Food Security Policy

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness for having introduced this debate so well. Her instinctive priorities are, as usual, absolutely right. I should declare an interest as a former director of Oxfam and as a trustee of Saferworld.

For many millions across Africa, world food security is a distant dream; food insecurity is the endless reality as they struggle to survive. As of today in west Africa, hunger affects more than 18 million people, with approaching 1.5 million children suffering acute malnutrition and 3 million at risk. Violence and turmoil in Libya, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and northern Mali have reduced regional employment opportunities. With its front-line experience, World Vision recently described how the migrant workers of Niger have had to return home, and now clashes in Mali have resulted in 300,000 internally displaced people. World Vision tells of 255,000 refugees arriving in the region of Tillabéri, one of the areas already worst affected by food shortages in Niger. All that has made a grave regional situation still worse; 50% of children under five suffer chronic malnutrition, leading to the death of 300,000 children from causes rooted in that.

Droughts and food shortages are not new to the region, but climate change is accelerating the rate at which they come. There used to be longer periods of separation, which enabled communities to restore their means of livelihood—their crops and livestock—and to rebuild their resilience. The immediate crisis is just two years after the 2009-10 crisis, which was only five years after the 2004-05 crisis. We are not only talking about west Africa. Half the population—4.7 million people—in South Sudan are threatened by food insecurity; in the Horn of Africa, 9 million people are food insecure; the BBC reports that 10 million are food insecure in Yemen, with all its globally dangerous political tensions, and that 5 million require emergency aid; and there are reports of increasing food insecurity across southern Africa.

The immediate, appalling suffering and disease are not anything like the whole story. There are long-term consequences for the productivity of people acutely weakened by hunger, the long-term adverse effect on mental and physical health, the impossible pressures on already minimal health services and the seriously negative impact on school attendance, with all that that inevitably means for the future.

The UK Government deserve credit for having remained committed to their overall targets and to their L’Aquila undertakings on global hunger. Their commitment to fund the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme with £20 million in its first year was also welcome. These help to provide moral authority to push hard for a more ambitious programme on food and agriculture when the UK hosts the G8 summit next year.

At its recent Camp David meeting, the G8 focused a little on food, nutrition and agriculture. However, those discussions achieved only what Oxfam has described as,

“a shrinking solution to a growing problem”.

It is disturbing that the members of the G8 have together funded only half of the $22 billion that was promised three years ago to fund agriculture in developing countries.

There are other in effect more sinister—some would say—issues strategically affecting food security. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, in its current Grow campaign Oxfam spotlights land grabs. Demand for land has soared as investors look for places to grow food for export or crops for biofuels, or simply to buy up land for profit. In too many instances, land sold as unused or undeveloped is in fact being used by poor families to grow food. The Land Matrix database includes deals that are reported as approved or under negotiation worldwide between 2000 and 2010 as amounting to 203 million hectares. This is equivalent to over eight times the size of the United Kingdom. Too often these deals trample over the rights of local people.

Back in May 2001, the Committee on World Food Security agreed voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests in the context of national food security. These represent the first international norms on tenure of land and other natural resources. They are a significant first step towards ensuring that local communities are empowered to stop land grabs and to benefit themselves from responsible investments. They are not perfect but they are a start. What specifically are the Government doing to highlight these guidelines and to encourage their application? I hope that the Minister will cover this in his reply.

Biofuels are a major driver of food price rises and volatility. As the report by the Committee on World Food Security high-level panel of experts has underlined:

“Biofuel support policies in the US and the EU have created a demand shock that is widely considered to be one of the major causes of the international food price rise of 2007/8”.

That report stresses that such policies increase vulnerability and inequity in the overall distribution of food. The European Commission is currently preparing a report to look at the increased EU demand for biofuels in supplier countries. This provides a real opportunity to ensure that the negative impacts of biofuels both on food prices and in driving land grabs in developing countries are taken into account in the EU’s renewable energy directive. I hope that Ministers are as a priority engaging with those in the EU who are preparing this report and are taking the opportunity to influence the report in the light of our own experience. I am convinced that DfID has a very constructive part to play in that process and I hope that the Government will encourage it to do that.