Commemoration of the Fiftieth
Anniversary of FAO in Quebec
Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City, Canada, 16 October
1995
Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen,
This is such an extraordinary event,
it seems almost unreal. Here we are together in
Château Frontenac, at the very place where the
Constitution establishing the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations was signed, exactly
half a century ago.
On the morrow of the most appalling
conflict that the world had ever seen, with tens of
millions dead and countless more displaced, with
unprecedented destruction and agriculture in ruins over
much of the planet - particularly in certain
high-productivity regions - the idea that had been
launched 10 to 15 years earlier by inspired visionaries
and scientists was finally poised to become a reality: an
international organization that could fuse the efforts of
all interested nations into one dynamic and coherent
entity. It would help rebuild from the ashes,
rehabilitate agriculture and revive the flow of
international trade; it would tackle the problem of food
for all.
We have come a very long way since
then. We started with 34 members and today we number 171.
Meanwhile, the world itself has undergone tremendous
change. Its population has nearly tripled, and
agricultural production has surged even more
spectacularly, considerably raising per caput food
supplies. The advanced European countries that had
suffered deprivation during the war and seen their
agricultural sectors shattered were the first to regain
and surpass their earlier production levels, and soon
found themselves with surpluses on hand. Equally
important, many formerly food-deficit, famine-prone
developing countries managed to achieve food self-
sufficiency and have even become food exporters, thanks
mainly to enlightened policies, the hard work of their
farmers and a host of new technologies commonly referred
to as the "Green Revolution". FAO unquestionably has
played a major role in these developments.
Worldwide, supplies today are more
than enough to feed the global population, and there is
even a little left over to accommodate population growth.
Does this mean then that FAO has accomplished its mission
and can now gracefully step back from or even leave the
world stage? Should the Organization's fiftieth
anniversary both crown and signal an end to its efforts?
Not at all, for what we are up against now, instead, is a
challenge so unprecedented that we shall require every
last drop of political will from our Member Nations,
every last ounce of dedication and skill from our staff
and the full backing of the public at large.
The situation is serious. Good as the
overall data may seem, they cannot mask what are often
tragic disparities. We are already seeing glaring
inequalities within nations. Even the richest, with more
than 3 600 calories per person per day, have millions of
undernourished children. And there are equally large gaps
among nations: while per caput food supplies are more
than abundant in the developed countries of the North,
they remain insufficient in much of the developing world,
particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where supplies have
actually shrunk in the past 25 years.
And here once again I have to draw
attention to the fact that there are 800 million people
in the world today without access to a proper diet. Of
these, 192 million are children under the age of five,
victims of serious calorie and protein deficiencies that
will forever deny them access to full physical and
intellectual growth. This is not just a serious
situation, it is an unacceptable one.
But what has brought us to such a pass
when, in theory, we have enough food to feed everyone?
Firstly, the progress in production is unequally
distributed. Unhappily, the least privileged countries,
lacking the resources to afford costly technical inputs,
such as irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides, are also
the most frequent victims of attacks by pests or unusual
weather conditions resulting in drought or flood. Those
most vulnerable to such scourges are the least-equipped
to deal with them and they also lack the financial
resources to make up for any shortfall from the world
market. There are 88 low-income, food-deficit countries
altogether, half of them in sub-Saharan Africa. In these
countries, living conditions are the most precarious, and
food production is unable to keep pace with what are the
world's highest rates of population growth.
So, once again our founding fathers
were right in asserting, back in 1943 at the Hot Springs
Conference, that "poverty is the first cause of hunger
and malnutrition". Hence the widening gap between the
haves and the have-nots, whether individuals,
socio-economic groups or nations. It would be a great
mistake to view the battle as won simply because supply
and demand now balance out at the world level. The tragic
fact is that the cash to back up much of this demand is
simply not there.
What then are we to do, given the
circumstances, if we are to provide food for all? The
first solution that springs to mind is to right the
balance by distributing the surplus production of the
rich countries to the poor countries in the form of food
aid. I am perhaps better placed than anyone to affirm the
need for generous food aid in the event of famine or
serious food shortages. I am also in a better position
than most to understand how carefully targeted food aid
can drive specific development projects. At the same
time, however, I am more than aware of the dangers of
structural food aid: the disruption of internal markets,
the negative impact on local production, the shift in
preference away from traditional foods and, above all,
the emergence of a welfare mentality among people and
governments.
We can offset these dangers by a
series of precautions and strategies; for example, we can
supply some aid in cash rather than in kind, or we can
adopt triangular arrangements whereby the donor country
purchases surplus production from one developing country
for transfer to a neighbouring one in deficit. The fact
remains, however, that while food aid is now, and may
well continue to be, an essential component of
international action, it cannot provide a lasting and
humanly satisfying solution to the problem that concerns
us.
The solution lies elsewhere. Genuine
food security can only come about if the least privileged
countries manage to break free from their poverty and
dependant status. The most obvious and assured way to do
so would be to increase food production substantially.
But this is conditional upon a whole set of
circumstances, the first and foremost of which is the
determination to act. Governments will need to muster the
political will, and rural energies will have to be fully
mobilized, particularly those of women and the young
whose key roles need to be recognized. As for the
practical means, one avenue that immediately comes to
mind is to expand the amount of farmland, but there is
very little scope for this. Although it is not accurate
to say, as some do, that we no longer have any potential
farmland, there is in any case very little, particularly
if we wish to safeguard the ecological equilibrium and
avoid massive deforestation. With continuing population
growth and an expected 3 billion more mouths to feed by
the year 2030, the amount of available cropland - which
now works out at 0.25 ha per person - will in all
likelihood shrink even further.
Any increase in production will
therefore have to focus on intensified farming of the
land already under cultivation, taking care to avoid
rapid depletion of the soil. We must concentrate on
extending sound conservation practices and developing the
use of inputs: improved seeds, fertilizers and,
particularly, irrigation.
The irrigation factor has vast
undreamed-of potential, particularly in Africa, where
food security problems are the most acute. Conventional
wisdom has it that the African continent, with a mere 11
million irrigated hectares (which is only 7 percent of
the global figure), is destined for chronic drought. Yet
some of the most arid of the Sahel countries lie over
vast, virtually untapped aquifers; moreover, Africa's
rivers discharge some 4 500 billion cubic meters of water
each year into the sea. Obviously, it would be illusory
to claim that all this water could be used, but the area
now under irrigation could certainly be increased three-
to fourfold under carefully managed hydro-agricultural
systems. The consequences would be staggering - so much
so that water control is unequivocally the key to food
security in Africa.
Clearly, such an ambitious undertaking
would require policy commitment and close cooperation on
the part of governments, as well as massive injections of
foreign capital to build the necessary infrastructure. It
would need the active and ongoing involvement of local
communities and all farmers in the development and
maintenance of secondary and tertiary irrigation schemes,
and these people would need to be carefully briefed. This
is where difficulties have arisen in the past, and since
they have not been overcome, many observers have come to
regard them as insurmountable. Policy-makers, with their
limited resources, are reluctant to embark on such vast
designs, especially as they may have misgivings about the
potential strength of agreements between neighbouring
states to exploit shared resources. As for investors,
many are unwilling to finance a hydro-agricultural
undertaking that offers uncertain economic returns,
apparently oblivious to the human lives that could be
spared, the suffering that could be averted and the
potential savings on emergency relief. Finally, rural
people, both individually and collectively, will only
mobilize if they can clearly perceive the advantages of
the undertaking and be confident of receiving their fair
share of the benefits.
I have dwelt at length on this example
because I feel that it squarely defines our obstacles. We
have already identified the poverty of individuals,
communities and nations as a formidable enemy, but there
are other equally daunting foes: ignorance; unequal
distribution of the fruits of the earth and the rewards
of labour; indifference, which the World Food Security
Compact has already decried as the most redoubtable of
adversaries; and, most of all, ack of courage to trust a
great ambition to human ingenuity.
During the course of its fifty years,
FAO has relentlessly battled each of these foes on all
fronts and dealt many a heavy blow. However, despite its
many initiatives in all areas, the final outcome hangs in
the balance because of the enemy's astonishing capacity
for active and passive resistance. We have made
considerable progress, but half a century of efforts have
still not brought us the decisive breakthrough. We must
even report regression on some fronts: agricultural aid
to developing countries, for example, is constantly
falling in real terms, its share in overall development
assistance having fallen from 24.5 percent in 1981-83 to
16 percent in 1991-93.
Not for this, though, shall we lower
our flag or even countenance a negotiated settlement. We
are fully confident that the final victory will be ours
and remain committed to combat ignorance through the
dissemination of knowledge and know-how, the fear of
ambitious programmes through the advice we offer to
decision-makers, and inequality through the promotion of
equitable domestic and international trade relations and
projects that guarantee equal terms and opportunities to
the less privileged, particularly to women. We shall
continue to combat poverty through all of FAO's
activities, whether increasing production, avoiding
losses or ensuring stable and remunerative prices to
producers. And we shall fight indifference by ceaselessly
reiterating that no one can build prosperity and security
in isolation and ignore the rest of the world, for global
interdependence is now a fact of life and collective
solidarity its inseparable companion.
I have summarized the work that FAO
has tirelessly pursued from the very outset. But the
state of the world and the perils we face are so menacing
thatwe must redouble our efforts and creativity if we are
to score a decisive victory. In this spirit, and with a
concern to intervene where needs are greatest andthe
agricultural sector most vulnerable, the Organization has
just launched two wide-scale priority programmes.
The first of these is the Special
Programme on Food Production in Support of Food Security
in Low-income Food-deficit Countries. This programme,
based on the participation of farming communities and
extension workers within a context of socially equitable
measures particularly targeting the least privileged,
involves the implementation of pilot projects using
appropriate technologies which meet environmental
preservation imperatives. Broader implementation during
the expansion phase will be coupled with the promotion of
favourable economic policies and the building of national
capacities. The goal is nothing less than a new Green
Revolution that will learn from past mistakes, safeguard
natural resources and ensure equitable rewards from
agricultural growth. The Programme's target is to
increase food supplies in the most vulnerable countries,
improving yields and boosting work and income
opportunities in agriculture.
The second priority programme is the
Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and
Plant Pests and Diseases. This will initially focus on
two specific objectives: the desert locust and rinderpest
| two common scourges that are particularly virulent in
Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia. We are
convinced that this initiative will also have a great
impact.
Of course these two programmes alone
cannot solve every problem. But, in addition to the
impressive results we expect from them, we are also
counting on the spillover factor. Whether or not we
succeed in our quest of food for all hinges mainly on the
response of governments and people in developed and
developing countries alike. While FAO cannot stand in for
them, it can and will strive ever harder to perform its
role successfully: to inform, to provide advice and
counsel, to propose new initiatives, to help identify
donors and to implement development projects | in short,
to backstop their efforts y every means available. Our
ongoing concern for our Member Nations' needs is once
again evidenced in five newly-launched programmes: three
focusing on cooperation among developing countries,
countries in transition, and with research institutions
and universities; one to help young national professional
officers from developing countries gain practical
experience with FAO projects as young professionals, as
the developed countries already have; and one designed to
tap the priceless store of expertise and experience in
international cooperation vested in retired experts.
From the bottom of our hearts, we
dedicate our efforts to feed the world - or rather to
help the world feed itself - to all farmers, foresters
and fishers everywhere, and particularly to the women who
account for such a large share of global food production.
FAO exists solely to serve each and every one of them.
And on this fiftieth anniversary of our Organization, we
solemnly promise to spare no effort to place in their
hands the three immutable keys to food security:
knowledge, capability and the will to act.
Thank you.
