Mr President,
In recent years, following the food commodities crisis of 2007 and 2008, our country has contributed greatly to bringing this crucial issue back onto the international political agenda.
On the occasion of our presidency of the G8 in 2009, in the town of L’Aquila, former Prime Minister Berlusconi launched a food security initiative in which more than 40 countries and International Organizations agreed to mobilize 20 billion dollars over three years in order to help farmers in poor countries boost their productivity.
Furthermore, the principles laid out in L’Aquila were subsequently approved at the World Summit on Food Security in November 2009 and are now known as the Five Rome Principles for Sustainable Global Food Security. Thanks to the renewed attention of the international community, the same World Summit saw the approval of the reform of the Committee on Food Security and the creation of a High Level Panel of Experts, thereby giving life to a more coordinated system of global governance.
Again during our presidency of the G8, Italy organized the first ever G8 Agriculture Ministers’ summit.
We highlighted on that occasion the risk that unless structural changes were made, food crises would not only have grave social and economic repercussions, but could also seriously affect political stability worldwide.
Mr President,
Two years on, food security is back on the top of our agendas and shows all its humanitarian, development and security implications.
Food prices reached new heights in 2011, coupled with the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa. Last year’s riots in North Africa and the Middle East were not triggered by economic hardship alone, but it is no mere coincidence that the popular uprisings occurred following a sudden increase in food prices and in particular in the price of wheat.
The truth is that inflation in agricultural prices brings about an exponential rise in political, economic and social vulnerability and instability, especially in countries where a large part of households’ income is spent on feeding the family. A hungry world is an unjust world. It is also an instable world.
