SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY (SADC) - COMMUNAUTE DU DEVELOPPEMENT DE L'AFRIQUE AUSTRALE - COMUNIDAD PARA EL DESARROLLO DEL AFRICA MERIDIONAL

Mr. Kaire M. Mbuende, Executive Secretary, Southern African Development Community (SADC)

I would like to open my remarks by congratulating the Director General of FAO for convening this Summit on the important topic of the availability and accessibility of food. As leaders in our respective nations and regions, we all share the responsibility for ensuring that the world produces sufficient food. Equally important is our responsibility for ensuring that everybody has continuing access to sufficient food to live a productive and decent life.

The first point I would like to make is that the attainment of food security is becoming much more the result of a number of actions taken by a range of sectors than a function of merely increasing food output. In other words, food security has become a policy objective rather than a set of activities, and requires coordinated action in a number of fields.

Many of the documents that have been prepared for this meeting and the speeches which have been given point to the need for improvements in productivity in agriculture to meet the changing dietary needs of increased populations. Clearly this has implications for continued support for research and dissemination of new technologies at the global level as well as at the regional and national level. Nowhere is this more urgent than in the Southern African region. Per caput output of major cereals has declined in our region over the past two decades and yield increases are slowing, despite the fact that nearly all the countries of the region were implementing policies aimed at food self-sufficiency for much of that time. This must be reversed and we need the support of the rest of the world to do it. What is needed is a package of policies and investments, both public and private, that will enable us to exploit the largely untapped agricultural potential of the region. But the focus must not be just on increasing food output. We have tried that and it has failed. New approaches to investment, to intra-regional trade, and to promotion of resources that are clearly being used inefficiently are needed. Many of these problems can only be addressed by countries of the region working together.

All countries in our region can be classified as developing countries. As such, we share a number of common problems that militate aginst our being able to ensure food security for all our people. In the past, we have attempted to meet that goal by trying to increase output. While this is important, a large and growing proportion of households in our region now obtain at least part of their food requirements by buying or working for it. This means that we must now orient our thinking towards how we can change the focus of agricultural development away from just raising productivity and total output, although, as I have said, that is important. Because agriculture is the largest sector in most SADC countries in terms of employment, we must make that sector the engine for economic development that creates employment and incomes. In other words, we must seek to alleviate poverty in order to improve food security and, given their size in most countries, we will have to focus predominantly on the agricultural sectors to achieve this.

In SADC, we have already taken a number of steps towards this end, both as independent countries and as a region. In the first place, we have recognized that agricultural research and the development of technology is critically important. We cooperate as a region in research and are grateful for the support that is given to our efforts in this regard by such groups as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and by individual cooperating partners. But much more needs to be done, including the preservation of biodiversity in the region. I would hope that the final Declaration to emanate from this forum will emphasize the continuing need for global support for our efforts in this regard.

We have also tried to improve the efficiency with which we allocate our scarce resources in agriculture. The deregulation of agricultural and other markets in nearly all countries of our region is well known to most of you. We have also taken a number of measures to open up our countries to trade. As agricultural products form such a large proportion of our foreign trade, it is of the greatest importance to us that we are given the opportunity to enter world markets - in other words, that barriers to trade are not raised but are dismantled. It is equally, if not more, important that our open markets are not used as a way of disposing of surpluses from other areas of the world. We surely cannot be asked to accept trade patterns that militate against the development of the one sector in the region that has the potential to provide an increasing number of people with food, incomes and jobs. This summit must, therefore, stress that trade in agricultural products should be oriented towards balancing food needs and not be used to undermine development.

Closely allied to what I said about the need to increase food output and employment is the need for all countries, especially regions such as ours, where soils are fragile and the climate is capricious, to bear in mind the environmental impact of development. Soil degradation is a problem we are grappling with because it threatens the very basis of our development. The techniques to reduce the impact of increased pressures on natural resources are becoming increasingly well understood. What is now required is the capacity to use such techniques and that, in turn, implies a need for human and financial resources. Global climate change may well be occurring already. With our predominantly rainfed agriculture and the large areas in our region which get little rain, often irregularly, we need to have access to long range seasonal predictions and be able to combat the soil erosion that characterizes such regions. This is not a problem that affects our region or Africa alone. This summit needs to recognize that making information on climate, on combating soil erosion, on new High Yielding Varieties of cereals and other food crops, on water catchment and use, on tillage techniques, or on pollution control available to all is of paramount importance. Without that, our capacity to meet our growing food needs or to develop faster are prejudiced. The transfer of technology to the region and its subsequent transfer to individuals within the region should be seen as a major component of global action to increase food, while preventing further damage to fragile natural resource bases.

Managing variability is a major concern of ours in the southern part of Africa. The use of trade is, as I have said, one way of doing so. Another way is to provide for greater flexibility within our economies. Macro-economic policies aimed at this are now being implemented in all our Member States. The increasingly close links between our economies and those of the rest of the world, however, mean that we are still vulnerable to external shocks that would not hurt more developed economies in the same way. We have started a process of economic integration in the region which should, in time, give us greater capacity to ride out global trade or financial storms more easily. At the moment, however, we are vulnerable. We need assistance to help us trade among ourselves (especially in times of shortage), to improve the way our members develop policies affecting the agricultural sector, and to instill the skills required to ensure that the process of development continues without causing undue inequities.

May I close by reiterating my gratitude to the Director-General for starting this process of concentrating the minds of the world on the continuing importance of food security. This Summit meeting will be only one part of a continuing effort to bring the issue of food security into the limelight and make it of greater concern to all policy makers. I have tried to make clear our concern that agricultural development is an essential first step towards more employment and, hence, more income thereby ensuring not only that more food is produced but that more people can have access to that food. So it is imperative that we understand and have support for, policies that promote that process. In this context, we are currently in the process of developing a new food security strategy framework for the region which will require the involvement of all sectors of the economy and all of civil society, not just governments. Equally, it is vital that we are not called upon to accept trade agreements or market situations that could damage our capacity to develop our agricultural sector. In the long run, as we develop more, we will have less need for external help and will become a bigger market for non-food tradable goods. Slower development will surely bring in its wake greater social unrest, pressure for migration and continuing requests for assistance. We in SADC are determined that our future should be one of faster development and, at the same time, enhanced food security.