The odds were high that the World Food Summit held in Rome in November would be a waste of time. The world's leaders clearly thought that it would be: only 50 of the 197 nations attending were represented by a head of government, signalling the low priority attached to world hunger.
Binu Thomas of ActionAid India, who worked long and hard to raise public awareness before the Summit, has a rather bitter response to its achievements: 'Just how much hunger has slipped from the global agenda can be gauged by the fact that while the 1974 World Food Conference pledged to eradicate hunger by 1984, in 1996 they refuse to commit themselves to eradicate it even in two decades.' He goes on to point out that the failure of the Food Summit derived from governments' failure to challenge the rising power of the unholy trinity - global finance, transnational corporations and international crop-research institutes - which control the food business.
Global foodgrain production slid from 1,780 million tonnes in 1990 to 1,680 million tonnes in 1995. Part of the reason is two decades of high-tech agriculture which is draining soil fertility. Another part is the persistent promotion of cash crops by the World Bank and the IMF.
It was entirely predictable that the West persisted in raising the population issue, ignoring the fact that population-growth rates have dropped and continue to fall even in the poorest countries whereas overconsumption continues to grow and threatens to get out of control. The references to overconsumption introduced by Asian non-governmental organizations in the Rome NGO document last September were mysteriously deleted from the final version.
The star of the Summit show from a Third World point of view was an old stager who did deign to turn up: Fidel Castro of Cuba. 'What kind of cosmetic solutions are we going to provide,' he thundered, 'so that 20 years from now there will be 400 million instead of 800 million starving people? The very modesty of these goals is shameful.'
Mari Marcel Thekaekara