Leaders Meet to Discuss Food Crisis

European and African political figures met in Brussels to ask "Who will feed the World?". Participants heard that climate and growing demand for meat are contributing to the crisis.

08/07/08 Investment, free-trade, abolition of subsidies, a change of direction on biofuels: all options submitted to a joint European Parliament-French government conference on 3 July. With people on earth set to be 9 billion in 4 decades and foodstuffs like rice and maize up in price over 70% in a year, academics, experts, European and African political figures met in Brussels to ask "Who will feed the World?". Participants heard that climate and growing demand for meat are contributing to the crisis.

The scale of the problem was spelled out by Parliament's President Hans-Gert Pöttering who told those gathered that "850 million people, 170 million of them children, currently suffer from hunger or malnutrition". He added that "every year 5.6 million children die from malnutrition."  Jacques Diou - the Director-General of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation later said that the number of hungry people increased by about 50 million in 2007 due to high food prices.
 
For the European Commission, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said the EU has already abolished import duties on many goods, abolished the "set aside" scheme in Europe to free up more land. Both Ms Boel and Development Commissioner Louis Michel stated that they would propose to Ministers and MEPs to give Europe's unused agricultural subsidies to farmers in the developing world to fight food shortages. Some newspaper reports have this figure as high as €1 billion.
 
Spanish Socialist MEP Josep Borrell - Chair of parliament's Development Committee - told the conference that development aid for agriculture was 17% of all aid 30 years ago - compared to 4% now. He added that only 4% of public investment in developing countries goes to agriculture. French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier quoted a World Bank report saying that "1 euro or 1 dollar invested in agriculture is most efficient way of combating poverty".
 
On the position of agriculture in Europe, Neil Parish - the British Conservative MEP who Chairs Parliament's Agriculture Committee said "we need to free our farmers from regulation, bureaucracy and market distorting subsidy." The importance of free trade in tackling food prices was also stressed by World Trade Organisation head Pascal Lamy.
 
Kati Partanen from the International federation of agricultural producers stressed the role younger people can play. She said that "young farmers have a crucial role in feeding the world” as they prefer quality production, developing local markets and innovation new products." French academic Michel Griffon, Director General of French National Research Agency, stressed the future challenges agriculture faced such as water scarcity, climate change and the fact agriculture is a big emitter of CO2.
 
Morocco's Agriculture Minister Aziz Akhannouch explained that 45% of the population is based in rural areas, out of which 80% live directly from agriculture. He noted that "this crisis is very disturbing. There is a lack of diversity in terms of sources of food." He told the conference that what was required was "trade, investment, aid, partnership".
 
Ousseni Salifou - agriculture commissioner for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), told delegates that 60% of the population of West Africa live in rural areas. He said that agriculture was the "main factor in West African economy, it gives food and provides jobs". Finally, striking a positive note he told those gathered that "the potential is there in Africa."