[asia-apec 234] Sustainable Food Security Convention

[Jagdish Parikh]

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Date:          Thu, 31 Oct 1996 14:28:40 -0800 (PST)
From:          klehman at iatp.org (Karen Lehman)
Subject:       Sustainable Food Security Convention

Dear Friends,

For the past several months, a group of NGOs from Latin America,
Asia, North America, Europe and Africa has been evolving a proposal
for a Sustainable Food Security Convention to present at the NGO
Forum at the World Food Summit.  The idea for a Convention
emerged from our disappointment with the limited options that have
resulted from the FAO's effort to draft a Plan of Action to end world
hunger.

Our goal is to create the policy framework at the international level
that will foster sustainable food security at the local, national,
regional and international levels.  We believe that food security is
not possible without a sustainable agriculture that both protects the
environment into the distant future, and provides peasant and
family farmers with the means to continue to earn their livelihoods
from the land by receiving fair prices for their labor.  We urge that
the global agriculture system be restructured to reduce volatility in
agriculture markets and to correct the imbalance that currently
exists between food surplus and food deficit countries and regions.

To achieve these aims, we see that a number of reforms are
necessary.  We need to implement a Code of Conduct on the Right to
Food which calls on national governmentsto implement policies that
ensure access by their citizens to safe, adequate, nutritious food
supplies.  We need to reform the agriculture provisions of the World
Trade Organization that undermine food security.  And we need to
create a new legally binding global framework through a Convention
that formally establishes food security in the structure of
international law.  These approaches are complementary, not
contradictory, and groups are working to integrate them into a
comprehensive strategy at the Summit and beyond.

We invite your organization to endorse the attached call for a Sustainable
Food Security Convention.  (The English text appears below, as well as in
the attachment.  We will send a Spanish version under separate cover.)
Please send your name and your identification as you would like it to
appear to klehman at iatp.org or fax it to (1) 612-379-5982. Also, please
distribute the text to your networks. We will be distributing this text
(perhaps with a few revisions) at the NGO Forum and at the World Food
Summit.

We look forward to hearing from you and to working with you in the
future.

Regards,

Convention Drafting Group

Rudi Buntzel - Germany
Entwicklungspolitische Bildungsarbeit auf dem Lande in der EKD
Tel:    (49) 7942--107-78
Fax:    (49) 7942--107-77
email:          EBW at LINK-CR.cl.sub.de

Mikako Iba - Japan
NESSFE
Tel. & Fax:  (81) 333-25-57-72
email:          eric at gol.com

Karen Lehman and Mark Ritchie - USA
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)
Tel:    (1) 612-379-5980
Fax:    (1) 612-379-5982
email:  klehman at iatp.org, mritchie at iatp.org

Chico Menezes - Brazil
IBASE
Tel:    (55) 21-286-6161
Fax:    (55) 21-286-0348
email:          chico at ax.apc.org

Jeanot Minla Mfou'ou - Cameroon
APM-Africa
Tel:    (237) 21-83-89
Fax:    (237) 20--55-20
email:          minla at reseau.apm.cm

Antonio Onorati - Italy
Centro Internazionale Crocevia and Italian Committee for the NGO
Forum
Tel:    (39) 6-5747613
Fax:    (39) 6-5758383
email:  ngoforum at rmnet.it

Joseph Rocher and Meredyth Bowler - France
RONGEAD
Tel:    (33) 78-61-32.23
Fax:    (33) 78-69-86-96
email:  rongead at lyonnet.dtr.fr

Victor Suarez Carrera - Mexico
Associacion Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras (ANEC)
Tel:    (525) 661-5914
Fax:    (525) 661-5909
email:          anec at laneta.apc.org

Pierre Vuarin - France
Fondation Charles Leopold Mayer pour le Progres de l'Homme (FPH)
Tel:    (33) 1-43- 57-44-22
Fax:    (33) 11-43-57-26-83
email:          pvuarin at fph.fr

--------

Note: This Plan to achieve a Sustainable Food Security
Convention will require a comprehensive decentralized global
strategy for its implementation. We welcome everyone to use
the concept and this document in any way that may help. It is
being continually revised. Please send comments to Karen
Lehman, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Fax: (612)
379-5980 or Email: <klehman at iatp.org> Thank you.

Plan of Action to Achieve Universal Food Security

Revised 10/29/96

Background:

Events of the past two years have underscored significant problems
in the global food system.  Shortages and skyrocketing prices have
distressed food importing nations that dismantled domestic food
security policies to conform to demands for structural adjustment
demands by global financial institutions and by the new global trade
regime.  Multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization
(WTO) are narrowly focussed on promoting the idea that food
security can be bought and sold on the world market.  Many
governments in developing countries, especially those who need to
import much of their food, are emphasizing the need to base food
security first on local and national production and equitable
distribution.

The primary goal of an internationally coordinated approach to food
security is to increase stability in the food supply by reducing
volatility in agricultural markets, and by making food production and
distribution sytems sustainable over the long term.  Such an
approach requires that food security be planned and implemented
primarily at the local and national levels with support for diversified
peasant and family farm systems.  Trade can complement domestic
food security strategies, but it cannot be allowed to replace them.

Why a convention?

Multilateral collaboration on the development of a viable global food
security system is more important than ever with the passage of the
Uruguay Round trade agreement.  With significant power over
agriculture policy shifting to the World Trade Organization, farmer,
consumer, and environmental organizations, as well as national
governments, have lost many of the policy tools they once could
employ to defend food security.  There is a great need for a global
debate on forms of multilateral collaboration that place food security,
not trade, as the highest priority.  Key to this debate is the role that
civil society can play, not only in collaboration with national
governments, but in a process of negotiation under UN auspices to
bring food security strategies into equilibrium among civil,
government and private interests.1

Conventions are treaties.  They are instruments for building
accountability within the structure of international law.  There are
conventions to protect the atmosphere from ozone depleting
chemicals and to protect the Earth's biodiversity, as well as to reduce
the risk of nuclear war.  The time is ripe for a convention to protect
the Earth's people from hunger.  With a convention in place, nations
create the framework to define specific conditions under which food
security, not trade alone, must be the highest priority  in the
development and implementation of local, national, and international
agriculture and trade policy.2

Toward a Sustainable Food Security Convention

It is time to begin negotiations for a Sustainable Food Security
Convention to assist governments and civil society in their
responsibility to achieve food security and to establish a global
network of local, national and regional reserves.

Basis for Action:

1. Food security policy must help reduce the volatility of agricultural
production cycles, markets, and prices.  Farmers3 and consumers
suffer at both ends of boom and bust cycles.  Surpluses drive down
agricultural prices and bankrupt farmers, while shortages raise
prices beyond the ability of consumers to buy basic staples.

2. National governments, in conjunction with civil society, have the
responsibility to guarantee adequate production and equitable access
to safe, adequate, nutritious food supplies for their citizens. To do so,
they must design and implement policies that protect the long-term
capacity of farmers to produce food domestically in diverse agro-
ecosystems.  These include policies to protect domestic staple food
production from export dumping; strategies to control, utilize,
develop and protect land, water and genetic resources; and programs
to ensure access to these resources for all farmers, including women
and ethnic and racial minorities.

3. Global food stocks are poorly distributed between a few large
exporting countries that produce more than their regional needs, and
regions of the world that have become dependent upon imports from
exporting countries.  Food security strategies must take into account
the differences between food surplus and food deficit countries and
be structured accordingly.4

True food security depends on the capacity of peasant and family
farmers to produce and store food locally for times of shortage, on
decreased volatility in supplies and prices, and on reduced transport
costs.  Cereals, pulses and vegetables traditionally grown in a given
region are generally better adapted to local climate and soil
conditions, and require less purchased chemical inputs.