RIO+20 FEATURE: SEVEN ISSUES, SEVEN EXPERTS – FOOD
New York, Jun 18 2012 1:10PM
World leaders, along with thousands of participants from governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other groups will come together next month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to take part in the UN Sustainable Development Conference (Rio+20).
In our <em><"/apps/news/featurenews.asp?Cr=Sustainable+Development&Cr1=Feature">Seven Issues, Seven Experts</em> series UN officials tell us more about the key issues that will be discussed during the conference and how we can contribute to make our planet more sustainable.
In the fourth installment, the UN News Centre spoke with the Chief Development Strategist at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Carlos Sere, about the role of hunger and obesity, and why small farmers are the key to ensuring food security.
<strong>UN News Centre:</strong> What is the global food situation at the moment?
<strong>Carlos Sere:</strong> The food situation in the world is that we have a rapidly growing population, rapidly growing incomes, changing consumption patterns, people eating more animal products, vegetables, fruits, oils, and all of this is compounding to a very rapid increase in the total amount of food needed.
<div id="EmbedPhotoLeft" style="width:200px;"><"/News/dh/photos/large/2012/May/05-31-fao-trad-food.jpg" class="lightbox" title="A sample of some underutilized indigenous foods. Photo: FAO" rel="gallery-default"><img class="Embed" src="/News/dh/photos/2012/May/05-31-fao-trad-food.jpg" style="width:180px; height:120px;">
<p class="phtocaption2">A sample of some underutilized indigenous foods. Photo: FAO</p>
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At the same time, the resources of the world are finite and we're getting more and more to the limits of what we can do. So this means that it's getting tighter, if you want, and therefore we have seen very high volatility in the recent past. So a drought in Australia or Russia would rapidly increase the price of wheat, especially because there are no large buffer stocks to control the markets. We took food for granted for many years, but right now food has become a very critical and strategic issue.
One other very important dimension which has changed is the fact that due to the rapid increase in oil prices, the world is looking at renewable energy sources and a lot of the renewable energy right now is bio-ethanol produced from corn. So we are now connecting the food market and the energy market. All of that adds a lot of volatility.
<strong>UN News Centre:</strong> How does volatility change countries' policies on food stocks?
<div id="EmbedPhotoRight" style="width:200px;"><"/News/dh/photos/large/2012/April/04-17-2012marketfood.jpg" class="lightbox" title="A mother shops for food at an outdoor market. Photo: World Bank/C. Carnemark" rel="gallery-default"><img class="Embed" src="/News/dh/photos/2012/April/04-17-2012marketfood.jpg" style="width:180px; height:120px;">
<p class="phtocaption2">A mother shops for food at an outdoor market. Photo: World Bank/C. Carnemark</p>
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<strong>Carlos Sere:</strong> Well, fundamentally, countries used to think that if they didn't have a good harvest in their own countries they could buy it in the world market. Suddenly, with the food crisis in the last few years they realized that sometimes even if you want to buy it, there are countries that are putting export bans. So there is some comeback to think more about self-sufficiency in food rather than just having the money to buy food, which was thought to be good enough.
<strong>UN News Centre:</strong> What are the most pressing issues that governments need to act on regarding food security?
<strong>Carlos Sere:</strong> Well, on the one hand, in most developed countries, the basic food and the calories have become very cheap and we find lots of people are consuming those types of empty calories. This is very much related to consumption patterns which are leading to obesity. We used to say this is just a developed country problem, but we are finding out that, more and more, the consumption pattern with this high-density energy food is also something we're seeing in the middle classes of developing countries. So this is really becoming a very significant problem.
At the same time, we do have the issue of malnutrition still remaining and it is largely not that we do not produce enough food, but that these people do not have incomes to buy the food they need. It is an issue closely related to nutrition and poverty, not just an issue of production. Obviously, if we can keep prices low, it's easier for more people to have access to it. This is why food price volatility is seriously bad for the poor, who spend a lot of their income on food.
<div id="EmbedPhotoLeft" style="width:200px;"><"/News/dh/photos/large/2011/August/134570-sorghum.jpg" class="lightbox" title="A local farmer harvests sorghum produced from seeds donated by the Food and Agriculture Organization through the "Improving Seeds" project. Photo: FAO" rel="gallery-default"><img class="Embed" src="/News/dh/photos/2011/August/134570-sorghum.jpg" style="width:180px; height:120px;">
<p class="phtocaption2">A local farmer harvests sorghum produced from seeds donated by the Food and Agriculture Organization through the "Improving Seeds" project. Photo: FAO</p>
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It is also an issue - particularly the obesity side of it - that has to do with consumption patterns and education, which are very difficult to change. This needs to be addressed by governments.
<strong>UN News Centre:</strong> Can you give an example of a project that is succeeding in ensuring food security?
<strong>Carlos Sere:</strong> The right to food and to stay healthy and productive - this entails a lot more than just producing food. It is an issue of producing healthy food, of having income to buy that food, of having the education to know how to consume that food, etc. So it's quite a complex set of issues and we cannot expect one individual project to solve this.
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<strong>Facts and figures</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Agriculture is the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for 40 per cent of today's global population. It is the largest source of income and jobs for poor rural households.</li>
<li>500 million small farms worldwide, most still rainfed, provide up to 80 per cent of food consumed in a large part of the developing world. Investing in smallholder women and men is an important way to increase food security and nutrition for the poorest, as well as food production for local and global markets.</li>
<li>Since the 1900s, some 75 per cent of crop diversity has been lost from farmers' fields. Better use of agricultural biodiversity can contribute to more nutritious diets, enhanced livelihoods for farming communities and more resilient and sustainable farming systems.</li>
<li>1.3 billion people have no access to electricity worldwide - most of which live in rural areas of the developing world. Energy poverty in many regions is a fundamental barrier to reducing hunger and ensuring that the world can produce enough food to meet future demand.</li>
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It's really a much more paradigm-related issue of making sure we develop the right approaches to address the different parts, and we can only do that in partnership. That's really the challenge. It involves producing the food sustainably. For example, there is a strong interest today in reducing food losses because we realized that limited resources don't allow us, as in the past, to produce food and tolerate certain levels of losses because food is now
Jun 18 201
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