World Food Supplies

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord, who has worked in this area for a very long time, is right to highlight this as a potential problem. However, I cannot agree with his first statement about its scale because there is insufficient evidence. One thing that is extremely important and that we are pursuing is supporting the evidence-gathering in this area to see what the scale of the problem might be so that we can better address it. Nevertheless, the noble Lord is right to say that transparency is the key here. If we can promote that, we can see whether the acquisitions that people may have made reference to are simply anecdotal or whether there is evidence of the nature that he is talking about. I assure the noble Lord that we are emphasising transparency and that at the G8 summit the Prime Minister will indeed focus on food security as one of the issues.

[Lord Chidgey]

What proportion of DfID’s aid budget has been allocated to the provision of more support for sustainable small-scale agriculture to help poor—mainly women—farmers feed their families? What measures are the Government taking to ensure that increased private investment in agriculture, as the Minister mentioned, is aimed at maximising poverty reduction and sustainable equitable growth, as highlighted by many NGOs, including Oxfam and ActionAid?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord is right. DfID does support smallholder production, and one of the key issues here is trying to establish land rights. The United Kingdom is working in a number of countries to promote this and has increased the spending in this area. It is working in 13 countries to support smallholder farmers by supplying seeds, fertilisers and access to finance and by making sure that women, who are often the ones running these smallholdings, are particularly supported.