AMERICAN GIVING | Strengthening communities through generosity
16 April 2008
U.N. Calls for New Food Donations, Predicts Long-term Success
Organization seeks quick action to meet dire needs caused by high food prices
Kansas City, Missouri -- Josette Sheeran, director of the U.N.’s World Food Programme, has asked for donor countries to increase aid for the world’s hungry. At the same time, she said her organization is making progress in building long-term solutions by helping farmers in developing countries.
Citing food costs that have increased by 55 percent in the most recent 10 months and a supply of aid to poor countries that is 40 percent smaller than it was a year ago, Sheeran sounded an alarm at the International Food Aid Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, April 15. Since early March 2008, she said, the price of rice has risen dramatically -- from $460 a metric ton to $780 a metric ton.
Funds devoted by the World Food Programme (WFP) to food purchases have not declined, Sheeran said. But her organization is hampered by rising food costs. Oil price hikes have affected prices of transportation, fertilizer and fuel to run farm machinery. Additionally, food stocks -- including maize, palm oil, oil seed, sugar and cassava -- are being diverted to industrial uses, such as the production of biofuels.
At the same meeting, Gaddi Vasquez, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies, cited climate change and a weakening U.S. dollar as part of the food-supply problem.
The WFP needs donors’ continued assistance to keep the food aid pipelines full of stocks so it can respond quickly to a country’s needs after such events as a war or natural disaster, Sheeran said. She reiterated her call, first made in February, for donors to provide an additional $500 million to supplement the agency’s base 2008 budget of $2.9 billion.
In addition to underscoring the need for more money to purchase enough food at higher prices to feed the world’s hungry, Sheeran also expressed concern about being able to find food to buy. Some suppliers, she said, have backed out of contracts with the WFP, after realizing they can get a higher price elsewhere.
ENDING HUNGER OVER THE LONGER TERM
“We have the ability to scale up quickly” following an emergency, Sheeran said. In some countries, WFP uses vouchers to help hungry people purchase food that is already on shelves but is too expensive for them to buy.
Yet, while WFP always will respond to emergencies, it is going through a “historic change” -- from providing food aid to seeking long-term solutions to help people provide for themselves.
In southern Sudan, for instance, WFP is providing food for work, which goes to workers who are building roads and clearing areas of mines so farmers can get their products to market.
Working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other partners, WFP also is using local purchases to help communities become more independent. In Senegal, for instance, WFP is leveraging local purchases with market access to buy salt from local salt producers who previously exported all of their product. Teaching the producers how to iodize the salt for local and regional use, WFP is helping them create good jobs and addressing Senegal’s goiter problem.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where farmers have been cut off completely from markets because of conflict, WFP uses its buying clout to purchase food from local farmers and distribute it nearby. At the same time, it gives those farmers credit so that they can improve their production.
In Egypt, WFP is helping to design a price stabilization safety net program to help the country deal with its current food-price crisis.
In many parts of Africa, farmers are planting less than before because they cannot afford increasingly expensive inputs, she said. For example, in parts of Kenya, the cost of fertilizer has more than doubled, and farmers are planting one-third less land than they did in 2007. WFP hopes to give some farmers forward contracts so they can get credit for inputs -- like improved seed and fertilizer -- and be assured they will get market value for their crops at harvest. Farmers who do not have the assurance of gaining a profit for their efforts tend to avoid risk, Sheeran said.
Addressing the 10th annual International Food Aid Conference, co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Sheeran said: “Defeating hunger is achievable. It requires no scientific breakthrough.”
