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UN: $6 billion funding for global food crisis
The top United Nations relief official said today that
$6 billion in new funding to tackle the global food crisis has been pledged
following the food security summit that concluded last week in Rome.
“We need to focus both on the immediate needs and on
the longer-term issues starting right now and the focus is on the smallholder
farmers in developing countries,†Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian
Affairs, John Holmes announced. “These are the people who need most help and
where there is the most potential for increasing agricultural productivity and
production.â€
Consensus
The new “Comprehensive Framework for Actionâ€
was reached by consensus among the members of the international task force,
which brings together the heads of the World Bank, the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and key UN agencies.
The
plan focuses on a series of measures to meet immediate needs and also to build
longer-term resilience to food crises in the future. Among the immediate
measures proposed in the plan are increasing nutritional and other feeding
programmes, as well as supplying fertilizers, seeds, animal feed and veterinary
services to help smallholder farmers in the current planting season.
Reduction
The plan also calls for a reduction in export bans on food
commodities, and focuses on the need for much greater investment in agricultural
production in the longer term. Noting that there was broad agreement on the way
forward, Mr. Holmes said the World Bank estimated that global food production
had to rise by at least 50 per cent by 2030 to meet worldwide demand.
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