Global recognition of the desperate need for measures to ensure global food security in coming decades is reflected in the G8 holding its first ever agriculture summit.
After decades of complacency, in which food security was widely seen as an issue only for poor countries, even the world’s leading economic nations are waking up to the need for action if the whole world is to enjoy a sustainable supply of food.
Enough food for all?
After the economically focused G20 summit in London, G8 agriculture ministers will meet at Cison di Valmarino, in Italy, from the 18th to 20th April, ahead of the main G8 summit in July. Other preliminary meetings will bring together environment and development ministers.
Time for a re-think
Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has stated that this G8 summit should provide an opportunity to “rethink the global economy’s ground rules” and ensure an ethical and legal underpinning:
it is necessary to define common ethical and legal standards and new rules governing the transparency, propriety and integrity of international economic and financial activity at this time of global economic difficulty
A policy document released ahead of the summit, notes that the food crisis of the last two years, in which commodity prices have fluctuated wildly, “will become structural in only a few decades” unless agricultural production doubles. We may not have even a few decades.
A global partnership for food security
In this context, Italy is also seeking to build a “a global partnership for farming and food security“, first proposed at last year’s FAO High-Level Conference on World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy in June 2008 and receiving support at the 2008 G8 summit in Japan, where leaders “acknowledged the grave problem caused by rising agricultural commodity prices and called on agriculture ministers to draw up concrete proposals on world food security”.
As the world’s food system comes under increasing pressure from rising population, climate change and dwindling resources, Italy’s Foreign Undersecretary, Vincenzo Scotti, has stressed the urgent need to:
promote more effective and consistent action both inside each country and at the global level. [...] Given the worldwide economic downturn, the time has come for countries, international institutions, NGO’s and private-sector players to cooperate on “fostering a fresh boost to investment in the spheres of farming and food, and a search for innovative solutions to support small-scale producers and to set up social security networks”.
It’s reassuring to see recognition of the vital role that small producers play in providing food to the world, and of the need for community-level initiatives and networks. Perhaps the failure of global financial markets has provided a timely lesson that the world cannot rely solely on the mechanisms of market capitalism to feed itself.
World representation
As befits a summit seeking to build a global network, delegates have been invited from outside the G8 club:
- Czech Republic’s agriculture minister (in capacity of EU Council duty president)
- EU Agriculture Commissioner, Marianne Fischer Boel
- Brazilian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, South African, Egyptian, Australian, Argentinian agriculture ministers
- FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organisation)
- WFP (World Food Programme)
- IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development)
- World Bank
- High-Level Task Force on Food Security
- African Union
- OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
Let’s hope the summit delivers on the promise to “re-think” and prepares the ground for the development of a truly sustainable world food system over the coming decades.
