More must be done to reform global food system to fight crisis, says UN expert

Investing in agriculture alone will not solve the food crisis, a United Nations independent expert said today, calling for stepped-up political will to address structural flaws in global food production, which is at the crux of the current emergency.

“The right to food is not the right to be fed,” Olivier De Schutter told reporters today in Geneva after briefing the Human Rights Council. “It is the right to access the means to produce food or to obtain an income that enables the purchase of adequate food.”

World leaders pledged $20 billion in agriculture in poor countries in July at the meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) industrialized countries in L’Aquila, Italy, but he called for a more ambitious policy.

“For one billion hungry people to escape poverty, the initiative announced at L’Aquila can only be a first step,” said Mr. De Schutter, who serves as the Special Rapporteur on the right to food. “It cannot be the last.”

Increased investment in agriculture is only a slice of the solution, he noted, calling for action to stabilize international food markets, which could face further disruption due to climate change.

Small farmers, he said, need access to land, credit, storage sites and support for cooperatives, among others, with measures necessary to alleviate hunger and malnutrition and boost the resilience of the most vulnerable people.

“As in the case of the financial system, it is the responsibility of policy-makers to take the decisions needed to ensure real change,” the expert stressed. “Political will is needed to tackle structural flaws in the global food system.”

Earlier this week, the head of the UN World Food Programme issued an urgent plea to ensure that those hardest hit by the financial crisis – considered by many to have started one year ago this week – are not forgotten.

There are more hungry people in the world and less food aid than ever before, while the flow of food aid is at its lowest in two decades, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in a statement.

“For the world’s most vulnerable, the perfect storm is hitting with a vengeance,” she said.