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MULTIMEDIA
February 11, 2012
 
 
 
 
 
 

Food summit to make little headway to fight hunger

A child walks down a shanty area in Hyderabad, India, on Thursday. A UN world food summit next week is likely to make little headway in the fight against hunger, with leaders simply pledging to boost agricultural aid to poor countries.
13 November 2009 / REUTERS, ROME
A UN world food summit next week is likely to make little headway in the fight against hunger, with leaders simply pledging to boost agricultural aid to poor countries but setting no targets or deadlines for action.
With more than one billion people going hungry, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had called the Nov. 16-18 summit in Rome hoping to win firm pledges by world leaders to spend $44 billion a year to help poor nations feed themselves. But a final draft declaration seen by Reuters includes only a general commitment to pump more money into agricultural development, and makes no mention of a proposal to eliminate hunger by 2025.

”We commit to take action towards sustainably eradicating hunger at the earliest possible date,” said the draft of the declaration, to be adopted on the first day of the Rome summit barring last-minute amendments. Aid groups said the summit, which few if any G8 leaders are expected to attend, already looked like a missed opportunity.

“The declaration is just a rehash of old platitudes,” said Francisco Sarmento, ActionAid’s food rights coordinator. Food shortages and malnutrition rose to the top of the political agenda since a spike in food prices last year sparked riots in around 60 countries and hoarding. The food scare also prompted some richer food importers like Saudi Arabia to snap up farmland in developing agricultural countries.

A G8 summit in July pledged $20 billion over three years to help farmers in poor nations, in a major policy shift away from emergency food rations and towards longer term strategies. FAO had hoped to keep the momentum going and that leaders would commit to raising the percentage of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent -- back to the 1980 level -- from 5 percent now. That would amount to roughly $44 billion annually, instead of the $7.9 billion that is being spent now.

Threat to peace

Since last year’s record levels, the prices of staple commodities like rice, corn and wheat have fallen. But in developing countries they are still high and according to several experts new spikes are all but inevitable.  FAO says the number of hungry people this year rose to 1.02 billion people, more than at any other time in history and up 100 million from last year.

A child dies of malnutrition every six seconds despite the fact that the world produces more than enough food for everybody -- cereals crops in 2009 are expected to be the second largest ever, after a record 2008.

 
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