Invest oil money in food, UN says DUUUUUHHHHHH
By Heba Saleh in Cairo
Published: March 6 2008 01:54 | Last updated: March 6 2008 01:54
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has called on the oil-producing countries of the Middle East to invest more of their oil windfalls in developing agriculture in their region, in order to address the serious threat to food security posed by water scarcity and climate change.
Jacques Diouf, FAO director-general, told ministers at the organisation’s Near East regional conference in Cairo that oil-producing countries, most of which are net importers of food, would benefit from investing in agriculture in neighbours such as Sudan and other north African countries, which have both land and water resources.
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“Hence the importance for these countries ... [to] consider the possibility of investing in some of their sister countries ... to ensure the security of their supply ... and in the same vein to help the agricultural development of these countries, which would be a win-win situation.”
Mr Diouf said investment in agriculture remained low in most of the Near East region, which according to the FAO’s categorisation includes 32 countries from Morocco eastwards to central Asia. He said it was crucial that more resources should go to agriculture and that the level of external aid to the sector had been falling since 1995.
According to the FAO, the number of undernourished people in the Near East increased from 33m in the early 1990s to 104m by 2004.
Water scarcity is a main constraint on agriculture in the region, which has only 2 per cent of global fresh water resources and 11 per cent of global population.
The FAO meeting repeated warnings that climate change is expected to make the situation worse, as changing rainfall patterns and global warming mean that more water is lost through evaporation.
Mr Diouf described the threat to food security in the region as serious, pointing out that it had some of the world’s biggest importers of cereal.
“It is a difficult balance for governments to respond to the need of their populations by importing food at very high prices, and also to ensure that the poorest of their populations get access to food at reasonable prices,” said Mr Diouf.
