It is with great pleasure that I join all of you again on World Food Day at the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.
For more than half a century FAO has worked with much success to guide countries in the region along the road to food security. It is heartening that this year FAO has chosen World Food Day to convey a message, which has long been known in Thailand to be true. I congratulate the Director-General of FAO for reminding the world that eradication of hunger is an important condition for eradicating or at least reducing poverty.
Many people ask why the theme is Fight hunger to reduce poverty and not the other way round. In my opinion, both themes are relevant. FAO's direct responsibilities are food and agriculture, so "hunger" is perhaps the main target to hit in order to cut this vicious circle of hunger and poverty. When we are hungry or malnourished, we are not able to work to generate income so we are poor.
In 1996, leaders of the world met in Rome at the World Food Summit and pledged to abate the extent of world hunger by half by the year 2015. This year in November they will meet again to review progress towards that goal. I was briefed during my short visit to FAO Headquarters in Rome in April this year that the progress had been too slow so far. Therefore we need a concerted effort with a holistic approach to fight hunger.
To be able to fight hunger, food production and distribution should be well considered. The production of food in large amount, or in other words, mass production, should be our objective, but at the same time we should also encourage local production of food-stuff. Food is basically an agricultural product. Therefore we should develop efficiency in agricultural production.
The world population increases but the resources remain scarce. Technologies are crucial for appropriate planning to increase food production. We should be interested in seed production, water management, soil improvement, post-harvest technologies, techniques in animal husbandry, GIS and computer technology, etc. After fishponds are dug, fish are released in those ponds and fish feed is provided by the authority we still cannot be assured that our hungry people will have a decent meal of fish. We should continue to ask whether they know how to catch fish, whether they have the equipment such as a net for catching fish, whether they know how to use the pond in a sustainable way and whether they know how to cook. Are there enough cooking utensils? It is really a complicated matter.
To combat hunger, it is not enough to provide good quantity of food; good quality, nutritionally balanced food is needed. Good nutritious food intake is the key to primary health care, which should be much less costly than the conventional therapeutic approach.
In this whole process, education plays an important role. Apart from the basic education that everyone should have, dissemination of integrated basic health and nutrition information both in the school and outside the school has to be encouraged. The aim is to link theory with practice. It is necessary to educate our society that we must join hands to reduce hunger.
Knowledge is also a part of the income generating process which is important in providing the means to purchase healthy food for the household.
So far I have been talking only about fighting hunger in general. Another sort of hunger that occurs sporadically during natural or man-made calamities should be handled with special techniques.
If we have some success in fighting hunger, our population will be healthy both physically and mentally. These people will be able to help themselves, their family members and the less fortunate ones in our society. The work should be done globally, regardless of race, social status, political and religious adherence.
While we contrive for success in fighting hunger and reducing poverty we should at the same time instill into people the spirit of reasonable contentment. If we incessantly increase our demands, there will be no end to them. It will not be possible to satisfy all our wants and we will always feel poor.
At this juncture, I would like to offer my good wishes to FAO and whole-hearted support to the World Food Day message. Like FAO I would like to urge Asia-Pacific countries to launch a unified campaign against hunger, which will pay off in improved economic well-being for their people.
Thank you
