Activity Background
THE CHALLENGE
The World Food Crisis - a major threat
The world food crisis is a major threat. Now almost one billion people go hungry. Most of them live in rural areas or in slums around cities. Lacking land and jobs, they cannot feed themselves. Global food stocks are at the lowest level in forty years. On top of that, climate change will make harvests insecure and the threat of famines will become more severe, mainly in the global South.
Growing populations and competition for land - an explosive mixture
With globally growing populations and emerging consumer economies in China, India and Brazil, competition for land between food and energy production is rapidly growing. Production costs for oil-dependent agriculture increase, while soils, water and biodiversity are depleted in many regions of the world. Adding the current global financial and economical crisis this is an explosive mixture.
No fair share of global energy and food resources
North America and Europe today consume about 60% of the world's available energy and 40% of the world's food, representing 19% of the world's population. In Europe, about 30% of available food is thrown away. Industrial processing, long distance transport between farms and consumers, as well as wasteful production patterns and consumption habits contribute to this extreme loss. This is unethical and unfair.
Challenging the agro-industrial model: enhancing local food security
Furthermore, agro-industrial meat production, based on feedstuffs which are mainly imported from developing countries or emerging economies compete with sustainable, low input local food systems. The recently published world agriculture report of the United Nations (IAASTD) points out that small scale and organic farming is more productive and less resource consuming as compared to agro-industrial production. However, the Common agriculture policy of the EU still promotes industrialised, high input and export-oriented agriculture.
A Green New Deal for global food sufficiency
In order to avoid rising conflicts on access to energy and food, a GLOBAL GREEN DEAL must tackle these unsustainable and wasteful patterns of food production and consumption and support people in changing lifestyles. In order to achieve a sustainable food system and a fair share of global food resources, the growing pressure on natural resources for food, feed and fuel must be substantially reduced.
Beyond food security and food aid - common food sufficiency
Discussing the concept of common food sufficiency will go beyond the often technical debate on global food security, which does not challenge the problems linked to global food trade and food aid. The conference will focus on the human right to sufficient and healthy food, and it will challenge wasteful food production and consumption patterns. It will include the relevant stakeholders and actors from around the world in this debate.
THE FORMAT
The global video conference experiment
This conference is an experiment which uses videoconferencing in order to connect simultaneous regional conferences dealing with the same issue: How to achieve global food sufficiency. The format will allow avoiding large distance travel. Participants may not be able to communicate as if they were in the same room. But they may better grasp the dimension of the food crisis and agree on possible common action.
With just short time slots for contributions of each region, the conference format demands a high focus on key messages and strict discipline of the participants to respect time limits of their presentations.
The conference will be moderated from the European Parliament in Brussels, but it will offer to the parallel regional conferences in Asia (Manila, Philippines), West Africa (Dakar, Senegal), Latin America (Brasilia, Brazil), and the USA (Washington DC) to manage their one hour input independently.
The one hour slots include 30 minutes for short presentations or internal debates on reasons for food insecurity, possible solutions and suggestions for common global action between the regions.
THE THEMES
The perspective of the Philippines may focus on the question of good governance in the field of food security, the empowerment of small farmers and on the demand for a local and regional stock-keeping system in order to stabilize farm gate prices and agricultural markets.
The West African perspective may demand for the appreciation of alternative food cultures such as family farms, local and regional markets and discuss strategies to make food production systems more sustainable regarding environmental threats.
The European perspective may focus on the negative impact of competitiveness and export oriented EU farm policy and the negative impact of feed imports, as well as on failures in the internal food system – the constant decrease of farm revenues, increased market power of retailers and increased waste of food.
The Brazilian perspective may focus on contradictions and complementarities between family farming based food production and export oriented production of commodities. The assembly of CONSEA on Zero Hunger programme of the government may allow participants to analyse the options for farmers' organisations and consumers to achieve a fair deal
The North American perspective may wish to discuss internal and external food aid and the role of the US farming sector in a global food sufficiency system. The impacts of the current financial crisis as well as the speculation on food commodities on global food security will also be main points.
