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MONTERREY,
Mexico -- Three UN food and agricultural agencies
warned that the International Conference on Financing
for Development being held in Monterrey, Mexico,
cannot spur broad-based economic development
unless it leads to increased funding to fight world
hunger
and rural poverty. The UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), the International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World
Food Programme (WFP) charge: "Without increased,
targeted funding to fight world poverty and hunger,
the most basic of obstacles to human and economic
potential will remain. Moreover, hunger and poverty
will not be halved by 2015, as agreed by world
leaders at the Millennium Summit in 2000. Progress
towards these goals has been proceeding well
below the rates needed for success."
FAO
Director-General Jacques Diouf said: "A hungry
person is an angry person, easily swayed by charges
that the global economic system is not working and
should be trashed in favor of something radically
different."
Of the 1.2 billion people who live in extreme
poverty on less than $1 a day, 75 percent live
in rural areas and make their living primarily
through agriculture. And 780 million people
in the developing world still live in hunger.
Yet, over the last 15 years, aid to agriculture
and rural development has declined by nearly
half. The UN agencies are urging the Monterrey
conference participants to reduce this downward
trend in development finance.
A joint report prepared for FfD, FAO, IFAD
and WFP outlines a twin-track strategy for
achieving substantial reductions in hunger
and poverty. One track involves promoting agricultural
and rural development mainly through productivity
increases, especially among small farmers,
in order to achieve broad-based economic growth,
increased food availability and sustained poverty
reduction. The second and parallel track involves
improving food availability to raise the productive
potential of those who are weakened by hunger,
and allow them to take advantage of the opportunities
offered by development.
Widespread
hunger and malnutrition in a world of plentiful
food implies that extreme poverty
is the root cause of undernourishment. At the
same time hunger and malnutrition are major
causes of poverty. The agencies charge: "Between
1975 and 1999, countries that managed to reduce
the prevalence of hunger invested substantially
more in agriculture than those where undernourishment
remains widespread. It is worrying that capital
formation per agricultural worker has remained
stagnant or declined in countries where more
than 20 percent of the population is undernourished
and where agriculture is essential for poverty
reduction and food security."
"There is disconnect, in fact a fundamental
inconsistency, between where aid goes and the
fact that poverty is found overwhelmingly in
rural areas," said Lennart Bage, President
of IFAD. "Aid must be targeted to enable
the rural poor to build better lives for themselves
and their families through linking them with
productive assets, markets and institutions."
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