MAKE HUNGER HISTORY

As part of the MakePovertyHistory events in Edinburgh, the UK Food Group and Greyfriars Kirk invite you to start the weekend with dynamic presentations and discussion on the impact of current trade and aid policies on farmers worldwide and how to...

Venue: Greyfriars Kirk, Greyfriars Place, Edinburgh, between Candlemaker Row and Forrest Rd. Just a 5 minute walk from the Grassmarket area and on the White Band Rally route. Click Here for Maps and Directions

Start the weekend with dynamic presentations and discussion on how to make HUNGER history. At a time when global hunger is increasing – more than 850 million people go to bed hungry each night – unfair trade rules, crippling debt and declining aid to sustainable agriculture are eliminating the smallholder farmers, livestock keepers and fisherfolk worldwide who feed the world and protect its environment.

Find out, with farmers from Asia, Africa and the UK, how the policies of the UK Government, EU and intergovernmental bodies like the World Trade Organisation must change in order to stop the destruction of the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and other food producers and make sure everyone can eat properly – that they can realise their Right to Food.

Learn, as one of the speakers at this event, Colin Tudge, says in the sub-title to his book So Shall We Reap, "what's gone wrong with the world's food – and how to fix it".

“It would be a sad irony if at the same time as doing so much to alleviate poor countries' debts you talked the World out of taking agriculture seriously.”
Letter to Tony Blair from Christopher Jones, UK Farmer, and Richard Frazer, Greyfriars Kirk.

“A mi me gustaria que se mantenga la agricultura; que se sigan produciendo alimentos sanos, diversos, suficientes para toda la poblacion”. (I would like agriculture to survive; so that we can continue to produce healthy, diverse, sufficient food for everyone.) Marcial Lopez, Nicaraguan farmer*

“My vision of food and farming futures is simple: a farming that is not dependent on external inputs, is self-regenerative, can provide multiple securities to people. Multiple in terms of food, fodder, fuel, fibre, nutrition, livelihood and ecological security.”
P V Satheesh, Deccan Development Society, India*

* Quotes from an electronic conference on the Future of Food and Small Scale Producers organised by IIED, CIIR, Small and Family Farms Alliance, the UK Food Group and TEBTEBBA

“Le marché mondial ne peut éradiquer la faim et la pauvreté” ( The world market cannot eradicate hunger and poverty). Message to Prime Minister Blair and members of G8 from ROPPA, the West African Network of Smallholder Farmers' Organisations and Agricultural Producers.

New agricultural policies are needed that increase democracy in localised food systems - Food Sovereignty policies – to ensure that 6.5 billion people today and 9 billion tomorrow are provided with sufficient, healthy food. These policies will:

• regulate international trade in favour of local markets, farmers and consumers;

• implement the fundamental Right to Food for all peoples and ensure Farmers' Rights;

• ensure equitable access to land, waters, GM-free seeds, livestock breeds and agricultural biodiversity for threatened farmers, herders and fisherfolk and landless families;

• promote sustainable, GM-free, localised food production, agroecology and sustainable fisheries.

HOW TO FIND GREYFRIARS KIRK

Greyfriars stands near the south end of George IV Bridge, at the junction with historic Candlemaker Row

Greyfriars is within easy walking distance of other tourist attractions such as Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Mile, St Giles, the National Library and it is directly opposite the new Museum of Scotland and the Royal Museum of Scotland. It is on bus routes 2/12, 23, 24, 27, 28-29, 40-42 and 45-47and tour buses.

“Blair initiative: can and must do better”

MESSAGE FROM ROPPA

THE WEST AFRICAN NETWORK OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS' ORGANISATIONS AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCERS

ROPPA , the West African network of smallholder farmers' organisations and agricultural producers, is sending a clear message to Tony Blair and members of G8 saying that their plight, the survival of agriculture and the future food security of Africa will not be achieved through a skewed World Market: African countries, they argue, need food sovereignty policies.

ROPPA is calling for:

• an immediate halt to negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements until there is a level playing field in terms of trade;

• the inclusion of smallholder farmers in developing and implementing plans and programmes for poverty reduction – something they say has been notably absent in the PRSP (Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers) process; and

• coherent policies that will address the espoused concern for Africa and will change the inequitable world order, which is controlled overwhelmingly by G8 countries and their corporations.

Attached is the ROPPA statement in French and an unofficial translation in English.

PO Box 100, London, SE1 7RT. Tel: 020 7523 2369.
Fax: 020 7620 0719. Email: ukfg@ukfg.org.uk . Website: www.ukfg.org.uk

Réseau des Organisations Paysannes et des Producteurs Agricoles de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (ROPPA)

______________________________________________________________________________________________

UNOFFICIAL TRANSLATION

MESSAGE FROM THE WEST AFRICAN NETWORK OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS' ORGANISATIONS AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCERS TO PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR AND MEMBERS OF G8

Ten years after the alarm bells were sounded by the World Food Summit in 1996, there has been little improvement of the food situation for a large number of the world's population. They are still more than eight hundred and forty (840) million people who suffer from hunger and, two (2) billion who have nutritional deficiencies. The objective to reduce by half the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015 cannot be achieved on current trends.

The situation is particularly serious in Africa. Millions of people are food insecure and live in daily poverty. More than half the population of Sub-Saharan African has less than 1 US dollar a day to feed themselves and develop. Three quarters of these poor come from rural areas. Thus, hunger and poverty affects mainly the family farmers who provide most of the region's basic foodstuffs.

The reasons given to explain hunger and poverty are known and often repeated. To mitigate these, the international community has made multiple calls for help and renewed commitments to Africa, the only continent where poverty is not declining. All kinds of initiatives, strategies, plans and programmes have been developed during the past twenty years: structural adjustment programmes, support for good governance, programmes to fight against poverty, support for liberalization and privatization, Lomé agreement, access to markets...! It's hard to keep track!

All of this has cost the international community billions of dollars, it's said! But what has it meant for agricultural producers? What has been the impact? All the evidence indicates that qualitative improvements in the systems of production are far from being assured. For West Africa, subject to repeated droughts, only 1.2% of the cultivated area is irrigated compared with 19.6% in the rest of the world. In spite of the poverty of our soils, we have only 0.1 kg of fertiliser for each hectare whereas much of the rest of the world uses 100 kg/ha. So far as investments in our production are concerned, we have difficulty in raising even $20 from the banks for each hectare. Control of diseases and insects is simply out of our reach; the recent locust invasion testifies to this. Fortunately we have our local seed varieties and our indigenous knowledge that under no circumstances do we want threatened by genetically modified varieties or innovations that have been insufficiently tested and could have potentially the disastrous consequences for ourselves and our thankfully still healthy environment!

The Paradox: an Agricultural Africa which depends on outsiders to feed itself

In spite of difficult climatic conditions, natural disasters, multiple conflicts, the absence of support and protection measures, we increased our agricultural production by 20 to 80% between 1990 and 2002, more than North America (from 0% to 20%) or Eastern Europe which fell by up to an estimated 50%. Moreover, as is known, our products are the principal source of the monetary incomes of our countries. Our capitals and large cities were built on our labour!

But our quality of life has basically not changed! We still have difficulties in accessing basic social services. Our young people no longer want to stay in our villages nor to devote themselves to rural professions! Quite simply because agriculture enterprises are no longer able to feed the people who depend on them or to ensure livelihoods for families and support children! To get cash, we have had to replace a part of our food crops with production for export, destined to supply the factories in your countries of the North.

This situation has made West Africa a net importer of foodstuffs when, hardly ten years ago, it was a net exporter. From 1993 to 2002, the sub-region increased its cereal imports by 60% (18.2% for the rest of the world) whereas its production increased only by 16.3% (6% - the world average). This massive importation, which is largely supported by food aid and distortions in the international market, is the result of bad choices in agricultural policy and the application of a dogmatic liberalism preached by the International Financial Institutions with the blessing of the donor countries, including those of G8.

The massive and uncontrolled import of foodstuffs has had perverse effects on local production, farming and producers' incomes. Many family farms in the coastal zones have had to give up poultry production or growing rice for sale in local markets because of imported foods, some of which enjoy direct or hidden subsidies.

The situation could become worse if our States are forced to open our borders and our agricultural and food markets as required by agreements of the WTO, and as stipulated by the European Union (in the Economic Partnership Agreements). The simple truth is that the current system of liberalization and globalisation brings no benefits to farmers. Whether they are from Africa, Europe, Asia or the Americas, family farms are seeing their incomes diminish day by day in spite of increases in production. Many of us have been forced to abandon our farms and young people have had to leave the land.

We, agricultural producers from indebted or highly indebted poor countries, in other words "the lowest of the low" are not convinced that the world market will suffice to reduce our poverty and eradicate hunger. There has never been a time when we were not in the world market as producers of raw materials for export and principal sources of foreign exchange for the vast majority of our countries. Yet that has had little basic effect on our situation of poverty.

We know, we at the village level, that the market is important for trading, but it is especially favourable for commercial middlemen and rich people! The international market could perhaps be advantageous for farmers, but for the moment it only benefits the multinationals! It is for that reason we think that those who control this world, those who are "the highest of the high" must take courageous measures to radically change the current system of international trade, in the WTO and EPA negotiations, and to develop more adequate instruments of regulation and supply management of agricultural produce.

We, African agricultural producers, represent the vast majority of those who are poor and hungry! But we do not want to live off charity and humanitarian good will! We do not want to build our rural societies on food aid, however generous it may be! We want above all to live from our work!

We want agriculture and farmers to be valued for their work and multiple functions: nutritional, social, environmental and cultural. A farm is not a factory! It is a production unit, of course. But it is also a way of life, a way of being and of sustaining society! Agricultural products are not manufactured goods whose trade can be controlled simply by the imperfect laws of the market.

The time has come to change things! The time has come for other policies and other types of investments in Agriculture. Poverty will not disappear from our villages so long as it is not recognized that agriculture is fundamental to freeing our countries from food dependence, i.e. to support their food sovereignty, as was the case in Europe or America. Poverty and hunger will be always present so long as agricultural producers will not be able to produce more and to have stable incomes, sufficient for all the family; this requires production, of course, but all a market, domestic, local markets in the first instance. Poverty and hunger will not disappear from our countries until we, our products and our trade receive appropriate support and protection measures from our governments.

Since 2001, the G8 summits have been important events at which new commitments have been made by the richest countries for themselves, the world and Africa. All the initiatives should be welcomed with optimism, those of Blair in particular! But, poverty and hunger are diseases which can only be attacked at the root, i.e. their political causes. It is not a matter of proposing technical solutions and injecting a large amount of dollars to make things change in Africa.

In order for Blair's initiative to be plausible, he cannot ignore the analysis of the links between liberalization and privatization of the economic sectors and services in Africa, on the one hand, and poverty in the rural world on the other. He should also recognise the right of countries to food sovereignty and the right to food for everyone , and to do this through concrete political acts and structural investments in family farming.

As long as aid is conditional to adopting development models dictated by dogmatic liberalism, West African economies will continue to decline and misery and multiple sources of tension will increase, as we have witnessed in recent years. Blair must support the right of each country, in particular those of Africa, to protect its agriculture and its economy including through tariffs.

It is necessary without any doubt, to remove the heavy yoke that prevents West African governments from developing another policy to replace the bungled "Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs)" in whose formulation the vulnerable poor and their organisations took little part.

Blair will also have to get his peers to call an immediate halt to the negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements between Europe and ECOWAS. It is totally unrealistic to envisage the creation of a free trade area, setting Europe in competition with the countries of ECOWAS, which are among the poorest in the world. That is in total contradiction with commitments to lead Africa out of poverty.