Statement on the occasion of
World Food Day 1997
Plenary Hall, FAO
Rome, Italy, 16 October 1997
His Majesty Birendra Bir Bikram
Shah Dev, King of Nepal,
His Excellency Lamberto Dini, Minister for Foreign
Affairs of the Italian Republic,
Excellencies,
Most Reverend Monsignor Wagner,
Madame Gina Lollobrigida,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In November last year, FAO organized
and hosted the World Food Summit, in order to raise
awareness of the intolerably high level of hunger in the
world and the urgent need to adopt a global strategy to
ensure the food security of present and future
generations. Representatives from 186 countries committed
themselves to a Declaration and a Plan of Action to lay
the foundations for achieving the goal of ensuring that
all people, at all times, have sufficient, safe and
nutritious food to lead healthy and active
lives.
More than 800 million people on the
globe, of whom 200 million children do not have the very
minimum of sustenance to stay alive. Their capacity for
growth and daily activity are stunted by malnutrition and
chronic undernourishment.
On this World Food Day, which marks
the anniversary of the Organization, I would like to
focus on a most essential commitment of the Summit: to
increase investment in food security. For if the goal of
food security for all is to be reached there must be
significant increases in food production and improved
access to food.
Much of the investment in food
security is, and will continue to be, overwhelmingly
private and carried out by the millions of small farmers,
traders, village artisans, entrepreneurs and others
engaged in the production and distribution of food. Many
are women and earn less than the equivalent of US$ 200
per year.
The challenges they face cannot be
underestimated: securing better water control to
counteract the harsh vagaries of climate and using
improved inputs in a sustainable manner to increase
yields from scarce arable land.
Yet by their labour, by their small
savings, by their investment they contribute around three
quarters of the total investments required to achieve
food security in the world's poorest countries. Such
basic on-farm and related private investment needs to be
strongly supported.
The remaining one quarter, about US$
41 billion each year, consists of public investments to
create and maintain the conditions for profitable private
sector activity in agriculture.
World Agriculture: Towards 2010
estimated that total investments of US$ 166 billion will
be needed each year to secure the increases in food
output required in developing countries over the next
fifteen years. This implies an increase of 23 percent
over the present level.
If official multilateral and bilateral
financial support provides the same share as in the past,
external commitments of some US$ 15 billion will be
needed annually to help the poorest countries meet the
public investment requirements.
Unfortunately, however, external
official development assistance to agriculture has fallen
steadily in the last ten years from about US$ 16 billion
in 1988 to under US$ 10 billion in 1995, in large part to
the detriment of the world's poorest countries with
predominant rural sectors. FAO is cooperating with its
investment partners to reverse this dangerous trend, and
I am pleased to report that some significant progress is
being made in this direction.
Fundamental to the development of
efficient food systems is the creation of a policy
framework which stimulates the flow of resources that can
contribute to food security. Policy adjustments in some
countries have already demonstrated the beneficial
effects of securing land tenure, mobilizing savings and
encouraging farmers and other private
investors.
Scarce public resources must be
directed to better focused agricultural research and
extension, small-scale land improvement and water control
systems, reliable infrastructure, reinforcement of
credit, building and reform of institutions.
Naturally, the challenges and
priorities of investment in food security differ in each
region of the world.
Special attention must be given to
women who, in much of the developing world, produce and
process up to 80 percent of basic foodstuffs. Providing
them with training, access to inputs, credit and market,
means investing at the most fundamental level.
Supplying the cities is also a major
challenge as by the year 2010 it is estimated that the
population of the world's cities will have almost
doubled. This unprecedented expansion calls for massive
investments in food distribution, storage and marketing
facilities. It requires also special social programmes to
allow the urban poor to have access to food
directly.
But public sector and private
investments are particularly needed to promote employment
opportunities in rural and peri-urban areas.
To ensure concrete follow-up to the
World Food Summit in some 86 such low-income food-deficit
countries which endure chronic food deficits, are heavily
dependent on food aid and lack the foreign exchange to
pay for commercial food imports, FAO has launched the
Special Programme for Food Security.
The Programme aims to use the
normative and field experience accumulated by the
Organization over more than fifty years to test under the
real conditions of the farmers fields through people's
participation more effective and sustainable ways of
farming - including improved water control, crop
intensification, diversification into small animal
production, aquaculture and inland fishing.
The first phase consists of two to
three years of pilot operations of a pre-investment
nature, encompassing a thorough assessment of all
relevant socio-economic issues at micro and macro levels,
to identify constraints to production, access and social
equity. The second phase focuses on assistance to
governments to improve their agricultural policies with a
view to create an environment favourable to investment in
production, processing and trade. It should also be an
opportunity for advising governments on investment plans
required to address the limitations in infrastructures
and other physical facilities.
Of the 86 low-income food-deficit
countries in the world, 19 now have fully operational
grass-roots pilot projects under the Special Programme.
Activities are rapidly expanding to cover over 50 other
countries from which requests for assistance have already
been received. I believe that this is an important,
indeed vital endeavour, and that the strong momentum now
underway must not be lost.
In this priority programme, I am
pleased to note active partnership arrangements with
relevant financing institutions such as the World Bank,
the African Development Bank and the Islamic Development
Bank, as well as with UNDP and a growing number of
bilateral agencies. Several advanced developing countries
have kindly agreed to provide a critical mass of field
technicians and coordinating experts in the framework of
the South-South Cooperation scheme, for the transfer of
know-how to participating farmers of other developing
countries.
FAO is also determined to ensure a
coordinated approach to food security issues, in
particular at country level, and in this spirit has
initiated the new ACC Network on Rural Development and
Food Security, jointly with the International Fund for
Agricultural Development, and in close cooperation with
the World Food Programme as well as other concerned
partners.
The achievement of the food security
goals set out in the World Food Summit's Plan of Action
will come through deeds and facts, in particular on the
ground, in developing countries. The international
community will fail if it continues to focus simply on
conferences, meetings, seminars and consultancy reports.
The plight of the poor and the hungry will not be
improved through intellectual debates only. The battle
for the fundamental human rights to change the dependency
and the unacceptable decay which are brought by
malnutrition and undernutrition will be won by concrete
action to support farmers in their fields throughout the
seasons. They need to be helped from dawn to dusk by
people sharing their anxieties and hopes, their sadness
and happiness. They require each passing day more
knowledge and resources to harness and improve water use,
provide high yielding seeds and plants, better fertilizer
and integrated pest management techniques, improved
storage and post-harvest facilities.
It is mainly through the increased
capacity to produce cereals, vegetables, tubers,
chickens, sheep, goats and fish that it will be possible
to bring the supply of food to a level where it can be
met by a demand in line with the low income of the
poor.
This is the road of the Special
Programme on food security. It is not a paved asphalt. It
is full of stumbling blocks, pot holes, mud and puddles
like the farm tracks that rural people take every day to
work the land and that the women use to go for water or
firewood. But it is the arduous, laborious and difficult
road to success. I am sure that on this long journey FAO
will not feel lonely as it will have by its side, across
seas and continents, not only people of kindness and
goodwill but also governments with vision and compassion.
