Agriculture & food security

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (World Food Summit, 1996).

While this definition of food security takes availability and agricultural production into account, it also highlights the importance of access difficulties and the link between hunger and poverty or social factors.

Food Security, Economic Accessibility and Agricultural Availability

The economic aspect of food insecurity is essential. The right to food has been acknowledged since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1948. However, it is not easily translatable into economic rules and political decisions.

The right to food is included in the constitutions of more than 20 countries and 145 states have ratified the 1966 International Pact regarding economic, social and cultural rights, which expressly invites the signatories to legislate for the right to adequate nutrition. However, this right to food raises thorny questions.

Food security is a global governance issue. This is the meaning of the United Nations’ first Millennium Development Goal, confirmed at the World Summit on Food Security held on November 16th - 18th, 2009, regarding reducing the number of undernourished people by half by 2015. Food security requires a financial effort, estimated by the FAO at 44 billion USD per year, which must, however, be included in a broader political framework, a genuine Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security.

Countries are confronted with the challenge of protecting their populations in the face of food crises. Famines generally affect the most vulnerable countries, in which certain fragile populations are less capable of resisting economic or climate shocks or conflicts. Poverty and malnutrition are fertile ground for the appearance of food crises.

Prevention now plays an essential role in targeting the neediest populations and preparing emergency responses included food aid. It is also a means for combating maternal and infantile malnutrition which persistently affects these social categories.

The availability of agricultural products plays an essential role. First of all because it guarantees local, and therefore quick, access to agricultural resources, with adequate redistribution systems. Secondly, because the poorest populations are majoritarily in rural areas and any improvements in agricultural production should benefit them. Lastly, because food security has a strategic dimension that certain agricultural producer organizations promote under the term “food sovereignty.” This issue involves national security, leading to refocusing the right to food at the state or community of states level. Agricultural policies are therefore a major issue for food security.

Three domains involving public assistance are fundamental in favoring better supplies:

 regulating markets that, according to the choice to participate in global trade leads to more or less liberal provisions and measures favoring interior markets operating effectively without being disrupted by the instability in international prices. From whence the interest of regional policies;

 preserving natural resources and productive capital. Endemic risks or the occurrence of food crises and changing ecological conditions due to climate change must be prevented by specific investments and alert schemes;

 an effort in research and service innovation. This approach involves providing the public goods of secure living conditions, the availability of preserved agro-ecological capital, and technical and economic knowledge.

Reinforcing French Commitments in Global Food Security

In response to the significant and sudden increase in the price of food commodities in 2007-2008 and the social movement that caused, France reinforced its commitments with regards to food security. The CICID’s (Comité interministériel de la coopération et du développement or Interministerial Committee for Cooperation and Development) “Agriculture and Food Security” sector strategy adopted in 2005, is based on two choices that are still pertinent:

 concentrating efforts on peasant agricultures that best promote labor and natural resources, and are the most adaptive (40% of public assistance to agricultural development in 2007);

 reducing the vulnerability of rural populations through local investment and preventing crises to combat exclusion and stabilize populations (60%)

Since 2008, France has made a new commitment to agricultural development and food security, both politically and financially. France’s assistance in the agriculture sector has followed a generally decreasing trend (10% of APD in 2001, 5.4% in 2007) even if it has remained above the average in OECD countries (3%). In early 2008, France proposed a global partnership for agriculture and food security. During France’s presidency of the European Union, an additional facility for food security in the amount of one billion euros (over 3 years) was adopted jointly by the Parliament and the Council. At the bilateral level, food aid was increased to €51 billion in 2008 (compared to €32 billion in 2007).

Lastly, France supports the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), who, with its partners, the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), and the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel, has committed to formulating and finalizing a regional agricultural policy.

^{Updated on 04.02.10}