The High-Level Conference agreed that the global food system is in a crisis and families all over the world are feeling the pinch of the situation. Millions of people can no longer afford or access what they need, increasing global hunger and malnutrition. One wonders what the big agricultural institutions are doing? The truth is that, modern agriculture has brought significant increases in food production. But the benefits have been spread unevenly and have come at an increasingly intolerable price paid by small scale-farmers, workers, rural communities and even the environment. To many, support has to be redirected at a different model of agriculture that can sustainably meet the needs of a growing population. As we debate the future of the food situation in the world we can also look at the World Trade Organization's bilateral and regional trade agreements currently under negotiation to ascertain whether or not they will solve the current food crisis.
Firstly, existing WTO and bilateral and regional trade agreements push across-board liberation, which in a sense have worsened the prices of food. It has also led to the dependence on international markets and decreased investments in local food production. In fact it has eroded the ability of a number of developing countries to feed themselves. The removal of tarrifs has also resulted in dumping heavily subsidised commodities in developing countries such as Ghana. This undermines local food production. We have turned from net food exporters to net importers food and this makes the country extremely vulnerable to volatile world food prices. The question is, can we do away with this short-term measure and allow many of our countrymen to go hungry? We welcome measures taken by President Kufuor's administration in the short-term to reduce the impact of increasing food prices on the consumer, while medium and long term polices are formulated.
It is worrying to see that the food situation is causing unrest in some parts of the world including some developed countries. President Kufuor made it clear that, young democracies such as Ghana's that have been nurtured diligently cannot afford any disturbance in governance strucutres in the name of food crisis. Urgent steps must therefore be taken to keep the soaring global food prices under control. Nothing is more demanding than hunger; it breeds anger, social disintegration, untold hardship, malnutrition and even death.
In order to bring the global food situation under control, governments and policy-makers would have to build resilient food and agricultural systems that increase local food production and consumption, local investments, support for sustainable small-scale farming, availability of soft loans and making technical know-hows a must for food producers. It is envisaged that the wolrd population would reach 7.2 billion by 2015 and unless governments and stakeholders act now the problem of food crisis will grow larger and remain with us. Together, all hands must be on deck to control this ethical canker, which has the tendency of threatening peace and stability in the world.
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