World Food Day 2010 – ‘United Against Hunger’

On 16 October 2010, World Food Day enters its 30th year. The occasion also marks the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN). World Food Day this year, will mainly focus on the theme ‘United Against Hunger,’ chosen to recognise the efforts made in the fight against world hunger at national, regional and international levels.

By Harsha Udayakantha Peiris

Uniting against hunger will reach a reality when state and civil society organisations and the private sector work in partnership at all levels to defeat hunger, extreme poverty and malnutrition. The collaboration among international organisations, particularly the Rome-based United Nations agencies, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), plays a key strategic role in directing global efforts to reach Millennium Development Goal – 1 of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, which calls for halving the hungry people in the world by 2015.

The World Summit on Food Security, or the ‘hunger summit,’ held in November 2009, adopted a declaration renewing the commitment made at the 1996 World Food Summit to eradicate hunger in a sustainable way from the face of the earth.

The declaration also called for an increase in domestic and international funding for agriculture, new investments in the rural sector, improved governance of global food issues in partnership with relevant stakeholders from the public and private sector, and more action to face the threat, climate change poses to food security.

The Tele-Food Special Fund (TFS) established by the FAO at its conference in 1997 is another key project launched in this regard to finance grassroots level micro-projects in developing countries and countries in transition.

Tele-Food Projects are intended to improve the livelihoods of poor families by enhancing agricultural production and promoting added value, enabling them to produce more food and to generate cash income, thereby allowing them better access to food. Currently, FAO is in the process of providing assistance worth US $ 12.5 million to the Government to improve the livelihoods of the people of Sri Lanka.

FAO and WFP collaborate with GOSL

FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP) have also joined hands with the Ministry of Agriculture to mark World Food Day 2010 in Sri Lanka on Saturday 16 October at the Plants Genetic Resources Centre at Gannoruwa in Kandy.

Hundreds of farmers will take part in an ‘Awareness Walk’ in Kandy followed by the official ceremony under the patronage of the Minister of Agriculture Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena. The ceremony, which will be followed by a seminar to cover key messages from the FAO Representative, the WFP Country Director, and other high level Government officials, will also include farmers, school children, officials from NGOs and private sector partners. A food demonstration and a cultural event have been organised to add further interest and diversity to the event.

In its development process towards future socioeconomic prosperity, the Government has extended major initiatives to support the agriculture sector and enhance self sufficiency in national food production levels of Sri Lanka.

Once the peace process was finally established in Sri Lanka following the eradication of long stood armed struggle and LTTE terrorism in the country, WFP was an active partner with the Government to provide food to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the welfare camps and then further food support as families return home to rebuild their lives in the north and east.

As families return to their farmlands, FAO has been providing agriculture support with the Government to enable farmers to re-establish their agriculture based livelihoods.

For the current ‘Maha’ season in the north, FAO (with multiple donor support) is further assisting the Government to bring over 130,000 acres of previously abandoned land, back into production while supporting livelihoods of more than 50,000 returnee families. In the east, abandoned irrigation tanks and farmlands are being brought back into production with nearly 20,000 formerly displaced families.

At the local and central levels, FAO is also working with the Department of Agriculture to strengthen extended supportive services to farmers and to promote environmentally sustainable farming practices.

At present WFP is actively working with the Government of Sri Lanka to help improve the nutritional well-being, and reduce the rates of malnutrition of food insecurity in the country. FAO and WFP are playing a collaborative key role in the transition from humanitarian to early recovery assistance in the north and east and are extending continued assistance to work closely to support the Government to address the needs of the people.

Timely concern to feed hungry masses

In April 2008, the United Nations established a High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, chaired by the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and vice chaired by FAO Director General Jacques Diouf, which developed a global strategy and action plan, the Comprehensive Framework for Action. One of the framework’s priorities is to strengthen programmes to feed the hungry and expand the support to farmers in developing countries.

FAO has a leading role in the framework’s goals related to increasing smallholder farmers’ food production in sustainable ways and is also contributing to the deliberations on policy adjustment procedures. Smallholder farmers and their families represent around 2.5 billion people, more than one-third of the global population.

According to the 2009 Global Hunger Index Report, 29 countries around the world have alarming or extremely alarming levels of hunger and 13 countries have actually seen increases in their hunger levels since 1990. The democratic Republic of Congo scored the worst, followed by Burundi, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Chad and Ethiopia. According to the Global Hunger Index 2009, India ranks 65th out of 88 countries, with a hunger rate of 23.9 while Sri Lanka with a hunger rate of 13.7 ranks 35th, way ahead of India and Pakistan.

The report also shows that high rates of hunger are strongly linked to gender inequalities, especially in terms of literacy and access to education, and highlights which countries are the most vulnerable to the global economic downturn.

The Global Hunger Index has been released in advance of the oncoming World Food Day 2010 for the fourth year by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and concern worldwide. The Index ranks countries on three leading indicators, namely, prevalence of child malnutrition, rates of child mortality and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient and combining them into one score.

At a recent declaration, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that at present there exist one billion hungry people on the globe and warned that the food crisis was a wake-up call for tomorrow since by 2050 the population of the planet would be 9.1 billion people, over two billion more than today.



Food production



According to FAO of the UN, food production will have to be increased by 70% to feed the expected population by 2050 and with land scarcity, farmers will be obliged to get greater yields out of the land already under cultivation rather than expanding their farms.

FAO also states that on the other hand intensified food production that traditionally meant increased dependence on pesticides and fertilisers and over use of water can degrade soils and water resources. Therefore, it has also urged that the use of mineral fertilisers in cultivation should be managed wisely in order to reduce production costs and environmental problems.

Integrated Pest Management or IPM combines pest resistant varieties, biological pest control, cultural practices, and judicious use of pesticides to increase production, lower costs and reduce water and soil contamination. Optimising the use of pesticides is obviously good for the environment and human health while it also saves the farmer finances that can be reinvested in the farm or spent on nutritious food for the family.

Conservation agriculture is another example of an ecosystem approach that builds on a range of ecosystem services. Increased organic matter in the soil improves soil’s capacity to retain water, thus reducing or eliminating the need for irrigation.

FAO also urges that food production has to be expanded on a sufficient scale to meet future demand while enabling laws, rules, regulations and programmes by nation states through governments.

“At various levels, the state has the authority to encourage environmentally responsible farming. It can pass laws that stabilise land tenure, so that farmers feel secure on their land and adopt farming methods to produce the needed food with a long term perspective, including the protection of natural resources. It can also check the quality of products used, and ensure they are correctly labelled, marked and applied to minimise risks,” FAO report indicates.

In the G8 meeting of this year, held in Muskoka, Canada, countries noted the relationship between cross-border investment and development and the fact that official development assistance alone is not sufficient to achieve global food security and stressed the importance of enhancing international investment in developing countries in a responsible and sustainable way.