Committment to Global Food Security Sadly Lacking

Sphere: Related Content This post is made up from a number of sources provided by Avaaz, which sometime ago sent a request to join in the call urging world leaders to make good on their promises to tackle the world food crisis by delivering a strong agriculture and food security package for developing countries.

Zunia provided a link to E-Learning: Food Security Information for Action. The link leads to information on the work that the FAO and European Union are doing together on Food Security Information for Decision Making. The goal is the Linking Information and Decision Making to Improve Food Security. The program offers self-paced e-learning, developed by international experts to support capacity building and on-the-job Training and Workshops at national and local food security information systems and networks. You can try a sample lesson "What is Food Security?"

This is one of the times that the effort did not reach its goal either in numbers or in effect. World leaders who met in Rome in November of 2009 for the World Food Summit, backed out on a pledge to fund lifesaving food production. The countries of France, Germany, UK, Italy and Japan all backed out on a $20 billion promise made earlier this year. Only $3 billion or Only 15% of G8 pledge was new money, according to Reuters.

The BBC reports Global Hunger worsening, warns UN's annual report on global food security which confirms that more than one billion people - a sixth of the world's population - are undernourished. This is a scandal with literally millions facing life-threatening hunger especially when the economic crisis has only made the situation wors and billions were found to help out the banks. Although the world produces enough food to feed everyone, according to this report for World Food Day: There is enough food grown in the world for everyone (Op-ed), Oxfam International: chronic hunger across the planet has reached the record-high figure of 1 billion this year.

Change.org, even more recently shifted the focus back to the United States and President Obama with the message: Feed the Hungry Instead of Wall Street

Most of the time, broken promises from politicians barely raise an eyebrow.

But what if a broken promise condemned one sixth of the world's population to chronic hunger?

The world's most powerful leaders, including President Obama, did just that in November when they refused to even show up for the Food Security Summit in Rome.

And just four months after promising $22 billion to fight hunger, the G8 leaders still haven't spelled out how they will fund it.

Don't let world leaders get away with ignoring the problem of global hunger.

Ask President Obama to take the lead and demand world leaders make good on their promise >

- The Change.org Team in partnership with ActionAid

They are working with the anti-poverty organisation ActionAid, which brings over 30 years of knowledge and experience in fighting poverty by applying the following principles:

• Work together with poor people, local partners and organisations in combating poverty
• Focus on fighting against the causes of poverty, not just the results.

Their efforts are prioritized into five areas of work to make the most difference:

1. education,
2. hiv and aids,
3. food rights,
4. emergencies,
5. women and girls and
6. governance.
   

Here is ActionAid's HungerFREE Scorecard which sees small scale farming systems being critical in tackling hunger and poverty:

This is an in-depth investigation into what 50 governments (poor and rich) are doing to tackle the billion hungry. Giving them each scores based on their achievements and policies.

While some of the poorest countries in the world have been able to reduce the number of hungry people, many of the richest countries lag shockingly behind.

More information about ActionAid´s HungerFREE global campaign:

• # The ActionAid HungerFREE campaign aims to put the issue of hunger to the top of the political agenda. The right to food has been sidelined for too long!
• # We are a global campaign that lobbies governments to deliver on their commitment to halve world hunger by 2015.
• # We want to ensure that corporations are held accountable for abuses of the rights to food, water, land and seeds
• # We believe that low-impact farming by small-holder farmers is the best way to tackle hunger. A UN study found sustainable agriculture increased crop yields in Africa by an astonishing 116%.
• # We’re teaming up with hungry people and communities, individual farmers, farmers’ groups, supporters, celebrities, artists, influencers and sympathetic politicians – all with one thing in common – we are determined to end hunger.

There is growing evidence, like this article from Greenpeace, showing that intensive farming models are not only ineffectual in countering hunger, they have a highly damaging affect on our environment. However, as strange as it may sound to some, an argument could be made that it makes more sense to work with businesses than governments. UN meets with food businesses to discuss food security Reuters(11/12)

Private sector, governments, non-government organisations should work together to solve long-term problems in developing countries and eradicate hunger in the world, said Ertharin Cousin, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies in Rome.