CONCORD called on MEPs to do more for food security at the European Parliament.
The EU must do more to address global food security, CONCORD told a meeting of the Development Committee of the European Parliament on 18th February. The Parliament’s session on “food and agriculture in the world” hosted the presentation of a UN report entitled The State of Food and Agriculture 2012 by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Stineke Oenema, the chair of CONCORD’s European Food Security Group (EFSG), provided the perspective of development NGOs on the topic of food security.
Kostas Stamoulis, the Director of the Agricultural and Development Economics Division in the FAO who presented the report.
The FAO’s report came to certain key findings.
The CONCORD representative welcomed the FAO’s acknowledgement that smallholder famers are the biggest investors in agriculture, a fact that CONCORD believes should serve as a starting point for strategising on how to achieve global food security.
Speaking directly to the MEPs in attendance, she wasted no time in reminding them of their role in driving the process of ensuring food security and elaborated upon the areas that the EU as a whole should be concentrating on to create a conducive environment that is supportive of small farmers.
She was critical of the fact that despite an EU Council request to the Commission almost three years ago to devise an implementation plan for the Food Security Policy Framework (FSPF), a strong document on food security that was adopted in 2010, no significant progress has been made on the implementation.
With respect to what is currently being worked upon, the Committee of the World Food Security’s (CFS) negotiations and the Commission’s upcoming communication on nutrition were mentioned. The EU was urged to defend a position coherent with a realisation of the right to food in the CFS negotiations while MEPs were requested to produce a report on the coherency with the FSPF vis-à-vis the Commission’s communication on nutrition.
Remarks extended beyond activity in food security policies; the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was criticised for its trade distorting effects that unfairly hinder small farmers in developing areas of the world, as well as suffering from the issue of sustainability as evidenced through the import of soy required for animal feed, a practice which is devastating the environment. To this end, Oenema called for the MEPs voting in plenary next month to include an independent monitoring mechanism within the CAP and redouble efforts to convince of the development impacts of the CAP to their colleagues in the Agriculture committee.
The session then opened to MEPs Charles Goerens (Luxembourg, ALDE and Standing rapporteur on PCD), Ivo Vajgl (Slovenia, ALDE) and Ricardo Cortés Lastra (Spain, S&D) all posing interesting lines of questioning such as the proportion of income that goes to small farmers as a result of higher prices and the pros and cons farmers face with regards to growing only one type of crop against crop diversification. In response to the latter question, Oenema ended the session saying global food wastage is at 30% which highlights the multifaceted nature of the food security debate; the issue stretches far beyond a question of increasing food production.