Alonzo L. Fulgham, Acting Administrator Chief Operating Officer and Executive Secretary (photo by FAO)

17 November 2009

Head of Delegation Fulgham Presents U.S. Intervention at the World Summit on Food Security, November 17, 2009

Summit on World Food Security
Rome, Italy
November 16-18, 2009

Thank you Mr. Chair.

Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentleman.

As many before me have noted, one billion people suffer from chronic hunger worldwide. We too recognize the recent FAO study stating that by 2050, global food supplies must increase by an estimated seventy percent to meet expected demand from a growing world population. It is with this in mind that we join the other governments gathered here in Rome for this important meeting.

The United States welcomes the declaration we have adopted at this Summit. It represents a global consensus on a new approach to alleviating hunger and under-nutrition by harnessing the tremendous potential of agriculture to drive economic growth.

This new approach changes how we think about the joint issues of food insecurity and under-nutrition.

Even better, this Declaration doesn’t merely acknowledge the problem, it articulates the principles as well as the solutions that will help us achieve our goals, as encapsulated by the MDGs.

At L’Aquila we joined the G-8 in announcing the way forward when President Obama supported the five principles for sustainable agricultural development.

This is truly a momentous occasion. Now, for the first time, the entire membership of the UN has affirmed these basic principles—the Five Rome Principles for Sustainable Global Food Security – that will shape and drive our actions for years to come.

The international community now shifts its focus to support country-led plans that channel resources to well-designed and results-based programs and partnerships. This approach to poverty and hunger involves both direct immediate action and medium and long term agriculture development.

We’ve agreed that our efforts must be as comprehensive as the problems are complex, encompassing the entire range of agricultural activities—from lab to farm to market to table.

Within this comprehensive approach we must give special attention to the needs of smallholder farmers, fisherfolk, and pastoralists, and the ultra-poor.

In all our efforts we must give particular attention to women because we recognize that women feed the world.

As part of this comprehensive approach, our efforts must also continue to be responsive to emergencies and crisis situations, such as the one now threatening food security in the Horn of Africa.

Humanitarian assistance, while addressing the immediate impacts of hunger, must also lay the foundations for longer-term solutions to food insecurity by protecting agricultural livelihoods, assets and investments that might otherwise be lost.

Such a comprehensive model already exists at the regional level. In 2003, African leaders made an historic pledge to increase their own investments in food security and agriculture-led growth through the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program—or, CAADP.

By asserting responsibility for their own development needs, the leaders of Africa helped to launch a new model in which development is a shared commitment based on the needs of the people rather than the capabilities of donors.

Last week in Abuja, many of us committed to what amounts to a code of conduct in support of the implementation of CAADP.  This code will help to ensure that our global commitments translate into coordinated, sustained investments in country-owned agriculture and food security plans within African countries and sub-regions.

In the Summit declaration, we also recognize that partnering with multilateral institutions, including a reformed FAO and a revitalized Committee on World Food Security will help provide strategic coordination and support at national, regional and global levels.

We are particularly pleased to see the enhanced cooperation in recent weeks among FAO, WFP, and IFAD to draw upon each agency’s comparative advantage in a more coordinated fashion.

We see this as affirmation of the global strategy we have been espousing in our approach toward food security, and something that must endure.

The U.S. will invest in--and encourage others to contribute to--multilateral institutions that support agriculture-led economic growth.

For example, G20 leaders called for the establishment of a multi-donor trust fund – theGlobal Agriculture and Food Security Program – at their September Summit in Pittsburgh.

The trust fund will provide critical financing for investments in country-led strategies and will draw on the expertise of institutions such as the World Bank, WFP, FAO, the African Development Bank, and IFAD.

We look forward to working with potential recipient countries, development partners and civil society to operationalize the fund in the near future.

Lastly, we underscore the fact that the Declaration’s shifts in focus and action are enduring. We—both donor and developing countries—commit ourselves to timely and sustained action, and welcome the declaration’s emphasis on mutual accountability.

Your Excellencies, now is the time to lift the words off the page and put them into action. Here’s what the U.S. is doing to support this historic consensus:

The Obama Administration’sresponse to global hunger and food insecuritywholeheartedly embraces the principles contained in the Summit resolution we have adopted here in Rome, while at the same time, maintains our commitment to emergency food assistance.

In addition to maintaining the U.S. commitment to emergency and humanitarian aid, the United States stands behind our pledge and we will invest $3.5 billion of the $22 billion committed by donors at L’Aquila and Pittsburgh, to catalyze agriculture-led economic growth in an environmentally sustainable fashion.

We recognize that these pledges represent only a portion of what is needed to carry through on the global commitment to alleviate hunger and poverty.

The United States is making a long-term commitment to eliminating food insecurity and we ask every country and organization represented in this room to join us.

We know we have many partners here in this room who are moving forward as eagerly and aggressively as we are. We hope there will soon be others. If we can now put our global commitments into action at the national, village and farm level, we are confident we will succeed in eliminating the human devastation caused by hunger, poverty and under-nutrition.

Secretary Clinton observed that, “The question is not whether we can end hunger, it’s whether we will.” Distinguished delegates, at this summit, we’ve adopted the principles and commitments that make it possible to end hunger. Once we leave, we’ve got to do the hard work to make it happen.

The Rome Principles for Global Food Security are a commitment to a new way of doing business based on our common belief that each country has a fundamental responsibility to advance practical actions to ensure the food security of its people.

Mr. Chairman, let us mark 2009 as the year in which we reversed the decline in investment in agriculture and took up the challenge to ensure global food security for all.

Thank you very much.