RETHINKING GOVERNANCE
Back on the table The challenges for food security
© Sanka Vidanagama/AFP
Benoît Miribel Chairman of Action contre la Faim
What can we do in the years to come to ensure food security? In the opinion of Action contre la Faim, a number of avenues could help promote secure access to food for everyone. We have been told that the Earth now has a population of 7 billion—which is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050. This growth in the world’s population brings home how absolutely necessary it is to adjust demand to the changing food requirements of populations. This is a major challenge. Many factors make it a particularly complex one: climate
Could we contemplate seeing starving people living next to fields growing crops for foreign countries? change, which aggravates food insecurity; the volatility of food prices; land grabbing; “competition” from biofuels; lack of investment in subsistence farming; and, lastly, social factors such as conflicts, poverty, education and the status of women. Faced with the immense task of ensuring food security, where do we start? First we need to establish priorities. It was with this aim in mind that in 2011 Action contre la Faim urged the G20 to adopt a number of essential measures on which the main specialist international non-governmental organisations all agree. What are these measures? Agricultural output obviously needs to be developed, but in an appropriate manner in order to give priority to strengthening and supporting local and family-based agriculture. In poor countries, small farmers play an essential role in ensuring
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food security but are also the first victims of the adverse impact of the increased volatility of food prices. Today, alas, we can see that the Earth does not feed those who work the land. Small farmers account for 80% of the undernourished. Several factors hold back the development and profitability of family-run farms, such as the disadvantaged position of women farmers and a lack of capital or access to land. While women account for 43% of the agricultural workforce in developing countries, they have only limited access to assets and opportunities. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), eradicating the inequalities between men and women would make it possible to reduce the number of people suffering from hunger by 100-150 million. Increased land grabbing in Africa allows countries that lack agricultural land to acquire their own capacities abroad, but often to the detriment of the local agricultural fabric. Growth in agricultural productivity in Africa may continue apace, but who will it benefit? Could we contemplate seeing starving people living next to fields growing crops for foreign countries? There is a real risk that this could happen unless we introduce a genuine world governance of the needs and capacity of agricultural production, from the local to the international level. Priority must therefore be given to promoting the development of family-run farms. However, such farms must nonetheless allow families to eat a balanced diet. In a word, nutritional impact must be placed at the centre of agricultural policies and we need to develop output in terms of not only quantity, but also quality and diversity. This can be done through technical and financial support for small farmers to allow them to diversify their crops. All this must be done in an environmentally friendly way. A growing number of small farmers cannot afford to purchase expensive inputs, which in addition are not particularly environmentally friendly. A potential therefore exists for developing small programmes aimed at ensuring the self-sufficiency of local farmers. Another measure required is the fight against price volatility, which has a particularly adverse impact on the poorest members of the population who have to spend most of their income on feeding themselves. In 2009, the FAO estimated that the increase in food prices in 2007-08 left a billion people undernourished. It is therefore necessary