Food security summit

Shohag Mostafij, MBA (Strategic & International Management), University of Dhaka
The World Summit on Food Security was held in Rome, Italy, from 16 to 18 November 2009. The FAO says the worldwide food security situation has worsened and continues to pose a severe threat. There are one billion chronically starving people in the globe and current reports say this number might grow by 100 million. Food prices linger persistently high in developing countries, while the universal economic crisis is deepening poverty. The foremost objective of the Summit is to get rid of hunger. To realize this, FAO says the occasion aims to put in place a more consistent and efficient system of governance of food security, including rules and mechanisms to make sure sufficient incomes for farmers, mobilizing funds into agricultural infrastructure and access to inputs, and an instrument for early response to food crises. On the opening day, the Summit adopted unanimously a declaration committing all the nations of the world to wiping out hunger at the earliest. It pledged to significantly augment aid to agriculture in developing countries, so that the world's one billion hungry can become more self-reliant. The statement confirmed the present target for plummeting hunger by half by 2015. FAO announced in July that Saudi Arabia had approved to meet up the expenses of the Summit, projected at $2.5 million. The offer was made during an official appointment to the country by Diouf. The prime minister of Bangladesh also joined this summit. And people around the world would certainly wait eagerly to see the implementation plans of poverty eradication.