LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN REGION CAN ONLY GROW
IF IT INVESTS IN ITS LESS FAVOURED CITIZENS,
ALERTS FAO AT ITS REGIONAL CONFERENCE

Ministers of Agriculture of the Region will receive tomorrow technical report from FAO

Guatemala City, Wednesday 27 April 2004 - The Region will attain growth only if it establishes the necessary bases for the sustainable development of all its people. If women, schoolchildren and the more disadvantaged groups such as indigenous people continue to suffer deficiencies in nutrition, education and health, a labor force that is economically competitive cannot be built.

This is the diagnosis formulated by the Technical Committee gathered for the past two days in Guatemala in the framework of the 28th FAO Regional Conference. On Wednesday 27 April, the Ministerial Sessions of the Conference will be inaugurated with the presence of FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, the President of Guatemala, Oscar Berger, and the Ministers of Agriculture of the countries of the Region

The Committee placed emphasis on the close relationship among food insecurity, hunger and economic and social exclusion, reaffirming the need of an integrated approach in addressing the analysis and identification of actions to be undertaken. In this context, the Committee requested the incorporation of subjects such as agrarian reform, agricultural and rural financing, technical cooperation and access to markets.

The Committee highlighted the fact that in analyzing food security and rural development, the international context should be taken into account. Adverse conditions in the international trade of agricultural products, derived from internal subsidies in developed countries and barriers to market access, where emphatically mentioned.

Hunger: insufficient and disheartening progress

The Technical Committee also analyzed regional achievements vis-à-vis the goals of the World Food Summit and the diagnosis qualified them as "disheartening".

Reduction of hunger in the Region has been slow and insufficient, in the opinion of the Technical Committee, who also indicated that seven years after the celebration of the World Food Summit, statistics on hunger showed a reduction of 5 million people, far below the goal of 30 million that would accomplish the reduction of those affected by hunger to half their numbers by the year 2015, as committed at the Summit.

The evolution of poverty and inequalities is not too promising either, confirmed the Committee, defining the Latin American and Caribbean panorama as a "combination of territorial inequalities, with a concentration of growth and investment attraction in the more competitive localities; sectoral, with a scarcely competitive rural and agricultural sector; and social, as a result of the above and due to the increasing segmentation of access to quality education and technological progress".

Inclusion of the excluded

Specialists confirmed that the reduction of food insecurity in the Region - affecting over 53 million people - requires the improvement of human capacities related to the process of food security, that is to say, nutrition, nutritional education and health.

The Committee also recommended the sustainable utilization of natural resources as a guarantee for food security. To this effect, it proposed to those politically responsible a "broadening of land property title rights and the stimulation and strengthening of the various forms of natural resources ownership, including social responsibility for their use".

The specialists verified that the great majority of the rural poor live in areas with low agricultural potential. Thus, they recommended fostering rural non-farm income sources to complement agricultural income.

They also indicated that natural and social emergencies represent serious threats for food security and for the conservation of natural resources, and therefore recommended member nations to "develop early warning strategies and food security programmes adequate to face catastrophes, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and civil conflicts".