Emergency food stocks in West Africa

Food insecurity is on the increase since the 2008 crisis: nearly one billion people suffer from hunger and many regions, such as the Horn of Africa, have been affected by severe food crises over the past few months.

Under these circumstances, on 23rd September in Washington, G20 Finance and Cooperation ministers decided to accelerate the implementation of measures defined during the agricultural G20 in June. While the G20 Ministerial Declaration called for a feasibility study before considering building-up food stocks, the Minister for Cooperation, Henry Raincourt announced the setting-up of emergency food stocks in West Africa. This region will be experimenting with a 90-day supply of humanitarian food stocks.

If it is indispensable to help areas affected by food crises through emergency measures, it is also indispensable to prevent these crises reoccurring by means of structural measures, such as combating agricultural price hyper-volatility. This latter, is in fact, one of the main causes of food insecurity because of two combined factors:

- Price hyper-volatility directly affects farmers in developing countries who hold a strategic position as food producers.

- It condemns them to food insecurity or even famine, as more than one individual in two who suffer from hunger in the world is a farmer and this proportion is much higher in developing countries.