Aid cut reversal needed to solve food crisis

Tuesday, 30 June 2009 12:00 AM

By Liz Stephens

The G8 must quadruple investment in farm aid to developing nations to fix the global food crisis, according to Oxfam.

In report today, the organisation called on G8 leaders to tackle the worsening food crisis by increasing agricultural spending when they meet at their annual summit in Italy next month.

Duncan Green, Oxfam head of research, said: "A substantial increase in financing for farmers is loose change compared to ongoing investments in rich countries or the trillions of dollars spent globally this year on bank bail-outs."

However, with UK government debt predicted by the IMF to rise to almost 70 per cent of GDP by 2010, this is unlikely to be welcomed in Westminster.

The report, Investing in Poor Farmers Pays claims that complacency in the 1990s has led to a 75 per cent drop in aid to developing countries' agriculture. It also alleges that two-thirds of the world's rural poor have been overlooked by the investments that have been made.

Oxfam also criticised the funding rich countries give to their own farmers. In 2007, agricultural spending in the EU was $130 billion (£78 billion).

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warns the number of hungry people will increase by a further 100 million this year to more than 1 billion, which represents a figure of one in six people on the planet.

Seventy per cent of the world's poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Tags:
• debt and debt relief in the developing world
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• foreign policy
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• international development