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MONTERREY,
Mexico -- To perform most any task efficiently
a worker must have adequate nourishment, right?
A hungry person can't hack it. So is poverty in
developing countries a principal cause of high
hunger incidence? Or is it the other way around?
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization,
hunger is both the cause and the effect. This is
what FAO wants delegates to the Monterrey conference
on financing for development to ponder, even as
this UN agency prepares to stage its own summit,
in Rome in June. Among
the goals approved by heads of state or government
from more than 140 countries at the UN Millennium
Summit in New York in September 2000 was that of
halving by 2015 the number of hungry people living
in extreme poverty. Improving health and education
and protecting and preserving the global environment
were other laudable ambitions agreed by the summiteers.
Yet, 18 months later the effort is lagging dramatically.
Some experts say that hardly a dent has been made
in the grim total of 815 million people known to
be chronically undernourished. No fewer than 777
million of them reside in developing countries, according
to FAO estimates.
Programs approved and decisions made at an
FAO-organized food summit five years ago, long
before the Millennium leaders gathered, were
supposed to produce a steep reduction in the
world's hungry population. On the available
evidence, it hasn't worked. Now, the agency's
message for Monterrey is that a determined,
direct assault on the hunger crisis is both
essential and overdue if the drive for sustainable
development is to succeed.
More
countries that can help need to do more:
put more food
in the pipeline or contribute
more money, or both. The US led the way last
year, donating $1 billion in aid to the World
Food Program, the largest amount ever for a
UN project universally acclaimed for its work
in the field under the inspired leadership
of Catherine Bertini. She is departing, alas,
after 10 years' dedicated service. FAO experts
say that 75 percent of the world's poor and
hungry people live in rural sections of developing
countries. These are areas known to have been
sadly neglected in some development programs.
William Meyers, who directs the agency's ongoing
analyses of the role of agriculture in economic
development, says that what's needed now is
what he calls a "twin track approach," of
short-term hunger alleviation and long-term
rural development.
As
FAO prepared an agenda for its participation
in the Financing
for Development conference,
Meyers commented, "You can't improve people's
health if they are hungry. You can't improve
education if children are too undernourished
to learn. You can't preserve the environment
if people are forced to claw every last bit
of nutrition from exhausted soil.
"And you can't persuade farmers to innovate
if they are just barely able to survive." This
may sound like a statement of the obvious,
but the message has not been getting through. "The
Millennium Goals need to be prioritized," says
Kostas Stamoulis, an FAO economist. "The
need to attack hunger first is so clear that
it should be top of the list. At the same time,
agriculture and rural development must be actively
promoted for substantial and sustainable growth
and poverty reduction."
He
fears that Monterrey may not pay sufficient
attention
to this aspect of development, fundamental
though it is. FAO wants to buck the conventional
wisdom, change the mindset that hunger is a
symptom of poverty and that development will
drive poverty away. Would that it were so simple,
say the experts. There is powerful scientific
evidence for FAO's arguments, including a study
in Ethiopia in the year 2000. This found that
people who were taller than average because
of better nutrition in early life earned more
and that those who were about 7 centimeters
(2 and 3/4 inches). above the norm received
15 percent more income than the others. "It
starts in the womb," the agency explains. "Nutritional
status during pregnancy, infant birth weight
and nutrition before 3 years of age have the
greatest effect on the ability to learn. "Feeding
programs for older children also help, because
no one can concentrate on an empty stomach."
Data
obtained by FAO studies have reinforced the
conclusion
made in 1994 by the Nobel prize
winner Robert Fogel that better levels in health
and nutrition were responsible for 50 percent
of the improvement in economic growth in France
and the United Kingdom in the 19th century.
Back to the needs of rural communities. FAO
economist Stamoulis says a decline in funding
for rural development must be reversed. "We
would also like to see an end to tariffs and
unfair agricultural support policies in the
richer countries that make it dificult for
farmers in poorer ones to compete." James
D. Wolfensohn, the President of the World Bank,
said something along similar lines in an important
recent address. Will the Monterrey delegates
heed the message? FAO analyst Myers says, "The
key targets of this conference include poverty,
health, education and the environment. But
if it ignores hunger, it is going to miss [hitting]
them all." Stamoulis adds that the objective
on one track should be fighting hunger in all
of its forms through measures such as safe
food, better food distribution networks in
cities and school meal programs. On the other
track, there should be broad-based, long-term
rural development.
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