Agriculture ministers from 65 countries have said efforts to rid the world of hunger face “immense challenges” as farmers deal with resource scarcity, climate change and loss of soil fertility.
Economic and financial crisis and “excessive” price swings create uncertainty that endangers investment in agriculture, the policy makers gathered in Berlin wrote in a joint statement.
Bloomberg newsagency reports the German agriculture ministry published the statement.
Food production will have to rise 60 per cent between now and 2050 as the world population expands to nine billion, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates.
The FAO estimates about 870 million people were undernourished in 2010-12.
International food prices in the past three years have been higher than ever before, FAO data show.
“We know that we are facing immense challenges,” the ministers wrote, according to Bloomberg.
“We regard the eradication of hunger and malnutrition, and the realisation of the human right to food, as one of the greatest goals in the world.”
The ministers wrote their mission is “to highlight how fundamental agriculture is in contributing towards eradicating hunger and malnutrition.”
As uncertainty puts further agricultural investment at risk, that may in turn reduce the efficiency of the entire food system, the ministers wrote.
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We must enable agriculture to adapt to new conditions, deal with risks and recover quickly from crises.”
Bloomberg reports eradicating hunger and malnutrition would require “deeper” national and international cooperation, according to the statement.
Government, civil society, companies and academia will need to share responsibility to achieve that goal, the ministers wrote.
“Progressive scarcity of natural resources, the negative impacts of climate change, extreme natural disasters, and the loss of genetic diversity and soil fertility prevent agricultural potential from being fully realised,” according to the statement.
The countries represented in Berlin included France, Brazil, India, Japan and Canada.
Bloomberg reports the United States, the world’s biggest farm exporter, was not represented at ministerial level, a list of participants showed.
2 Responses
Something they perhaps do not realise is that sea level rise is going to take out the most fertile soils first – the flood plains such as the Mekong Delta, and the Tweed / Richmond / Clarence Valleys.
Some of these have very little ‘freeboard’ already, & may be lost due to increased extreme weather, even before significant sea level rise.