Much still remains to be done to ensure global food security

PanARMENIAN.Net - To endorse the nomination, Ignacy Sachs, the Honorary Director of Studies at the "École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales", Paris, issued an article that was provided to PanARMENIAN.Net by Brazil’s embassy to Yerevan

It says:

“This article is intended to all of those who wish to contribute towards the fight against hunger in the world. I decided to write it in support of the candidacy of my friend José Graziano da Silva to the office of Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Much still remains to be done to ensure global food security. This will necessarily include reforming and strengthening FAO, as well as consolidating agricultural practices that are socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable, particularly family farming. To that end, it is necessary to enhance the role of national decision makers and ensure a more decentralized management, allowing countries to play a larger role in this process, notably developing countries.

Graziano has already demonstrated that he is fully capable of carrying out this task. As FAO`s Assistant Director General and Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, he led the "Latin America and the Caribbean without Hunger Initiative", through which the countries of the region were first in the world to take on the commitment of eradicating hunger by 2025. He also played a central role in the coordinating process among FAO, the agencies of the United Nations System such as ECLAC, UNDP and ILO, and international organizations such as the IICA and the OAS. Graziano`s career has been punctuated by actions aimed at rural development and the fight against hunger. Examples include the successful policies to fight against hunger and malnutrition carried out in Brazil beginning in 2003. It was Graziano Who coordinated the creation of the Zero Hunger Program, which enabled 24 million Brazilians to raise out of poverty in five years and reduced malnutrition in Brazil by 25 percent, using as little as 0.5 percent of Brazilian GDP.

It is important to recall that FAO was created with the goal of ensuring food security in the world. Despite many efforts and advances, this goal has yet to be achieved. Sixty years after FAO was created, one out of seven people in the world still goes hungry.

This is the main reason why FAO needs to take on the challenge of totally eradicating hunger in the world through effective actions investing in resources aimed at promoting sustainable rural development and intensifying South-South cooperation as well as via exchanges and solidarity among nations. It is essential to strengthen family farming and public policies aimed at keeping farmers in the countryside; improving the production infrastructure; creating opportunities of access to credit, technical assistance and quality rural extension to produce and commercialize goods. It is both necessary and urgent to recognize the role of small farmers as the keepers of biodiversity, the integrity of rural landscapes and food security. These practices must be associated with increased international cooperation, particularly among countries with similar biomes.

This is the way towards guaranteeing the growing need for a supply of healthful food items to a world population that will reach nine billion people by mid-century.

As an accomplished professional and high achieving scholar, Graziano da Silva has all the necessary attributes to take on this challenge.”