United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon believes there is more than enough food produced each year to feed the world’s population, yet, still a billion people go hungry. Ban sees this problem as a result of the current food system, a food system that constantly creates food crisis despite there being enough food for everyone to eat.As Ban stated at an event on food security hosted by him and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the UN General Assembly, "Ever more people are denied food because prices are stubbornly high, because the purchasing power has fallen due to the economic crisis or because rains have failed and reserve stocks of grain have been eaten," he added.
As the Economic Times reports, this event followed the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy. There nations pledged to provide $20 billion in “coordinated support to country-led food security strategies.” Still Ban thinks the UN must continue to push for changes in agriculture production in the hungriest nations, and to that end Ban “noted that a UN high-level task force was working on an initiate to usher in a ‘new era in agriculture development.’”
In Italy the nations also developed five principals critical to battling the food crisis. These include investing in country-led plans, investing in research for larger, and more efficient crop yields, improve coordination, “leverage benefits of multilateral institutions to support and help fulfill the country plan and finally pledge a long-term commitment based on accountability.”
These principals make for good sound bites, but will they make a difference on the world food crisis? Ban and the UN certainly hope so.
To read the Economic Times report click here.
Posted: 09/29/09
