FAO chief: developing country farmers need aid, support in food crisis
Source: International Herald Tribune (Original Article)
FRANKFURT, Germany: Giving farmers in developing countries immediate help to grow more crops should be the focus of efforts to tackle the growing global food crisis, the head of the United Nations food agency said Thursday.
Jacques Diouf, leader of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, said an international meeting in Rome June 3-5 would give the world an opportunity to rethink its policies and act.
“The facts are clear. One, we need to provide food and money so that people have something to eat and to lower the cost for the poor people so that they are getting access to food,” Diouf said in an interview. “Two, we help farmers to get access to what they need to be able to produce.”
He argued that $1.7 billion should be set aside to finance the aid effort.
“Everybody is saying, 'Let's feed the people and let's give more help,' which, of course, is also important,” Diouf said. “But this growing season — the off season in September, October, November — and (the) next growing season should be the focus right now.”
Otherwise, he said, “my impression is that we are just missing the train again.”
To prevent that, he said farmers in developing countries must have immediate access to more seeds, fertilizers and animal feed for the 2008 growing season.
“If we do not help the farmers this season, the problem will worsen.”
At a summit in London Tuesday on the first global food crisis since World War II, World Food Program executive director Josette Sheeran likened it to a silent tsunami, noting that the price of rice has more than doubled since March.
The World Bank estimates that food prices have risen by 83 percent in three years.
The skyrocketing cost of food staples, stoked by rising fuel prices, unpredictable weather and demand from India and China, has already sparked sometimes violent protests in the Caribbean, Africa and Frequent Flyer Cards Asia.
Diouf said that while high demand …continue reading