Answering the crisis - which way to go?

Should we solve the crisis by producing more? “This would be an oversimplification of the problem” explained Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food in his keynote speech. Most of the time, famines and hunger are not the results of a lack of food but are based on the fact large segments of population are lacking incomes to buy food. Out of the almost one billion people suffering from hunger, fifty percent of the hungry are smallholder farmers, twenty percent are rural landless, ten percent are fishermen and forest-pastoralists and twenty percent live in cities.

In relaunching agriculture, governments should therefore not focus on increasing production at any costs but focus on what really matters: hunger and poverty alleviation. It implies a diversity of measures such as improving the poor´s access to resources, especially land and strengthening the negotiating power of small producers in selling their production at fair price. It calls for a radical change in the model of agriculture promoted and in the direction given to international tra­de.

Model of intensive agriculture promoted by the green revolution in the year sixties and seventies has largely failed from the environmental and socio-economical points of view. The potential of solutions based on agro-ecological practices remain largely underestimated. Yet, they are key in both fighting and adapting to climate change and moreover, they are affordable to poor farmers.

The UN Special Rapporteur also said that “the current trade regime is severely defected”. The rationale of production specialization in what countries have a comparative advantage has largely resulted in a situation where some countries specialize in loosing and others in winning! Developing countries specialized in crops for exports like coffee, cocoa where the profits have kept declining. Hence they have been relying on international markets for feeding their population. This situation of dependence is extremely dangerous, developing countries should work at building food self sufficiency. The current trade regime as it works also benefit the small amount of big farms over the small ones counting for billions people. This vision of trade is distant from one in which human rights, especially the right to food, and development prevail over business interests.