Planting Some New Thoughts

International Cooperation minister Bev Oda flies to Rome shortly for the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) food summit.  As such gatherings go, it doesn’t compare with its more noted cousins, such as the G8 or G20 summits, yet Oda heads to Italy to deal with one of the most crucial challenges facing the planet.Presently, a record one billion people are now hungry worldwide and recent reports claim that number will increase significantly if governments don’t spend more on agriculture and food security.  The FAO itself reports that 30 countries now require emergency aid, with 20 of those being in Africa itself.When a child dies every six seconds due to malnutrition, you know there’s a problem.The issue is: What’s the solution?  In Canada, along with other nations, the price of food is spiraling. We all know it, feel it, yet we can still head down to the local supermarket and shop just a bit more frugally.  For those in the poorest countries, it could well lead to malnutrition at least, starvation at worst.  When an average family in Somalia, who spent $92 for basic foods in 2007 but now spends $171 for the same goods, it's clear the issue is getting more urgent.And so Ms. Oda heads to Rome with a food security future that is unclear.  As a rule, such summits barely move the goalposts; promises are made by the developed world that are most often unfulfilled.  Food prices and fuel allocations are at dangerous levels because of a lack of proper investment in past decades.  Food just seemed so cheap and plenteous that real innovate thinking and allocation of aid dollars didn’t seem that necessary.  Well, we’re now paying the price for that neglect and it’s reaching the critical stage.So, with food prices up 80% since 2002, what can be done?  Oda went a long way to providing relief by untying food aid from the designs of the countries that donated it, thereby providing more growing opportunities in those regions of the world where the need was the greatest.  But that was only a good first step.  The next would be to fulfill the promises made at the G8 summit in Italy this past summer to spend $20 billion (US) on food development.  We're not talking about just the gifting of food, but rather the kind of investment that sees to proper irrigation techniques, food storage capabilities, credit provision to local growers, greater assistance to smaller farms and innovation in crop rotation.But there is more than can be done.  The unprecedented thirst for biofuels has meant that much needed land that could go to the production of consumption foods is instead being harvested for the corn that feeds the energy sector.  Because many of the donor nations have significant biofuel industries (including Canada), such consideration might never make it to the table.  To be sure, there will be the ceremonial wording around such issues, but they rarely lead to concrete action.  Canada could take a lead here.With the United Nations now predicting that the world population will reach 9.1 billion by 2050 before it starts leveling off, how they are fed will become of paramount concern.  While we spend roughly 10% of our incomes on food, those in Third World allocate over half of their resources to the purchase of necessary food items.  There is little room for them to maneuver.  Ever-increasing food prices will devastate such families.Minister Oda has shown that she comprehends the challenge in front of Canada’s own responsibility for food donation; in fact, she seems somewhat empowered by the challenge.  My own difficulties with CIDA have been recounted often enough in these pages for people to know that I fret over the future of the agency.  Yet in this area of food, Canada has taken a clear lead.  Our hopes and prayers go with the minister as she seeks to avert what is clearly an emerging catastrophe.