MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE |
Original: English |
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is pleased to address this Fourth Ministerial Conference. We note the emphasis being placed on the particular concerns of developing countries and we would like to share with you our assessment and suggestions with food security and rural development in view.
One of the major challenges facing global society at the dawn of this new millennium is the reduction of hunger throughout the world and the achievement of food security for all – at the national and household levels. Appropriate rules of the multilateral trading system to govern agricultural production and trade are among the essential instruments for promoting food security and rural development. The Agreement on Agriculture was an important step in this regard.
I would like to make two points briefly. One is the global challenge facing the world’s agriculture; the other is the way ahead, i.e.what needs to be done in the trade context to meet this challenge.
FAO estimates that at the turn of the millennium, 815 million people were food insecure. They do not get enough food to lead a normal, healthy and active life. Of these, 777 million live in developing countries, 27 million in countries in transition and 11 million in industrialised countries. While there has been some progress in reducing the absolute number of hungry people, this is not happening fast enough to achieve the World Food Summit target of halving the number of undernourished not later than by the year 2015. At the current rate, it would take more than 60 years to reach this target.
Chronic undernourishment is an extreme manifestation of poverty. Hunger and food insecurity are both the result of poverty and its cause. Eliminating hunger is not only a moral and social imperative but also a good investment for economic growth.
Unlike most developed countries where excessive levels of support and protection continue to distort production and trade, agriculture in developing countries is often undervalued in policy setting. This also leads to the under-provision of public goods which exacerbates current problems of rural poverty, food security, environmental degradation, uncontrolled rural-urban migration and social instability that most developing countries are facing.
To combat hunger and food insecurity two things are essential: One, the undernourished must have economic access to food through opportunities to earn adequate incomes; two, it is necessary to ensure the physical availability of food supplies from either domestic production or imports, or both.
With 70 percent of the world’s extremely poor and food insecure people living in rural areas, the role of agriculture, which is the predominant economic activity in rural areas, is crucial in the eradication of poverty and food insecurity. The rural poor depend on agriculture both for their incomes and food entitlements. Thus chronic food insecurity can be addressed most effectively through policies that tap the huge agricultural potential of developing countries to increase agricultural productivity, rural incomes and food production.
The contribution of food imports to food security, while crucial, is limited by the foreign exchange earning capacity of developing countries. Thus, closing the food gap through commercial imports is not always a realistic possibility for most countries that have poor prospects for substantial increases in foreign exchange earnings and/or already face heavy external debt burdens. Nor is chronic dependence on external food aid a sustainable solution.
In sum, for many developing countries, particularly Low Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDCs), an essential option for closing the food gap is to increase agricultural productivity and domestic food production, and enhance the ability of countries to import food by strengthening their export earning possibilities.
Related to the challenge of reducing hunger is the challenge of ensuring the quality and safety of food, of plant and animal health, in particular as globalization and liberalised agricultural trade increase the trans-boundary transmission of related risks. Finding solutions to these challenges are of equal importance to rich and poor countries. As recognised by the SPS/TBT Agreements, it is important that measures taken by countries to address these risks are science-based and internationally harmonised.
In FAO’s view, the objective of reducing hunger and alleviating poverty through sustainable agriculture and rural development is not incompatible with the goal of establishing "a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system". FAO hopes that the current negotiations recognize the importance of food security and rural development. In particular, we would recommend the following:
Once again, I wish to emphasize the importance of investment in agriculture to improve food security. Evidence clearly shows that countries which decreased the number of undernourished in the 1990s have substantially increased capital stock in agriculture whereas capital stock declined in those where the number of hungry increased.
In conclusion, FAO is determined to continue to play its role and contribute to the international efforts to achieving the twin goals of reducing hunger and poverty, on the one hand, and moving towards a "fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system", on the other.