By Mark Tran
July 10, 2011
Rich nations are failing to keep their pledge to help farmers in developing countries, according to campaigners.
The anti-poverty group ONE is also renewing calls for a long-term strategy to boost agriculture as drought grips the Horn of Africa.
With 10 million people facing a crisis, ONE said donors had delivered only a fifth of promised money to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
The pledge to put serious money into agriculture in the developing world followed the jump in food prices in 2007-08 that triggered riots in 30 countries across three continents. At the L'Aquila summit in Italy in 2009, the G8 group of major economies and five other donors promised $22bn (£13.8bn) in financing for agriculture, to be delivered within three years, of which $6bn was new money. They also agreed to a set of principles on how they would spend it in what became known as the L'Aquila food security initiative. The US government calculated that the plan would enable 40 million farming families, most of them living on less than $2 a day, to increase their incomes by 250%.
According to ONE, Canada and Italy have disbursed two-thirds of their pledges but France, the US and the UK, which pledged £1.1bn, have fulfilled only 28%, 2% and 30% respectively. The US pledged the largest amount, $3.5bn, but has paid out only $73m.
But the Department for International Development (DfID) said in its annual report that it was on track to spend all its pledge; it said its support for Rwanda had helped the country achieve an agricultural growth rate above 7% and to become self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs.
"ONE are simply wrong on their figures… Britain remains firmly on track to deliver the support we have pledged," said a DfID spokesman. "In addition… we are providing emergency food relief for nearly one and half million people in Ethiopia."
DfID said the 30% figure cited by ONE referred to spending at the end of the first year and did not include updated figures for 2010/11, which will be available later this year.
Foreign aid for agriculture reached $20bn in the mid-1980s before plunging to $3bn in the early 2000s.
"Africa has the land, the labour and access to resources such as water," said Jamie Drummond, executive director of ONE. "Without getting agriculture right, too much of Africa will stay poor."
