Food Security Cooperation Among D-8 Members Important, FAO Thumbs Up D-8 Meeting

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | February 27, 2009 by D-8 Secretariat

D-8's 930 million people need enough food in a good quality and at affordable prices

Institutional development, capacity building, marketing and public diplomacy for food security cooperation are important  for the Developing Eight (D-8) Organisation for Economic Cooperation member countries.

D-8 Secretary General, Dr Dipo Alam, said the issues should be dealt with equally among its members. He said the three-day D-8 Ministers’ Meeting on Food Security was important and necessary to address the issues.

“Our meeting today is important and necessary, because our 930 million people need enough food in a good quality and at affordable prices,” Alam said in his welcoming address here today.

His speech was delivered by D-8 economist, Esen Gonen.

Alam said a working group on public-private sector partnership in food security was expected to be set up to maintain and develop cooperation among members in order to identify joint-investment potentials in fields such as fertilisers, animal feed, seed and fisheries.

He also hoped that a bi-annual ministerial meeting on food security be held to maintain the momentum and supervise the implementation of the programmes.

Besides hosts Malaysia, the countries attending the meeting are Iran, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Nigeria.  Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Qatar are attending as observers.

The meeting will dwell on the implementation of three initiatives for a strategic cooperation among member countries.

They are production of quality fertilisers, animal feed and formation of a seed bank.

FAO Gives The Thumbs Up For D8 Meeting

Recognizing the significance of the meeting, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) praised the Developing Eight (D8) meeting here as it correctly targeted key inputs, like seeds, fertilizer and animal feed to perk up agricultural productivity.

Roughly 75 per cent of the world’s hungry and poor live in rural areas and obtain their livelihood from agriculture, said FAO director Dr Charles Riemenschneider.

Speaking to reporters after a closed-door meeting of the D8 conference on food security here, he said the number of hungry and malnourished in the world rose to 963 million last year from 842 million in 1990, when the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals sought to halve hunger and poverty by 2015.

Riemenschneider said it was unimaginable that the world could meet the growing demand for food, feed and fiber without sensible use of inputs, especially seeds and fertilizers.  “At present about 170 million tonnes of fertilizer nutrients is consumed annually and is estimated to grow to 230 million tonnes in 2050.

The food price crisis last year focused the world’s attention on agricultural development needs in many countries.

The UN High Level Task Force organized by the UN Secretary-General had refocus the attention of the entire United Nations and Bretton Woods system towards the importance of agricultural development and food security.

SOURCE: BERNAMA

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