Aid agency welcomes government’s move to strengthen food security in Africa

Friday, October 28, 2011

Word Vision Australia welcomes the Federal Government’s move to establish a new research centre for food security and commends the government on taking a significant step towards tackling the global food crisis which has trapped one billion people in hunger.

The announcement at the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM) today follows World Vision’s warnings that the price of basic foods has skyrocketed by up to 200% recently.

“The announcement is a critical step in the re-establishment of agricultural and rural development as important targets for Australia's development assistance,” World Vision Australia spokesman Martin Thomas said.

“Australian farming know-how can play a key role in the fight against the global food crisis, it is an important issue for CHOGM because of the terrible reality that more than half of the eight million children that die each year from hunger and disease, die in Commonwealth countries.”

 World Vision Australia research shows there are 430 million small farms in the developing world and half of the world’s undernourished and 75 percent of Africa’s malnourished children live on these farms.

 The research revealed that if world leaders provided better support to these farmers as part of a wider global strategy they could put the fight against hunger back on track. It also highlighted Australia’s ability to play a leading role in this strategy due Australia’s know-how in dryland and tropical farming and the availability of innovative technologies.

 The Australian Government today announced it will set up a new Australian International Centre for Food Security to provide valuable agricultural research and advice to African countries in need.

 “This initiative is to be applauded and it must focus on both increasing productivity and nutrition.  Simply growing more grain is not the answer, there needs to be increased productivity across a wide range of foods to allow for a nutritious diet,” Mr Thomas said.

“There is also an urgent need to create a bridge between research and practice – the technologies often already exist but the trick is to work with communities to adapt them to local requirements”.

World Vision Australia is calling on G20 leaders next week to follow Australia's lead and provide an equal level of support for emergency food security issues and long term agricultural development and nutrition.

World Vision this week released the report, Island Nation or Global Citizen: Solving the Food Crisis by Helping Small Scale Farmers.  It makes a series of key policy recommendations that CHOGM leaders should adopt to respond to the world food crisis. The report, commissioned by World Vision Australia, was authored by Steve Wiggins a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in the UK who has been working on agricultural and rural development in Africa and Latin America for almost 40 years. 

 

ENDS

Media contacts:

Martin Thomas - Head of Public Affairs and External Relations, World Vision Australia
Email: martin.thomas@worldvision.com.au
Phone: 0400 454 695

Janet Craven – Senior Media Officer, World Vision Australia
Email: janet.craven@worldvision.com.au
Phone: 0407 819 347

Media Releases, Famine, Africa, Australian Government, Disaster relief, Food Security, Foreign Aid, Tim Costello, West Africa Food Crises

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