Erdogan set to address world summit on food security in Rome

World leaders, including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Libyan President Muammar Kaddafi and Pope Benedict XVI, yesterday convened at Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters for the World Summit on Food Security in Rome, and unanimously passed a declaration pledging a renewed commitment to eradicate hunger from the face of the earth sustainably and as soon as possible. As the guest of honor of the three-day summit, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to address the gathering today. On the first day of the summit, countries also agreed to work to reverse the decline in domestic and international funding for agriculture and promote new investment in the sector, to improve the governance of global food issues in partnership with the public and private sector, and to proactively face the challenges of climate change to food security. In his address to the summit, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon called the current food crisis "a wake-up call for tomorrow." "There can be no food security without climate security," Ban said. "If the glaciers of the Himalaya melt, this will affect the livelihoods and survival of 300 million people in China and up to a billion people throughout Asia," he said. "Africa's small farmers, who produce most of the continent's food and depend mostly on rain, could see harvests drop by 50 percent by 2020. We must make significant changes to feed ourselves and, most especially, to safeguard the poorest and most vulnerable." Calling the over one billion hungry people in the world "our tragic achievement in these modern days," FAO head Jacques Diouf stressed the need to produce food where the poor and hungry live and to boost agricultural investment in these regions. "In some developed countries, 2 to 4 percent of the population are able to produce enough food to feed the entire nation and even to export, while in the majority of developing countries, 60 to 80 percent of the population are not able to meet country food needs," Diouf said. "The planet can feed itself, provided that the decisions made are honored and the required resources are effectively mobilized," he said, calling for an increase in official development assistance to agriculture, a greater share of developing country budgets devoted to agriculture, and incentives to encourage private investment. "Eliminating hunger from the face of earth requires $44 billion of official development assistance per year to be invested in infrastructure, technology and modern inputs. This is a small amount if we consider the $365 billion of agriculture producer support in OECD (Organization for Cooperation and Development) countries in 2007, and if we consider the $1,340 billion of military expenditures by the world in the same year," Diouf said. "Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty," said Pope Benedict XVI. "Opulence and waste are no longer acceptable when the tragedy of hunger is assuming ever-greater proportions."