One of the great global debates of the 21st century is
whether or not food security is possible. Can the world
produce enough food to feed our growing population? And
is production really the problem, or is hunger the
result of poor distribution of agricultural resources
and food?
A major global conference was held last month to try to
address some of these very questions. The United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) held the
World Food Summit in Rome November 11-17. The World
Food Summit had both an official summit, attended by
government officials, and a forum of Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs) representing farmers, consumers and
public interest groups from around the world.
There are many proposed solutions to hunger. Some
assert that the only way to avert a looming food crisis
is to limit the population, following China's policy of
limiting family size. Others acclaim the "New Green
Revolution," highly dependent on biotechnology, to
increase production. Efficiency, still others claim,
through industrial agriculture and liberalized trade, is
another way to ensure that production levels meet world
demands. NGOs attending the Summit stressed that
industrialized farming, the de-regulation of trade and
the rise of biotechnology are among the very causes of
food insecurity and hunger. These groups sustainable
agriculture, strengthening local food production and a
more equitable distribution of resources as solutions to
feeding the world without depleting precious resources.
This issue of Farm Aid News & Views will discuss the
issues surrounding global hunger and some of the
outcomes of the World Food Summit.
WORLD HUNGER REMAINS WIDESPREAD
Approximately 800 million people are chronically
undernourished, amounting to about 20 percent of the
world's population. Hunger is a problem that affects
industrialized countries as well as developing
countries. In "Food Security and Nutrition," a report
issued prior to the World Food Summit, the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) called on governments to
assist in fighting poverty, citing the growing gap
between rich and poor in developed countries. "In the
course of the 1980s and the 1990s, as the distribution
of income in the industrialized countries of North
America and Europe has become more uneven and as social
welfare spending has been cut back in the face of rising
unemployment, the need for food assistance among low-
income groups has grown," the FAO report said, "Policy
makers must recognize that poverty is a major cause of
food insecurity and poor health ... and that
malnutrition leads to losses in productivity and the
misallocation of scarce resources."
FOOD-DEFICIT COUNTRIES: THE CASE OF MEXICO
Low-income food-deficit countries are those which import
a significant percentage of their staple foods for their
population. These countries face the greatest food
security challenges. Mexico is one of those countries.
Proponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), passed in 1993, argued that Mexico could import
the basic grains it needed to feed its people more
cheaply than it could produce them locally. World
prices for basic grains subsequently jumped
dramatically. This price increase, coupled with the
devaluation of the Mexican peso, has made it very
difficult for Mexico to import the grains it needs.
This shift away from self-sufficiency in food production
undermined Mexican family farmers and resulted in Mexico
producing 2.5 million tons less corn in 1995 than in
1994, forcing it to import the balance, at a higher
price, from the United States. As Mexican corn
production decreases, its demand for imports increases;
if the U.S. cannot fulfill Mexico's demand, widespread
hunger results. This desperation was demonstrated
earlier this year when trains carrying basic grains were
stopped and robbed by starving Mexican peasants.
According to Mexico's National Nutrition Institute, in
1995, 16 percent of Mexican children and 80 percent of
all Chiapans are malnourished, and eighty children under
the age of one die each day of malnutrition. Many
critics of NAFTA assert that these figures will only
increase as long as free trade agricultural policies
continue to exist.
THE RIGHT TO FOOD
There are a number of international human rights
agreements which support the universal right to be free
from hunger. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948
states that "everyone has a right to a standard of
living adequate for the health and well-being of himself
and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and
medical care and necessary social services ..." To
legally implement the Universal Declaration, countries
signed an international treaty called the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(CESCR), to which more than 130 countries are bound.
However, countries have different interpretations of the
implications of signing international agreements. Some
countries regard international agreements as national
law, while others don't consider the agreements to be
legally binding in any way. As a result, the
"fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger,"
as mandated by the CESCR, has historically been, and
continues to be, ignored by many governments.
FIAN International, the FoodFirst Information & Action
Network based in Germany, has been working to promote
the right to food, especially land rights and the rights
of rural workers. FIAN put forth five main demands for
the World Food Summit and beyond, which include a
commitment to the right to food and its implementation,
a code of conduct on the right to adequate food,
priority for integrated agrarian reform, a documentation
system for violations of the human right to food, and an
international framework convention on global food
security.
FOOD SUMMIT PLAN OF ACTION LACKS COMMITMENT TO RESOURCES
World officials entered the World Food Summit with the
immediate goal of reducing the number of undernourished
people in the world, estimated at 840 million, to half
the present level by 2015. However, the Rome
Declaration on World Food Security and the Summit Plan
of Action, approved prior to the Summit by government
negotiators, lacked a commitment to provide funds to
carry out this objective. "The Summit Plan of Action
has all the right nouns, but none of the right verbs,"
says Pat Mooney of the Rural Advancement Foundation
International (RAFI).
"They are a blueprint for food security on the cheap,"
adds Marc Cohen of Washington, DC-based Bread for the
World. "The documents recognize that many low income,
net food importing countries will require assistance,
but do not pledge specific resources. All references to
domestic production and protecting farming communities
that appeared in earlier drafts have now vanished, and
the texts do not address the contradiction between trade
liberalization and their call for strengthened
sustainable agricultural development in developing
countries."
"Especially weak is the commitment to progressive
realization of the right to food," continued Cohen. The
United States government along with a few Western allies
strongly opposed wording that could be interpreted as
endorsing a new human right. This was an effort to
avoid legal challenges to national food policies. Thus,
while the Right to Food is a universal human right, the
means to make this right a reality were blocked by the
U.S.
Shortly after the close of the Summit, the Bread for the
World Board of Directors passed a resolution concerning
the U.S. government's position on the right to food:
"[Statements released by the U.S. government] suggest
that the current administration is retreating from our
historical commitment to a Universal Right to Food...
[T]he Board of Directors of Bread for the World
expresses its deepest concern and moral outrage at these
apparent changes in United States policy, and urges the
administration to reaffirm U.S. commitment to a
Universal Right to Food, and to take steps necessary to
guarantee these rights at and throughout the world."
FAMILY FARMERS AT THE SUMMIT
Many people felt that the voices of family farmers were
under represented at the World Food Summit. Two
international coalitions of family farmers held events
during the Summit to emphasize the importance of farmer
participation in the food security debate. The National
Farmers Union of the United States, along with family
farm and cooperative organizations from Europe and Asia
held the first-ever Family Farmers Summit and signed a
declaration that points to the need for family farmers'
involvement in shaping food security policies.
Via Campesina, a growing movement of farm workers,
peasant, farm and Indigenous Peoples' organizations from
all over the world, was also active at the World Food
Summit. According to a statement released at the
Summit, "[We] know that food security cannot be achieved
without taking full account of those who produce food.
Any discussion that ignores our contribution will fail
to eradicate poverty and hunger... We have the right to
produce our own food in our own territory. Food
sovereignty is a precondition to genuine food security."
Larry Swartz of the Via Campesina member National Family
Farm Coalition, says "The most under represented group
at the World Food Summit, next to consumers, was
farmers. The perspectives of the farmers who were
present can be understood in terms of polar opposite
approaches to the problem of food security. Those are
that the technologically superior farmers of the North
will produce ever-increasing amounts of food, which will
be made available to the rest of the world through
further liberalization of trade policies; or that the
only real path to food security is food self-
sufficiency, or food sovereignty. The fact that the
moral and economic bankruptcy of the first position has
not been widely revealed gives witness to the power and
influence of the corporate pirates who promote and
profit from it."
WOMEN WERE MINORITIES IN ROME
Ask many of the participants of the World Food Summit
about under-represented groups and the answer will
include not only farmers, but also consumers and women.
While women make up a significant part of the world's
food producers, they were a minority of Summit
participants. The NGO Forum highlighted the importance
of women's involvement in food and hunger issues. The
entire day of November 15, 1996 was dedicated as Women's
Day at the NGO Forum. Speakers addressed topics ranging
from empowering women and ensuring greater control of
local food production, to the ill effects of
industrialization of food production, biopiracy, over
consumption, and globalized free trade.
The week before the NGO Forum began, Via Campesina and
other groups hosted a Rural Women's Workshop which
brought together thirty-five women food producers
representing every region of the Earth to discuss, share
and celebrate the importance of women in assuring food
security.
Denise O'Brien, an Iowa farmer and founding member of
the Women, Food and Agriculture Working Group, says,
"For years, women have been ignored as food producers.
The Rural Women's Workshop set aside time and space for
women to share concerns of their families, communities
and nations."
U.S. AG SECRETARY GLICKMAN
ADDRESSES SUMMIT
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman addressed the
World Food Summit on behalf of the United States on
November 13. Secretary Glickman represented the point
of view of many industrialized countries that the main
cause of world hunger is under-production. Glickman
stressed the need for increased food production and
increased trade as key factors for overcoming world
hunger. Secretary Glickman stated that "We will
strengthen our support for food security-related
research and biotechnology. ... Without biotechnology,
we will be forced to exploit highly erodible farm and
forest land. This may meet our short-term needs, but in
the end our legacy to future generations will be a
barren earth."
The importance of boosting food production through
biotechnology and other means became a central piece of
the Summit's Plan of Action.
NGOs PROPOSE ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS
Determined to have their voice heard, Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs) held their own forum parallel to
the World Food Summit. The NGO Forum, comprised of more
than 1,200 environmental, farmer, sustainable
agriculture and health organizations from some 80
countries, issued a statement disagreeing with solutions
to world hunger proposed by the U.S. and other
governments. The statement, entitled "Profit for Few
Or Food for All," supported the basic human right to
food, first and foremost.
Family farmers and NGOs stressed that trade
liberalization, biotechnology and chemically intensive
agriculture are causes of food insecurity, not
solutions. Rather than relying on trade liberalization
and increased production through biotechnology, the NGOs
emphasized the need for more equal distribution of
resources and farmer-led sustainable agriculture
initiatives.
The NGO statement outlines six key elements of an
alternative model to achieve food security: 1. The
capacity of family farmers, including indigenous
peoples, women, and youth, along with local and regional
food systems must be strengthened; 2. The concentration
of wealth and power must be reversed and action taken to
prevent further concentration; 3. Agriculture and food
production systems that rely on non-renewable resources,
which negatively affect the environment, must be changed
toward a model based on agro-ecological principles; 4.
National and local governments and States have the prime
responsibility to ensure food security. Their capacity
to fulfill this role must be strengthened and mechanisms
for ensuring accountability must be enhanced; 5. The
participation of peoples' organizations and NGOs at all
levels must be strengthened and deepened; 6.
International law must guarantee the right to food,
ensuring that food sovereignty takes precedence over
macro-economic policies and trade liberalization.
The Forum also called for a Code of Conduct to protect
and ensure the Human Right to Food along with a Global
Convention on Food Security to support governments in
developing and implementing national food security plans
and to create an international network of local,
national, and regional food reserves.
"We fully support the development of these binding
instruments to ensure more equitable access to food,"
says Rudi Buntzel, delegate to the NGO Forum from the
World Council of Churches. "Why can't the governments
advance these proposals themselves? They seem to expect
the NGOs to do their work for them." According to Karen
Lehman of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Policy, "We need a global framework that makes food
security, not trade, the highest priority."
"The Code of Conduct is a crucial tool for identifying
factors responsible for the failure of implementation of
the Right to Food and focuses on different actors
responsible, such as the national and international
institutions as well as other players like transnational
corporations," says Michael Windfuhr, executive director
of FIAN International.
Representatives from Asia, Africa, North America, Latin
America and Europe plan to refine the texts of the Code
of Conduct and the Food Security Convention in the
coming months. "The Summit is over, but our work is
just beginning," says Jeanot Minla Mfou'ou of APM
Afrique-APM Africa, a network of African farm and
agriculture policy organizations. "Our governments may
wish to forget they have been here, but we will not let
them. We will be back with our proposals and demand the
implementation of the Right to Food."
FARM AID ANNOUNCES 1996 GRANTS
Farm Aid distributed $582,000 in grants in 1996 to help
family farmers stay on their land. These grants funded
a variety of programs, including projects to provide
legal and financial counseling to help farmers avoid
foreclosure, provide support for farmer-led sustainable
agriculture initiatives, support efforts to restrict the
growth of factory farming, and build links between
farmers and consumers. Since 1985, Farm Aid has granted
over $13 million to farm organizations, hotlines, and
service agencies in 44 states. For more information
about Farm Aid grants, call Harry Smith at 617-354-2922.
________________________________________
Farm Aid News is produced by the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy for Farm Aid. Editors
Harry Smith and Kate Hoff. We encourage the
reproduction of Farm Aid News & Views. Comments and
suggestions welcome. Farm Aid (617) 354-2922. Fax:
(617) 354-6992. Email: Farmaid1@aol.com. For more
information on agricultural publications contact IATP,
(612) 870-0453. Fax: (612) 870-4846.
Email:farmaid1@aol.com