Food disappointment

The United Nations World Summit on Food Security in Rome had all the signs and trappings of a world-class summit: helicopters buzzing overhead for days, whole city blocks roped off to traffic, hundreds of police on guard, and crowds of well-heeled officials from around the globe.

Inside the huge, modern, monolithic Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters, just across the street from the ancient Roman Circus Maximus, leaders and diplomats from around the globe spoke one after another of the tragedy of hunger, which now affects over a billion people, more than ever before.

Yet despite pleas for action from everyone from Pope Benedict XVI to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, no new commitments have come - neither for more money to bolster agriculture in developing nations, nor to the UN's proposed date of 2025 as the target for ridding the world of malnutrition. Instead, in a watered down statement, already released on the first day of the summit, nations pledged to try to cut world hunger in half by 2015 and said that eradicating hunger should come "at the earliest possible date."

G-8 no-show

The summit comes a year after sharp rises in food prices, largely caused by financial speculation on crops such as wheat, corn and rice, which triggered mass hunger and food riots in many poor countries.

Prices have since dipped, but larger concerns loom: global warming is leading to a steady reduction in arable land; foreign companies are buying up land from poorer African, Asian and Latin American nations to set up agri-businesses for crop exportation; and there's continued speculation on food prices in the financial markets.

While 60 world leaders were present, notably absent from the summit were the leaders of the G-8 countries, with the exception of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. They are the ones who have the budgets and enough clout to eliminate hunger. So far, the G-8 countries have promised about $20 billion (13.4 billion euros) to go toward agricultural development over the next few years, though few have given details about where the money will go. The amount is a far cry from a commitment of $44 billion a year UN chief Jacques Diouf had hoped to secure - the amount he says is needed to make hunger a thing of the past.

Africa's strongmen rules rail against the West

While G-8 leaders stayed away, rulers from some of Africa's most repressive regimes used the podium at the conference to chastise the West. Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi told delegates that Western colonizers looted Africa and should pay aid money to Africa not as an act of charity, but as retribution for past crimes.

On the second day of the summit, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe called for the West to lift sanctions against his country, which he said were designed by "neo-colonialist enemies." He called the sanctions, imposed by the West on his government for confiscating much of the white-held land in Zimbabwe, "illegal and inhuman."

Outside the UN conference, critics voiced and performed their protest

Across the street from the conference, human rights and farmers' groups protested sporadically throughout the three days. Small farmers' groups put on street theatre, re-enacting scenes of land-grabbing by foreign companies, with thugs bearing sticks pretending to threaten the small land owners.

"It's unprecedented," said Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN, an NGO which supports small farmers around the world and which was involved in the performance. "We're seeing over 40 million hectares of prime farm land being taken over by financial investors and rich states. We're talking about $100 billion that's being mobilized. Essentially financial investors have seen that in the food crisis there's money to be made in farmland and they're buying it up very cheap."

In Ethiopia alone, says Kuyek, 300,000 hectares of agricultural land were recently sold to an Indian company for $1 per hectare.

While the issue of land-grabbing was on the agenda at the food summit, Kuyek says it didn't address the need to protect land sovereignty from investors attempting to make a quick buck.

Other NGOs working in the field of food security also expressed their dismay at the summit. Oxfam's spokesman Matt Grainger called the event a "massive wasted opportunity."

Even UN head Jacques Diouf expressed disappointment in the lack of progress made towards ending hunger.

Author: Megan Williams, Rome
Editor: Michael Lawton