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Lectures from Mugabe and Other Misadventures in Food Policy
Category: Development, Human Security
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Last week’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) High-Level Conference in Rome was as eclectic as it was confused. The meeting kicked-off with an impassioned speech by FAO secretary-general Jacques Diouf, who attributed the world’s food crisis to military expenditures by developed countries and “excess consumption by the world’s obese,” which ostensibly results in $20 billion of waste each year. Diouf called upon the international community to respond with $30 billion for the FAO and related international programs.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, whose strident criticisms in May caused a shake-up of the FAO, took a different tack in his speech. He quoted the 2007 Report of the Independent External Evaluation, which accused the FAO of being “a heavy and costly bureaucracy characterized by: excessive transaction control processes, high levels of overlap and duplication and low levels of delegated authority relative to comparative organizations.” Wade concluded that the FAO should make “innovative investments” to stimulate agricultural production, especially in developing countries, and avoid expensive and inefficient international bureaucracies wherever possible.
But Robert Mugabe’s appearance, made by invoking UN rules to skirt a European travel ban, won the most attention, eclipsing the lively debate between the Diouf and Wade camps. The Zimbabwean president used his high visibility at the conference to claim that Western-funded NGOs had created political opposition parties in his country. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad echoed Mugabe, calling Western states “bullying powers” concerned with “warmongering” in developing countries.
In its calmer moments, the conference managed to address issues of climate change, biofuels, trade, and agricultural production. The meeting concluded with the adoption of the Declaration of the High-Level Conference on World Food Security, which calls for increases in food assistance and greater international cooperation. The question of the FAO’s role remains unresolved, however. Diouf’s request for $30 billion will require a major funding push for an FAO already heavily criticized for overspending on projects with a dubious track record. Even aid proponents agree that international institutions need to improve to meet world food needs. According to David Beckman, president of Bread for the World, “to overcome today’s hunger tragedy, we desperately need to build institutions that will change the politics of hunger.”
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