An Open Letter to the UN Task Force on Food Crisis

Date: 14 October 2008

TO: The UN Task Force on Food Crisis
 
Including FAO, IFAD, OHRLLS, UNDP, UNEP, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, WHO, IMF, World Bank, WTO, Departments of Economic and Social Affairs, Political Affairs, Public Information, Peacekeeping Operations, The Special Adviser on Millennium Development Goals and OECD
 
Dear Members of the Task Force,  
 
On 16 October 2008, the UN, its associated bodies and many governments worldwide will observe the “World Food Day” to draw people’s attention to the problem of hunger and food security. The event is on its 28th year but instead of celebrating the gains from established policies, plans and actions, we are faced today with a ballooning world food crisis. 
 
Hunger and malnutrition have been increasing as a consequence of food unavailability and price hikes. “Food riots” are happening in underdeveloped countries where workers and peasants have become less and less able to afford food. Basic human rights and privileges are being curtailed. 
 

The UN High Level Task Force on Food Crisis came up with its Comprehensive Framework for Action (CFA) in July 2008. The action plan recommended a series of immediate and long-term measures to address the food crisis. We applaud the intention of the Task Force in seeking to promote a “unified response”, prioritized action and coordinated implementation of the plan through giving due and greater attention to agriculture in public policies, strengthening social security systems and increasing public spending and investment on agricultural and rural development especially to smallholder farmers.  
 
However, we are concerned on some of the issues in the CFA. While it agrees that the food crisis and soaring food prices “stem from the cumulative effects of long-term trends”, it does nothing to review these trends and, as a result, ends up recommending and initiating their replication. The CFA focuses a great deal on linking smallholder farmers to the market, without dwelling on the fact that in the current inequitable market scenario, the smallholder farmers do not reap the benefits from any increase in farmers’ production and higher prices but it is only the corporations which immensely profit from it. There are no adequate recommendations to restructure the market.  
 
The CFA’s overarching stress on trade liberalization in agriculture, particularly when it states that the Task Force “will encourage nations to immediately reduce or eliminate restriction in imports, exports and movement of fertilizers…”, will only give way to further corporate control over agriculture. We are equally concerned about the CFA’s recommendation on seeking a rapid completion of the Doha round of trade negotiations under the WTO. These talks have been stalled on the issue of high subsidies to agriculture by the US and the EU. The inability of the UN and other international bodies to break down the obstinacy of the bigger powers on this issue, is a sore point.  
 
In not including the smallholder farmers and their representatives in the development of the CFA, the Task Force does not draw on their valuable inputs based on their inherent knowledge, experience and abilities, and tends to treat them as mere recipients of its recommendations on a crisis that besets them the most. 
 
These and other concerns in the CFA lead us to believe that it will remain largely ineffective and actually strengthen the power structures, approaches and practices which have over time resulted in systematically undermining the agriculture systems and infrastructures of the people worldwide, degraded the environment, denuded agro-biodiversity, invalidated small scale farming, diverted landuse to produce cash crops, agrofuel or other international commodities, destroyed the self-sufficiency of the small farmers and marginalized them, and led to forced eviction of the people from their land, including prevention of their access to livelihood resources.
 
Indeed, in response to the food crisis, seeds, fertilizers and other basic inputs are already being supplied to the small farmers in critical countries under the FAO’s Initiative on Soaring Food Prices, as well as by the World Bank and other international agencies. We are concerned about any such supply in times of crisis without proper control and investigation, as it only opens an easy backdoor for the TNCs to introduce their hybrid seeds and products in the region.  
 
We, the signatories of this letter, belonging to organizations and institutions representing farmers, agricultural labour, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, urban workers and poor, call for comprehensive measures that strike at the roots of these problems, and stipulate the following:
 

• Recognize people’s basic Right to Food, by providing adequate, affordable and safe food for all. Food is a biological need and necessary for survival and hence a basic right. But there are more people today suffering from hunger and malnutrition – over 3 billion – than ever before.
• Promote and support bio-diversity based ecological food production and community-based seed and grain storage systems.  These systems offer higher productivity and income to help improve and create rural livelihood by spurring diverse economic activities. However, these systems need strong institutional support in terms of integrated financial, technical and marketing and other support systems. Local consumption and local markets should be given priority.
• Develop local food markets, and strengthen public procurement, distribution and stocking systems for food. Increasing control of corporations over food distribution, have broken down local food market systems, made people’s accessibility to adequate and safe food extremely vulnerable even in normal times, and increased its cost through transportation over long distances.
• Ensure that food production and consumption are more equitable and beneficial for women and girls. Women’s labour, knowledge and hard work feed their families and communities, but they face extreme discrimination. The destruction of local food production, procurement, storage and consumption systems, have led to further inequities for the women and girls in the society. Women must be integrated into the agricultural and rural environment agenda and programmes for equal rights and equitable share of resources.
• Stop indiscriminate agricultural landuse change from food crops to agrofuels and other global commodities. The industrialization and corporatization of development in general and agriculture in particular, have encouraged large scale landuse changes and diverted fertile land away from producing food for the people to the production of agrofuels and other global commodities, or converted for large-scale recreational centres and special economic zones thereby worsening people’s food systems and the climate.
• Take WTO out of agriculture. It is apparent that the agriculture trade agreement platform of the WTO has been a major culprit in taking agriculture out of people’s control and giving it to the corporations. Its talks have also miserably failed. The food crisis is being taken as an opportunity to revive the failed talks and its ruinous implementations.
• Control speculative trading and stop futures contract trading. Agriculture is an issue of life, culture and livelihood, not trade. Seeds and crops are food, not commodities. Land is a resource for local food production, not for global speculation and grabbing.
• Implement genuine agrarian, fisheries, forestry and pastureland reforms. Global food crisis cannot be addressed by repeating the policies, practices and mistakes of the last fifty years, but through true reforms encompassing agriculture, land and water resources and rural development.
• Realise People’s Food Sovereignty as the framework for food production and distribution, and for national and international trade and investment policies. The solution to what appears to be a permanent food crisis lies in the people being in control of agriculture, their productive livelihood resources and distributive practices.

 
We therefore declare 16th October 2008 as WORLD FOODLESS DAY – a Global Day of Action to commemorate the people’s struggle for food sovereignty, and our unending resolve to battle the world food crisis.
 
We hope that you will take from this food crisis, a clear view of the food and agriculture related distortions, unfairness and unsustainability in the world. We also hope that this crisis will lead to genuine and closer participation, consultation and involvement of the small farmers’ representatives in dialogues and policy determination to pave way for solutions that rest on the foundations of People’s Food Sovereignty and which will benefit the small-farmers and the poor of the world.
 
Originally posted Oct. 7, 2008 by Keystone