UNITED NATIONS: After two major UN food summits, one in 1996 and the other in 2002, the international community pledged to alleviate hunger and reduce malnutrition.

And a world conference on food back in 1974 went one better: it even promised to eradicate hunger “within a decade”.

But most of the promises at the three UN talk-fests never came to pass despite the fact that the two summit commitments were made by world leaders.

With food riots in over 30 countries, and rice and corn shortages in more than 60 countries, a third global summit of over 150 world leaders pledged on Thursday “urgent and coordinated action” to resolve the ongoing crisis.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon dramatised the food shortages when he told the Rome summit: “In Liberia recently, I met people who normally would buy rice by the bag. Today, they buy it by the cup.”

The resounding cry at the summit was the need to harness the political will of the international community, and specifically the rich nations of the world, to respond to the crisis fast.

“If we do not act quickly, the bottom billion (of the world’s poorest) will become the bottom two billion, virtually overnight as their purchasing power is cut in half due to a doubling in food and fuel prices,” warned Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), the lead UN agency doling out food aid to the hungry and the starving.

The WFP says it will be providing about $5 billion worth of food aid to nearly 90 million people in 78 countries this year. The list includes some of the countries worst-affected: Haiti, Afghanistan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

The three-day summit, hosted by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), was predictable in its outcome: a pious declaration to fight hunger and malnutrition worldwide. But how much of the declaration will eventually be implemented?

Along with the declaration came staggering numbers. As the secretary-general told the summit, there is a need for “substantial new resources” perhaps as much as 15 to $20 billion a year to deal with the impact of the global crisis, including about 8.0 to $10 billion annually to realise the requirements of a “Green Revolution” in Africa.

Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the San Francisco-based Oakland Institute, which has done exhaustive studies on issues relating to food trade and agriculture, said the commitments made at the summit, at first glance, are impressive.

She said calls for immediate action to assist countries affected by the food crisis and policy recommendations, including support for small-scale producers, strengthening social safety nets, development of buffer food stocks and other risk management mechanisms, will be vital for ensuring food security.

At the same time, medium- and long-term recommendations, urging governments to embrace a people-centred policy framework for agriculture, are also geared towards ensuring food security, she added.

Mittal said the current food price crisis and growing hunger demands a new agricultural and food system that is about feeding communities instead of commodities to be traded in international markets.

This will require that Third World countries have the necessary policy space to adopt measures that will ensure food sovereignty.

She said it will also require space for the FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to operate with budgets that can ensure the fulfillment of their mandate.

“It will require the ability of Third World countries to break away from ill advised policies of the international financial institutions,” Mittal said.

“And it is about creating an agricultural system that is based around small farmers, farm workers, fisherfolks and indigenous communities who are the best stewards of the land and the ones to ensure food sovereignty and self-sufficiency of nations,” she argued.

Ban said the international system is already contributing to immediate needs.

The FAO has called for $1.7 billion in new funding to provide low-income countries with seeds and other agricultural support.

The WFP has raised the additional $755 million it needs, mostly from Saudi Arabia, to meet existing commitments this year.

IFAD is giving an additional $200 million to poor farmers in the most affected countries.

And the World Bank has established a new $1.2 billion rapid financing facility to address immediate needs and boost food production, including $200 million in grants targeted at the world’s poorest nations.

The United Nations itself has set aside a reserve of $100 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to help fund new humanitarian needs arising from soaring food prices.

Meanwhile, the summit declaration also says that members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) reaffirmed their commitment to the “rapid and successful conclusion” of the WTO Doha Development Agenda, including strengthening the trading capacity of developing nations.

Asked about impact of the Doha Agenda, Mittal said some of the gains in the summit declaration are being “erased” by the call for a quick conclusion of the Doha negotiations of the WTO to solve the current crisis.

She said the Doha Round, as is currently envisioned, will intensify the crisis by making food prices more volatile, increasing developing countries’ dependence on imports, and strengthening the power of multinational agribusiness in food and agricultural markets.

“Developing countries are likely to lose further policy space in their agriculture sector, which would in turn limit their ability to deal with the current crisis and to strengthen the livelihoods of small producers,” she added.

The inability to manage the current food crisis is an illustration of the failure of three decades of market deregulation in agriculture.

“We are therefore calling for real solutions that will stabilise food production and distribution to meet the global demand for healthy, adequate, and affordable food,” Mittal added.

Meanwhile, 237 major non-governmental organisations (NGOs), trade unions and social movements from about 50 countries have warned WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy that the answer to skyrocketing food prices “does not lie in deeper de-regulation of food production and trade”.

The letter says that Doha negotiations do not tackle the major challenges facing the global food system, which include climate change, natural resource depletion, the quadrupling of oil prices, the lack of competition in world commodity markets, financial speculation and the rapid expansion of unsustainable agrofuels production.—Dawn/ The IPS News Service