Ag history is made, but will there be food fights over ideology and technology? USDA has just announced that Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan will lead the US delegation to the 36th Session of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations Ministerial Conference, which takes place next week in Rome, Italy, Nov. 18-23. Merrigan will also chair the conference, and she's the first woman to ever do so. It's also the first time in twenty years that the US has chaired the conference, an indication that the US is being regarded as the leader in global food security initiatives. President Obama's influence was critical to rounding up international monetary support for global food security initiatives at the L'Aquila G8 in Italy last July, and he's credited with getting member countries to boost pledges from $12 billion to $20 billion.
From Merrigan's statement about the upcoming conference:
FAO is the United Nations' organization whose mandate is to raise levels of nutrition and standards of living, improve agricultural productivity, promote rural development and, ultimately, provide all people at all times with access to the food they need for an active and healthy life. President Obama has committed the United States to a whole-of-government approach to tackle the problem of global food security and the United States will work with more than 130 countries as we move forward with this important effort.
The US State Department has newly identified women and small farmers as the critical populations for providing the world with food, and so that makes Merrigan's choice as chair even more interesting, from a gender perspective. State's new plans to combat world hunger, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laid out in a speech in September, sound very similar to the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF2) initiative that Merrigan chairs in the US (except that KYF2 doesn't focus specifically on women farmers). On the international assistance front in the US, there's a developing focus on supporting in-country local agriculture, and using funding to help boost or create infrastructures, rather than providing aid in the form of flown-in food for countries in need. But under constant debate for internationally-aided Ag is what kind of agriculture: Organic and sustainable, or "modern science," which focuses on the use of genetically modified food crops, such as disease and drought resistant food plants, and the use of chemicals for pesticides and fertilizer, among other things. Merrigan's reputation as a staunch supporter of organics and sustainability (she helped develop the US's organic standards early in her career) doesn't necessarily indicate that that's the path that will be taken for international food security initiatives. Merrigan is well-versed in every kind of Ag, or she wouldn't be Deputy Secretary. The new nomination of Dr. Rajiv Shah to lead the United States Agency for International Development also speaks to Ag technologies being privileged.
FAO has historically come down on the side of Ag tek. In an interview with Daniel Flynn of Reuters last week, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf has (once again) announced that the global food crisis is about to explode, and called for more international assistance for developing countries in order to raise agricultural outputs, and said that "rich nations" needed to raise the share of aid earmarked for agriculture to 17 percent, from 5 percent at present. He's promoting the Ag-tek/gmo platform, calling for disease resistant crops, among other things.
"The fundamentals that led to the crisis in 2007-2008 are almost all still there, except for oil prices," Diouf said, and noted that "climate change shocks like droughts in Africa, strong population growth in developing countries, and use of bio-fuels" has led to the crisis. High oil prices had previously been blamed for food insecurity; but now that the oil prices are lower, the hunger problem continues. 2008 was a banner year for food riots around the world; there was a doubling in prices of staples such as cereals and grains.
At the same time, there have been many different studies that have shown that organic and sustainable agriculture are capable of feeding the world. and many countries in the European Union have banned genetically modified crops from being grown or sold within their own borders.
The FAO Conference meets every two years, and is the supreme governing body of FAO. Members include 191 nations, one member organization, the European Community, and one associate member, the Faroe Islands. Merrigan will be joined by the State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs Nerissa J. Cook, among others. Ahead of the conference, the FAO is holding the World Summit on Food Security, Nov. 16-18.
