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U.N. Food Aid Agency Urges Countries to Lift Food Export Bans
U.N. Food Aid Agency Urges Countries to Lift Food Export Bans
By Kathryn McConnell
The head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has called on countries that ban exports of food commodities to lift those restrictions so more food can be available for humanitarian aid.
Approximately 40 countries have imposed bans as world commodity prices have increased several times in the past year. As a result, WFP is having trouble securing enough food for aid, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran told a meeting at the International Institute of Economics in Washington May 6.
She called the crisis a silent tsunami that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people around the world into hunger.
Sheeran said purchasing problems affect WFP's ability to get food to areas where it is needed, such as Sudan. Export bans have forced WFP to go further from areas in need to seek food stocks, which adds to the time and logistical challenges of getting food to starving Sudanese and other populations, she said at the International Institute of Economics in Washington May 6.
WFP is facing the challenge of the "fusing of the fuel and food markets," she said. Food producers are breaking supply contracts with the WFP, accepting broken contract penalties, then selling their crops instead to biofuel producers at higher prices, Sheeran said.
WFP is seeking $755 million from donors to make up for a projected fiscal year 2008 budget shortfall caused by soaring food and transportation costs. This is a significant jump from the end of February, when WFP estimated it would need an additional $500 million.
WFP also is calling for a more coherent and increased international response to world hunger.
In the short- and medium-term, donors can provide seeds and fertilizer to farmers in developing countries so they can increase their production, Sheeran said. Donors also can support efforts to identify groups of people newly vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition and provide them with safety nets.
Among the most vulnerable are refugees and people who are unsettled within their own countries, mothers and infants, HIV/AIDS patients, small-scale farmers and people living in cities on less than $1 a day.
Safety nets target aid to these groups by providing supplemental and school feeding programs to help households with low incomes meet their basic dietary needs.
The need for such systems can been seen in Haiti, for instance, where approximately half the population is malnourished and 60 percent of household income goes to food. Non-nutritional mud cakes, traditionally used for medicinal purposes, are now being used as food because they are the only thing people can afford, she said.
In Burundi, the country's staple food - cassava - has gone up in price 200 percent since mid 2007. Poor households now are consuming moldy cassava, which in recent months has gone up in price threefold, Sheeran said.
Donors can work to provide aid recipients with more vouchers so they can purchase locally produced food, which is now too expensive to buy without help, she suggested.
Officials also can shift their policies to allow more purchases of food from farmers in developing countries, Sheeran said. That change would support local economic development and allow aid to reach people who need it faster than by costly transoceanic shipment.
President Bush has called on Congress to support a request to allow America to purchase up to 25 percent of food aid from farmers in developing countries. The measure is included in a new multiyear farm bill Congress is still debating.
Long-term responses to the crisis involve policy reforms by both food aid donors and recipients.
Sheeran said that without an increase in the international response to the food crisis there will be more hunger and malnutrition around the world, causing the overall health of poor people and rates of school attendance to decline.
AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
The United Nations is calling for an international meeting to be held at its Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) June 3-5. The gathering will focus on how agriculture can continue to produce adequate quantities of food for the world's growing population, particularly the poor and vulnerable, in changing climatic conditions, FAO said.
Sheeran said WFP is changing from an emergency food aid provider to an agency involved in agricultural development aimed at stabilizing food supply systems and allowing a reduction of dependency of food aid.
These efforts include training farmers in improved production methods and rebuilding infrastructure.
For instance, she said, in recent years WFP has planted 5 billion trees, which are helping to stabilize ground soils, and built thousands of kilometers of roads.
Sheeran said the WFP is coordinating with other donors to get food and other lifesaving supplies to Burma, devastated earlier in May by a massive cyclone. Because Burma is part of Asia's greatest rice-producing area, "the storm compounds the problem of lost rice production," she said.
The United States is the world's largest food aid donor, contributing about half of all food aid. It provides approximately 40 percent of contributions to the WFP.
See also "U.S. Provides $3.25 Million to Aid Burma Cyclone Victims ( http://www.america.gov/st/peacesec-english/2008/May/20080506154943dmslahrellek0.832699.html )" and "U.N. Calls for New Food Donations, Predicts Long-term Success ( http://www.america.gov/st/foraid-english/2008/April/20080416114245akllennoccm0.3393213.html?CP.rss=true )."
Source: U.S. Department of State
judythpiazza@newsblaze.com
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