U.N. urges food aid reforms to combat hunger
MILAN, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Food aid programmes need to be overhauled to strengthen the long-term campaign against world hunger, the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday.
Emergency aid has saved millions of lives, but such help provided over longer periods might destabilise markets, create dependency on imports and delay reforms needed to lift domestic output, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a report.
"Reforms to the international food aid system are necessary but they should be undertaken giving due consideration to the needs of those whose lives are at risk," FAO said in its report on the state of food and agriculture in 2006.
"Whenever possible, it is always better to teach and help people to fish rather than to give them fish," FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said.
About 854 million people around the world lack enough food to lead active and healthy lives and more than 90 percent of them are chronically hungry, the FAO said.
International food aid currently provides about 10 million tonnes of commodities a year worth some $2 billion to about 200 million needy people.
Food aid needs to focus on emergencies and target only those who really need it, while longer-term efforts should aim at building the funds, skills and other conditions required to revive local agriculture and trade.
If all food aid was equally distributed among the world's 850 million under-nourished people, it would provide less than 12 kg per person.
"Clearly, food aid is far too small to provide food security for all of the people in need," the FAO said.
REFORMING LONG-TERM PROGRAMMES
"Although the moral imperative to provide assistance to people suffering from extreme hunger is undeniable ... some ask whether such aid may in fact be counterproductive to longer-term sustainable reductions in hunger and poverty," the agency said.
FAO urged donors to provide aid in the form of cash or food coupons rather than food shipments when food was available locally and raise funds for local development rather than spend money on delivering their own products to recipient countries.
The world's leading food donors spend as much as half of their food aid budgets on domestic processing and shipping by national carriers and a third of the global food-aid budget, or some $600 million, was wasted because aid was tied to specific conditions, FAO said.
Food aid had dropped to less than 3 percent of total world cereals trade in recent years from about 10 percent in the 1970s but still accounted for 5-10 percent of net food imports in recipient countries.
For some crisis-stricken countries food aid might account for a major part of available supplies, as happened in North Korea and Eritrea in 2001-20003, when food aid made up 22 and 46 percent of supply respectively.
"In the long term, the focus should be on preventive measures aiming at an increase in the security of production ... in particular through investment in water control and rural infrastructure, but also through access to inputs and credit,"
Diouf said.
((Reporting by Svetlana Kovalyova, editing by Bernard Halloran))
