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	Food for more than thought by Jo Chandler Australia   Oct 2010   Turn the clock back to October 2005. The lives of 4.7 million people in the sub-Saharan African nation of Malawi were in the balance, their subsistence crops wiped out by the worst drought in 15 years. The famine extended across borders into neighbouring nations, claiming more lives every day and endangering an estimated 12 million people.   Survival depended on the delivery of emergency rations, enough to sustain communities until the next harvest, six months away. But the international response was sluggish, the trucks loaded with donated grain were slow to come, and when they did arrive, there was not enough to go around.   Reporting for The Age on the crisis, this correspondent took a 1000-kilometre round trip through the hungry country, sitting in on local meetings where aid workers from the Catholic relief agency Caritas asked elders to identify the neediest of their communities - to choose who among them would be fed. Of 5000 mud-hut households in one village, fewer than 1000 would receive grain and oil.   Compounding the distress of the aid workers in conducting these excruciating negotiations was the fact that most of them were agricultural specialists. Their role was supposed to be working with farmers to improve their yields - digging dams, changing cropping practices, planting trees to preserve precious topsoil. But these projects stalled because of hunger and the diversion of all hands and resources into the emergency. It was Catch 22 - by responding to an immediate need, as humanity required, they doomed communities to repeat the famine cycle. Or so they feared.   But over the next seasons, a combination of fortuitous weather and strong government investment in programs giving small farmers access to subsidised seeds and fertilisers has reaped vastly improved harvests, and a bumper yield in 2009. Malawi produced enough surplus to be no longer dependent on food aid; rather it has become an exporter.   Today, instead of sending in maize, the World Food Program buys surplus crops from Malawian farmers for distribution in places where food is still critically short. They are not far away. Just over the border in Mozambique, food riots recently claimed 10 lives and wounded hundreds.   The Malawi story illustrates key themes on the international agenda today, World Food Day, as governments and development agencies consider how they will feed a more crowded planet, and one where changing climate is predicted to alter profoundly the agricultural landscape.   The literature and rhetoric of food security insists that cycles of scarcity and famine are not inevitable and that investment in agriculture does work to transform even the bleakest realities.   The number of people going hungry in the world is still an estimated 925 million. Disproportionately, those going without are children and women. The total is still higher than it was before the devastating 2008 food crisis, an emergency overtaken on many First World news agendas by the global financial crisis. But it is down on the record peak of 1.02 billion in 2009. At that time Olivier de Schutter, special rapporteur on the Right to Food, observed that "we live in a world in which we produce more food than ever before, and in which the hungry have never been as many".   Despite the correction, the hunger epidemic is still "shockingly high", the executive director of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, said when the figures were released. "Grotesque," is how Andrew Hewett, head of Oxfam Australia, summarises it.   The figures are all the more distressing given the success stories in Malawi and some other nations in Africa, Asia (for example Vietnam) and Latin America (Brazil), which illustrate that the wherewithal does exist to turn around patterns of chronic malnourishment.   The latest hunger data shows that achieving the first of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals on health, poverty and equity - to reduce the number of hungry people in the world to half of what it was in 1990 - will be virtually impossible.   The reason, according to the director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, is the neglect of agriculture in development policies over the past 30 years. More than 70 per cent of the extremely poor live in rural parts of developing countries, he said, and those areas need investment in seeds and fertiliser, and better access to markets, to reduce hunger. Developed countries promised to invest $22 billion in aid to agriculture from 2009 to 2011, he noted, but so far only $425 million has been spent. Movement is in the right direction, but the pace needs to be accelerated.   Oxfam International has also released a new analysis - Halving Hunger: Still Possible? - which argues that the target could still be achieved with an investment of $US75 billion a year in agriculture and rural development, food security, social protection, nutrition programs and food assistance. It advocates half the money coming from donor countries, and half from national budgets.   The Oxfam report warns that all the structural issues identified as the causes of the 2008 crisis - stimulus for biofuels at the expense of food crops, speculation on commodities, unfair trade policies, growing demand for "rich" diets of meat in emerging countries and stagnated agricultural productivity - continue to make food markets fragile and volatile.   A longer-term food crisis looms, it warns, with serious consequences for world stability. "Each day of inaction brings us closer to failure and has a tremendously high cost in human lives and suffering."   Andrew Hewett has just returned from southern Africa, which has the world"s highest proportion of undernourished people - 30 per cent of the population. "One billion people in the world are hungry - but not because we do not have enough food in the world to feed everyone," he says.   The drivers of hunger are all well known and easily identified - "unequal distribution of resources and access to land, changing weather patterns through climate change, a lack of investment in agriculture in developing countries". But, he says, they are not being dealt with in any coherent or cohesive way.   "Until we are prepared to see that these issues are all linked, we are not going to develop the sort of comprehensive response the world needs to ensure that we can feed a growing population."   The interlinking of markets is also a key factor. Subsidies given to farmers in wealthy nations allow them to dump their surplus food onto developing countries, wiping out local production.   With 9 billion people expected to inhabit the planet by 2050, it is estimated that agriculture will need to produce 50-70 per cent more food in an era when changing weather patterns, dwindling water supplies, finite land resources and fragile energy supplies will all challenge productivity.   To achieve that, Hewett and other commentators call for a sustainable 21st-century "green revolution" - this time without the reliance on expensive inputs which underwrote yield growth last century, and without the damaging consequences for water resources and harm to land and jobs. The focus would be to use knowledge to protect and nurture fragile resources.   With the writing on the wall, but the response of international agencies sluggish and fractured, the fear of agencies and food specialists is of endless re-runs of an all-too familiar scenario - just like the one observed in Malawi five years back, imperfectly geared to emergency response, rather than anticipating and interrupting the cycle.   "We have seen the results of decades of immediate interventions without long-term planning, and it has not helped people in developing countries to have sustainable access to enough food," says Hewett. "What we need is a long-term response that invests in small farmers who feed their families and communities, that helps farmers adapt to the impact of climate change, and that provides sustainable ways to use the land and water resources we have." Visit the related web page
	UN Summit on Food Security by United Nations News   Oct 2010   Meeting against the backdrop of recent increases in food prices, delegates met for United Nations-led talks focusing on issues such as land tenure, international investment in agriculture and food security during crises.   The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) current session is the first with an expanded group of stakeholders, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations, UN bodies, the private sector and philanthropic representatives.   In his message to the delegates, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world requires formal global governance on food security.   “The Committee wil focus on issues such as the support for smallholder farmers, land acquisition, the interests of women, nutrition, price volatility, climate change and the establishment of food trading systems. I am especially keen to see the right to food become the basis of all our efforts for food and nutrition security. The is one of the keys to halving global hunger, the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), which in turn can have a multiplier effect across all our development goals,” the Secretary-General added.   The Committee will receive advice from a High-Level Panel of Experts in a variety of fields associated with food security and nutrition. The CFS Secretariat is now made up of members from the three Rome-based UN agencies – the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP).   Yukiko Omura, IFAD’s Vice President, noted that investing in small farmers by improving their access to land, to appropriate technology, financial services and markets, and responding to their other requirements is the most effective way to assist them out of poverty and hunger.   Also attending the meeting is Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, who said that the meeting “is a test for the ability of the CFS to shape an international consensus on issues such as land grabbing and speculation on agricultural commodities.”   He said the discussion on the “Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investments” to regulate large-scale land acquisitions, and the initiatives to combat volatility of prices on food commodity markets, including a discussion on the role of financial speculation, is crucial.   Mr Schutter noted that “pressures on land are increasing as a result of speculation on farmland, the expansion of agrofuels production, and demographic growth in rural areas,”   “In this context, moving swiftly towards protecting the rights of land users is vital. The livelihoods of peasants, fishers, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples in particular are threatened on a large scale as a result of the global enclosures movement that we are witnessing.”   “This is key for the future,” Mr. De Schutter said. “Climate change and changing weather patterns shall mean more instability in the future. Speculation by commodity index funds on the derivatives markets of agricultural commodities shall worsen the problem. We need both to make agriculture more resilient to these shocks, and to address speculation itself, which destabilizes the markets.”   Mr. De Schutter, who reports to the UN Human Rights Council, has been critical of the growth in large-scale land acquisitions, while aiming to forge a consensus.   “Where land is underutilized or considered vacant, the question of whether it should be redistributed to allow small independent farmers to use it should be asked first, before considering whether large-scale investment complies with a set of principles,” he said.   Regarding international investments in agriculture, including the "land grab" issue, the Committee "encouraged the development of international Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land and Other Natural Resources". The Committee requested its high-level panel of experts to study the respective roles of large-scale plantations and of small-scale farming.   The group also decided to start an inclusive process of consideration of the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investments that Respect Rights, Livelihoods and Resource.   The Committee requested its high-level panel of experts to examine and make recommendations regarding "causes and consequences of food price volatility, including market distorting practices and links to financial markets, and appropriate and coherent policies, actions, tools and institutions to manage the risks linked to excessive price volatility in agriculture."   The panel will also consider how vulnerable nations and populations can ensure access to food when volatility causes market disruption, and ways to lessen vulnerability through social and productive safety nets programmes.   On climate change, the CFS agreed to review existing assessments and initiatives on the effects of climate change on food security and nutrition. The focus of their study will be on the most affected and vulnerable regions and populations.   The CFS launched a consultative process to develop a global strategic framework for food security and nutrition over the next two years in order to help improve coordination of international efforts in the fight against hunger. Emphasis will be placed on input from the countries and stakeholders most affected by food insecurity.   Oct 2010 (AFP)   The United Nations top official on the right to food has called for wholesale changes in farming methods to safeguard the environment and ensure everyone has enough to eat.   Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said in a statement to mark World Food Day that there is currently "little to rejoice about," and "worse may still be ahead."   "As a result of climate change, the yields in certain regions of sub-Saharan Africa are expected to fall by 50 percent by 2020 in comparison to 2000 levels. And growing frequency and intensity of floods and droughts contribute to volatility in agricultural markets."   "Current agricultural developments are ... threatening the ability for our children"s children to feed themselves," he said. "A fundamental shift is urgently required if we want to celebrate World Food Day next year," he added.   De Schutter said the emphasis on chemical fertilisers and a greater mechanisation of production was "far distant from the professed commitment to fight climate change and to support small-scale, family agriculture."   In addition, "giving priority to approaches that increase reliance on fossil fuels is agriculture committing suicide," he said.   "Agriculture is already directly responsible for 14 percent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions -- and up to one third if we include the carbon dioxide produced by deforestation for the expansion of cultivation or pastures.   De Schutter said that pursuing the current approach would be "a recipe for disaster."   Instead there should be a global promotion of low-carbon farming, he said, adding that "agriculture must become central to mitigating the effects of climate change rather than a large part of the problem."   "Low-technology, sustainable techniques may be better suited to the needs of the cash-strapped farmers working in the most difficult environments," De Schutter said.   "They represent a huge, still largely untapped potential to meet the needs and to increase the incomes of the poorest farmers."   Climate change and agricultural development must be thought of together, instead of being dealt with in isolation from one another, De Schutter urged.   "To do so, we need to resist the short-termism of markets and elections. Development of longer-term strategies through inclusive and participatory processes could and should clearly identify measures needed, a clear time line, and allocation of responsibilities for action."   "What today seems revolutionary will be achievable if it is part of a long-term, democratically developed plan, one that will allow us to develop carbon-neutral agriculture and to pursue everyones enjoyment of the right to food through sustainable food production systems." Visit the related web page
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