Statement by Mr Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Mr Chairperson,
Mr President,
Mr Executive Director,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have great pleasure in addressing this opening session of IFAD’s Twenty-seventh Governing Council. FAO, IFAD and WFP shared a single platform at Monterrey and continue to speak with a single voice on these issues in the shared fight against poverty and hunger in the world.

FAO and IFAD have continued to broaden and strengthen their collaboration. The IFAD President and I have met on a number of occasions during the year in order to deepen our cooperation, and our Deputies also meet on a regular basis.

There is also deepening of the working-level relationships between staff of IFAD and FAO. In addition to the long-standing joint work with IFAD and the FAO Investment Centre, the major technical divisions of the Organization are collaborating with IFAD in the field. Just to name a few, IFAD and FAO are implementing together Integrated Production and Pest Management Farmer Field Schools in Eastern Africa. We are also working jointly with NGOs to adapt participatory approaches to community-based management of seeds and genetic resources. We are collaborating on organic production of medicinal, aromatic and dye plants for poverty alleviation in marginalized communities in South Asia. IFAD and FAO have been increasingly working together on capacity-building and training in socio-economic and gender analysis but also on developing an agriculture sector response strategy for mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS on and food security. In that framework IFAD and FAO are studying labour saving technologies and practices for farming under conditions of labour stress.

The list of our common undertakings is long, but the few examples to which I have referred demonstrate the willingness and commitment on the part of both institutions to combine our comparative advantages.

Mr Chairperson,
Ladies and Gentlemen.

On the occasion of the World Food Day 2003 FAO, IFAD, WFP and IPGRI together with NGOs, issued an important joint statement to promote the International Alliance Against Hunger. We agreed to join forces, and to bring on board other partners, to eliminate the scourge of hunger.

One of the objectives of the IAAH is to advocate greater resource flows into developing country agriculture. In the context of the Anti-hunger Programme, unveiled at the World Food Summit: five years later, FAO estimates that, worldwide, some US$24 billion per year is required to achieve the World Food Summit goal of reducing by half the number of hungry people by 2015: US$ 8 billion for food aid and commercial loans, US$ 8 billion from developing countries, and another US$ 8 billion through concessional loans from international financing institutions and bilateral assistance from developed countries which, in 2002, provided US$ 318 billion of support to their farmers.

Despite, the commitments renewed at the World Food Summit: five years later, there are no concrete signs of changes in the declining trend of resources to agriculture. All things being equal, the goal of 2015 will be achieved only by 2150.

FAO is therefore organizing jointly with regional development banks Round Tables on Financing for Agricultural Development, bringing together international financing institutions, regional banks with ministers for agriculture and finance, at the FAO Regional Conferences this year.

In cooperation with member countries, FAO is updating the long-term vision of agricultural development and food security strategies, prepared after the 1996 World Food Summit. It is also preparing medium-term investment programmes for each country, and bankable projects in priority areas like water control and rural infrastructure. At regional level, it has prepared and started to implement regional programmes of food security in cooperation with regional economic unions. Projects to fund this activity have been approved under the FAO Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP), and the FAO Investment Centre is leading their implementation , working closely with the Rome based Agencies, the World Bank and regional financing institutions.

Mr Chairperson,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to underscore here FAO’s determination to continue to expand its collaboration with the IFAD for the benefit of their common Member Nations and to extend to the Council every good wish for success in its deliberations.

Thank you for your kind attention.