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News \| Africa \| General Africa

UN to buy surplus food from poorer producers

XAN RICE | NAIROBI, KENYA - Sep 28 2008 06:00

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More than 350 000 small-scale farmers in Africa and Central America will soon begin selling produce to the UN in an initiative that could transform the way food aid is purchased.

Announcing the five-year $76-million (R618,5-million) pilot project earlier this week, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said it would buy surplus crops from low-income farmers in 21 countries to help boost fragile economies. The food will be used for regional hunger emergencies and safety-net schemes, such as school feeding projects.

Although the WFP currently buys about 80% of its stocks locally in the developing world, virtually all of them come from traders and large-scale farmers.

"The world's poor are reeling under the impact of high food and fuel prices and buying food assistance from developing-world farmers is the right solution at the right time," said Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, who said the Purchase for Progress scheme was a "win-win".

"We help our beneficiaries who have little or no food and we help local farmers who have little or no access to markets where they can sell their crops."

Charitable foundations established by Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, and Howard Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, are funding the project, which targets some of the world's poorest countries, including Sierra Leone, Malawi, Ethiopia and El Salvador. It is expected that 40 000 tons of food - enough to feed to 250 000 people for a year -- will be purchased in the first year.

The farmers will be required to form collectives and the usual UN requirements for growers to provide surety bonds, transport and packaging materials will be relaxed or waived. By selling directly to the WFP rather than to middlemen, it is expected that the farmers will receive higher-than-normal prices.

The announcement was made at the UN general assembly, where world leaders are discussing the progress made towards achieving the millennium development goals, which include halving the 1990 poverty and hunger levels by 2015.

Speaking at the launch, Gates said the new initiative "represents a major step toward sustainable change that could eventually benefit millions of poor rural households".

CONTINUES BELOW

The WFP bought $612-million (almost R5-billion) of food supplies in the developing world last year to feed 86-million people. -- © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2008

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Comments

Fantastic to hear that some organisations are being proactive in dealing with this problem and giving producers in poorer countries a hand. I really hope they manage to pull this off. Now if only African governments themselves could follow the example of the UN and come up with workable solutions...

Maylani Bezuidenhout on September 30, 2008, 11:57 am

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