Food Crisis Threatening World Stability - Malawian President

Excerpt from report by state-owned Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) radio on 25 September

[Presenter] His Excellency the president, Dr Bingu wa Mutharika, has
said the current food crisis that has rocked the world poses a new
threat to the stability of social framework and economic prosperity of
all countries in the world, especially the small nations.

President Mutharika was addressing the on-going United Nations General Assembly in New York.

In a speech, which he titled The Global Food Crisis: a Collective
Challenge to the United Nations, Dr Mutharika said during the past 20
years, the food production in many countries has been affected by
severe climate changes such as cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, floods,
droughts, rising sea levels and desertification.

The president
said high dependency on rain-fed agriculture has also caused a great
challenge especially in countries in the sub- Saharan region. He said
agriculture and food production had been given low priority by the
international development institutions in their allocation of resources
and investment funds.

Dr Mutharika said this has been
compounded by low national budgetary allocation to food production in
many countries, especially in Africa.

The president therefore said the food crisis resulted from failure
of all nations to increase performance in the production of staple food
crops such as wheat, rice and maize. He also said there was general
concern in Africa that multi-lateral and bi-lateral institutions
continued to oppose subsidies to agriculture and food production,
especially in sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and Latin America.
[Passage omitted]

The Malawi government sees the attainment of
global food security as a collective challenge. This must be premised
on the ability to produce sufficient food and to move such food from
surplus areas anywhere on the globe to food deficit areas.

In
order to alleviate the global food crisis Malawi proposes that a
contract should be reached that countries that can produce sufficient
food surpluses should be empowered to share with others in the world
wherever they may be through a fair international trading system. This
would ensure that the entire humanity has enough food.

Second,
Malawi proposes that the United nations should urge industrialized
countries to make significant increases in resource allocation into
agriculture, especially food production. Special attention should be
given to improve infrastructure, machinery and equipment and capacity
building for farmers, especially small- holder farmers. The private
sector in industrialized countries should be persuaded to increase
investment in food production, paying special attention to the
application of science and technology to agriculture, research on
climate change and on the measures to protect food producing countries
from the vagaries of the climate.

Third, Malawi believes that
a global food crisis could be mitigated if the United Nations, the
World Bank and other multi- lateral and donor agencies would seriously
consider granting subsidies for agriculture and food production as an
integral part of their global development policy and aid packages to
developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

It
will also be useful if the international community could acknowledge
Africa's potential and capacity to contribute significantly to the
solution of the global food shortage. The United Nations should fully
support the alliance for an African Green Revolution chaired by the
former secretary general of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan.

To this specifically Malawi appeals to the G-8 countries to support us
to create a Green Belt around our lakes and along our rivers to
irrigate land up to 20 kilometres from the shores. The Malawi
government plans to grow a lot of rice, wheat, maize, millet, cassava,
potatoes, beans and [words indistinct] for the local and international
market. [Passage omitted]

Originally published by MBC radio, Blantyre, in English 1600 25 Sep 08.

(c) 2008 BBC Monitoring Africa. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

Source: BBC Monitoring Africa