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Right to Food expert says simply increasing production will not solve food crisis
De Schutter:The food crisis is still with us.
PRES:Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food came on board in May when everyone was talking about the crisis of higher food prices. But he reminds us that even though prices have fallen on the global market since then, the number of hungry people has increased getting the total close to the one billion mark.
De Schutter:The crisis has had a very severe impact, not only by increasing the number of people who are hungry or in extreme poverty but also by impacting severely on those who are already poor, and who as a result of this crisis have switched to poorer diets, have limited the number of meals they take, have cut back on education and health, and in certain cases, have sold productive assets, such as land, tools, making their situation more precarious.
PRES:Mr. de Schutter says while there has been a worldwide response to the food crisis, with the UN and its food agencies in the lead, too often the emphasis is on increasing food production. But he says the problem is not that there is too little food, but that it is not affordable to a large segment of the population. His view is that solutions must emphasize increasing the incomes of those who are hungry today, and that is mainly food producers in developing countries.
De Schutter:We need to ensure that their incomes would be raised as a result of increased food production, and we must avoid at all cost that under the pretext of producing more food, we increase the marginalization of small hold farmers and increase the dualization of the farming system for the benefit only of the few very large agricultural producers.
PRES:A very controversial issue in the food crisis has been how much of it has been caused by diverting grains to produce ethanol, a substitute for gasoline. Mr. de Schutter's predecessor Jean Ziegler, famously called this practice a crime against humanity. Mr. de Schutter takes a more nuanced view. This is in line with his contention that it is not the quantity of food produced that is causing the crisis, but who benefits from it. He says the problem with the way agrifuels are produced at the moment is that they only benefit large-scale plantations that export to industrialized countries.
De Schutter:We can think of means of producing agrifuels, which in fact are not threatening food security, but are a contribution to food security, if it can raise the incomes of small farmers, cultivating crops on marginal lands for fuels and if that can limit the dependence of certain developing countries on sources of imported energy, particularly oil.
(duration: 4'04")
