UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon.An upward spike in the number of hungry people worldwide, and a realization that long-term challenges lie ahead in feeding the planet’s growing population, are pushing food security into the centre of global policy concerns for the first time in decades. What’s more, policy-makers are finding that food security solutions are directly tied to other key objectives.
Under pressure from dwindling purchasing power since last year’s economic crash, the number of malnourished people in the world has now surpassed a staggering one billion. Food prices – although down globally from mid-2008 levels – continue to remain high in many of the poorest countries, as drought and floods take a toll on livestock and farmlands. Spurred by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, donors pledged $20 billion at the G-8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, in June this year, where 26 developed and developing nations endorsed a hard-hitting action plan. The “L’Aquila principles” notably place agricultural productivity and support for poor farmers on a par with emergency food aid, usually the more dramatic and better-bankrolled activity. Emergency aid, nevertheless, is now severely under-funded in relation to the impact of economic and weather-related shocks. The World Food Programme is urgently seeking to regain its level of 2008 support, when it led an $8 billion emergency mobilization against hunger, the largest in history.
Under pressure from dwindling purchasing power since last year’s economic crash, the number of malnourished people in the world has now surpassed a staggering one billion. Food prices – although down globally from mid-2008 levels – continue to remain high in many of the poorest countries, as drought and floods take a toll on livestock and farmlands. Spurred by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, donors pledged $20 billion at the G-8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, in June this year, where 26 developed and developing nations endorsed a hard-hitting action plan. The “L’Aquila principles” notably place agricultural productivity and support for poor farmers on a par with emergency food aid, usually the more dramatic and better-bankrolled activity. Emergency aid, nevertheless, is now severely under-funded in relation to the impact of economic and weather-related shocks. The World Food Programme is urgently seeking to regain its level of 2008 support, when it led an $8 billion emergency mobilization against hunger, the largest in history.
Philanthropist Bill Gates has announced that his multi-billion dollar foundation will now focus mainly on food security. Making poor farmers more productive, he said, will have a massive impact on tackling world hunger. From 16-18 November 2009, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will hold a summit on food security, following up on its June 2008 emergency meeting. The Rome summit, says FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, aims to “forge a broad consensus on eradication of hunger in the world.” Secretary-General Ban, who will attend, last week assigned inter-agency task force coordinator David Nabarro to also serve as his Special Representative for Food Security and Nutrition.
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