PROLONGED LOW world food prices have inhibited investment in food production and innovation. Suddenly this problem has become apparent over the last year, when soaring food prices have left many more of the world's population - an estimated 842 million people - hungry. It is a central issue in the Food and Agriculture Organisation's World Food Security conference in Rome, which concludes today. The problem has been reinforced by the recent large scale switching of agricultural land and resources to biofuels. Disagreements on this admittedly important matter should not obscure the need to make increased productivity a priority in food security policy.
Radical changes made during the 1960s green revolution in the productivity of rice and wheat, for example, have not been matched in recent decades, particularly in developing states. Instead these gains were concentrated disproportionately in richer states, enabling their agribusinesses to capture many world food markets, often with the help of heavily subsidised exports. That formula now badly needs to be revisited and revised. The new focus on food security should be matched by efforts to link the alleviation of hunger to improved agricultural productivity in the developing world. Development aid policies can play a constructive role in this by being directed more towards regenerating agriculture, especially in African states.
Ireland has an opportunity to make a progressive contribution to this international shift of focus. The Government has appointed a Hunger Task Force on how best to do this. As our development aid programme increases in value more resources should be devoted to linking the alleviation of hunger to broader development goals of poverty alleviation. Development aid policies throughout the world have for too long underestimated the agricultural sector in recipient states.
In Ireland's case this linkage can more easily be made. That will involve rethinking the taken-for-granted dependence on subsidised agricultural exports highlighted once again this week in the row between the Government and the Irish Farmers Association over the Lisbon Treaty and the Doha world trade round. Agricultural innovation can be related to development aid and the alleviation of hunger by creating linkages between Ireland and the mainly African development priority states. It will be interesting to see whether Minisrer for Agriculture Brendan Smith reflects such thinking in his speech to the FAO conference today.