The EU/The UN: EU food surpluses should be released to feed victims of humanitarian emergencies, according to the head of the United Nations' main food agency.
Mr James Morris, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), called on Ireland to use its EU Presidency next year to ensure that EU food mountains are freed up for emergencies.
Speaking on a visit to Dublin, Mr Morris paid tribute to Ireland for its "generous" support for the agency. "You're generous and thoughtful and your country is incredibly engaged on the issues where people are suffering, way beyond its actual size." Aid agencies such as Goal and Concern were "among the best" in the world.
Mr Morris, a US businessman who was appointed head of WFP last year, was in Ireland to meet Government ministers and non-governmental organisations. During his visit, the Department of Agriculture announced a donation of €4.4 million to the agency, and the Department of Foreign Affairs is giving €2.3 million through its aid subsidiary, Development Co-operation Ireland, for use in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Ethiopia.
WFP is the largest humanitarian agency in the world, and currently feeds 109 million people in 80 countries. This figure includes 27 million people in Iraq, where 60 per cent of the population are being fed "in partnership with the occupying authorities". In North Korea, it is feeding over six million people, or one-third of the population.
Africa, where Mr Morris has served as UN special envoy for the humanitarian crisis in the south of the continent, remains the biggest challenge, however.
The risk of famine in southern Africa has eased somewhat since last year, he says. Malawi and Zambia will both produce food surpluses this year.
However, as Mr Morris points out, 10 million people remain at risk and "a convergence of issues" such as HIV/AIDS, a lack of foreign exchange resources and crippled private sector mean the crisis won't go away.
"If you take a part of the world that's already poor, then you have a bad weather situation and you throw in AIDS/HIV on top of it, you have all the ingredients for an extraordinary predicament," he says.
According to Mr Morris, WFP is seeing a lot more natural disasters and difficult hunger situations that it used to. Humanitarian challenges are at an all-time high; emergencies used to account for 20 per cent of the agency's work, with development taking up the rest. Now, however, it's the other way around.
"We're doing three times as many emergency assessments as we were doing in the 1960s, and twice as many as in the 1990s. It just can't go on like this." He blames conflict, bad weather, "misguided" macroeconomic policies and HIV/AIDS for many of these problems, but is reluctant to get into larger issues relating to trade imbalances and the responsibility of the West. "Our focus is on feeding the people."
Mr Morris, one of only two Americans heading up UN agencies, had an entirely domestic career before President Bush nominated him for the WFP job. The former CEO of a water company in Indianapolis, he was prominent in the American Red Cross and the US Olympic Committee but had no previous experience of the UN system.
Unsurprisingly, he maintains the US has been "incredibly generous" to UN agencies; it pays for over half of the WFP budget alone. He also says that President Bush has been "incredibly committed" to the humanitarian work of the UN.
The answer to the food supply problems in the world lies in investing in the basic needs of farmers, such as simple irrigation or roads to help farmers to get products to market. Ensuring that hungry children get fed and educated is also a priority; it costs just €35 a year to send a child to school for a year, and 30 cents for the medicine to eliminate worms.
Asked whether the world has enough food, he replies: "No question. There is plenty of food for everyone; it's just a matter of distributing it properly".
