Global forum on food security and nutrition

Benone Pasarin from the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Iasi, Romania

Honorable co-participants in the forum,
I found this topic very actual and I guess it will contribute a bit to enlighten some future strategies to reduce food security issues. Indeed, forums like this one are real brainstorming pools.
Concerning the Global Governance for Food Security, I consider that this Global component is a little bit utopia, as far as the policies related to food security and food safety differ between the high developed regions and countries, not speaking of the big gap of mentality and strategies between these countries and the lower developed ones.
However, there are some possibilities to contribute ourselves to the decreasing of Food Security threats.
I found very interesting the EuropeAid Development and Cooperation program of the EU (http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/how/finance/dci_en.htm) and its strategy for the upcoming years:

Thematic Strategy Paper and Multi-annual Indicative Programme 2011-2013

http://ec.europa.eu/development/icenter/repository/FSTP 2011-2013_Commission adoption.pdf
The MULTIANNUAL INDICATIVE PROGRAMME (MIP) 2011-2013 should operate at two levels> global and continental/regional/subregional. I will list some ideas I found interesting and you will be able to read the documentation and the specific number values from the links above:

1. 
   Strategic priorities:
   

• 
  Research, technology transfer and innovation to enhance food security
  
  • 
    nutrition (including horticulture and livestock production)
    
  • 
    ecologically efficient intensification of agriculture
    
  • 
    sustainable natural resources management
    
  • 
    agricultural biodiversity
    
  • 
    sustainable management of agricultural ecosystems
    
  • 
    technology dissemination and adoption
    
  • 
    life-learning programs and professional reconversion for less favored people
    
  • 
    support for extension, with the aim of maximizing research impacts on poverty and food security
    
  • 
    partnerships to share knowledge and technology among less developed areas
    
• 
  Strengthened governance approaches for food security
  
• 
  Addressing food security for the poor and vulnerable in fragile situations
  

2. 
   Creating a reserve to ensure the financial flexibility of the program.
   

Besides explicit aiding actions and political decisions, it must be found a strategy to help people to help themselves, not to be just assisted across the entire life.

May be there are some critical question that high developed countries and especially their citizens should ask themselves, in order to improve food security:

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  why wasting so many resources for the highest comfort level, which is usually artificially induced by aggressive advertising campaigns (resulting in energy and resources wasting, overconsumption of certain unnecessary products and services)?
  

• 
  why using many land areas for producing biofuels and feedstuffs for animal husbandry in order to provide energy and elaborated food resources to the consumers in the high developed countries, while those lands could be used more efficient for crop productions at low costs, therefore a source to provide cheap food and even healthy if there is well nutritional rationed?
  
• 
  Why not use alternative food crops, like GMOs or local varieties, if they are proved to be safe and reliable?
  
• 
  it is really true that a more expensive food (eg. Bio or Eco) is better than conventionally produced food or it is just a trend, a marketing fashion that induce us to live “green”, while the resources allocated for producing those special food products are not so sustainable and deepen the gap between developed and underdeveloped countries?
  

Therefore, the change could come from an upper level, from a Global Governance, but also have to be known and applied by each of us, at individual level.

Best greetings!

 

Prof. Benone Pasarin, Ph.D.

Dean

The University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Iasi

Faculty of Animal Sciences

Romania

Kodjo Dokodjo from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Togo [2^nd contribution]

Dear Members of the Forum

Two levels of food security services are being provided to countries or regions or groups of population to fight hunger. The first level aims to install a sustainable food security and the second level is provided in particular situations such as natural disaster, war…etc and malnutrition.
The first level searches for agricultural development activities or food production activities. The services provided at this level by the existing institutions often did not tally with the population growth. Programmes to promote rural and agricultural sector development are doomed from the start as they are not well conceived. Failures of these programmes are due to lack of investment in the agricultural sector. However, countries beneficiating supported agricultural development programmes are unable to invest most of the time to continue the programmes when donor’s technical and financial dead line ends. As a result, developing countries are building programmes over programmes and none of these programmes contributed to achieve the goals or the objectives assigned to them. This leads to suggest that in less developed countries, dead line of technical and financial assistance to agricultural development programmes provided by the institutions should not be fixed a priori. Another factor of failure of agricultural development programmes relies on lack of monitoring. Sometimes, the financial service provided for agricultural development is used for other aims. Some countries don’t know the exact state of food production as they never conducted agricultural census. It is necessary to help these countries in this field.
The second level of food security service is the one provided in emergencies. This service is provided for food insecure regions and malnutrition. In most of the cases the service is delayed due to several factors and there are overlaps because of lack of real organization of the donors. But this is not a real problem. We must admit that the existing institutions are very good at their work at this level.
Kind regards
Kodjo Dokodjo