The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf on Wednesday appealed to world leaders to meet together next year to design a new agricultural order and find 30 billion U.S. dollars a year to eradicate hunger from the Earth once and for all.
Addressing a special session of the FAO's 191-member-nation governing conference, Diouf said the world summit was needed because "after more than 60 years since FAO's foundation it is essential to create a new system of world food security."
"We must correct the present system that generates world food insecurity on account of international market distortions resulting from agricultural subsidies, customs tariffs and technical barriers to trade, but also from skewed distribution of resources of official development assistance and of national budgets of developing countries," he said.
The summit, proposed for the first half of 2009, "should lay the ground for a new system of governance of world food security and an agricultural trade that offers farmers, in developed and developing countries alike, the means of earning a decent living," he said.
"We must have the intelligence and imagination to devise agricultural development policies together with rules and mechanisms that will ensure not only free but also fair international trade," the director-general said.
He said the summit should also "come up with 30 billion dollars per year to build rural infrastructure and increase agricultural productivity in the developing world."
Earlier this month in his message of congratulations to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, Diouf suggested that the United States take a lead in convening the summit.
At the proposed meeting, heads of the state and government should also agree to create an "Emergency Intervention Fund" to provide rapid-reaction resources to boost food production in poor countries heavily dependent on food imports, Diouf said.
FAO's five-day governing conference, from Nov. 18-22, is expected to adopt a three-year Immediate Plan of Action for a wide-ranging reform of the organization, following an Independent External Evaluation conducted in 2006-2007. The main elements of the plan include a stronger focus on the agency's core objectives and functions, enhanced governance and oversight, and improved performance through leaner and more accountable management procedures.
"The intention is to reform FAO so that it can play a more effective role in world food security," Diouf said.
Source:Xinhua
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