Address core problem – market shocks – of world food systems

Food shop

Prof. Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 49/13, in a letter written to the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ms. Okonjo-Iweala has called for addressing the core challenges facing the world food systems.

The letter draws attention to the statement issued by the WTO, the World Bank Group (WBG), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Food Programme (WFP) on 13 April last in relation to the current global food crisis. 

In the letter, Prof. Fakhri points out that while “the statement focuses on the provision of emergency food supplies, financial support, increased agriculture production, and open trade”, his concern is that “this simply highlights what the respective institutions have been doing over the past years, if not decades, without addressing the core challenges facing the world’s food systems”.

He goes on to highlight some of these challenges including the damage caused by intensive industrial agriculture and export-oriented food policies including the displacement of long-standing regenerative and integrated farming practices. The letter points out that the problem with hunger is not a lack of sufficient production, “but inequality and other systemic impediments to access adequate food”.

“The core problem is that current markets do not absorb shocks and instead amplify them”, the letter says.

Moreover, the letter points out that “there is a growing consensus amongst different coalitions within the WTO that the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is outdated”. While the AoA does contain exceptional provisions that could theoretically ameliorate the negative effects of trade on particular countries, or on groups of people within countries, from the negative impacts of trade; such as special and differential treatment, special safeguard measures, special products, and the Ministerial Decision on measures concerning the possible negative effects of the reform programme on least-developed and net food-importing developing countries” (The NFIDC Decision, 1994), “but instead they have been systematically opposed, eroded and marginalized. In sum, the AoA’s provisions and its implementation have been inequitable”.

He further argues that “the challenge is that food security has been treated as something to be dealt with as an exception to trade policy. There remains, however, no coherent international food policy informing WTO operations, just as trade policy is not adequately addressed in Rome-based agencies. It remains to be seen whether we can have an action-oriented discussion around trade and food policy within the WTO, or whether that conversation should be hosted elsewhere”.

Source: https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-food/mr-michael-fakhri

- Third World Network