Why talk about Food security within the G20?
There are at present in the world nearly a billion
people suffering from hunger. Reducing by 50% the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015 is a challenge. It is the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG).
Estimated population increase (nine billion by 2050, according to the United Nations) and climate change raise considerable uncertainty about the planet's ability to feed its inhabitants. Farm prices remain highly unstable and competition for access to farmland has never been as fierce.
But food insecurity is not merely a problem of farm production, it is also a question of access to food and poverty reduction. To guarantee food security requires therefore mobilizing a wide range of public policies: agriculture, education, health, energy, trade, research, etc.
Food security has four dimensions:
- availability of foodstuffs from sufficient agricultural production;
- access to food staples with adequate means of subsistence;
- nutritious and healthy quality of food;
- stability of supply to avoid food crises.
Food security is a comprehensive challenge. It cannot be guaranteed without close cooperation between all the players involved.
In June 2008, in response to the food crisis, President Nicolas Sarkozy launched the idea of a "Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition". This Partnership has three objectives:
- Governance, to ensure the coherence of policies impacting food security;
- Knowledge, to mobilise expertise and research on behalf of food security;
- Finance, to reverse the downward trend in financing for food security.
President Sarkozy's initiative placed food security at the top of the international agenda. Other countries have joined this initiative at the G8 Summit held in L'Aquila (July 2009), the G20 Summit held in Pittsburgh (September 2009), and the Rome World Summit on Food security (November 2009). The G8 and the other countries of the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative committed to raise over $20 billion for food security.
The Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition remains a strategic priority for France. It has made possible the reform of the Committee on Food Security in Rome, which is part of the United Nations system, as well as setting up a high-level group of experts to provide essential scientific expertise. The partnership must also enable to ensure equilibrium between the four dimensions of food security, while answering to the new challenges, such as price volatility, land property and climate change.
During the French presidency of the G20, we intend to give priority to the question of commodity price volatility to improve food security. In the agricultural sector, it is important to better regulate markets, improve transparency as well as to prevent and manage the effects of price instability (inventories, insurance). A response will also be needed to the new challenges of climate change and access to farmland.
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