Joint Press release No.: IFAD/40/08

Brussels/Rome – 9 September 2008. The European Parliament will hear from three UN agencies tomorrow on the current food price crisis. A special meeting of the Development Committee will be discussing proposals to release an extra €1 billion euros from the European Commission to support urgent needs as well as funding seeds and fertilizers for developing countries. As part of the discussions the Executive Director of the WFP Josette Sheeran, the Director-General of the FAO, Jacques Diouf and the Vice-President of IFAD, Kanayo F. Nwanze will tell the committee how the three Rome-based food agencies are working in partnership to respond to high food prices.

The continuing rise in food prices is expected to push about 100 million more people into poverty, nearly 30 million of them in Africa. Food production will need to rise 50 per cent by 2030 to meet growing demand.
The Rome-based UN agencies are collaborating to ensure an effective and efficient response.

At the beginning of June, world leaders and policymakers met at the FAO headquarters in Rome at the High-level Conference on World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy to discuss ways in which to safeguard the world’s most vulnerable populations. The Conference concluded by calling on the international community to increase assistance for developing countries, in particular the least developed countries and those that are most affected by high food prices.

Tomorrow the three UN agencies will also outline their specific responses to the crisis. In August the World Food Programme announced a US$214 million package directed at sixteen hunger hotspots.

With US$104 million, WFP is supporting more than 11 million people in 14 countries particularly hard-hit by high food prices. In addition, the WFP is providing $110 million in the Horn of Africa which includes funds from its emergency reserves, to meet urgent food needs including supplementary feeding programmes for malnourished children. In June, during the World Food Security conference in Rome, WFP announced a US$1.2 billion cash package for 62 countries hit by high food prices.

In addition to US$900 million of ongoing field activities, which are contributing to increase food security worldwide, FAO, through its Initiative on Soaring Food Prices, is active in 78 countries, distributing seeds, fertilizer, animal feed and other farming tools. FAO is working closely together with governments,  farmer’s organizations and NGOs.

FAO also advises governments on policy measures in response to the crisis. Together with WFP, IFAD and the World Bank, FAO is developing short and medium term strategies for countries to respond to the crisis. FAO short-term interventions, financed from its own resources and donor contributions, amount to around $60 million but FAO estimates US$ 1.7 billion is needed to improve small holder farmers’access to agricultural inputs and boost food supplies.

IFAD’s immediate response has been to make available up to US$200 million from existing loans and grants to provide an urgent boost to agricultural production in the developing world. The agency continues to press for rapid and urgent longer-term investment in agriculture to enable the 450 million smallholder farms in developing countries to grow more food, more productively, and thereby increase their incomes and resilience, and respond to the increasing global demand for food. 

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Notes to Editors

• Africa Week at the European Parliament (8-12 September) will be marked by a series of seminars, parliamentary debates, workshops and exhibitions in Brussels. The event is being held as part of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. MPs from Africa and around the world will join MEPs to discuss issues such as immigration, the brain drain and the food crisis.
• A press conference will be organized at the European Parliament Press Room (PHS0A50) in Brussels at 10.30 before the Development Committee extraordinary meeting, with the participation of the WFP, the FAO and IFAD

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IFAD was created 30 years ago to tackle rural poverty, a key consequence of the droughts and famines of the early 1970s. Since 1978, IFAD has invested more than US$10 billion in low-interest loans and grants that have helped over 300 million very poor rural women and men increase their incomes and provide for their families. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency. It is a global partnership of OECD, OPEC and other developing countries. Today, IFAD supports more than 200 programmes and projects in 81 developing countries and one territory.