Ministerial meeting on World
Food Security
Fiftieth Anniversary FAO
Quebec City, Canada, October 1995
Your Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen,
The generous hospitality of Canada,
the province of Quebec and Quebec City has afforded us
the opportunity to make the Fiftieth Anniversary of FAO a
return to our roots. This is indeed a return and not
merely - or even mostly - a romantic pilgrimage to the
birthplace of our Organization. It is also an occasion,
at a time when humanity is in great peril, to regain the
spirit and enthusiasm that inspired our founding fathers
half a century ago, and an opportunity for us to regain
strength and creativity.
This Ministerial Meeting is part of a
process that has already produced an important symposium
on people at the heart of development, and that will
culminate next year in the World Food Summit. You are
being asked to review the conclusions of the Symposium
and at the same time to make substantial preparations for
the Summit. Clearly, after such frank discussion among
representatives of governments, business, organizations
and the academic world, only a top-level gathering such
as this could set in train the policy-making and people's
mobilization process that is so vital if we are to
achieve our final goal of wiping out hunger and its
root-cause, poverty, from the face of the earth and, to
cite our slogan for the fifteenth World Food Day and the
Fiftieth Anniversary of FAO, of securing "Food for All".
I have had and will continue to have
occasion to expound the problem, but there is no need for
that here as the positions you occupy make you uniquely
well-informed; I have rarely had the opportunity to
address an audience so well aware of the fact that it is
unacceptable, indeed impossible, to go on living in a
world which has 800 million undernourished people in the
developing countries, including nearly 200 million
children under the age of five suffering from acute or
chronic protein or energy deficiencies. Your very
presence here today despite your many responsibilities is
ample evidence of the importance that you and your
governments attach to the problem which is facing us
today with critical urgency.
You more than anyone understand that
our only salvation is to win the racebetween food
production and population growth in the developing
countries, which is precisely where most of the 3 billion
additional people in the world in the year 2030 will be
living. The crux of the problem is therefore to devise
ways to boost food production in Third World countries
fast, substantially and sustainably, particularly in the
least privileged ones - the 88 low-income, food-deficit
countries, exactly half of which are in Africa, with a
further 19 in Asia and the Pacific, 9 in Latin America
and the Caribbean, 4 in the Near East and 12 in Europe
and the former Soviet Republics.
This is of course an immense
undertaking, fraught with difficulties. But is it one, as
some seem so quick to believe, that is beyond the ability
of this human race that has so successfully embarked upon
the conquest of space, unlocked the secrets of matter and
harnessed its energy, brought about a revolution in
genetics and found cures for diseases that were fatal
only yesterday? No, we would not be here today, and FAO
would not have fought for fifty years and be preparing so
vigorously for future combat were we not firmly convinced
that the final victory will be ours and that our goal not
only can but must be attained. For this to happen, we
will have to wage and carry through a wide-ranging
campaign that attacks the technical, financial and policy
dimensions of the problem all at the same time.
All three are closely interlinked, but
the technical dimension comes more specifically within
the province of FAO. Our major prospective studies
provide the basis for our work: the most recent,
Agriculture: Towards 2010, analyses the foreseeable needs
and existing potential for expanding farmland and raising
yields. FAO has also sought to learn from the past,
particularly from the Green Revolution which produced
spectacular results, particularly in Asia and the
Pacific, where available per caput food supplies are now
35 percent above what they were thirty years ago, whereas
barely a generation ago, common sense had it that the
region would never be able to feed itself. Based on this
information, FAO has resolved to launch a new Green
Revolution, skirting the shoals upon which the first
nearly ran aground, that is, basically, the problems of
adverse environmental impact and the risk of benefiting
the wealthier, better-educated farmers and sidelining the
poorer ones.
The Organization has worked very hard
to come up with dynamic and clearly-focused programmes to
serve development in the domains of agriculture,
forestry, fisheries and nutrition. This is not the place
to dwell at length on the subject and so I shall simply
mention two special programmes that I proposed and the
FAO Council approved in June 1994: we attach special
importance to them for they are destined to have a swift
impact on agricultural production, especially food
production.
The first is the Special Programme on
Food Production in Support of Food Security in
Low-income, Food-deficit Countries. The programme format
is to select pilot projects, apply appropriate technology
(particularly for water control), adopt production
systems that safeguard environmental imperatives, promote
appropriate economic policies and build national
capacities. Based on the participation of farming
communities and extension workers, within a context of
socially equitable measures, particularly for the least
privileged, the programme aims to increase food supplies,
stabilize yields and boost work and income opportunities
in agriculture.
The second programme is the "Emergency
Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant
Pests and Diseases". Initially, it will focus on desert
locust and rinderpest, two cyclical scourges that are
particularly virulent in Africa, the Near East and
Southwest Asia.
It is perfectly clear that even the
best-laid plans will remain a dead letter without the
necessary means to implement them. The kind of
agricultural growth we need to achieve implies truly
massive injections of capital; high-performance,
on-target technology; inputs, knowledge and know-how: in
short, aid and investment on an unprecedented scale.
This brings me to the subject of
official development assistance, for which the United
Nations had set a target of 0.7 percent of gross domestic
product for donor countries so many years ago. We are all
familiar with the problems that have arisen over the
years in achieving this goal, and the fact that only a
few countries have reached it and even fewer exceeded it.
The end of the cold war had raised great hopes: there was
no longer any rationale for the arms race and so the
immense outlay of human and financial resources that it
devoured to no purpose could now be redeployed and
retargeted to the peaceful business of development, which
would generate prosperity and well-being for all
humankind.
These high hopes were cruelly dashed.
We are now in fact moving further from the 0.7 percent
goal, not closer: donor country GDP earmarked for
official development assistance, which stood at 0.34
percent in 1970, had dropped to 0.29 percent by 1994. The
brunt of this reduction was borne by the agricultural
sector, which received less both in absolute and
percentage terms. Calculated in constant 1990 dollars,
assistance fell from 16 billion dollars in 1981-83 to 11
billion in 1991-93. During the same period, agriculture's
share dropped from 24.5 to 16 percent.
Yet there are increasing signs of
economic recovery. The performance of several countries
that have successfully broken away from underdevelopment,
and the efforts of many others to engage in structural
adjustment, would normally be expected to rekindle
confidence and trigger a renewed flow of aid. Substantial
problems, though, still stand in the way. A large portion
of the resources that the principal donors are prepared
to hand the international agencies has been, and
continues to be, taken up by the many peace-keeping
operations in the world to halt conflict, bloodshed and
massacre. As for bilateral assistance, there is no sign
of renewal other than for military aid, and, with a few
praiseworthy exceptions, the decline only worsens. It
would therefore be pointless to expect any increase in
flow of aid until peace and order have been restored in
the world.
But investment is more than just
official development assistance. Savings should be
encouraged within countries. This would stimulate
national public and private funding and at the same time
create an enabling environment for supplementary private
investment from abroad.
There is immense scope for investors
in the development of agriculture. But, investment is
required in a vast range of domains if we are to assure
strong growth of production, remove the element of risk,
avoid losses and facilitate commodity marketing. A far
from exhaustive list would include technology transfer,
equipment and inputs of all sorts, management of forest
resources,development of aquaculture and related
industries, the design and construction of
hydro-agricultural systems within an integrated watershed
management and water control plan, protection against
crop losses by pest and disease control, new
infrastructures such as storage facilities, roads and
transport networks, and development of human resources
through teaching, training and extension.
Such undertakings require in-depth
feasibility studies and "bankable" projects governed by a
host of parameters: economic and financial viability;
medium- and long-term impact; optimal size of project;
selection of technologies; absorption capacity;
protection of the natural and cultural environment;
greater responsibilities given over to national officers
and local populations; fair distribution of benefits.
The economic "take-off" of many
developing countries initiated by agricultural growth
should herald further successes, with spin-off in terms
of growth and employment also being felt in the developed
countries, thus encouraging further investment in
countries with promise for the future.
Clearly, investment priorities will
vary from one region to another. In Asia, where the
benefits of the Green Revolution may level off, the focus
should be on renovating irrigation schemes, installing
drainage systems and regulating rights of access to
water. In Africa, where there is so much to do but where
irrigation covers barely 7 percent of farmland, any
modernization is conditional upon hydro-agricultural
programmes carried out at community level, while in Latin
America market-based agrarian reform would seem to be a
top priority.
It is not easy to gauge the level of
investment that is needed to attain the growth targets
outlined in FAO's study Agriculture: towards 2010, but it
is in sub-Saharan Africa in particular that net
investment in production and marketing will have to be
substantially raised.
Investment efficiency is just as
important as volume. In this connection, the structural
adjustments already in place have helped reduce
ineffective measures and structures, and have also acted
as an incentive for private investment. There are still,
however, many instances of economic and social bias, and
the problems of transition have not always been addressed
and resolved appropriately.
It is of course for the developing
countries themselves to finance the bulk of the
investments they need for economic growth. Some of this
capital should come from public revenue, export earnings
and savings, but the greatest potential in many countries
lies in mobilizing the farming population to engage in
investment activity. However, many of these countries
also require strong external support to reinforce their
national effort.
Genuine food security will only become
a reality in the world if all the interested parties -
developing and developed country governments, private
investors and international funding agencies -
demonstrate that they have the clear, coherent and
sustained political will to make it happen, even if this
entails questioning concepts, criteria and attitudes that
have long been taken for granted.
Whether the focus is on the technical,
the financial or the political, there is one key element
that must always be borne foremost in mind - the time
dimension. Time in agriculture (and even more so in
forestry) is not the same as in industry or the tertiary
sector. The pace is slower. Changes do not happen
overnight. Results take time to emerge. Analysis of
trends needs to cover the medium or long term if it is to
have any significance. Implementation and evaluation need
to be framed in a much longer perspective. In short, the
patience of the farmer must become the principal virtue
of the investor.
The implications of food security are
vital for the world today, for what we have before us is
no less than the survival of humanity. If, through
misfortune, we found ourselves unable to avoid famine, if
our efforts to achieve "food for all" are proved to be in
vain, then all of us, whether rich or poor, would be
facing the same dangers, wherever we might be. Such,
Honourable Ministers, is the nature of the challenge that
our governments and peoples have to take up now and in
the future. May this return to our roots, on the occasion
of the fiftieth anniversary of FAO, help us to regain the
vision, hope, energy and determination that markedthe
birth and life of our Organization. The Ministerial
Meeting that opens this morning will thus serve as a
beacon of hope and mark a decisive step in the fulfilment
of the dream - or rather the grand unequivocal design -
of our founding fathers: to free humanity from hunger.
Thank you.
