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Oct 26, 2011

Reports from Rome: From Policy Table to Field

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Monday, October 24, Rome – They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Well, the proof of the CFS’s achievements – and the impact of the several hundred individuals from civil society participating – will be in how the lives of billions of hungry farmers, food producers, and eaters will be different in the coming years.

Today is International UN Day, a good reminder that this body, and the multilateral system, remains an important pillar for states and non-states to work out international problems. This is still the arena where most important frameworks are built; where policies are set and monitored. So it’s important to be engaged here. If you’re not, you miss the boat from the outset.

But CFS-37 is now finished. It now falls to national and local governments to come up with actions that stem from this meeting – at the country level – to deal with critical issues like price volatility.

How they do that will make all the difference, and will be what really changes lives.

Price Volatility and Food Scarcity
Having heard stories from the Philippines about rice prices that have more than doubled in less than a year, it’s easy to understand just how price volatility can rule food security and hunger. Moreover, food prices have been linked to conflict and toppled governments, sparking regional liberation movements like the Arab Spring.

Benoit Daviron is lead author of the CFS-commissioned Price Volatility Report tabled in Rome. He says the agencies involved in food governance need to get used to dealing with a long-term food crisis. “This is a warning sign of future food scarcity,” he said.

National Actions Key to Stability
One of the main solutions in the hands of governments – and endorsed by the CFS – is the idea of food reserves at the local, national, and international levels. Other ideas involve a suite of precautionary measures to give national governments the authority to regulate power over large scale commodity investments.

Generally there’s a good deal of agreement that agencies governing the food system, and national governments, need to think in food security terms. One Swiss government delegate talked about building an agri-food framework for future conferences – such as the Rio+20 conference scheduled for June 2012. Systemic thinking is the key in food policy which spans so many sectors.

International agencies – like Rome-based Bioversity International – want future international meetings to have some non-negotiable guiding principles that would necessarily be considered, no matter what strategy is adopted. These include biological diversity and food & eco-system resilience. I would add food sovereignty as another guiding principle.

Farmer Solutions
All in all, that’s a lot of pudding to chew. With so much is at stake, it’s encouraging to know that we all worked together to gain some important policy wins in Rome.

For me though, it’s also encouraging to see the farmers involved in USC’s Seeds of Survival program in Africa, Asia, and Latin America continue to work towards achieving their own version of what the food system should look like.

From October 17-21, the UN Committee on World Food Security, The CFS – one of the governing bodies of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – is meeting in Rome to address the issues of food security, food price volatility, and land investment. Our own Faris Ahmed is attending the conference and will be sending regular reports.

Will decision-makers take this important opportunity to act? Watch our website for Faris’s posts this week, or sign up for RSS updates to be notified whenever we update our site.