Message from the Director November 2011
October 16th marked the annual occurrence of World Food Day, which this year focused on "Food prices: from crisis to stability." Food Day primarily focused on the impact of insufficient food, traditional food security, and price volatility as problems contributing toward the various challenges globally, ranging from riots to food outages and starvation. Rather than just looking at rapid price swings as being a potential problem, it focused on some of the reasons for the volatility which tie back to production variabilities in countries where that increase in production was not sustainable long-term. It also looked at the population growth that the world is facing and the difficulty in feeding all those new mouths. On biofuels, not unexpectedly, FAO favors elimination of what it considers the current distorted subsidies and policies, because they do end up diverting potential food grains that could be used for food instead of fuel. However biofuels are being produced in countries that are often not suffering from food insecurity, so the real impact is hard to measure.
They also address better information sharing across the world so that countries can make better decisions about risks they are facing, the need to invest in safety nets within countries, and how to boost domestic production and other things related to improving the economic performance related to the food system. All of these are very noble objectives for FAO for World Food Day. To accomplish these, FAO estimates that it will require 80 billion dollars a year, every year, through 2050. The FAO World Food Day report doesn't cover some other important areas such as food safety, food defense, or the public sector infrastructure necessary within countries to meet these production goals. To meet the need to feed the world, as the population grows by 2050, we need to make sure we have the right public health and agriculture infrastructure to ensure that it is done safely, and that it is done without putting any other country at risk from accidental or intentional contamination within their country. From a geopolitical standpoint, it is obviously important we get rid of global hunger and food insecurity. Having 30 or more countries in the world that are insecure in food makes them politically unstable, which places us at risk. But we will still be at risk if they are able to eat, but can’t ensure that the food they are eating or sending to us is safe, or protected from intentional contamination.