Establishing policy to ensure global food security

Progress in terms of increasing food security and improving nutritional levels has been uneven. Food insecurity and undernutrition look set to persist in many developing countries and may even be accentuated in the medium-term future. In 1996, the International Food Policy Research Institute forecast a long-term downward trend in the international prices of main foodstuffs, combined with an increase in world food production. Yet, it also predicted that whereas there may be a slow improvement in food security in many developing countries, food insecurity will increase in sub-Saharan Africa. The US Department of Agriculture predicts that, even taking into account the most optimistic scenario, food aid needs in sub-Saharan Africa will double... and the needs of the region by 2005 will exceed the projected global supply of food aid.

The Rome Declaration of World Food Security states: We consider it intolerable than more than 8000 million people throughout the world, and particularly in developing countries, do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. This situation is unacceptable. Food supplies have increased substantially, but constraints on access to food and continuing inadequacy of household and national incomes to purchase food, instability of supply and demand, as well as natural and man-made disasters, prevent basic food needs from being fulfilled. The problems of hunger and food insecurity have global dimensions and are likely to persist, and even increase dramatically in some regions, unless urgent, determined and concerted action is taken, given the anticipated increase in the world's population and the stress on natural resources".

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends: supporting national and regional early warning systems through food-security assistance schemes that monitor food supply and demand and factors affecting household access to food; carrying out national policy reviews related to food security, including adequate levels and stability of food supply and access to food by all households.

The European Council resolution of 1996 is geared toward combating food insecurity by establishing integrated food security policies within a long-term development perspective. It stipulates that in addition to food aid, there should be technical and financial assistance aimed at improving sustainable and long-term food security, in the form of measures including: (1) the supply of seeds, tools and inputs essential to the production of food crops; (2) rural credit support schemes, targeted particularly at women; (3) schemes to supply the population with drinking water; (4) operations concerning the marketing, transport, distribution or processing of agricultural and food products; (4) support of the private sector for commercial development at national, regional and international level; (5) applied research and field training; (6) projects to develop the production of food crops while respecting the environment; (7) flanking, awareness, technical assistance and field training operations, in particular for women and producers' organizations and agricultural workers; (8) projects to produce fertilizer from raw materials and basic materials found in the recipient countries (9) schemes to support local food-aid structures, including training schemes on the ground. These measures are aimed at alleviating poverty, raising nutrition, stabilizing economic and social climates and heightening independence and capabilities in food production.

Agri-Energy Roundtable (AER) was founded in 1980 as a mechanism to explore the nexus between agro-food and energy exporting nations and the myriad of issues entwining these subjects in the quest for balanced food security.