By IANS,
New Delhi : Lack of investment in agriculture and rural development is the main cause of global hunger of millions, especially in the developing countries like India, according to a UN report released Thursday.
The report, titled ‘Millennium Development Goals-2008 Report’, said domestic agricultural subsidies by rich nations overshadow money spent on development aid.
“The global food crisis is partly the result of domestic agricultural subsidies and tariff protection by developed countries, which for many years have discouraged agricultural production in developing countries,” it said.
UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon said in the report: “The imminent threat of increased hunger would have been lessened if recent decades had not been marked by a lack of investment in agricultural and rural development in developing countries.”
The report also relies on the role of official development assistance (ODA) – financial aid from developed countries to the third world in achieving the UN’s goals to alleviate poverty.
The total subsidy developed countries have given to their domestic agricultural sectors grew by some $65 billion between 2000-04, before being cut by $16 billion in 2006 to $372 billion.
Such expenditures are three times higher than the ODA of developed countries.
This, according to the report, “acts as a disincentive to agricultural production in developing regions and undermines ODA’s broad objective of supporting development”.
The Group Eight countries, comprising the US, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan and Italy – the most industrially advanced nations – have targeted raising global ODA from $80 billion in 2004 to $130 billion by 2010.
The report suggested that to plug the gap, donors will have to increase aid flows by $18 billion each year between 2008 and 2010.