More than 1.4 billion of the world’s people live on less than $1.25 a day. Most are women. The United Nations estimates that the 2008 spike in food costs pushed another 100 million to the edge of starvation. Back in 1970, the industrialized nations agreed to contribute 0.7% of their gross national income as Official Development Assistance to the world’s poorest nations; few rich nations honored this pledge.
In 2005, a global aid conference in Paris promised much but delivered little. In August 31–September 1, 2008, the world’s nations again convened—this time in Accra—to revisit the problem of global poverty. A Parallel Conference drew more than 600 representatives from 325 civil society organizations (CSOs) from 88 countries. Instead of using the yardsticks of industrial production and trade, CSOs gathered in Ghana called for truly “effective aid” that would reduce poverty and inequality, support human rights and democracy, protect the environment and promote gender equality.
PAN Africa Steering Committee member Simplice Davo Vodouhe reports that a workshop on the findings of the UN’s path-breaking International Agricultural Assessment (IAASTD) drew “participants from Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, India, Malaysia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and the Philippines.” Professor Carol Markwei, from Ghana’s Lagon University, noted “agricultural research cannot be left guided by market forces alone…. There is a need to organize another forum during which the IAASTD results must be fully discussed.”
A Parallel Conference workshop on “Feeding Africa with Better Agriculture” faulted the “new Green Revolution for Africa” for introducing foreign technologies “without an in-depth assessment” of their “impact on health, the environment.” The workshop praised the IAASTD’s 22 Findings for recommending “strengthening the small-scale farm sector [by investing in] agro-ecological farming and… ecologically resilient systems”—an approach “clearly in line with the viewpoints” of many farmers and NGOs who believe that “Africa can feed itself through ecological agriculture” and that small farmers, “most of whom are women, are the key to Africa’s food security.”
The UK Food Group report, “More Aid for African Agriculture,” argues: “A new agricultural agenda should give priority to the local control of food provision that would realize the Right to Food, rather than using agriculture as an ‘engine of economic growth.’”
The big question, Food Group’s Patrick Mulvany says, is will governments “listen to the advice and demands of small-scale farmers who feed the continent? Or will they continue to use Agriculture Aid to promote globalization and the production of food and fuel, primarily for the rich?”
PAN’s Marcia Ishii-Eiteman (a lead author on the IAASTD Global Report) emphasizes the point: “The donor countries who just convened in Accra should take as a starting point the comprehensive set of policy options laid out by the IAASTD, and immediately redirect investments towards the ecologically-based, productive, healthy and resilient farming on which our future depends.”