Diouf Calls for US$30 Billion to Eradicate Hunger

Jacques Diouf, head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, appealed to world leaders for US$30 billion investment a year to boost agriculture and fight hunger worldwide during the opening of a three-day U.N. summit on the world's food crisis in Rome. Diouf emphasized that the US$ 30 billion is nothing compared to the US$1 200 billion spent on weapons, US$100 billion worth of food wasted in a single country, and US$20 billion excess consumption by the world’s obese in 2006.

“The structural solution to the problem of food security in the world lies in increasing production and productivity in the low-income, food-deficit countries,” Diouf declared. He noted that this will involve innovative solutions, including partnership agreements between countries that have financial resources and technologies and countries that have land, water and human resources.

Diouf also raised the issue of food versus fuel. He stressed that subsidies worth US$11 billion have diverted 100 million tons of cereals from human consumption just to “satisfy the thirst for fuel”. The FAO director concluded that the problem of food security is a political one, since it is the choices made by Governments that determine the allocation of resources.

For more information, visit http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000853/index.html or read the transcript of Diouf’s speech at http://www.fao.org/newsroom/common/ecg/1000853/en/diouf_en.pdf