices we make as consumers have now become just as important for the future as the ones we make as producers.

In addition to the around 800 million people who are chronically undernourished, malnutrition is also a major problem with some two billion people suffering from micronutrient deficiencies and 500 million who suffer obesity, the latter a malady that is increasing in many medium- and high-income countries.

Paradoxically this is all happening in a world where nearly a third of all food produced is lost or wasted, generating even more pressure on production.

The world being envisaged through the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals is not an unattainable pipe dream. It is not utopia; we can make it real.

The solution lies in the problem. As wealth continues to gain distance from justice, survival depends more and more on the imperative of cooperation.

Either we build a future for all, or there will be no acceptable future for anyone. Any doubt in this regard pales before the exodus we are witnessing where desperate refugees attempt often deadly land and sea crossings in a desperate attempt to find a better life elsewhere.

More than 70 percent of the world’s food insecurity is concentrated in the rural areas of poor and developing countries. One of the solutions is to acknowledge and support the role that small-scale family farming can play to achieve zero hunger in a sustainable way. To achieve this we need public policies that build people’s capacities, support production, facilitate access to financial credit, technology and other services and promote international cooperation.

To eradicate hunger and poverty we must begin by moving beyond dealing with emergencies when they occur and instead direct our efforts at addressing the conditions that cause them.

The cost of failure is clear. If a business-as-usual approach prevails, by 2030 we will still have 650 million hungry people.

We have estimated that to end hunger by 2030 a combination of investments in social protection and agriculture/rural development of some USD 267 billion is required. This means some USD160/year for each person suffering hunger

This is more or less the price of a cell phone. It is a relatively small amount to pay to finally rid the world of the scourge of hunger and to do it in our lifetimes. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, May 5 2015 (IPS)

In the last half-century, people’s lifestyles have changed dramatically. Life expectancy has risen almost everywhere, but this has been accompanied by an increase of so-called non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases, and diabetes – causing more and more deaths in all corners of the world.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

My distinguished colleague Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), has called the worldwide rise of NCDs a “slow-motion catastrophe”. If NCDs were once considered the scourge of the developed world, this is no longer true; they now disproportionally affect low- and middle-income countries where nearly three-quarters of NCD deaths – 28 million per year – occur.

Much of the rise of NCDs can be attributed to unhealthy diets. WHO estimates that 2.7 million deaths every year are attributable to diets low in fruits and vegetables. Globally unhealthy diets are estimated to cause about 19 percent of gastrointestinal cancer, 31 percent of ischaemic heart disease, and 11 percent of strokes, thus making diet-related NCDs one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide.

In other words, diet determines health – just as bad diets can lead to disease, healthy diets can contribute to good health.

But what exactly is a healthy diet? This is a difficult question. Generally, a healthy diet must provide the right nutrients in the right balance and with sufficient diversity, limiting the intake of free sugars to less than 10 percent of total energy requirements, and keeping salt intake to less than 5 grams per day.“There is no one-size-fits-all healthy diet. A healthy diet must be affordable, based on locally available foodstuffs, and meet cultural preferences”

However, there is no one-size-fits-all healthy diet. A healthy diet must be affordable, based on locally available foodstuffs, and meet cultural preferences. For over 20 years, FAO, together with WHO, has worked with governments on national Food-Based Dietary Guidelines: short, science-based, tips on healthy eating, in accordance with local values, customs and tradition.

Healthy meals do not always taste or look the same. Take, for example, the Mediterranean and Japanese diets: very healthy and completely different.

The Mediterranean diet revolves around the consumption of legumes, cereals, fruits and vegetables, olive oil, fish, and moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly cheese and yogurt). It emphasises unprocessed, plant-based foods, such as fruits and vegetables, in addition to the consumption of beans, nuts, cereals and other seeds; olive oil is the main source of (unsaturated) fat.

Japanese cuisine, on the other hand, is often associated with sushi (raw fish with rice), and sashimi (fresh raw seafood). The Japanese diet emphasises at least seven ingredients: fish as a major source of protein; vegetables including daikon radish and sea vegetables; rice; soya (tofu, miso, soya sauce); noodles; fruit; and tea (preferably green).

The Japanese and Mediterranean diets are examples of healthy diets. They use a great variety of ingredients; they are rich in plant foods including vegetables and fruit, legumes and fibres; they are modest in red meat; and they utilise many natural herbs and spices instead of salt to flavour food.

Both diets are linked to peoples and cultures as much as to their natural environment: it therefore comes as no surprise that both the Mediterranean diet and the Japanese diet have made it onto UNESCO’s World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

The health benefits of the Japanese and Mediterranean diets are promising. Japanese enjoy one of the longest average life spans in the world – 87 years for women and 80 for men. In Mediterranean countries such as Italy and Spain, women have a life expectancy of 85 years. The figure for Italian men is 80 years, the same as their Japanese counterparts. All of them are above the average of high-income countries: 82 years for women and 76 years for men.

Medical research also indicate that that the Japanese diet leads to the lowest prevalence in the world of obesity – only 2.9% for Japanese women – and other chronic diseases like osteoporosis, heart ailments and some cancers. On the other hand, the Mediterranean diet, if followed for a number of years, is known to reduce the risk of developing heart disease, cancer, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

In sum, adhering to a healthy diet helps you to not only to live longer, but also to have a better quality of life. Conversely, a bad diet causes malnutrition and can expose you to a range of NCDs.

A modern paradox is that many countries – including developing countries – suffer from undernourishment on the one hand, and obesity and diet-related diseases on the other. And while FAO’s chief concern is to eradicate hunger in this world, we cannot separate food security from nutrition. FAO – together with our U.N. agencies – considers food and nutrition security a basic human right.

In all cases, the cost of malnutrition goes beyond the health of the individual: it affects society as a whole in terms of public health costs and loss of productivity, and, therefore, is an issue that must be addressed through public and coordinated action.

Last year’s Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), organised jointly by FAO and WHO, sent a clear message in that direction. The two outcome documents of ICN2, the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Framework for Action that commit world leaders to establishing national policies aimed at eradicating malnutrition and making nutritious diets available to all.

A key message from ICN2 is: governments have a central role to play in creating a healthy food environment to enable people to adopt healthy dietary practices. Yes, it is consumers who choose what to eat, but it is the government’s role to provide the enabling environment that encourages and makes healthy choices possible. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Mar 13 2015 (IPS)

Artificial meat. Indoor aquaculture. Vertical farms. Irrigation drones. Once the realm of science fiction, these things are now fact. Food production is going high tech – at least, in some places.

But the vast majority of the world’s farmers still face that old and fundamental fact: their crops, their very livelihoods, depend on how Mother Nature treats them. Over 80 percent of world agriculture today remains dependent on the rains, just as it did 10,000 years ago.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

At the Second International Conference on Nutrition held in Rome last November, Pope Francis said: “God forgives always; men, sometimes; the Earth, never. Mother Nature can be rough – and she’s getting rougher as our planet’s climate changes.”

When drought, floods, tsunamis or severe weather hit, the consequences for people’s food security and economic well-being can be profound. Beyond the disaster-provoked hunger crises that make newspapers headlines, the development trajectories of entire nations and regions can be seriously altered by extreme events.

Remember: In many developing countries farming remains a critical economic activity. The livelihoods of 2.5 billion family farmers depend on agriculture, and the sector accounts for as much 30 percent of national GDP in countries like Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger and Mozambique, among others.Losses and damages to crops and livestock, fisheries and forestry due to natural hazards accounted for at least 22 percent of the total bill between 2003 and 2013.

It is not only drought, floods, and storms the pose a threat to agriculture, by the way. Diseases and pests like Small Ruminants Plague (PPR), or desert locusts or wheat rusts do as well. Nor is harsh weather the only threat: wars, economic crises – the work of humans – frequently wreak havoc on agricultural communities and infrastructure.

Conflicts, natural hazards have always threatened food security. However today we are witnessing their aggravation. Economic losses due to natural disasters have tripled over the last decade – and continue to rise.

Initial results from a new FAO study show that losses and damages to crops and livestock, fisheries and forestry due to natural hazards accounted for at least 22 percent of the total bill between 2003 and 2013.

Small scale farmers, herders, fishers and forest-dependent communities, who generate more than half of global agricultural production, are particularly at risk. (By the way, these very same people make up 75 percent of the world’s poor, hungry and food insecure population.)

So how can we ensure food security in a world with ever more people, exposed to ever more intense and frequent hazards?

Agriculture itself can provide solutions. It is a main driver for land use changes and can therefore be instrumental in increasing vulnerabilities to natural hazards. At the same time, a more sustainable approach to food production would help us protect the environment and build the resilience of our communities in the face of disasters.

Over the past decade, good progress has been made in fleshing out the concept of disaster risk reduction and its vital contribution to inclusive and sustainable development. Yet more must be done to harness the potential of agriculture in reducing disaster-related risks and to factor agriculture, food security and nutrition into strategies for bolstering up the resilience of societies.

Next week, world leaders and the international development community will gather in Sendai, Japan, to chart a pathway for a broad-reaching and holistic global approach to disaster risk reduction.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations will be taking the message to the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (Mar. 14-18) that risk-sensitive development in the agriculture-food-nutrition sector is an essential building block for enhancing overall global resilience to disasters.

Our vision for ensuring that agriculture both benefits from and contributes to disaster risk reduction rests on four mutually reinforcing pillars that are applicable at the local, national, regional and global levels.

First, we must manage risk. This includes developing legal and regulatory frameworks for risk reduction and crisis management and building capacities at all levels to implement them. Risk factors need to be systematically factored into agriculture, fisheries and forestry planning, from step one.

Second, we have to watch to safeguard, establishing better information-gathering and early warning systems to identify threats. Then we must be proactive and act before disaster hits. In the past, the global community received early warning of impeding crisis, but did not react. The 2011 famine in Somalia is a recent and sobering example.

Third, we need to reduce the underlying risk factors that make farmers, pastoralists, fishers and foresters vulnerable. This can be achieved by focusing on – and investing in – more sustainable models of food production and the use of improved agricultural technologies and practices which raise yields and boost resilience against shocks while protecting the natural resource base.

There is a rich tool kit of options already available, such as conservation agriculture and agroforestry, strengthening producer organisations, or establishing field schools to disseminate best practices, to name just a few.

Finally, maintaining a state of readiness to allow for rapid responses to the needs of the food production sector if disaster does hit is also key. Despite massive damage, agricultural livelihoods in the Philippines were rapidly restored after 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan thanks to appropriate national-level preparedness and timely international community support.

Sendai – and July’s development financing conference in Addis Ababa and the Paris 2014 climate summit – give us a chance to hard-wire resilience into the post-2015 development agenda. Agriculture – and the many, diverse communities that make it up – can and should be the bedrock on which increased resilience for millions of people is built.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Sadhana Ghimire, 23, makes sure to give her 18-month-old daughter nutritious food, such as porridge containing grains and pulses, in order to prevent stunting. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

By José Graziano da Silva and Margaret Chan
ROME/GENEVA, Nov 13 2014 (IPS)

The scourge of malnutrition affects the most vulnerable in society, and it hurts most in the earliest stages of life. Today, more than 800 million people are chronically hungry, about 11 percent of the global population.

Undernutrition is the underlying cause of almost half of all child deaths, and a quarter of living children are stunted due to inadequate nutrition. Micronutrient deficiencies – due to diets lacking in vitamins and minerals, also known as “hidden hunger” – affects two billion people.Our food systems are simply not sustainable or healthy today, let alone in 2050, when we will have to feed more than nine billion people. We need to produce more food but also nutritious food and to do so in ways that safeguard the capacity of future generations to feed themselves.

Another worrying form of malnutrition – obesity – is on the rise. More than 500 million adults are obese as a result of diets containing excess fat, sugars and salt.

This exposes people to a greater risk of noncommunicable diseases – like heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer – now the top causes of death in the world. Poor diet and physical inactivity also account for 10 percent of the global burden of disease.

Many developing countries now face multiple burdens of malnutrition, with people living in the same communities – sometimes even the same households – suffering from undernutrition, hidden hunger and obesity.

These numbers are shocking and must serve as a global call to action.

Besides the terrible human suffering, unhealthy diets also have a detrimental impact on the ability of countries to develop and prosper – the cost of malnutrition, in all its forms, is estimated between four and five percent of global GDP.

Government leaders, scientists, nutritionists, farmers, civil society and private sector representatives from around the world will gather in Rome from Nov. 19 to 21 for the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2). It is an opportunity they cannot afford to miss: making peoples’ right to a healthy diet a global reality.

Current food systems are unsustainable and unhealthy

Creating healthy and sustainable food systems is key to overcoming malnutrition in all its forms – from hunger to obesity.

Food production has tripled since 1945, while average food availability per person has risen by only 40 percent. Our food systems have succeeded in increasing production, however, this has come at a high environmental cost and has not been enough to end hunger.

Meanwhile, food systems have continued to evolve with an even greater proportion of food being processed and traded, leading to greater availability of foods with high energy, fats, sugars and salt.

Our food systems are simply not sustainable or healthy today, let alone in 2050, when we will have to feed more than nine billion people. We need to produce more food but also nutritious food and to do so in ways that safeguard the capacity of future generations to feed themselves.

Put simply: we need healthy and sustainable food systems – that produce the right balance of foods, in sufficient quantity and quality, and that is accessible to all – if we want to lead healthy, productive and sustainable lives.

Acting now

In preparation for ICN2, countries have agreed to a Political Declaration and a Framework for Action on nutrition containing concrete recommendations to develop coherent public policies in agriculture, trade, social protection, education and health that promote healthy diets and better nutrition at all stages of life.

The Framework for Action gives governments a plan for developing and implementing national policies and investments throughout the food chain to ensure healthy, diverse and balanced diets for all.

This can include strengthening local food production and processing, especially by family farmers and small-scale producers, and linking it to school meals; reducing fat, sugars and salt in processed food; having schools and other public institutions offer healthy diets; protecting children from marketing of unhealthy foods and drinks; and allowing people to make informed choices regarding what they eat.

While government health, agriculture, and education ministries should take the lead, this task includes all involved in producing, distributing and selling food.

The ICN2 Framework for Action also suggests greater investments to guarantee universal access to effective nutrition interventions, such as protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding, and increasing nutrients available to mothers.

Countries can start implementing these actions now. The first step is to establish national nutrition targets to implement already agreed-upon global targets, as set out in the Framework for Action. ICN2 is the time and place to make these commitments.

FAO and WHO are ready to assist countries in this effort. By transforming commitment into action and cooperating more effectively with one another and with other stakeholders, the world has a real chance of ending the multiple burdens of malnutrition in all its forms within a generation.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Children in northern Pakistan line up for food rations. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Jun 13 2014 (IPS)

Continued growth in developing countries, along with poverty-reduction policies, have helped to improve both income and food security globally.

Still, eradicating hunger remains an enormous challenge that has an impact on every other attempt to improve lives.

An estimated 842 million people were found to be chronically hungry between 2011 and 2013. Globally, one in eight people are unable to gain regular access to enough food to be able to study, work, ward off disease, and otherwise live healthy and productive lives.

Malnutrition has a price tag. It could cost as much as five percent of global income – 3.5 trillion dollars, or 500 dollars per person – in terms of lost productivity and healthcare expenses.
Agriculture remains the key pathway to improving both access to food and income for most vulnerable families worldwide. Policies aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity and rural development, especially when smallholder producers are targeted, can help to create employment opportunities and achieve hunger reduction — even where poverty remains widespread.

But the quest for better lives must necessarily address another, often intertwined issue, that of malnutrition in all its forms. 
At least two billion people suffer from various vitamin and mineral deficiencies and related diseases. Malnutrition undermines wellbeing at all ages, and is seen as the underlying cause of death for some 2.6 million children annually.

In some of the world’s most vibrant and influential developing countries, malnutrition is threatening the next generation of parents, teachers, scientists and leaders.

Inadequate nutrition causes stunting, weakened immune systems and difficulties in learning and concentration. If having access to enough food is necessary for a person’s survival, then getting an adequate combination of safe and nutritious foods is fundamental to his or her future, and to the wellbeing, health and development of entire communities and economies.

Some progress has been made in reducing hunger over the past two decades, as measured by the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) objective of halving the prevalence of dietary energy undernourishment by 2015. Already, about 60 countries have achieved the target against 1990-91 benchmarks, or are on track to do so.

There has been progress, too, in combating malnutrition. Child stunting – a key indicator of malnutrition – has declined, but if present trends continue, half a billion more children will still experience stunted growth over the next 15 years.

Meanwhile, around one-and-a half billion people are overweight, with half a billion deemed obese, and hence, more vulnerable to diet-related non-communicable diseases.

Malnutrition has a price tag. It could cost as much as five percent of global income – 3.5 trillion dollars, or 500 dollars per person – in terms of lost productivity and healthcare expenses.

All this makes nutrition a public issue. And the conversation about malnutrition and hunger may be scientific, social and economic, but above all, it is political.

Tackling malnutrition

Good nutrition starts with access to nutritious food. Food systems must be improved in ways that make nutritious foods available and affordable to people throughout their lives, as shown by the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) most recent ‘State of Food and Agriculture’ report.

But overcoming malnutrition in all its forms – caloric undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies and obesity – requires a combination of appropriate interventions in food systems, public health, education and social protection to guarantee availability and access to nutritious food, reduce the vulnerability of poor populations to disease, and improve consumer awareness of the sources of good nutrition.

Food systems must place extra priority on meeting the special needs of mothers and young children. Malnutrition during the critical first 1,000 days from conception can cause permanent physical and cognitive impairment in children and lasting damage to mothers’ health.

In most governments, nutrition lacks a natural home and a responsible official. Nutrition is a public issue and tackling it is a complex task requiring strong political commitment, leadership at the highest levels, as well as unprecedented cooperation and coordination among various ministries and partners.

Turning up the volume

Fortunately, policymakers and community leaders around the world are making some progress in turning up the volume of the conversation on malnutrition and placing the topic, along with food security, at the apex of the international development agenda.

The U.N. Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge, launched in 2012 at the Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference, recognised the intrinsic link between development and proper nutrition for all. It calls for a world without hunger, no more stunting, zero food waste and loss, sustainable agriculture and a doubling of poor farmers’ incomes.

Food security and nutrition have also been placed squarely at the center of discussions to define the work of the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda; and at high-level meetings hosted in London in 2013 by the UK and Brazilian governments.

The volume of the conversation on nutrition is about to be notched up further. On Nov. 19-21, the FAO, World Health Organisation (WHO) and others in the U.N. system will co-organise the inter-governmental Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), 22 years after the first one in 1992.

ICN2 will establish the bases for sustained international cooperation and improved policy coordination to overcome malnutrition. It should also help to ensure that different voices are heard in the debate. While governments have the final say on policy matters, non-state actors have important contributions to make to the multi-dimensional challenge of improving nutrition.

By cooperating more effectively, we have a real chance of ending this blight on humanity within a generation. But only if the conversation turns to concrete, consistent action that reaches every family.

*José Graziano da Silva is the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome.

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Jun 3 2014 (IPS)

Modern biofuels have become a fact of life, part of a quest for more cost-effective and environmentally sustainable businesses and lifestyles. But to be truly sustainable, biofuel production must strike a balance between its benefits and its potential hidden costs, between energy security and food security.

With the right policies, it does not have to be an either-or situation. It can be a win-win scenario. And that is what we should strive for.

Jose Graziano da Silva. Credit: Courtesy of FAO

Concerns about higher fossil fuel prices, rising energy import bills, geopolitical changes and environmental issues like climate change are not likely to go away anytime soon, if at all. One of the major challenges that policymakers will continue to face in addressing these issues is fostering biofuel production while protecting food supplies and pricing, especially in developing and emerging economies.

Like the opposing forces that work against each other in nature to create a state of equilibrium, policies can be more effective if they are flexible enough to counteract varying market conditions and respond to changing human needs.

A number of countries have already developed and implemented policies to make their national biofuel markets more flexible to accommodate changes in agricultural feedstock and fossil fuel markets. There is much room to improve on these options and extend them to other markets.

More than 60 countries have mandates specifying the percentage of fuel content that should come from renewable sources.“Biofuel policies could be used to generate funds that allow food consumers in poor countries to cope with the possible adverse impacts of price hikes” – José Graziano da Silva

Where there are mandates in place, allowing additional flexibility would be one way to minimise pressure on food prices. For instance, annual mandates for renewable fuel content could be stretched to cover longer periods of time – meeting mandates over five or 10 years, instead of every year.

Better coordination of policies among governments is also important. Coordination among the United States, the European Union and Brazil policies could avoid large trade flows in ethanol. It could also reduce additional demand on certain feedstock, when the prices are already high.

Greater flexibility could also be built in “at the pump”, through a broader promotion of flex fuel technology. This approach would allow both fuel blenders and consumers to respond to changes in relative prices by switching between fossil fuels and biofuels, as appropriate.

Not only could existing schemes be made more flexible, but also, biofuel policies could be used to generate funds that allow food consumers in poor countries to cope with the possible adverse impacts of price hikes. One such option could be to implement a variable fee on blending requirements.

And there are even more straightforward measures that could be used to help the food insecure cope in high and volatile food-price environments.

This is where social provisioning schemes can make a difference. They can help to level the playing field for people whose capacity to buy food or make investments in income-generating activities may be out-of-sync with rising prices.

In some countries, cash transfers and other schemes have provided important safeguards for families and smallholder agricultural producers in vulnerable communities.

In addition to making existing policies more flexible, the second major challenge is to fully harness the potential of biofuels for food security. In many developing countries, a lack of access to affordable and continuous energy supply is the single most important factor that limits agricultural productivity, and in turn, sustainable food security.

In many landlocked parts of sub-Saharan Africa, farmers may pay twice or three times the price of fossil fuels seen on world markets. Electricity is often completely absent or dependent on generators that are run on expensive fossil fuels.

Unstable and costly supplies of fossil fuel-powered energy do not allow farmers to mechanise production and step up food output, and may even increase wastage and spoilage. Providing farmers with jatropha or palm oil-based diesel could be an effective solution. Supporting investment and training in the production and use of biofuels could yield benefits, year after year.

Biofuel production and food security need not be mutually exclusive, but the intrinsic link between the two does need to be acknowledged in the policymaking process, in order to maintain a consistent balance between energy security and the right of all people to adequate, nutritious and affordable food.

No doubt, reconciling food and energy security in so many different environments is a tall order. But introducing greater flexibility in implementing existing policies and doing more to harness the potential of biofuels for farmers in food and energy-poor environments are opportunities which should not be missed. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

A sense of urgency brought on in recent years by food price volatility inspired collective action to reduce the likelihood of further price spikes and food supply shocks.

Now that international food prices are declining and food commodity markets are calmer, it is time for countries to harness this heightened resolve to work together, using it to tackle the root causes of volatility.

Food price problems are far from over, and some regions, countries and communities are feeling the pressure more than others. The high and excessively volatile food prices of the last few years have caused disruptions to the global food system and undermined the efforts of developing countries to reduce hunger and poverty in a lasting and sustainable way.

Two recent international meetings pointed to the continued threat of volatility ­ the September meeting in St Petersburg of leaders from the G20 group of nations and the October meeting of agriculture ministers at the Rome headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which also drew representatives of up to 130 countries.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

Participants in both meetings acknowledged the need to keep a close and continued watch over the agricultural commodity markets.

Improved global governance has already paid off, playing an important role in preventing the food price spike of July 2012 from developing into another potential crisis. The Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) created by the G20 in 2011 proved effective, providing reliable information and increased transparency that helped to calm international food markets.

Still, there are a number of outstanding issues that require further examination, including food price speculation and its regulation, policies on biofuels, trade policies, and the potential role of public food stocks in managing price risks.

At the October meeting, ministers underlined the need for better regulation and transparency in commodity futures markets in order to limit excessive speculation and its effect on price volatility.

They also agreed that concrete and consistent steps are needed to improve sustainability in the use of natural resources, the production and consumption of food and the role that both can play in dealing with climate change.

A recurring theme in all these discussions was the need for policies and action to yield more inclusive, across-the-board access to economic, social, and policy-related benefits that reach the most vulnerable groups.

Protection of the most vulnerable groups from the adverse effects of sudden spikes in food prices should be a policy priority. In many poor countries, safety nets and social protection programmes need to be strengthened. This, however, should not overshadow the longer-term objective of increasing productivity in a sustainable manner and strengthening the resilience of production systems, especially in poor countries.

Decision-makers can actively support this process by keeping sustainable development ­ a necessary condition for lasting food security – squarely on the table in the discussion and design of policies and programmes related to production, trade and energy.

One such opportunity is the upcoming Ninth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Participants at the Dec. 3-6 meeting will look at, among other issues, compatibility between WTO rules and domestic support measures aimed at food security, such as food aid and food stockholding programmes.

On the sidelines of the conference, a FAO-organised session at the Bali Trade and
Development Symposium will engage non-governmental thought leaders in a discussion of trade and market policy interventions in support of food security, and lessons learned from such measures.

Whenever decision-makers gather at the international level, they open the door to an exchange of ideas and a chance to build consensus on crucial issues. Turning that opportunity into concrete, long-term improvements in productivity, sustainability and food security will ultimately hinge on how far they are willing to take the conversation and how successfully they can translate that talk into action at home.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva, Kanayo Nwanze, and Ertharin Cousin
ROME, Oct 2 2013 (IPS)

Every year, we take a snapshot of world progress in the fight against chronic hunger. This year, the picture is looking better, but it’s still not good enough.

Some 842 million people are estimated to have been suffering from chronic hunger in 2011-2013, according to The State of Food Insecurity in the World, a report released jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

This figure is down from 868 million during 2010-2012, and represents a decline of 17 percent since 1990-1992. Significant as this progress may be, it cannot disguise the harsh reality: roughly one person in eight suffers from hunger.

The vast majority of undernourished people, 827 million, live in developing countries, while 16 million live in developed countries. It is unacceptable that in a world of plenty, hundreds of millions of people are denied their most basic right to freedom from hunger. The only acceptable number is zero.

One of the hard truths underscored by the report is that, despite overall progress made in hunger reduction, marked differences persist across regions, with many countries left far behind. Sub-Saharan Africa has made modest progress in recent years, but remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment (24.8 percent).

Western Asia has seen no discernible improvement, while Southern Asia and Northern Africa have registered slow progress. Eastern Asia, Southeastern Asia and Latin America, on the other hand, have seen greater relief from the grind of extreme hunger, with significant reductions in both the number and the proportion of hungry people.

Food security depends on a host of factors. While food availability is important, it is equitable economic growth and access to employment for the poor that enhance access to nutritious food. The report shows that transport, communication, safe water, sanitation, and appropriate healthcare and feeding practices are also crucial for reducing chronic hunger and undernutrition.

Given that 75 percent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas and mainly depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, fostering inclusive growth means investing in agriculture. And this investment has been shown to pay dividends in poverty reduction.

It is estimated that growth in agriculture is five times more effective in reducing poverty than growth in any other sector. In sub-Saharan Africa, it is 11 times more effective. Since smallholder farmers produce up to 80 percent of available food in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, there is an obvious impact on food security as well.

Economic growth that reaches large parts of the population can reduce poverty, leading to improvements in food security. In Ghana, equitable economic growth contributed to lifting some five million people out of poverty in just 15 years, and fewer than five percent of the population were undernourished in 2011-2013.

However, such growth is not always sufficient to ensure that everyone has what they need to live healthy and productive lives. In many cases, despite a reduction in hunger, nutritional status may deteriorate, for example, with the increased prevalence of child stunting.

Inadequate intake of vitamins and other micro-nutrients, a high disease burden, unsafe water, poor sanitation and poor child feeding practices at key stages of child development cause serious health problems for up to two billion people globally. Greater efforts with a holistic approach are needed to combat malnutrition.

Thirteen years ago, world leaders set out a series of development targets to be met by 2015 through a global partnership, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Under MDG 1, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, the world sought to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of undernourished people.

With only two years remaining, 62 countries have already reached this target. Twenty-two of them have also achieved a higher goal, established during the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome, to halve the absolute number of hungry people in the same time period. But extending that achievement across the board will require urgent, sustained action.

Countries need to address hunger and poor nutrition by integrating food security and nutrition into public policies and making the necessary resources available.

We urge governments, organisations and community leaders in every region to make economic growth more inclusive through policies that target family farmers and foster rural employment; strengthen social protection; scale up nutrition-enhancing interventions to improve dietary diversity and the health of the environment, especially for women and youth; and promote the sustainable management of natural resources and food systems.

Only with sustained efforts and long-term commitment will we be able to reach well beyond the MDG targets to fully interrupt the cycle of extreme hunger, malnutrition and poverty that is stifling the potential of future generations.

Better is good, but when it comes to hunger, better is not good enough. There are 842 million reasons why.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Mar 7 2013 (IPS)

Around the world, but especially in the planet’s poorest regions, women represent a life force that renews itself daily, sometimes against all odds.

José Graziano da Silva, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Credit: FAO News

Rural women, for instance, make up 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries. Fighting hunger is something they do every day.

They are the faceless enlistees in the most devastating war of our times, one which – paradoxically – is the easiest to win: the war on hunger, that afflicts one in every eight inhabitants of our Earth, some 870 million human beings.

In millions of homes around the world, women are often the ones who make the day-to-day decisions that guarantee that food is placed on an otherwise bare table.

It is the responsibility of governments and international cooperation agencies to empower women, to do justice to the leading roles they play.

This means providing women with the rights, policies, tools, and resources they need for their unrelenting role.

The central role of women in food security and nutrition starts with the thousand days — from the start of pregnancy through the child’s second birthday – that mark a person’s development forever.

Women can make the difference – for better or for worse – in the stark arithmetic that adds up to 2.5 million child deaths every year.

Putting food on a family’s table involves extending a woman’s reach beyond her maternal instincts. It means applying her energy and her life lessons to tilling the land and harvesting crops.

This is especially relevant in Africa, where the 21st Century’s key battles against hunger are being fought. Some 239 million people suffer from hunger in Africa, 23 percent of the region’s entire population.

In rural areas, home to 60 percent of all Africans, we see the most outstanding features of this struggle against tragedy and the importance of women.

Women head one in four rural households in Africa. In Southern Africa, that share is 45 percent.

Wars and ethnic conflicts, migration and environmental collapse have all intensified the absolute and relative presence of women in agricultural labour markets, over recent years.

Their participation in agricultural labour markets in Northern Africa has jumped from 30 percent to 43 percent since 1980. They are the majority in some countries, like Lesotho, where over 65 percent of the agricultural labour force are women.

The new responsibilities being attributed to women come on top of their roles in feeding and caring for their families. The double and sometimes triple burden of work in the field, at home and in the community is not always recognised, or shared by the men in the households. This frequently makes the empowerment of women more difficult.

Paradoxically, everywhere in the world it is women who suffer most from restrictions on access to the legal ownership of land. This in turn limits their access to credit and to the inputs they need to maximise the utmost efforts they put into community wellbeing.

Achieving those rights and that access, in order to close the gender gap in the most vulnerable countries’ farming systems, is one of the most important food security policies that governments and international cooperation agencies could ever implement.

Making states aware of the core role women play in economic and social development and forging a political consensus to give them the tools and rights that their role demands will be vital steps in the fight against hunger.

And not only against hunger.

As mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and, oftentimes, sole supporters of their households, women often are on the front line in the struggle for social justice.

(END)

Excerpt:

Recent decades have witnessed remarkable rates of growth for many developing countries. That is good news, as high growth rates of GDP per capita are a key factor in reducing food insecurity and malnutrition.

But economic growth alone is no guarantee of success in the fight against poverty, hunger and malnutrition, as the 2012 edition of The State of Food Insecurity in the World, recently released by the Rome-based United Nations agencies, shows.

In order for economic growth to enhance the nutrition of the neediest people, poor women and men must participate in the growth process and its benefits.

Success stories from all developing regions make one thing clear: investment in agriculture, more than investment in any other sector, can generate economic growth that delivers large benefits to hungry and malnourished poor people. That is because most of them live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

We have learned that smallholder farmers can be supported to benefit from higher food prices and become part of the solution to reducing price spikes and improving overall food security. Higher prices of agricultural commodities can definitely provide positive incentives for increased investment in agriculture.

However, better policy responses and improved governance are also needed to address the effects of increased price volatility and of higher food costs for poor people, who spend a large share of their income on food.

Major climatic events are causing severe damage to agriculture. Until we find the way to make our food system climate-resilient, the danger will remain. Practical solutions that promote sustainable intensification of food production systems, ensure strong involvement of smallholder farmers, increase their access to markets, reduce their exposure to risk, build the resilience of rural communities and preserve natural resources are urgently needed.

We must also reduce the enormous amount of food lost or wasted throughout the food system — which has been estimated at around one third of total production.

There has been progress in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. The global number of chronically hungry people has fallen by 130 million since 1990, and the proportion of hungry people has dropped from 18.6 percent in 1990 to 12.5 percent today.

Still, nearly 870 million people continue to suffer from undernourishment, and the negative health consequences of micronutrient deficiencies continue to affect around two billion people.

In a world of plenty, childhood malnutrition kills more than 2.5 million children every year, and more than 100 million children under the age of five are underweight, and therefore unable to realize their full socio-economic and human potential. This is morally unacceptable and economically foolish. Good nutrition is key to sustainable economic growth.

While the world grapples with the burden of undernutrition, we are faced with an increasing trend towards overnutrition. A growing number of people have adopted lifestyles and diets that are conducive to being overweight and related non-communicable diseases, taxing public health systems in many countries.

Working with national governments and the international community, our organizations are committed to developing better-integrated approaches to food security and nutrition that are both “pro-poor” and “nutrition-sensitive” by promoting positive, sustainable interactions among the agriculture, nutrition and health sectors.

The world has the knowledge and the means to eliminate all forms of food insecurity and malnutrition. No ambition in achieving this aim is too high, which is why we welcome UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s recent “Zero Hunger Challenge”.

It’s up to all of us to rise to meet it. In the fight against hunger, the ultimate sum of all of our efforts must be zero hunger.

*The authors are  the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Despite a sudden increase in July this year, prices of cereals on world markets remained fairly stable. But there are no grounds for complacency, as cereals markets remain vulnerable to supply shocks and disruptive policy measures. In this context, the good harvests that are expected in the Southern Hemisphere are important.

José Graziano da Silva, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Credit: FAO News

In the last ten years we have seen major changes in the behaviour of food prices. Up until around 2002 real food prices were falling but they have now been above trend for longer than at any other time in the previous forty years.

Food prices have also been volatile and the combination of high and volatile food prices will continue to challenge the ability of consumers, producers and governments to cope with the consequences.

All this makes it timely to reflect on recent price events and the reactions of the international community, especially since price volatility is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Set against this backdrop, the Ministerial Meeting on Food Price Volatility held on World Food Day on Oct. 16 was particularly relevant.

Twenty-five ministers and 13 deputy ministers met to discuss the issues and exchange views on how to strengthen measures to contain food price volatility and to reduce its impact on the most vulnerable populations.

The meeting recognised that a lot was learned from the 2007-8 and 2010-11 price hikes about appropriate responses at international, regional and national levels. They also agreed that much more could be done based on the Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture that was adopted by the G20 leaders in November 2011.

This action plan launched major international initiatives, in particular the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), hosted at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). AMIS monitors developments based on the latest available information, analysing the global supply/demand situation and providing objective assessments.

Born just one year ago, AMIS is already a fully functioning mechanism and played a key role this summer in calming markets and preventing the deterioration of a vulnerable food market situation into the potential crisis that countless commentators were so quick to predict.

AMIS is providing an objective assessment of the market situation and risks, while calling on G20 member states to refrain from adopting policy measures that might further destablise markets.

This experience shows that coordinated international action and enhanced transparency and information on agricultural markets can make a difference in limiting food price spikes and excessive volatility.

Even when they are affected by adverse weather conditions that reduce production and export capacity, it is important that governments of exporting countries act transparently and dialogue with commercial actors to assure local availability of cereals without creating uncertainty in international markets.

This coordination is crucial because it can stop a drought or a flood from becoming a crisis.

Other actions to limit price spikes and excessive volatility ­ adjustments to trade rules, the creation of emergency food reserves, reform of biofuel policies and control of speculation ­ are all still works in progress. ‘Excessive’ is the keyword, because some degree of volatility is a characteristic of agricultural markets.

Action also needs to be taken to build resilience to that volatility in the medium-term.

This requires substantially increased investment in agricultural production with a particular emphasis on support to smallholder farmers.

Financing will need to come primarily from the private sector including smallholders themselves and major companies. This is a controversial area and concerns, especially over large-scale land investments, are well founded.

It is vital that any investment is made responsibly and for the benefit of all stakeholders. This is where the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture, which will be discussed by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure previously endorsed by the CFS, have an important role to play.

FAO is prepared to assist governments in implementation of these safety measures. AMIS, Voluntary Guidelines and the Principles for Responsible Investments are all elements of the new global governance on food security that we are building, and that has the CFS as its cornerstone. We are making up for lost time, as food security governance was neglected until a few years ago. Fortunately we are learning that, in a globalised world, it is impossible to ensure food security in a single country or region. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

*Jose Graziano da Silva is the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The fight against poverty and hunger cannot waste time, nor disdain any scales of action. Public and private initiatives are critical and must include both family farming and so-called agribusiness. It is up to governments and international cooperation to harmonise this collective economic effort and to ensure that bigger harvests translate into increased food security for the needy.

The futures of real people are at stake. How a society responds to this challenge will define what happens to people on the outside of society. This response also helps shape patterns of development and influences relations between markets, states and democracies.

Our decisions must be guided neither by theory nor by ideology. The best advice to hear when making these choices is the voice of experience.

Latin America, for example, has been an advanced test plot for coexistence between large-scale and small-scale farmers. Ten years of social protection and agricultural production policies implemented in a context of economic expansion provide a unique gamut of regional experiences.

To what extent has this combination generated the conditions necessary to break down cycles that perpetuate poverty? Both the question and its answer are important for the agenda of the global fight against hunger and extreme poverty.

In the 1980s, the end of a cycle of international financial liquidity laid bare the fragility of Latin America’s growth model. The 1990s’ allegiance to canons of
self-sufficient markets subjected the region’s economies to one financial collapse after another and debunked the existence of self-regulating counterbalances promised by laissez-faire.

The social cost was devastating. Thirty one million Latin Americans became extremely poor in the 1990s.

Once that damage had been quantified, space was opened for rectifying policies, which were progressively incorporated into the region’s development agenda.

A single figure reveals the scale of this new approach: one out of every five Latin American and Caribbean citizens – nearly 113 million people – now participate in conditional income transfer programs.

This action has tempered the impact of the world crisis that began in 2007. The region’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by three percent in 2009. In contrast to previous crises, however, progress made did not all turn to dust. After 41 million people in the region had stepped out of poverty since 2002 and another 26 million had broken their chains of extreme poverty, nine million fell back to where they were before.

Structural weaknesses do indeed persist, favouring relapses back to poverty and hunger, particularly in rural areas, where exclusion is most present.

Today, 13 percent of the region’s population is extremely poor: 35 million live in the countryside; 35 million live in the cities.

That apparent symmetry is misleading; 30 percent of those who live in rural areas are extremely poor, four times more – proportionally – than those in urban areas (eight percent), according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The data leaves no room for delusions about spontaneous and automatic economic processes that set social inequities right.

From 1980 to 2010, and particularly over this past decade, the region’s agricultural exports have set one price and volume record after another, propelled by global demand for commodities.

Over the same period, nonetheless, the retreat of rural poverty has been negligible in Latin America and the Caribbean: from 60 percent in 1980, down to 53 percent in 2010, as we learn from a joint study by ECLAC, FAO and the International Labour Organisation, entitled ‘Agricultural Boom and the Persistence of Rural Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean’.

The fact that the greatest proportion of the region’s extremely poor lives in rural areas forces us to face two parallel but undeniable realities.

The first is that abundant harvests are no guarantee of food security, even for the people who live there. Second, big business is here to stay in agriculture and plays a strategic role in generating foreign reserves for developing countries and in supplying world markets.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, we have learned once again that supply is not synonymous with access. Hunger can coexist perversely with plenty.

This paradox underlines the importance of consolidating a third dimension to harmonise the whole, namely the responsibility of public policies to consolidate workers’ rights in the countryside, eradicate precarious labour, respect tenure on small farms, make and foster investments for the food security of vulnerable people, topple gender barriers, support family farming, multiply small-scale farmer cooperatives and boost yields to generate surpluses, income and adequate supply for domestic markets.

The concentration of poverty and hunger in rural areas does not happen only in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is why the lessons of this experience apply far beyond the region. Worldwide, 900 million people are hungry and at least 70 percent of them live in rural areas.

The vulnerability of people whose livelihoods depend on the land is also greater. A third of the people in the world live on small farms less than 10 hectares in size, only two percent of which are technified and 70 percent of which depend exclusively on their own muscle-power for production. In the 21st century, 40 percent of humanity still depends on agriculture, the world’s biggest employer.

Latin America’s anti-hunger and anti-poverty agenda therefore echoes transcontinental deficiencies. The same can be said of the need for public policies to expand labour rights, investments and citizenship in rural areas. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Jose Graziano da Silva is the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

As stated in the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and the 1992 Earth Summit, human beings are at the centre of sustainable development. However, even today, over 900 million people still suffer from hunger. Poor populations worldwide, especially in rural areas, are among those most vulnerable to the food, climate, financial, economic, social and energy crises and threats the world faces today.

We cannot call development sustainable while this situation persists, where nearly one out of every seven men, women and children are left behind, victims of undernourishment. It would be a contradiction in terms.

Hunger and extreme poverty also exclude the possibility of sustainable development because the hungry and extremely poor need to make use of the resources they have at hand in whatever way they can to make ends meet. For people who are chronically hungry and malnourished, meeting their immediate needs is their paramount concern – planning for the future is often a luxury they cannot afford.

Paradoxically, over 70 percent of the world’s hungry people depend on agriculture, fisheries and forestry for at least part of their livelihoods, so their daily choices also help determine how the world’s natural resources are managed.

We cannot expect a poor farmer not to chop down a tree for fuel if he does not have another source of energy; we cannot ask a fisherman not to fish during spawning time if that is his only way to feed his family.

Hunger puts in motion a vicious cycle of reduced productivity, deepening poverty, slow economic development, resource degradation and violence. Hunger and natural resources are, increasingly, factors of internal conflicts and conflicts between nations. Even when these conflicts are internal, their impacts frequently breach national borders. So, there is also a direct link between food security and national security.

The quest for food security can be the common thread that links the different challenges we face and helps build a sustainable future. At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) we have the golden opportunity to explore the convergence between the agendas of food security and sustainability to ensure that happens.

Both require changes towards more sustainable production and consumption models. To feed a growing population that is expected to top the nine billion mark in 2050, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) projects the need to increase agricultural output by at least 60 percent in the next decades. To do so, we must save and grow agricultural production while preserving the environment.

But even then the pressure on our natural resources will be extreme. So we must also change the way we eat and find ways to feed the world without the need to produce as much. We can do this by changing to healthier diets in the richer segments of our population and by diminishing the food loss and waste that exist in industrialised and developing countries: on average, we throw away 1.3 billion tonnes of food every year, between production and consumption.

However, even if we do increase agricultural output by 60 percent, the world would still have 300 million hungry people in 2050 because, like the hundreds of millions today, they would still lack the means to access the food they need. For them, food security is not an issue of insufficient production; it is an issue of inadequate access.

The only way to ensure their food security is by creating decent jobs, paying better wages, giving them more access to productive assets – especially land and water – and distributing income in a more equitable way.

We must bring them into society, complementing support to smallholders and income generation opportunities with the strengthening of safety nets, cash for work and cash transfer programmes that contribute to strengthening local production and consumption circuits, in an effort that must contribute to our sustainable development goals.

The transition to a sustainable future also requires fundamental changes in the governance of food and agriculture and an equitable sharing of the transition costs and benefits. In the past, the poorer have paid a greater share of transition costs and received a smaller share of benefits. This is an unacceptable balance and one that needs to change. The speed of change should also be our concern, so that the vulnerable population can adapt and be part of the changes instead of widening the gaps that exist today.

Eradicating hunger and improving human nutrition, creating sustainable food consumption and production systems, and building more inclusive and effective governance of agricultural and food systems are at the heart of achieving a sustainable world.

As world leaders meet in Rio, we are at a crossroads. In one direction is the path to further environmental degradation and human suffering; in the other direction lies the future we all want. The Rio summit offers a historic opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

We know how to end hunger and manage the earth’s resources in a more sustainable way. But we need a stronger political will to do it.

We should look to Rio+20 as the beginning of a new process rather than the finish line, and as a path that we cannot travel alone.

Sustainable development, including ending hunger, is a goal to which every one of us must contribute: citizens, companies, governments, social movements, civil society, non-governmental organisations and regional and international bodies and institutions. Together, working from the local to the global level, we can build the future we want. And this future needs to start today.

(END COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Jose Graziano da Silva is the Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

By José Graziano da Silva and - -
SALVADOR, Bahia, Nov 3 2011 (IPS)

Guiding the transition from one cycle of development to another is among of the most daunting tasks in politics.

With the launch in January 2003 of the Zero Hunger programme, Brazil’s food security policy achieved exactly that, taking a wide range of actions -with emphasis on the need to end hunger- to boost job creation and restore the buying power of the minimum wage.

The basic approach of the programme was to increase the buying power, especially for food, of the poorest families by providing them with regular payments tied to certain conditions while simultaneously promoting reforms to stimulate job creation.

This combination of actions contributed to dismantling areas of resistance, which should not be ignored at the beginning of a new cycle, produced fast results in terms of social benefits, and won the government political legitimacy in the eyes of various sectors of the population.

The government could then take steps of a more structural nature, giving increased autonomy to specific sectors -encouraging family agriculture, for example- which strengthens the movement towards a new dynamic of inclusive growth.

The numbers give the clearest picture of the effectiveness of the approach: between 2003-2010, infant malnutrition dropped by 61 percent, credit for family farmers grew eightfold, while their income grew three time faster than the national average and rural poverty fell by 15 percent.

What is inspiring about the Brazilian experience is not only the speed and size of the results but the revelation of the mutually reinforcing interplay between fighting hunger and the new dynamics of growth.

One example is the annual captive demand of 1 billion reals (about USD 580 million) generated by family farming thanks to the requirement that one-third of food for schools be bought from local producers.

Policies like these can be adapted to the conditions of other countries, reproducing the positive effects in local communities with important benefits, like food security for all society.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Brazilian government already share with other Latin American and Caribbean countries the experience of buying local products from small farms to serve as snacks at schools.

Brazil did not reinvent the wheel in its fight against hunger, but it did increasingly leverage the successful implementation of programmes inside the country and elsewhere. Above all, it took a page from the United States’ “New Deal”, which helped the country overcome the great depression of the 1930s and made the rebuilding of demand a top priority.

Brazil’s success confirms that the state remains an important force in redefining the operation of growth in the transition from one economic cycle to another.

The 2003 recreation of the National Council on Food and Nutritional Security (CONSEA) provided a forum for the renegotiation of the new democratic hegemony. In the course of the process a number of historical structural changes were made.

This group of actions restored the massive domestic market’s central role, allowing the country to continue to grow as trade and employment shrank worldwide.

Today we are free to say what in the 90s was anathema: that a society controls its development only when it is able to regulate it with public policies generated democratically by an active state in association with an organized civil society and the participation of the private sector.

This is what Brazil continues to do, as seen in the Fourth National Conference on Food and Nutritional Security, to be held November 7-10 in Salvador, Bahia, which more than 2000 national and 100 international delegates are expected to attend, including members of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger for Latin American and the Caribbean, which is working to ensure that governments provide adequate budgets to address the issue of food security.

The FAO as well is enlisting a broad range of forces in its fight against hunger with the reform and broadening of the Committee on World Food Security, the global equivalent of the CONSEA.

Creating food security at the global level could play an important part in overcoming the current economic crisis, for which there is no plan for ending the paralysing vicious circle of consumers who do not buy, factories that do not produce, and banks that do not loan.

Almost 80 percent of humanity now live on less than 10 dollars a day and spend most of their money on food. About 70 percent of the people suffering from malnutrition live on the land but without being able to extract from it enough to survive.

For most of the world, therefore, the most palpable manifestation of the crisis are the sharp fluctuations in production, supply, and food prices caused by financial turbulence.

The world crisis requires rapid responses capable of reviving demand and broadly-agreed proposals for action to transform the current financial chaos into a cycle of expansion without compromising social justice. The fight against hunger could be one of the pillars of such a programme. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Jose Graziano da Silva is Director-General elect of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). He will assume the position in January 2012.

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva
SANTIAGO DE CHILE, Jun 9 2011 (IPS)

Lula launched the Zero Hunger Programme when he assumed the Brazilian presidency in January 2003, pledging that every Brazilian would be able to eat three meals a day.

I had led the team that prepared the programme and then was entrusted by Lula with running it, as his Minister for Food Security and the Fight against Hunger. The results of the development model that was jump-started by Zero Hunger are highly visible: in only five years 24 million people have been lifted from extreme poverty and undernourishment in Brazil fell by 25%.

Brazil is not only growing, but more people are benefitting from growth. This broader social and economic inclusion is the main reason why the country weathered the recent crises in better shape than others.

Eight years after the launch of Zero Hunger, Brazil has nominated me as a candidate for election as next Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). In setting out my priorities for FAO, I have given top priority to eradicating hunger in the world. I know that it is an entirely feasible goal.

The second pillar of my platform is to promote a shift to truly sustainable food production systems so that we leave in good condition the natural resources ¬soil, water, biodiversity, climate- that are needed to provide food for our children and grandchildren. As a third pillar, I want to see FAO and other international agencies ensure greater fairness in the management of the global food system.

Some people ask me how I can propose such an ambitious agenda when the world is embroiled in a mix of grave crises ¬high oil and food prices, slow economic growth, looming threats of climate change, shortages of land and water, and so on. I believe that ending hunger, putting food production on a sustainable footing and improving global governance are part of the solution to these crises.

Eating is such a fundamental aspect of our existence, that I find it strange that anyone should question the wisdom of proposing that FAO ¬which was set up in 1945 to end hunger¬ should do all in its power to help ensure that everyone can eat 3 meals a day. But today almost 1,000 million people ¬one in seven of the earth’s inhabitants¬ are still chronically hungry.

This is not because there is no food but because these people do not earn enough to pay for the food they need. They live in a hunger trap from which escape through their own means alone is virtually impossible.

As anyone who misses a few meals knows, hunger makes the body weak and diminishes concentration. Long-term hunger has dire effects. It prevents adults from working, even if they want to, and it stops children from learning at school. Undernourished persons are more susceptible to disease and their life expectancy drops. If a mother is hungry during pregnancy and cannot provide enough food for her babies before their second birthday, they will be disadvantaged for all their lives.

A widely-held view is that people are hungry through their own fault. However, most people who suffer from hunger are the inadvertent victims of global and national economic growth processes that have the side-effect of widening the gap between rich and poor.

We now know that investing in hunger eradication, especially through programmes that provide extremely poor families with regular and predictable grants to allow them to eat adequately, is not charity but a high-yield investment, and the yield is even greater when women take control of the grants. This type of social protection enables people to stand on their own feet, and introduces the processes of economic growth where they are most needed, in the poorest communities.

Translating unmet food needs into demand can stimulate local production, especially by small-scale farmers, if they receive adequate support to turn their potential productivity in actual gains. Public action is key to making this happen.

Having dedicated myself to rural development for over three decades, I know that increasing production in poor rural communities of developing countries has many positive spill-over effects.

Like many other people, I view access to adequate food as a human right.

As an economist, I also know that fulfilling that right for hundreds of millions of people will not only end needless suffering on a vast scale but also herald a new age of prosperity throughout the world and contribute to lasting peace.

This is not mere wishful thinking. With my own eyes I have seen what has happened in countries that have taken the hunger problem seriously. Ask any Ghanaian, Vietnamese, or Brazilian about the impact of their anti-hunger programmes, and I am sure that they will confirm my impressions.

(*) Jose Graziano da Silva, architect of the Zero Hunger Program, former Brazilian Minister of Food Security and Fight Against Hunger, FAO Regional Representative and Assistant Director-General for Latin America and the Caribbean, is Brazil’s candidate for the next Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva and - -
SANTIAGO DE CHILE, May 30 2011 (IPS)

Lula launched the Zero Hunger Programme when he assumed the Brazilian presidency in January 2003, pledging that every Brazilian would be able to eat three meals a day.

I had led the team that prepared the programme and then was entrusted by Lula with running it, as his Minister for Food Security and the Fight against Hunger. The results of the development model that was jump-started by Zero Hunger are highly visible: in only five years 24 million people have been lifted from extreme poverty and undernourishment in Brazil fell by 25%.

Brazil is not only growing, but more people are benefitting from growth. This broader social and economic inclusion is the main reason why the country weathered the recent crises in better shape than others.

Eight years after the launch of Zero Hunger, Brazil has nominated me as a candidate for election as next Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). In setting out my priorities for FAO, I have given top priority to eradicating hunger in the world. I know that it is an entirely feasible goal.

The second pillar of my platform is to promote a shift to truly sustainable food production systems so that we leave in good condition the natural resources ­soil, water, biodiversity, climate- that are needed to provide food for our children and grandchildren. As a third pillar, I want to see FAO and other international agencies ensure greater fairness in the management of the global food system.

Some people ask me how I can propose such an ambitious agenda when the world is embroiled in a mix of grave crises ­high oil and food prices, slow economic growth, looming threats of climate change, shortages of land and water, and so on. I believe that ending hunger, putting food production on a sustainable footing and improving global governance are part of the solution to these crises.

Eating is such a fundamental aspect of our existence, that I find it strange that anyone should question the wisdom of proposing that FAO ­which was set up in 1945 to end hunger­ should do all in its power to help ensure that everyone can eat 3 meals a day. But today almost 1,000 million people ­one in seven of the earth’s inhabitants­ are still chronically hungry.

This is not because there is no food but because these people do not earn enough to pay for the food they need. They live in a hunger trap from which escape through their own means alone is virtually impossible.

As anyone who misses a few meals knows, hunger makes the body weak and diminishes concentration. Long-term hunger has dire effects. It prevents adults from working, even if they want to, and it stops children from learning at school. Undernourished persons are more susceptible to disease and their life expectancy drops. If a mother is hungry during pregnancy and cannot provide enough food for her babies before their second birthday, they will be disadvantaged for all their lives.

A widely-held view is that people are hungry through their own fault. However, most people who suffer from hunger are the inadvertent victims of global and national economic growth processes that have the side-effect of widening the gap between rich and poor.

We now know that investing in hunger eradication, especially through programmes that provide extremely poor families with regular and predictable grants to allow them to eat adequately, is not charity but a high-yield investment, and the yield is even greater when women take control of the grants. This type of social protection enables people to stand on their own feet, and introduces the processes of economic growth where they are most needed, in the poorest communities.

Translating unmet food needs into demand can stimulate local production, especially by small-scale farmers, if they receive adequate support to turn their potential productivity in actual gains. Public action is key to making this happen.

Having dedicated myself to rural development for over three decades, I know that increasing production in poor rural communities of developing countries has many positive spill-over effects.

Like many other people, I view access to adequate food as a human right.

As an economist, I also know that fulfilling that right for hundreds of millions of people will not only end needless suffering on a vast scale but also herald a new age of prosperity throughout the world and contribute to lasting peace.

This is not mere wishful thinking. With my own eyes I have seen what has happened in countries that have taken the hunger problem seriously. Ask any Ghanaian, Vietnamese, or Brazilian about the impact of their anti-hunger programmes, and I am sure that they will confirm my impressions. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Jose Graziano da Silva, architect of the Zero Hunger Program, former Brazilian Minister of Food Security and Fight Against Hunger, FAO Regional Representative and Assistant Director-General for Latin America and the Caribbean, is Brazil’s candidate for the next Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation www.grazianodasilva.org

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva and - -
SANTIAGO DE CHILE, Feb 8 2011 (IPS)

The world is living through another major upswing in food prices. World food prices surged to a new historic peak in January, for the seventh consecutive month, as the FAO Food Price Index reached 231 points, up 3.4 percent from December 2010. The accumulated increase in food prices during 2010 amounted to 25% relative to the 2009 level. Starting with a sharp increase in wheat prices in July in reaction to production shortfalls and export prohibition in Russia and followed by uncertain crop prospects in other parts of the world, this new episode raises concerns over instability in world food markets and its social implications.

The current price spike is different from the previous incidence in many ways. The 2008 upswing was driven first and foremost by escalating grain prices in a situation where cereal stocks had been declining over the years, reaching dangerously low levels in 2007. The reasons behind overall price increases were multiple, combining unexpected movements in supply and demand as well as policy reactions.

The price spike of 2010 is partially explained by production shortages due to poor weather. Moreover, the current increases are more pronounced for sugar and oilseeds, while rice and maize markets remained relatively stable. Transmission of price signals to local markets has been highly heterogeneous. Carry over stocks have helped keep national prices down in many countries. In most countries in Latin America, for example, bread prices remained stable even though international wheat prices jumped.

Despite the different characteristics of the two price upswings and the short time elapsing between them, both are highly indicative of the fact that we are living in an environment of much greater uncertainty than ten years ago.

Price movements are no longer determined only by the basic driving forces of supply and demand: agricultural commodities are attracting excess liquidity in international markets and other factors, far less transparent and constantly changing, such as expectations and appetite for risk, start to play an important role in determining the direction of the prices.

Furthermore, food markets are more and more intertwined with financial and energy markets, both of which are characterized by greater volatility. Facing these multiple sources of uncertainty, agricultural commodity markets tend to overreact to any changes in the demand or supply projections, as it happened in mid-2010 in the case of wheat.

Although grain stocks are higher today, this is not the time to be complacent. If production shortages persist, stocks will dwindle and sooner or later world price increases will probably trickle down to local food markets. Moreover, prices are likely to remain high and volatile in the near term. Climate change also plays a role in this, as extreme weather conditions add an element of unpredictability to agriculture.

Excess volatility of food price is undesirable not only because it places a disproportionally high burden on the most vulnerable consumers – the poor spend up to 70% of their income on food – but also because it results in suboptimal levels of production as farmers are typically risk averse.

What should be done to alleviate this worrisome situation?

First of all, it is clear that a coherent and coordinated worldwide response is needed to bring greater stability to global markets, while the sum of individual actions in an environment of elevated risks could result in a worsening of an already difficult situation.

At the national level, the countries have the options of trying to minimize the risk of price swings or deal with their negative consequences ex-post. One possibility is to try to control the prices directly through stabilization schemes, as it has been done in the past, but these imply high fiscal costs and are very difficult to run. Another is to apply an array of border measures and domestic subsidies, but both can distort prices and be very difficult to dismantle once they are no longer justified.

Finally, there are policies to counteract the negative implications of price spikes, which include expanding the existing safety nets to compensate for loss of purchasing power by consumers. These have been adopted by most of the Latin America and the Caribbean countries with generally positive results.

Other mitigation strategies include increasing emergency stocks to avoid shortages, encouraging diversification of consumption to include traditional and locally produced products, improving the efficiency of domestic markets and helping vulnerable population to grow food for own consumption. These measures can help soften the negative impacts of price increases affecting foods that are traded on international markets.

These measures can provide immediate results but in the long run the only lasting solution to high food prices lies in securing ample and stable supply. Although the world produces enough food, global production needs to be gradually increased to keep pace with the growing population. Chronic underinvestment in agriculture throughout the years, in developing countries in particular, made them more vulnerable to risks associated with the new dynamics that rule the world market. Investment in agriculture, which would allow to increase productivity and improve resilience to climatic risks, together with strengthening of rural institutions and better governance of commodity markets, are needed to reduce the incidence of price spikes. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) José Graziano da Silva is the Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Ekaterina Krivonos is Trade and Market Officer at FAO’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Excerpt:

By José Graziano da Silva and - -
SANTIAGO, Dec 22 2009 (IPS)

When we place an undernourished child on the scale, we are weighing not only a weakened organism, but also the synthesis of a system of reasoning as cruel as the one that cuts down trees, blows destruction and excludes the possibility of a decent life to over one billion people worldwide. The conscience of the XXI Century can no longer neglect that, as long as there is hunger, there will be no sustainable future

Nothing that resembles the systematic production of excluded populations will result in a lasting equilibrium. The challenges that humanity faces cannot be dealt with by repeating the segmented approach predominant in the developing pattern of the 20th Century that left us as legacy different social and environmental deadlocks.

The impact of climate change is specially harsh on the populations that are poor, institutionally unprotected and less capable of reacting quickly to extreme events. Among them are, for instance, are those excluded from the market, small-scale farmers and the rural poor. In almost all regions of the world, the poorest people live in areas with a greater vulnerability to climatic events that are accentuated by cyclical phenomena such as the El Niño and La Niña.

Climate change also increases the intensity and unpredictability of climate-related events. Consequences are already visible, for instance, in the rise of agricultural insurance costs and in the water shortage in some parts of the world. This is the greatest limitation to the expansion in food production. Furthermore, the uncertainty related to climate contributes to the volatility in food prices.

Up to 2050, developing countries may experience a decline of between 9 and 21 percent in overall potential agricultural productivity as a result of global warming.

Even a relatively slight increase between 1°C and 2°C in the global temperature may have significant impacts in the world food security because, if effective adaptation measures are not taken, it would cause a fall in productivity and would reduce land suitable for agriculture in lower-latitude regions around the Equator, where most of the developing countries are located.

On the other hand, the number of people in the world is expected to grow at a rate of 80 million per year, roughly the equivalent of the population of Ethiopia. In 2050, there will be over 9 billion mouths to feed. To guarantee food supply, FAO estimates it is necessary to add, per year, the equivalent of the agricultural production of Australia.

Therefore, there is no Malthusianism in recognizing that climate change may threaten food security. However, there is enough land, as well as technology and knowledge available to increase production and feed every single person in the world. And in 2050, it will be possible to feed everybody almost without expanding the agricultural frontier. FAO estimates that 90% of the production increase necessary to feed the world in 2050 will come from productivity gains and only 10% from the increase in land used for agriculture.

What is still missing are more investments and political commitment that would allow us to explore the production potential to its fullest. This reaffirms the urgency of an articulated action to beat hunger and the environmental imbalance at the same time.

As Copenhagen may have inaugurated a new cycle that will allow us to effectively mitigate climate change, the World Summit on Food Security that took place at FAO, in November, suggests an inflection point in the fight against hunger.

What has been exhausted in this case may have been ever more important. Since the 80’s, governments, mainly in the developing countries, have been urged to transfer the responsibility of guaranteed domestic food supply to the international market and its “just in time” supply of cheap food. Thus, rural development policies, specially those focused on small-scale farming, were dismantled. Emergency food stocks dwindled. The proportion of official development assistance destined to agriculture fell from 17% in the 80’s to less than 5% nowadays. In a world of abundant supply and obliging markets, what sense was there to channel scarce public funds to poor farmers?

The answer came in the form of a disaster: food prices exploded in 2008 and the number of undernourished people worldwide reached a somber record, rising from 873 million to over one billion in just two years.

The First Millennium Development Goal has become harder to reach and international aid is still insufficient. In light of this, the response from the Rome Summit was clear: it is time to strengthen the development pillar of the twin-track approach to fight hunger and the primary responsibility for fighting hunger needs to be reclaimed by the developing countries.

Strategies to promote food security cannot be imposed from the outside; they need to be built based on national dialogues inside the countries with, if necessary, the support of the international community.

Rich countries will continue to be pressured to destine 0.7% of their GDP to official development assistance and making sure that agriculture receives at least the same share of the pie it had in the 80Â’s. However, nobody but the governments of the developing countries themselves can fill the two voids left by the world crisis: the void caused by the myth of market self-regulation and the void caused by the unfulfilled promises that international solidarity would save one billion people from a life of hunger.

On December 31, 2009, 28% of the children living in poor countries will go to sleep the same way they woke up on the first day of the year: hungry and tangled up in the smothering web of a disease that has a cure. The friction between the possible and the impossible in the case of hunger and environment challenges political apathy and calls upon societyÂ’s transforming energy to coordinate answers that Copenhagen and Rome showed are part of one indivisible agenda: that of a sustainable civilization. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) José Graziano da Silva is FAO’s Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean

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By José Graziano da Silva and - -
SANTIAGO, May 19 2009 (IPS)

Though the world economic outlook continues to look grim, it is worth asking what the world will be like when we exit this crisis. We have to identify the forces that are affecting the course of events so that we can change the existing order and avoid these problems in the future.

The crisis began in a particular segment of the American economy and spread with staggering velocity, driven by the contraction of credit. International trade was severely effected, and according to the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, will drop by between 2-9 percent this year. If this forecast turns out to be correct, it will be the worst decline in trade since World War Two.

Predicting what comes next is not easy. It is unlikely that the demand for commodities will rebound in the short term. However, it is not certain that prices, especially of food, will continue to fall. The roots of the insecurity are the same that fed the recent speculation-driven price increase -in other words, the distortion caused by the influence of unregulated financial operations on commodity prices, whether up or down.

Recently the president of the Chinese Central Bank, Zhou Xiauchuan, defended the creation of a new benchmark currency -like the universal monetary unit suggested by John Maynard Keynes in 1944. What Xiauchuan and Keynes share is the sense that a currency cannot be national and international at the same time because it would risk subjecting the world to the vagaries and conditions of the issuing country.

Those most seriously affected by the current economic crisis are the poorest populations, which are the most vulnerable to a recession with price inflation and exacerbated by the monetary imbalances of the American economic system.

To avoid a repetition of this silent tsunami, the established economic order will have to be changed.

A new political geography is emerging from the crisis and it is important to listen to voices of the world that were once considered peripheral. The incorporation of nations like South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, China, India, and Mexico into the new system of global governance, with both a voice and a role in decision-making, could have been accomplished at the G20 summit held last April in London. While this is not all that is needed, it is an indispensable step towards bringing about a true multipolar order.

A new order should result from an organisation of democratic states that protect and broaden the range of civil victories that characterised the 20th century. Among these, the promotion and consolidation of democracy, the strengthening of social protections, and the fight against inequality and hunger.

The regression in the latter three areas that has taken place in recent years is largely the result of the exhaustion of institutions, national regulation, and social safety nets. We have seen a deliberate dismantling that was carried out largely from outside, driven by the unilateral supremacy of unregulated financial markets.

The inadequacy of the systems of governance that resulted from this process became inescapably apparent in this crisis. The disaster has still not generated a consensus about how to fix it. It is not enough to simply treat the symptoms of the disease; the causes must be found.

If we wish to create a sustainable economic order for the 21st century, we will have to go beyond that which existed in the past. Because of this, we will have to base our actions on those tenets that have the broadest and clearest support and legitimacy in the eyes of society: human rights and the commitment to tear down the walls that prevent the equal access of all people. All of this must be definitively incorporated into a development agenda and multipolar institutions -particularly the right to adequate food, a fundamental part of the right to life enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It is because threats to this right are once again emerging that the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation is calling for a new World Food Summit for 2009.

The importance of this right goes beyond economics to biology itself. Even if overcoming the current impasses leads to a delay of the process of global reconstruction, we still have to generate a consensus on a matter of urgency that simply cannot wait: eradicating hunger is the passport necessary to enter the new world order that will be the foundation of the new century. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Jose Graziano da Silva is Regional Representative of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation for Latin America and the Caribbean.

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