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Reforms within the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will help the organization better deal with worldwide food problems, says an FAO official.
Abdolreza Abbassian, the FAO's secretary of the Intergovernmental Group for Grains, said that only a reformed FAO can more efficiently cope with the grave challenges ahead for the world's food supply.
In an interview with Xinhua at an FAO conference that ends Nov. 22, Abbassian said that for the long term, the organization intends to improve its efficiency in order to more effectively deal with the challenges. FAO's vision is to establish a world without hunger and malnutrition and to help farmers eradicate poverty.
There is no room for optimism now, the secretary said. A food crisis in 2007 deteriorated the world food situation and increased by 75 million the number of undernourished, which now stands at 923 million worldwide.
This year's financial crisis, which has attracted most of the world's concern, gives a false impression that the global food crisis is over. Abbassian said, however, that the problem has not ended and that the financial crisis will trigger even more severe troubles.
Abbassian said the financial crisis will negatively influence food from both production and consumption perspectives. The world's major food producers, such as the U.S. and Europe, are now facing a credit crisis that will make it difficult for them to borrow money to expand production or even maintain current levels.
The financial crisis also will shrink the spending of consumers and force them to abandon more expensive products and turn to cheaper food, adding pressure to the world's crop production. For the poor, having even less money will mean an additional reduction in available food, increasing the number of undernourished people.
Abbassian said the world's farmers are facing grim, long-term challenges and have a core task of increasing food production.
FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said the world needs to double food production by 2050 in order to feed a population of nine billion people.
In order to ease hunger problems in some parts of the world, a June food conference held in Rome set out specific guidelines, including a 20-billion-U.S. dollar donation promised by wealthy nations to help poor countries.
The FAO, however, has collected less than 200 million dollars so far, much less than the pledged sum. If the situation continues, Abbassian said, the world might experience an even more serious food crisis than in 2007.
China's agriculture policy includes many precautionary measures, thus its agricultural industry was not heavily hit by last year's food price surge, the FAO secretary said.
China currently can feed itself and export a certain amount of food. The stimulus package introduced by the Chinese government to tackle the financial crisis includes plans to stabilize the domestic food market. That will help stabilize the world food market, Abbassian said.
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