Some 870 million people in the world are undernourished, and more than 2.5 million children die each year of malnutrition. Tackling this horrifying situation is a priority for the European Union and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Today, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso met in Brussels with the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, José Graziano da Silva. They agreed that the EU is a key strategic partner for the FAO and should play a full role in it. They discussed food security including development, resilience and nutrition policies, as well as global governance issues. On Wednesday, Mr Graziano da Silva also met Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Dacian Ciolo? and Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Maria Damanaki.
President Barroso said: “I am very happy to receive Director-General Graziano da Silva here in Brussels today. We are partners in the fight against under-nutrition amongst the world’s poorest and in the promotion of global food security. The EU is consistently the largest single source of voluntary funding to the FAO. For the European Commission, food security is a key priority: worldwide, the EU is already the largest donor of aid to fight food and nutrition insecurity and we will step up our efforts in the next Multiannual Financial Framework. The EU remains fully committed to the Millennium Development Goals and to achieving the development aid target of 0,7 % of gross national income by 2015. The European Union will continue to support the on-going FAO reform politically, operationally and financially.”
Valued partner
Director-General Graziano da Silva stated: “The European Union is a valued partner of FAO. We are working together at the global and national levels to promote food security and sustainable agricultural development. The new hunger figures show that we are on track to meet the MDG target of halving the proportion of hungry people. But we need to look beyond that and aim for the total eradication of hunger, answering the Zero Hunger Challenge launched by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the Rio+20 Conference. With hunger, the only acceptable number is zero.”
Mr. Graziano da Silva and President Barroso said that governments and the national and international communities have an important role to play. They stressed the need to strengthen global governance mechanisms such as the Committee on World Food Security and the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), and noted that increased market transparency and coordination were helping avoid spikes in international food prices. Mr. Graziano da Silva and Barroso also reaffirmed FAO and EU’s commitment to supporting nationally and regionally led efforts and actions to promote sustainable and inclusive growth and mitigate the impact of high food prices in local food security.
In his meetings with Commissioners Piebalgs, Ciolo? and Damanaki, Mr Graziano da Silva discussed various issues of EU-FAO cooperation, including the 2014 International Year of Family Farming, as well as rural development, food price volatility, global governance of food security – which FAO wants strengthened – and the need to promote pro-poor long term economic growth, including the importance of resilience building, the creation of enabling environments for the productive sectors, support to small-scale production and the strengthening of social protection.
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