Food Security Summit

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Wednesday 25th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right to emphasise the need to support those working in agriculture in their various countries. It is striking that 75% of the world’s population live in rural settings dependent on agriculture, and we are acutely aware that they are very vulnerable. People in developing countries spend 60% of their income on food, unlike in the UK, where the figure is about 10%, so one can see how vulnerable people are in these situations. We are targeting our support to try to help smallholding-farmer households and women in particular in those circumstances.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

My Lords, will the summit look at the consequences of conflict on food security and, in particular, the fact that the consequences of conflict can sometimes have an unintended impact in neighbouring countries, as we see today in the Sahel region of west Africa? Is it possible for the summit to look at how we address these issues of conflict in the context of dealing with food security?

[Baroness Northover]

All these factors interlink. The fragility of some of these countries feeds into their problems in terms of food, and that is clearly the case in the Sahel, where the United Kingdom is supporting the feeding of 400,000 people. We are well aware of how these things interlink and I am sure that that will be part of the discussions at this event.