LATIN AMERICA: Food Crisis Must Be Regional Priority
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Sep 21 (IPS) - There are 52 million hungry people in Latin America and the Caribbean, six million more than in 2008 - an aspect of the global economic crisis that must be a top priority focus of national policies and development aid, according to a meeting of experts from 27 countries held in the Venezuelan capital.
The region "presents a contradiction, because it has resources, land, water, energy and other elements necessary to sustain production that would be sufficient to cover needs, but by contrast it has areas suffering chronic food shortages," Mexican economist José Rivera, secretary general of the Latin American Economic System (SELA), told IPS during a break in a Sept. 17-18 meeting on the food crisis in the region held by the regional body.
What has been described as a financial debacle since 2008 "is actually a structural crisis affecting finance, employment, food supplies, the environment, energy shortages and climate change. But it is the food aspect that requires priority treatment, because it directly affects people's lives," Rivera said during the two-day gathering, which involved experts from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
One out of 10 people in Latin America and the Caribbean go to bed hungry every night, while at a global level, one billion people do so – 100 million more than in 2008, according to the FAO.
The U.N. agency doubts that the goal of cutting the number of hungry people in the world to 420 million by 2015 - the goal set at the World Food Summit in 1996, when some 800 million people were hungry – will be met..
The issues of food security and hunger eradication must be dealt with "as national priorities, by incorporating them as central elements of state policies and of the cooperation and integration agendas with a regional scope," said the representatives of SELA's 27 member states taking part in the Meeting for Consultation and Coordination on Food Prices and Food Security in Latin America and the Caribbean.
"It is fundamental to commit all national bodies, including the private sector, government agencies, subregional integration schemes and specialised international organisations to the strategies to guarantee food and nutritional security," added the document containing the meeting's conclusions and recommendations.
"The challenge posed to developing countries by the goals of sustainable food and nutritional security entails increasing supply, raising productivity, incorporating vulnerable communities and favouring the appropriate operation of local agricultural markets, while giving priority to cooperatives and small and medium-sized agricultural producers," says the document.
"There are experiences that are worthy of greater attention, like the efforts of Bolivia and Ecuador to salvage native knowledge and plant varieties that are known by rural indigenous communities and are of high nutritional value and have not been commercialised," Diego Montenegro, a Bolivian representative of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), told IPS during the meeting in Caracas.
The meeting discussed the impact on food supplies and on agricultural sustainability of the global rise in food prices, which according to Montenegro increased by an average of 40 percent in the 2006-2008 period.
The conclusions of the meeting point out that "the recent expansion of the (region's) agricultural and livestock production and exports has been concentrated in a limited set of primary commodities with little added value. This has resulted in a high vulnerability to the fluctuations in the international prices of both exportable products (such as coffee and soybean) and import products (such as rice, corn, sugar, etc.) and in significant falls in the international exchange terms."
The price of cooking oils, for example, rose 153 percent on average from 2006 to 2008, while the price of cereals when went up 126 percent and dairy products 88 percent.
One commodity that particularly stood out was rice, the price of which climbed 140 percent in just five months in 2008 – from 376 dollars a ton in January to 900 dollars a ton in May – compared to beef, which went up just 28 percent between 2006 and September 2008, when the price peaked.
"Speculation has been one of the factors that has hit the food market hardest," said Rivera, who called for support for initiatives to limit financial speculation in international commodity markets.
The SELA meeting called for the exchange of information and the transfer of appropriate technology in the region, training in agriculture and livestock breeding, the generation of applied knowledge, and the use of new technologies in the agricultural sector, to benefit small and medium-sized producers in particular.
The participants also recommended the establishment of a special food security fund, to assist countries with agricultural production projects and food emergency programmes, and the creation of networks of regional research institutions and laboratories for seed improvement, genetic upgrading and the development of resistant varieties.
The delegates especially highlighted an initiative adopted in February 2009 by the member countries of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of the Americas), an alternative bloc made up of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.
In April, the ALBA food programme earmarked nine million dollars for an agricultural project in Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere, and a total of 13 million dollars for 10 projects in eight other countries in the Caribbean region.
SELA reported that the initiative focuses on needy sectors of the population like indigenous communities, peasant farmers and Afro-descendants.
The regional body also underscored an innovative scheme by Petrocaribe – under which Venezuela sells some 15 countries in the region fuel on preferential terms – involving the creation of a 50 million dollar development fund. As long as the price of oil is above 100 dollars a barrel, Petrocaribe will earmark 50 cents of a dollar for food security projects in the region for every barrel it sells.
Delegates at the meeting also warned of the need to keep the production of biofuels from triggering a conflict between the environment, agriculture and trade.
Montenegro said that "fortunately, many countries interested in agro-bio-energy have identified crops that have high energy value and do not compete with food production, while biofuel consumer countries like the United States have recognised that competing with food production is not right in a situation like today's."
Rivera, meanwhile, warned that the full impact of the global crisis in the region has not yet been felt, and that food insecurity could become even worse in the next few months – in spite of the fact that this region, home to less than 10 percent of the global population, has 15 percent of the planet's farmland and 33 percent of the world's water sources, grows 30 percent of all oilseed crops and produces 21 percent of the world's chicken and 26 percent of beef.
Indeed, as the SELA document points out, "Due to its agricultural potential and as a food producer, the region could contribute to significantly solving the lack of food at the global level." (END/2009)
Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48533
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Sep 21 (IPS) - There are 52 million hungry people in Latin America and the Caribbean, six million more than in 2008 - an aspect of the global economic crisis that must be a top priority focus of national policies and development aid, according to a meeting of experts from 27 countries held in the Venezuelan capital.
The region "presents a contradiction, because it has resources, land, water, energy and other elements necessary to sustain production that would be sufficient to cover needs, but by contrast it has areas suffering chronic food shortages," Mexican economist José Rivera, secretary general of the Latin American Economic System (SELA), told IPS during a break in a Sept. 17-18 meeting on the food crisis in the region held by the regional body.
What has been described as a financial debacle since 2008 "is actually a structural crisis affecting finance, employment, food supplies, the environment, energy shortages and climate change. But it is the food aspect that requires priority treatment, because it directly affects people's lives," Rivera said during the two-day gathering, which involved experts from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
One out of 10 people in Latin America and the Caribbean go to bed hungry every night, while at a global level, one billion people do so – 100 million more than in 2008, according to the FAO.
The U.N. agency doubts that the goal of cutting the number of hungry people in the world to 420 million by 2015 - the goal set at the World Food Summit in 1996, when some 800 million people were hungry – will be met..
The issues of food security and hunger eradication must be dealt with "as national priorities, by incorporating them as central elements of state policies and of the cooperation and integration agendas with a regional scope," said the representatives of SELA's 27 member states taking part in the Meeting for Consultation and Coordination on Food Prices and Food Security in Latin America and the Caribbean.
"It is fundamental to commit all national bodies, including the private sector, government agencies, subregional integration schemes and specialised international organisations to the strategies to guarantee food and nutritional security," added the document containing the meeting's conclusions and recommendations.
"The challenge posed to developing countries by the goals of sustainable food and nutritional security entails increasing supply, raising productivity, incorporating vulnerable communities and favouring the appropriate operation of local agricultural markets, while giving priority to cooperatives and small and medium-sized agricultural producers," says the document.
"There are experiences that are worthy of greater attention, like the efforts of Bolivia and Ecuador to salvage native knowledge and plant varieties that are known by rural indigenous communities and are of high nutritional value and have not been commercialised," Diego Montenegro, a Bolivian representative of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), told IPS during the meeting in Caracas.
The meeting discussed the impact on food supplies and on agricultural sustainability of the global rise in food prices, which according to Montenegro increased by an average of 40 percent in the 2006-2008 period.
The conclusions of the meeting point out that "the recent expansion of the (region's) agricultural and livestock production and exports has been concentrated in a limited set of primary commodities with little added value. This has resulted in a high vulnerability to the fluctuations in the international prices of both exportable products (such as coffee and soybean) and import products (such as rice, corn, sugar, etc.) and in significant falls in the international exchange terms."
The price of cooking oils, for example, rose 153 percent on average from 2006 to 2008, while the price of cereals when went up 126 percent and dairy products 88 percent.
One commodity that particularly stood out was rice, the price of which climbed 140 percent in just five months in 2008 – from 376 dollars a ton in January to 900 dollars a ton in May – compared to beef, which went up just 28 percent between 2006 and September 2008, when the price peaked.
"Speculation has been one of the factors that has hit the food market hardest," said Rivera, who called for support for initiatives to limit financial speculation in international commodity markets.
The SELA meeting called for the exchange of information and the transfer of appropriate technology in the region, training in agriculture and livestock breeding, the generation of applied knowledge, and the use of new technologies in the agricultural sector, to benefit small and medium-sized producers in particular.
The participants also recommended the establishment of a special food security fund, to assist countries with agricultural production projects and food emergency programmes, and the creation of networks of regional research institutions and laboratories for seed improvement, genetic upgrading and the development of resistant varieties.
The delegates especially highlighted an initiative adopted in February 2009 by the member countries of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of the Americas), an alternative bloc made up of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.
In April, the ALBA food programme earmarked nine million dollars for an agricultural project in Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere, and a total of 13 million dollars for 10 projects in eight other countries in the Caribbean region.
SELA reported that the initiative focuses on needy sectors of the population like indigenous communities, peasant farmers and Afro-descendants.
The regional body also underscored an innovative scheme by Petrocaribe – under which Venezuela sells some 15 countries in the region fuel on preferential terms – involving the creation of a 50 million dollar development fund. As long as the price of oil is above 100 dollars a barrel, Petrocaribe will earmark 50 cents of a dollar for food security projects in the region for every barrel it sells.
Delegates at the meeting also warned of the need to keep the production of biofuels from triggering a conflict between the environment, agriculture and trade.
Montenegro said that "fortunately, many countries interested in agro-bio-energy have identified crops that have high energy value and do not compete with food production, while biofuel consumer countries like the United States have recognised that competing with food production is not right in a situation like today's."
Rivera, meanwhile, warned that the full impact of the global crisis in the region has not yet been felt, and that food insecurity could become even worse in the next few months – in spite of the fact that this region, home to less than 10 percent of the global population, has 15 percent of the planet's farmland and 33 percent of the world's water sources, grows 30 percent of all oilseed crops and produces 21 percent of the world's chicken and 26 percent of beef.
Indeed, as the SELA document points out, "Due to its agricultural potential and as a food producer, the region could contribute to significantly solving the lack of food at the global level." (END/2009)
Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48533
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