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AGRICULTURE:
Three-Quarters of Hungry
Are Rural Poor
By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO (IPS) - Climate change, associated with a
four-fold increase in natural disasters in the last
decade, and the growth of world population, which is
expected to reach nine billion by 2050, pose new
challenges for aid initiatives like those of the United
Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
This warning comes from Gemmo Lodesani, head of the WFP
office in Brussels, who is in charge of relations with
the European Union and of fund-raising to fulfil the
organisation's primary commitment: fighting hunger
worldwide.
Interviewed by IPS while on an unofficial visit to
Brazil, Lodesani said three-quarters of the more than
one billion hungry people in the world are poor farmers.
This vulnerable rural population will bear the brunt of
the consequences of global warming through catastrophes
like drought and flooding, he said.
"We are already seeing the impact of climate change on
food production patterns. We know there are poor areas
of the world that will become poorer through lack of
rainfall. Desertification is already happening,"
Lodesani warned.
"We have to address this now, through specific
measures," said the expert, who previously coordinated
emergency food aid plans in countries like Sudan and
Ivory Coast.
The WFP report titled Climate Change and Hunger:
Responding to the Challenge says that "By 2050, the
number of people at risk of hunger as a result of
climate change is expected to increase by 10 to 20
percent more than would be expected without climate
change."
Lodesani emphasised the need for specific programmes to
encourage sustainable development, through "the use of
land resources to produce food" without further harming
the environment.
With respect to biofuels, produced by Brazil and other
countries, the WFP official's view is that they reduce
environmental pollution, but that further research on
their disadvantages is needed.
Biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are derived from
crops like sugarcane and vegetable oils and therefore
take up agricultural land. Lodesani stressed that
growing plants for biofuels must not displace food
crops, "especially since world population will be over
nine billion in 40 years' time."
Population growth is another challenge to be faced "when
over one billion people already lack access to enough
food to meet the nutritional recommendations of
international bodies like the World Health Organisation,"
Lodesani said.
When global population reaches over nine billion in 2050
it will be even more difficult to meet nutritional
needs, creating a new vicious circle of poverty to be
solved, he said.
"Three-quarters of the more than one billion people who
are hungry today are poor farmers. This means they don't
have enough food to live a normal life, and above all a
productive life, while they are the very people who are
relied on to produce food," he said.
In recent years the WFP has made it a top priority to
buy food from developing countries for its aid
programmes.
Lodesani said that in the last three years, WFP food
purchases from developing countries amounted to 80
percent of the total outlay of close to 2.9 billion
dollars. In 2008 alone, 427 million dollars were spent
in African countries, out of a total of 1.4 billion
dollars.
"WFP's policy is to buy food as close to where it is
needed as possible. We used to buy it through the
regular markets, which is a good thing, but they don't
always benefit poor small-scale producers," he said,
referring to a new WFP programme called Purchase for
Progress.
This programme aims to give poor farmers access to a
market for their surplus produce, providing them with
more income while guaranteeing the subsistence needs of
their families.
Purchase for Progress, which is being implemented in
countries like Haiti and Mozambique with the help of the
European Union, seeks to open farmers' access to markets
by improving the quality and presentation of their
products.
Initially the WFP guarantees to purchase the food
produced, at competitive prices.
Lodesani mentioned other challenges that "need to be
closely watched," such as the cost of food, which is
still expensive according to the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) food commodity price
index.
People in developing countries are affected by high food
prices, which create a situation where "food is
available, but significant segments of the population do
not have access to it," he said.
The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009, a report
by FAO and the WFP, says that of the 1.02 billion hungry
people in the world today, 642 million are in the
Asia-Pacific region, 265 million in sub-Saharan Africa,
53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, 42
million in the Middle East and North Africa, and 15
million in industrialised countries.
The first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
agreed by U.N. member states in 2000 is to halve the
proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015,
compared to 1990 indicators.
To meet the immediate target of reducing the number of
undernourished people in the world by between 90 and 100
million in 2010, Lodesani says the WFP needs nearly 4.5
billion dollars.
Help is needed not only from rich countries but also
from developing nations, both in operational and
financial terms.
"In Latin America we will continue to work increasingly
with the resources of the countries themselves, because
it is a developing region that can contribute to this
type of programme out of its own resources," he said.
"The trend is increasingly for countries to finance
programmes with the help of WFP, based on their own
resources," he said, adding that Brazil has already
contributed 80 million dollars to WFP projects.
According to Lodesani, the WFP may also participate in
new technical aid programmes in Brazil, for example
projects to "map and detect the most vulnerable
populations," which could identify target beneficiaries
of the government assistance programme known as Bolsa
Familia (Family Grant).
"We know Brazil is interested in this type of joint
venture," Lodesani added.
He said Bolsa Familia was "a very important social
protection programme in terms of food security."
Bolsa Familia, one of the most popular programmes
undertaken by the government of leftwing President Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva, provides a small monthly cash
grant to 11 million poor families on condition that
their children attend school and are vaccinated. Most of
the stipend money is spent on food.
Analysts say the programme drives the growth of local
economies. |
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