The primaries are over! Now is the time to solve the real problems as world leaders gather in Rome for the second day of talks on food price escalation and, with luck, to settle on a common strategy to deal with the crisis, the FAO has put a price on eradicating hunger: $30bn. Yep! That's for one year.
In his opening presentation, FAO director general Jacques Diouf pointed out that, in 2006, the total amount spent by nations on arms was $1200 bn. Here are some horrifying figures: just one country could waste as much as $100bn, and excess consumption contributing to global obesity amounted to $20bn.
Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, said the solution to the current world food crisis had to include financial support for African farmers.
Attending the conference in his new role as the chair of Agra, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, he said the African farmer was the only farmer in the world that still took all the risks, often operating without financial support, expertise or safety nets.
Earlier, World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick said the Rome summit should commit to helping the twenty most vulnerable countries in the coming weeks before soaring food prices push millions more into poverty or malnutrition. Outlining three priority actions for the Rome meeting on the food crisis, Mr. Zoellick said the agencies and governments at the meeting should also commit to getting seeds and fertilizer out to smallholder farmers in the coming planting months and agree on an international call to scrap food export bans and restrictions. Ideally, someone ought to tell Monsanto: no terminator seeds please!
"Globally, we have estimated that this crisis could push 100 million people into poverty – 30 million in Africa alone. This is not a natural catastrophe. It is man-made and can be fixed by us. It does not take complex research. We know what has to be done. We just need action and resources in real-time,"
outlined Robert Zoellick. To support this agenda, the World Bank last week created a new Global Food Crisis Response Facility to fast-track $1.2 billion to address immediate needs arising from the food crisis, including $200 million of grants for especially vulnerable countries. Grant operations have been approved for Haiti, Djibouti and Liberia; operations are being processed for Togo, Tajikistan and Yemen. The Bank announced that overall, the World Bank Group will expand assistance for agriculture and food-related activities from $4 billion to $6 billion over the coming year.
Solving the structural problem at the heart of food security is a matter of increasing production and productivity in low-income, food-deficit problems. This requires "innovative and imaginative solutions", such as partnerships between countries that have money, management capabilities and technologies at their disposal, and those that have land, water and human resources. However richer nations have already been shown unwilling to put their money where their mouths are. Let's see what tomorrow brings.
This Food Conference comprises two segments running simultaneously throughout the three days: the High-Level Segment and the Committee of the Whole.
The High-Level Segment hears statements from the heads of governments and delegations, while the Committee of the Whole will focus on:
* High food prices: causes, consequences and possible solutions
* Climate change and food security
* Transboundary pests and diseases
* Bioenergy and food security
Other news from Rome is of course the unexpected arrival of President Mugabe and his shopacholic wife, Grace, which prompted a flood of international protests yesterday after he joined more than 60 world leaders flying in for the three-day conference. The grotesque irony of the situation was lost on no one.
"Robert Mugabe going to Rome for the food summit is like Pol Pot going to a human rights convention,"
said Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office minister for Africa, referring to the mastermind of the Cambodian genocide. I couldn’t have worded this better. The British representative to the meeting, Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary, said Mr Mugabe’s appearance was "obscene".
"Regrettably, this elicited wrath from our former colonial master,"
Mr Mugabe said.
"In retaliation for the measures we took to empower the black majority, the United Kingdom has mobilised its friends in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to impose illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe."
In fact, there are no trade or investment restrictions on Zimbabwe. The only "sanctions" in place are travel bans supposedly preventing Mr Mugabe and 124 of his allies from visiting any member of the European Union.
Another clown, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has also used the Conference in Rome to attack Israel, hinting that "Zionists" were behind rising food prices across the world. Meh!