One attendee of the so-called "hunger summit," Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, sought a harvest of a different kind. He engaged 200 women, located through a hostess Web site, to listen to his rambling discourse on the merits of Islam and gave each of them $90, a pamphlet on how to be a Muslim and a copy of the Quran for their trouble. He has lined up similar events for two other nights during his Rome sojourn.
Some observers have suggested that the worthy speeches at the summit may end up having as little practical impact as Gadhafi's proselytizing. Expectations for the meeting of some 60 global leaders were low from the beginning -- most tellingly because almost no leaders of the world's richest countries attended.
But there was no doubt that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has a serious problem to address. In 1980, 19 percent of all the development aid poorer countries received from richer countries and international agencies was directed toward agriculture; by 2006 that proportion had fallen to 3.8 percent. The FAO says there are more undernourished people now than there have been since 1970.
The richer countries have recently acknowledged the need for more spending. Earlier this summer, the Group of Eight nations pledged to put $20 billion toward agriculture over the next three years. But notably, that pledge was made outside of the U.N. framework. The FAO director-general, Jacques Diouf, convened the summit with the goal of getting countries to commit $44 billion a year toward fighting hunger, much of which, presumably, would go through the United Nations. The summit declaration ended up making no mention of that figure or any other target amount.
Khalil Senosi, AP
Kenyan women pluck rice plants from a successful nursery the government has nurtured near the town of Ahero.
"Hunger is the most devastating weapon of mass destruction on our planet," Lula told the assembly. Brazil is widely recognized as one of the world's leaders in fighting hunger, having substantially reduced its once high levels of undernourishment through a sustained program of cash and agricultural supports for the country's many poor.
Gadhafi, who heads the African Union, lambasted the leaders of wealthy nations for skipping the summit, "except for my friend Berlusconi." Echoing some of the ideas he laid out in a marathon discourse at September's U.N. General Assembly, he blamed the current food crisis on the developed world's history of colonization and exploitation.
Pope Benedict said that what is lacking is a political will for change and an economic structure to make sure everybody is fed. The problem is not a lack of food supply, but how it is distributed, he said, bolstering a point very much at the heart of Catholic doctrine: that "there is no cause and effect relationship between population growth and hunger."
Anti-poverty campaigners were downbeat about the effects the summit would have from the beginning. Oxfam International released a statement calling the pledge to redouble efforts against hunger "uncosted, unfunded and unaccountable. The sentiment is honorable, but that alone doesn't put food on a billion empty plates."
Speakers frequently mentioned the impact of climate change on hunger. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called for action on climate change at the upcoming meeting in Copenhagen, saying that "there can be no food security without climate security." A recent report by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute found that the number of malnourished children in the world will increase by 25 million over the next 40 years because of floods, droughts and other weather upsets.
One notable addition to the summit declaration was a new openness to using biotechnology in agriculture, a change that came at the urging of American officials, according to FAO Assistant Director-General Jose Maria Sumpsi, who stressed that his organization would take a precautionary approach to controversial scientific advances. The U.S. delegation did not respond to a request for comment.
