'More investment needed for farm research'

By G. Venkataramani

BONN, SEPT. 8. ``Governments need to invest more in public agricultural research, especially focussed on how to achieve productivity gains for small-scale farmers. Globalisation can be both beneficial and harmful to poor people. The European Union, the U.S. and Japan, need to provide market access for developing country farmers.'' These points stood out sharply at the end of the three-day international conference on ``Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020'' organised here by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington D.C.

The conference participants also stressed that because the large majority of the world's poor live in rural areas, agriculture must play a key role, not only in reducing hunger, but in reducing poverty. The participants provided feedback to an IFPRI vision statement that provided a possible roadmap for eliminating hunger and malnutrition.

This conference was the largest-ever attended gathering of governments, non-government organisations, academia and the media, outside of the U.N. framework to discuss how to assure universal access to food. ``The results of the conference have inspired us and will enrich our work in the future. We will present the results at the World Food Summit,'' said Ms. Uschi Eid, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in Germany.

``I am sure that we will all take home new ideas and new political energy for our daily effort to achieve food security. It is important that the conference won't be considered as an end, but rather as a beginning of new efforts,'' she said. ``We have spent three days discussing how to assure that everyone on the planet has enough food for a healthy life. During this time, about 45,000 children died from hunger. That this should be tolerated in our day and age is an outrage,'' said Dr. Per- Pinstrup-Andersen, Director General of IFPRI, and winner of the 2001 World Food Prize.

IFPRI is working with high-level policy makers from several countries and international institutions to create a ``Bonn Food Policy Circle'' to accelerate progress towards reaching the goals of the conference. ``Many people have asked me if this conference was successful. It depends on the attention that governments, journalists and civil society organisations give to the issues we raised here in Bonn. It depends on the willingness of all of us to stop accepting what is clearly unacceptable. It depends on whether we will begin behaving with the sense of urgency that the daily tragedy of hunger demands of us. It must be done, and IFPRI and its partners will do everything to assure it is done,'' said Dr. Pinstrup-Andersen.

``It is a sad fact that at the current state of progress and the reality of today, food security for all will not be achieved by 2020. Such a breakthrough would require a whole new level of commitment focussing on priority policy actions and resources,'' said Ms. Rajul Pandya-Lorch, head of IFPRI's 2020 Vision Initiative and lead organiser of the conference.

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Section  : International
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