FAO DIRECTOR-GENERAL SAYS SUSTAINABLE INTENSIFIED FARMING NOT FOOD AID KEY TO FOOD SECURITY
Press Release
FAO/3624
FAO DIRECTOR-GENERAL SAYS SUSTAINABLE INTENSIFIED FARMING NOT FOOD AID KEY TO FOOD SECURITY
19951020 Quebec City, 16 October (FAO) -- At the final session of a Ministerial Meeting on World Food Security, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Jacques Diouf, condemned the continued inequities between rich and poor countries in food production and distribution. The most obvious long-term solution to genuine food security was to increase food production substantially, he said.The Ministerial Meeting was held in Quebec City to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of FAO. It was a preparatory step to the proposed World Food Summit at Rome in November 1996.
In the closing session, the Ministers also endorsed "Quebec Declaration," which will be submitted for final adoption by the FAO governing Conference in Rome later this month. The Declaration noted the progress towards food security made globally over the last 50 years, while recognizing that, despite advances, many people still suffered from chronic undernutrition. It reaffirmed the international community's commitment to the goal of food security for all.
In his statement, Mr. Diouf said, "Good as the overall data may seem, they cannot mask what are often tragic disparities. We are already seeing glaring inequalities within nations. Even the richest, with more than 3,600 calories per person per day, have millions of undernourished children. And there are equally large gaps among nations; while per capita food supplies are more than abundant in the developed countries of the North, they remain insufficient in much of the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where supplies have actually shrunk in the past 25 years."
Referring to traditional food aid programs. Mr. Diouf said, "I am more than aware of the dangers of structural food aid: the disruption of internal markets, the negative impact on local production, the shift in preference away from traditional foods and, above all, the emergence of a welfare mentality among people and governments."
As options, the FAO Director-General said there could be some aid in cash rather than in kind, or triangular arrangements, could be adopted whereby the donor country purchased surplus production from one developing country for transfer to a neighbouring one in deficit. On longer term solutions, Mr.
Diouf said that genuine food security could only come about if the least privileged countries managed to break free from their poverty and dependent status. The most obvious and sure-fire way to do so was to increase food production substantially.
Mr. Diouf called for an expansion of farmland to the extent ecologically viable. Any increase in production would have to focus on intensified farming of the land already under cultivation, taking care to avoid rapid depletion of the soil, he added.
The FAO Director-General said that control and management of water was unequivocally the key to food security in Africa. He observed that the irrigation factor had vast undreamed-of potential, particularly in Africa, where food security problems were the most acute. While conventional wisdom was that the African continent was destined for chronic drought, he said, some of the most arid of the Sahel countries lie over vast, virtually untapped aquifers.
The area now under irrigation could be increased three to fourfold under carefully managed hydro-agricultural systems and the benefits in food production would be "staggering."
Apart from special events in Quebec City, FAO's Fiftieth Anniversary and World Food Day were observed in some 140 countries. World Food Day was established by the FAO Conference in 1979.
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