1993 is likely to be remembered as a watershed year for FAO, a year of redefining the course that will guide the Organization into the next century and of setting forth under new leadership.
1993 is likely to be remembered as a watershed for FAO, a year of redefining the course that will guide the Organization into the next century and of setting forth under new leadership. At the FAO Conference in November, the Member Nations elected Dr. Jacques Diouf of Senegal to take the helm of the Organization's nearly 50-year campaign for stable, sustainable agricultural development. Dr. Diouf became the new Director-General on a clearly stated platform of renewal dedicated to reinvigorating and reshaping FAO's structure to meet new challenges.
Charting a course for the future - Agriculture: Towards 2010
During the three-week Conference, delegates reviewed Agriculture: Towards 2010, a document that sets out the prospects for the future in stark terms and reviews the lessons of the past. For example, the study points out that, despite dire predictions, on a global basis agricultural production has managed to outstrip population growth. Although substantially more food is available per person today than was the case 30 years ago, these gains have not been shared equally. Globally, as many as 800 million people in the world still suffer from chronic undernutrition and many developing countries - among them the entire region of sub-Saharan Africa - are worse off nutritionally today than they were 20 or 30 years ago.
Agriculture: Towards 2010 also underlines the heavy environmental and social toll of the gains in food production. An exacting assessment of the environmental effects of agricultural practices too often shows a negative balance: deforestation, soil degradation, desertification, water contamination and genetic erosion have damaged the very resources on which food production depends. At the same time, the shift to intensive, high-input production has all too often bypassed the rural poor, locking them into a vicious circle of poverty-engendered resource degradation.
The challenge is clear: food production must equitably and adequately meet the needs of a population that will swell to over 7.2 billion by the year 2010 while protecting and even enhancing the natural resource base. Agriculture: Towards 2010 offers some signposts for charting a course to meet the challenge. But it also offers dismaying projections of what is likely to happen if we follow the course of present trends. Growth in food production, for instance, will continue to outpace human reproduction. But increases in food supplies and progress in alleviating poverty will still not provide food security for all. By the study's best estimates, some 650 million people will still suffer from chronic undernutrition in the year 2010; in sub-Saharan Africa alone, as much as one-third of the population, or some 300 million people, will be affected.
During the year, for example, the Organization focused the world's attention on biodiversity, our invaluable yet fragile global store of living resources. With the mission of "Harvesting nature's diversity", World Food Day 1993 mobilized awareness of and support for ongoing efforts to protect our irreplaceable natural resource base, recognizing the rights of farmers who have developed, conserved and enhanced that base over the centuries. Each plant or animal breed has a pool of genetic traits that may be bred into other varieties to convey increased efficiency, resistance to pests and tolerance of harsh climates and conditions. The tradition of breeding to enhance the resource base is at the very foundation of sustainable agriculture and rural development.
Yet our heritage of crop and livestock biodiversity is being lost at an alarming rate. Agronomists predict, for example, that three-quarters of the total rice area in India - once home to over 30 000 varieties - will soon be planted to just ten varieties. Livestock is similarly threatened; one-third of existing breeds are at high risk of extinction. Ironically, people constitute the main hazard for the resources on which their survival depends. Environmental degradation, disruption of traditional agricultural ecosystems and increasing reliance on a few highly productive varieties account for most of the loss.
In 1993, FAO launched its "International Conference and Programme for Plant Genetic Resources" to prepare the first global report on the state of the world's plant genetic resources as well as a concrete plan of action for approval and adoption at a major conference that will be held in 1996. To help protect animal biodiversity, FAO and UNEP joined forces to establish a global data bank of domestic animal breeds which served as the source for the publication, in 1993, of the first World Watch List for Domestic Animal Diversity. The list - a tool for global early warning - covers seven species of livestock to date. Among them, it has identified more than 390 breeds at critical risk of extinction. The numbers will swell as the List is expanded to include all 30 to 40 animal species in use.
Aside from protection of biodiversity, Agenda 21 - the plan of action endorsed by the Earth Summit - sets forth many tasks to be tackled if we are to provide an equitable, sustainable basis for agricultural development and policy formulation. In March 1993, "task-masters" were named among the UN agencies to promote and coordinate interagency activities along these lines. FAO's direct charges include Agenda 21's "land cluster" chapters - water resources, forests, fragile mountain ecosystems and sustainable agriculture and rural development - apart from chairing two UN sub-committees on oceans and water resources. At the organizational level, FAO has streamlined and reorganized its Special Action Programmes (SAPs) to provide a concerted thrust to its work for sustainable agriculture and rural development. The SAPs integrate organizationwide activities in policy advice and planning assistance, nutrition and welfare of rural peoples, sustainable management of natural resources and sound use of agricultural inputs. In 1993, this work ranged from developing computer programs for improved efficiency in water use to assessment of community-based efforts to combat deforestation and desertification; from research on plant varieties' nutrient management to promotion of biological fertilizers; from application of pesticide codes to study tours of IPM "field schools"; from conflict resolution seminars on forest resources management to measures to ensure responsible fishing; from research on biofuels to analyses of the effects of increased livestock production on the environment.
1993 was also a year of follow-through on the International Conference on Nutrition, convened at FAO headquarters in Rome in late 1992. One of the major conclusions reached by the ICN was that knowledge is among the most powerful tools for achieving nutritional gains in needy populations worldwide. Several FAO projects in the year sought to build up knowledge both in and of nutritionally vulnerable groups. One project in Viet Nam, for instance, successfully reduced vitamin A deficiency by improving women's awareness of dietary deficiencies and the alternatives available to them.
FAO's activities in nutrition are increasingly focused on food security at the household level versus overall food availability. In this context, proper identification of vulnerable groups is fundamental. During the year, the Organization worked to develop, at national and sub-regional levels, an Aggregate Household Food Security Index. The conceptual basis for the Index was approved by the FAO Council in November. Once fully developed, it will serve as a tool for monitoring food security trends worldwide.
At the policy level, FAO helped over 40 Member Governments follow through on their pledge to revise or establish national plans of action for nutrition. The 150 nations that participated in the ICN committed themselves to developing plans with attainable goals and measurable targets. To support the process, the document "Guidelines for Developing National Plans of Action for Nutrition" was distributed to Member Governments.
Developing country gains from the Uruguay Round package will depend mainly on elimination of restraints to textile and clothing exports. But studies indicate that while prices of grains and other temperate zone products will shoot up by 5 to 10 percent, prices of tropical products exported by developing nations will stagnate. This will accentuate a current trend in which tropical agricultural commodities' value is plummeting next to rising costs of goods - such as manufactured products and petroleum - that most developing countries must import.
Throughout the Uruguay Round, FAO advocated freer and fairer trade, a key to economic growth for the developing countries. The Organization will continue to provide policy advice and technical support to assist developing countries in reshaping their policies and programmes to adapt to the new and evolving context of trade conditions. At the same time, FAO will insist on provision of adequate support through the special assistance programme conceived to help offset negative impacts on the least developed, net food-importing countries.
Recognizing the contribution of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to improved rice production in Asia, the Government of the Netherlands pledged US$ 9 million to deploy FAO's IPM field programme in ten Asian countries; Australia announced that it would contribute an additional US$ 3 million.
A Global Plan of Action aimed at the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources was proposed by FAO to the Commission on Plant Genetic Resources at its tenth anniversary meeting. The Commission also explored issues such as farmers' rights and the development of early warning systems to secure the maintenance of plant genetic resources and their availability to all
.Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro inaugurated additions to FAO headquarter facilities at the Viale delle Terme di Caracalla address. This extension of the central FAO offices allowed the Organization to bring all its staff in Rome together in the same building complex for the first time since moving to Italy.
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