In Adam’s post on Food Prices & Protest, the article cited made reference to Simon Maxwell of The Overseas Development Institute in the UK. Mr Maxwell has blogged on what he sees as 5 key steps to make progress in this area.
His conclusions are:-
The Green Revolution transformed food production from the 1960s onwards, but the world became complacent. The rate of growth of yields fell. In an era of apparent surpluses and falling food prices, it was easy to neglect investments in research, irrigation, infrastructure and market institutions. No longer.
The UN needs to live up to its name and be united; sublimating inter-agency tensions and presenting a single package to the major powers that provide most of the funding. Gordon Brown has emphasised the need for collective action, in his letter to the Japanese chair of the G8 and at his Food Summit in Downing Street last week. Jacques Diouf of the FAO has called a Food Summit in June. Presidents Lula of Brazil and Sarkozy of France are the latest to announce they will participate. This will certainly be on the G8 agenda in July.
There are parallels between the management of this crisis and the management of the credit crunch. There is the same power of speculation, the paucity of information, the disagreement about causes, the apparent impotence of individual governments, and the strong need for a coordinated response. But there is more to this crisis. Lives are at risk.
The points made seem relatively simple and straight forward to this writer, but he is willing to bet that even if agreed too, not much will happen because of vested interests and the US elections.
In the meantime lives are at risk. Further, as Adam blogged on 8 May, potentially food and water issues are a potential political flashpoint, with an incendiary effect too awful to contemplate.
Let us hope we can move beyond talk to concerted and effective action.
Tags: Effective action not words, Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food Summits, Overseas Development Institute, Political Flashpoint, Politics, Simon Maxwell
