Rich Nations Repress Agricultural Development At World Food Summit

Silvio Berlusconi was the only leader from the richest nations on Earth to even bother to turn up at this week's United Nations Food Summit, but it is being held in his capital city, Rome, so one would have already expected his face to dominate the proceedings. But, it seems that the plight of over 1 billion starving people is not important enough to force the rest of the top brass to attend this 3 day conference, which was already being branded as a failure within hours of commencing. All sides are giving their own reasons for the apparent washout, but no matter what way you look at it, the countries with wealth are not inclined to help those who have very little. Our leaders are telling their respective public's that they are helping to eradicate global hunger, when they are actually tightening their grip on Third World countries. When the UN declined to shift a paltry 17% of foreign aid to agricultural development in destitute countries, they proved this to be the case.

November.18.2009 - George Valentine Corr, Blatant News Editor
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WHAT IS THE FOOD SUMMIT?
The official United Nations figures state that there are just over 1 billion people starving around the World right now. This includes 642 million across Asia and the Pacific, 245 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 42 million in North Africa and the Near East, 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, aswell as 15 million in developing countries. These numbers are growing steadily because of the global food shortage, and to make matters worse, since the credit crisis started, poorer countries have had much less help from industrialised nations, at a time when these people need our help more than ever. The timing is indeed critical for those who cannot afford to buy food and who have no fertile land to grow crops, so the United Nations Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) took the decision to hold the World Summit on Food Security this week in Rome. The FAO Director-General, Dr Jacques Diouf, has pushed to get this topic on the table, and even went as far as holding a 24 hour hunger strike over the weekend, in solidarity with all of those people who are dying around the World from a lack of basic food.

WHAT DID THE POORER COUNTRIES WANT?
Many leaders from critically poor countries were asking for help in the form of large chunks of cash, and many were asking for bigger shipments of food aid itself, but one idea which seemed to make much more sense than those two was totally rubbished. Whilst on his mini hunger strike, Diouf - who has been Director-General of the FAO since 1994 - made a very direct statement... "We have the technical means and the resources to eradicate hunger from the world so it is now a matter of political will, and political will is influenced by public opinion". At the talks themselves, Diouf proposed to get all industrialised nations to agree to switch 17% of their foreign aid - which they had already guaranteed - over to agricultural development in needy countries, rather than being spent on direct shipments of food aid. This scheme would have earmarked US$44bn per year to the cause of making these people self-sufficient, whilst raising global food production at the same time, but the UN member countries would not agree to expanding on a similar deal which they made last year, and which provides just US$7.9bn per year.

WHAT ARE OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS DOING?
We can basically take for granted that many of our industrialised governments did not set this Food Summit very high on their agenda's, because for the most part, our elected leaders did not turn up in person. And that they will not agree to earmark a large percentage of their already promised foreign aid, to such a worthwhile and humane scheme, should be of no real surprise to us either, considering they generally don't give the full amount of foreign aid which they publicly pledge at such summits and conventions. And if they do, it will be many years after the date which it would have been expected, and needed. So I expect rejecting this scheme is just their way of not guaranteeing any particular amount, for any specific cause or development, because just pledging bulk amounts to a central 'banker' allows our governments to side-step any of these pressures, but it also consigns many more people to die a painful death. This is why we should push our elected officials to make our foreign aid dollars do more for the people who need them.

SHOULD WE - THE PUBLIC - DO MORE?
We need to push our governments to finance these kinds of ideas. Think about it, if money for an exact scheme did not arrive from a donor country, and there were serious consequences for the already-deprived local population, the public in the donor country will know about it, and will force their government to do as promised (in the public's name and with the public's purse). Sadly, that kind of public pressure is never expected, because we just don't bother to march on our parliaments to help stop so many men, women and children from suffering and dying from such a preventable condition - hunger. This is what needs to change, our mindset, or our governments will just continue to short-change our less well-off brothers and sisters, who seriously need our help right now, and have done so for all of recorded history. As Diouf stated so vividly, we do have the means and resources to eradicate hunger from the planet, we just need the public opinion to push for a real political will to do so. So, it may be up to the global public to really make an attempt at getting rid of poverty, because over many decades, our governments have blatantly failed the billions who have experienced starvation.

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