ROME - As battle lines are drawn between the anti-globalisation movement and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the world still lacks a united action plan to win the war on hunger.
Despite a renewed pledge at a United Nations world food summit to halve the number of hungry to 400 million people by 2015, division over how to reach that target persists as the world falls even further behind. The United States, the world's biggest food aid and development donor, has failed to respond to a new proposal by the United Nations to invest an additional $24 billion a year in agricultural development.
"We have not taken a specific position on that proposal," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, head of the U.S. delegation at the summit, told Reuters in an interview.
Thousands of anti-globalisation campaigners marched through Rome at the weekend urging greater self-sufficiency in food production for poor countries and a ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which they see as no answer to hunger.
"We want the World Trade Organisation to quit agriculture," said Jose Bove, a prominent French anti-globalisation campaigner, said during the march.
Anti-globalisation campaigners are holding a parallel summit in Rome to the four-day world food summit, organised by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Bove said the FAO should have more power to implement rules in food and agricultural trade. He criticised rich countries for dumping their agricultural produce in poor nations, making it harder for them to produce their own food.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, in his strongest remarks yet on agricultural trade subsidies, told Reuters this week that rich states should drop protection of their agriculture to enable poor countries to compete in world food markets.
"We cannot talk of free trade and truly open markets if we are going to do that (protect trade)," Annan said.
Veneman denied the new U.S. farm bill, which promises billions of dollars in subsidies for agriculture, had increased protection of U.S. agriculture and said the United States was committed to dropping trade-distorting subsidies.
"We want to eliminate export subsidies," she said. "We want to substantially increase market access by lowering tariffs. Our tariffs are about 12 percent for food and agriculture. Around the world, such tariffs average about 62 percent. We want to substantially cut domestic supports that are trade-distorting."
CONFLICT OVER GM CROPS
The anti-globalisation movement and the United States are deeply split over whether GM crops can reduce hunger.
Anti-globalisation activists want GMOs banned, saying the world already produces enough food, while the new technology merely lines the pockets of multinationals which patent GM seeds, obliging poor farmers to buy them at high prices.
"GMOs are no answer to hunger," Bove said.
Some scientists believe that genetic manipulation of crops can ease hunger through new varieties that boost yields and are more resistant to drought and global warming.
Activists warn GMOs can contaminate neighbouring fields through cross-pollination, while no one yet understands the possible long-term health risks from eating GM foods.
Bove, who has attacked experimental GM fields, said: "A plan to stop GMOs is needed. All patents on life should be stopped."
But the United States, which has pioneered development of genetically modified crops, says their improved yields, resistance to drought and tolerance of salt can increase food supplies to the areas with the most chronic food shortages.
"Biotechnology has tremendous potential to develop products that can be more suited to areas of the world where there is persistent hunger," Veneman said.
She rejected complaints from some non-governmental groups that the United States was forcing desperately hungry people to eat genetically modified food aid unfit for human consumption.
Friends of the Earth and civil society groups in Bolivia and Guatemala said the United States and the U.N. World Food Programme had distributed GM food not fit for consumption and illegal in many regulatory systems around the world.
"Our production has gone through extensive reviews. It is safe to eat," Veneman said.
"There is no food safety issue whatsoever. And I find it probably very political on their part. There is no reason to deprive people who are hungry and to withhold food aid from the people who need it.":
