Print This PageHot Issue: World Summit on Food Security
Outcome of World Food Summit 2009
Between now and 2050, the world’s population will rise by a third but demand for agricultural goods will rise by 70% and demand for meat will double, mostly as a result of rising wealth in poor and middle-income countries. All this while we try to wrestle with the consequences of a changing climate. Long-term policies are needed now to make sure this happens without farmers clearing large amounts of new land or using water inefficiently and without further food price hikes (which have risen an average of 83 per cent in the past three years).
It is with this in mind that world leaders met at a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization food summit in Rome on 14-16 November this year to discuss a strategy to help address the world's one billion starving people. Sixty Heads of State and Government and 192 ministers, from 182 countries and the European Community, attended the summit.
The Summit unanimously adopted a Declaration committing all the nations of the world to eradicate hunger at the earliest possible date. It also pledged to substantially increase aid to agriculture in developing countries, to help the hungry to become more self-sufficient. The declaration confirmed the current target for reducing hunger by half by 2015.
Interestingly, countries at the summit also promised to increase and promote new investment in science and technology, and to work to reverse the decline in domestic and international funding for agriculture. It was acknowledged that these goals will not be met without technology and concerns were raised that throughout the last 25 years investment in agriculture has declined rather than increased.
Major aid organisations such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Nations World Food Program also understand the importance of agricultural innovation in all of this.
While it is clear that agricultural innovation can mean a lot of things, GM crop technology must certainly be one technique that needs to be seriously considered by governments moving forward – as a safe and proven way of increasing yields and using fewer inputs.
