28/11/2011 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Strasbourg, 28.11.2011 - Famine kills one person in the world every second, in 2010 alone, 925 million were considered “hungry” by FAO. Increased productivity in the countries concerned is indispensable and could be achieved through more efficient production and through a focus on smallholder agriculture as a centerpiece to improve resilience, participants at a hearing organised in Paris by the PACE Environment Committee on food security said today.
Governments need to create an enabling environment to assist smallhold agriculture in dealing with their own vulnerability but also in contributing to mitigate the impacts of price volatility for the benefit for all. PACE rapporteur Francine John-Calame (Switzerland, SOC) concluded that her report will focus on a series of recommendations to member states to:
• reduce food and industry waste,
• combat climate change,
• devise new legislation on the right to food,
• promote food crop farming through tax and other incentive measures,
• shield foodstuffs from financial speculation,
• enact legislation in the regional planning field with a view to slow down the rate at which farmland is converted for industrial or residential use,
• abolish export subsidies for agricultural products from Western countries which come into competition with home-grown products in Southern countries and destroy their agricultural markets,
• introduce an effective precautionary policy against food risks.