Obama Enlists Major Powers to Aid Poor Farmers With $15 Billion [View All]

[Pirate Smile]

Source: The New York Times

L’AQUILA, Italy — President Obama has enlisted the world’s leading powers to contribute $15 billion to help millions of the world’s poorest farmers grow enough food to feed themselves, American officials said Wednesday.
If the assistance is delivered and is in fact mostly new money, it will constitute the largest international effort in decades to combat hunger by investing in the fundamentals of an agricultural economy, including seed, fertilizer, grain storage and research into new plant varieties.

With the ranks of the hungry expected to exceed a billion people this year, the undertaking has great urgency for the bulk of the world’s poor who still live in rural areas.
And it also signals a major change in the United States’ own approach to hunger, which has relied far more on shipping American-grown food to the starving than on helping them grow their own.

This aid package effectively recognizes the growing consensus among philanthropists, economists and African governments that efforts to reduce poverty on the continent are probably doomed without far greater investment in agriculture. While aid to educate the poor and keep them healthy is critical, so is helping millions of farmers grow more food and earn some income.

Mr. Obama, who has made improving the productivity of farmers in the developing world a top priority since taking office, lobbied other world leaders to join him in backing this venture during telephone conversations in recent weeks. Leaders from Italy and Japan, among others, also took the lead in forging a consensus. The resulting commitments, to be unveiled Friday, may be among the most tangible achievements of his first summit meeting with the Group of 8 powers, here in L’Aquila.

“We don’t need fancy computers to solve these problems,” Mr. Obama said in a recent interview with allAfrica.com, which distributes news from across the continent. “We need tried-and-true agricultural methods and technologies that are cheap and are efficient but could have a huge impact in terms of people’s day-to-day well-being.”



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/world/europe/09food.html?src=twt&twt=nytimespolitics