ABSTRACT
The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is at the centre of UN policy with regards to global food production. Its principal tasks have been to increase food production in the world and create a framework of standards for the distribution of this food. The FAO, while acknowledging the scale of global hunger, makes a case for its contribution to tackling the problem: ‘Food production has increased at an unprecedented rate since the FAO was founded in 1945, outpacing the doubling of the world’s population over the same period’ (FAO 2002). The FAO has, nevertheless, been the focus of much criticism in recent years. Uvin, in an angry polemical work on global hunger in the mid-1990s, described the combined work of the FAO and its offspring the WFP as amounting to an ‘international hunger regime’ (Uvin 1994: 73-74). Uvin contends that the FAO, in line with other UN agencies and IGOs, is interested in facilitating greater international trade through mechanizing agricultural production in LDCs rather than confronting the nutritional needs of people in poverty. The Ecologist magazine in 1991 produced a special edition entitled ‘FAO – Promoting World Hunger’ which focused specifically on the allegation that the FAO is unduly influenced by lobbying from food and pesticide MNCs seeking favourable conditions to extend their business opportunities in the South (Ecologist 1991). The FAO stands accused of having undergone a value shift from its original aspirations and becoming an agent of northern economic gain rather than that of relieving human suffering. The FAO has, however, done much to achieve one of its central aims and undoubtedly assisted in improving agricultural productivity over the last half-century. Its role in food trading has possibly served northern interests more than those of the South since the epistemic community on whose advice it draws is far more corporate than other UN agencies. The FAO, however, cannot to be held responsible for the persistence of the root cause of inequitable food trading, excessive government protectionism. The fact that developed states have shown little enthusiasm for freeing up agricultural trade in the same manner that has been achieved for industrial produce has stifled a potential economic way out of the quagmire for many LDCs. This problem, highlighted by the Brandt Reports, has yet to be addressed. Global governance guided by more than the profit motive of wealthy states is needed to ensure that the FAO’s success in promoting food production is put to best use.
