PRESS RELEASE
14 October 2008

NGOs and People’s Organisations call on the UN Task Force to Resolve the Global Food Security Crisis

Eighty four national and international NGOs and People’s Organisations from 23 countries have called on the United Nations (UN) Task Force and Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general and Task Force head, to draw comprehensive measures to resolve the global food security crisis. These groups represent or work in solidarity with millions of farmers, agricultural workers, fisherfolks, pastoralists and herders, indigenous people, women, migrants, consumers, youth, urban poor across the world. 

While the UN Task Force drew a Comprehensive Framework of Action (CFA) to resolve the looming crisis, the prescribed policies are actually the same recipes that led to worsening hunger, degraded environment and now the current global financial meltdown. These policies were proven to be largely ineffective and are just strengthening power structures, approaches and practices.    

The open letter stated three main concerns of the groups: 1) While the UN Task Force agrees that the food crisis and soaring food prices ‘stem from the cumulative effects of long-term trend’, it does nothing to review these trends; 2) The CFA focuses on linking smallholder farmers to the market but in the current scenario, only big corporations profit from it and there are no adequate recommendations for restructure; 3) The CFA’s overarching stress on trade liberalisation in agriculture will only give way to further corporate control and its recommendation on seeking a rapid completion of trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization (WTO) clearly shows the inability of the UN and other international bodies to break down the obstinacy of the bigger powers on this issue.

In response to the food crisis, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Bank and other international agencies have started to supply seeds, fertilizers and other basic inputs to small farmers in critical countries.

“We are alarmed by these supply distributions as there are no proper guidelines and investigations in place. This allows transnational corporations to spread their hybrid seeds and products in the region.” says Sarojeni V. Rengam, Executive Director of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP). She adds, “It is ironic that the UN Task Force has not involved the small food producers or peasant farmers in the development of the CFA since they have knowledge and experience to address the food crisis. A major problem has been top-down approach without involvement of smallholder farmers in policy determination.” 

The letter stipulated recommendations for the UN Task Force which include the following:

• Recognize people’s basic Right to Food, by providing adequate, affordable and safe food for all. Food is a biological need and necessary for survival and hence a basic right. But there are more people today suffering from hunger and malnutrition, over 3 billion, than ever before.
• Promote and support bio-diversity based ecological food production and community-based seed and grain storage systems.  These systems offer higher productivity and income to help improve and create rural livelihood by spurring diverse economic activities. However, these systems need strong institutional support in terms of integrated financial, technical and marketing and other support systems. Local consumption and local markets should be given priority.
• Develop local food markets, and strengthen public procurement, distribution and stocking systems for food. Increasing control of corporations over food distribution, have broken down local food market systems, made people’s accessibility to adequate and safe food extremely vulnerable even in normal times, and increased its cost through transportation over long distances.
• Ensure that food production and consumption are more equitable and beneficial for women and girls. Women’s labour, knowledge and hard work feed their families and communities, but they face extreme discrimination. The destruction of local food production, procurement, storage and consumption systems, have led to further inequities for the women and girls in the society. Women must be integrated into the agricultural and rural environment agenda and programmes for equal rights and equitable share of resources.
• Stop indiscriminate agricultural landuse change from food crops to agrofuels and other global commodities. The industrialization and corporatization of development in general and agriculture in particular, have encouraged large scale landuse changes and diverted fertile land away from producing food for the people to the production of agrofuels and other global commodities, or converted for large-scale recreational centres and special economic zones thereby worsening people’s food systems and the climate.
• Take WTO out of agriculture. It is apparent that the agriculture trade agreement platform of the WTO has been a major culprit in taking agriculture out of people’s control and giving it to the corporations. Its talks have also miserably failed. The food crisis is being taken as an opportunity to revive the failed talks and its ruinous implementations.
• Control speculative trading and stop futures contract trading. Agriculture is an issue of life, culture and livelihood, not trade. Seeds and crops are food, not commodities. Land is a resource for local food production, not for global speculation and grabbing.
• Implement genuine agrarian, fisheries, forestry and pastureland reforms. Global food crisis cannot be addressed by repeating the policies, practices and mistakes of the last fifty years, but through true reforms encompassing agriculture, land and water resources and rural development.
• Realise People’s Food Sovereignty as the framework for food production and distribution, and for national and international trade and investment policies. The solution to what appears to be a permanent food crisis lies in the people being in control of agriculture, their productive livelihood resources and distributive practices.

The open letter was directed to Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General and Head of UN Task Force, the FAO, International Fund for Agricultural Development, UN Office for High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, UN Development Programme, UN Environment Programme, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UN Children’s Fund, UN World Food Programme, World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, Departments of Economic and Social Affairs, Political Affairs, Public Information, Peacekeeping Operations, The Special Adviser on Millennium Development Goals and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Organisations and institutions are welcome to participate in the ongoing signature campaign for the open letter which is posted at www.panap.net/wfd.

On October 16, 2008, the UN and its associated bodies will once again celebrate World Food Day but the signatories of the letter declare it as World Foodless Day, a Global Day of Action to commemorate people’s struggles for food sovereignty and the unending resolve to battle the world food crisis.

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Pesticide Action Network (PAN) is a global network working to eliminate the human and environmental harm caused by pesticides and to promote biodiversity based ecological agriculture. PAN Asia and the Pacific is committed to the empowerment of people especially women, agricultural workers, peasants and indigenous farmers. We are dedicated to protect the safety and health of people, and the environment from pesticide use and genetic engineering. We believe in a people-centered, pro-women development through food sovereignty, ecological agriculture and sustainable lifestyles.