Montemayor cites strategies to lick hunger

BANGKOK – Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor proposed six strategies, including giving local communities greater control over their resources, to help reduce the world’s hungry population and raise farm productivity and incomes for the coming years.

In a keynote speech at the opening of the two-day World Food Summit - Asia Pacific regional consultation of NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs) here, Montemayor cited the need for governments to recognize the expertise and resources of NGOs and CSOs particularly in local communities, especially where government services are inadequate.

Being the only agriculture secretary in Asia Pacific to address the two-day meet, Montemayor also asked developing countries to assess "the impact of – and the response to — globalization and trade on agriculture and the food security situation as well as adjustments, if any, that should be made in land reform programs so that smallholder beneficiaries can withstand the pressures of greater competition from freer trade."

Montemayor also asked for improving governance in both government and NGOs/CSOs. He said effective governance should be a primary means of reducing poverty and attaining food security.

The Food and Agriculture Organization estimated the chronically undernourished population at close to 800 million, mostly in the developing world. The optimistic forecast of reducing this to 700 million 10 years from now remains bleak with the declining investments – especially of official development assistance (ODAs) for agriculture and poverty reduction programs of the developing countries, Montemayor stated.

He warned of an imminent danger that "debates on poverty reduction strategies will continue in the world’s corridors of power, delaying commitment to even the most obvious of actions, while amost 800 million people, many of them children, are deprived of the opportunity to live a full life."

FAO defines the problem of food security more as the inability of vulnerable groups to access to food supplies resulting from their lack of purchasing power. The Asia Pacific region is home to 525 million, or 2/3 of the developing world’s chronically hungry, Montemayor said.

"Poverty has effectively reduced people’s food intake and increased the number affected by deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and iodine. The three As of food security – availability, accessibility and affordability–have to be addressed as a whole from the production areas up to the level of the individual consumers," Montemayor said.

Montemayor noted the difficulties experienced by developing countries in opening up their markets. "We have seen cheap, heavily supported developed country exports flood developing country markets to the prejudice of small, resource-poor farmers," he said.

"Small farmer agriculture in developing countries is finding it more and more difficult to survive, much more to compete. These have negatively affected incomes, income distribution and therefore food security," Montemayor said.

ODAs decreased during the 1990s from 0.33 percent to 0.25 percent of the GNP (gross national product) of the Overseas Economic and Cooperation Development (OECD) countries, Montemayor said.

"Commitment among donors to help address humanitarian and development issues has been further eroded by the disillusionment over the alleged ineffectiveness of aid and inability of recipients to absorb it, concerns over corruption, a diminishing geopolitical rationale for assistance and in some cases, the need to apply austerity policies domestically," Montemayor said.