In Issue 41

As we go to press, the most important international meeting on hunger for 20 years is about to begin in Rome. This is The World Food Summit, convened by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The last Food Summit took place 22 years ago. At that Summit Henry Kissinger famously vowed that world hunger would be eradicated “within ten years”

This Summit will agree more modest, and perhaps attainable aim, to halve the number of hungry by 2015. And this at a time when 90 million mouths are being added to the world’s population each year.

The big question is: how do we halve the number of hungry?

Some believe that food security is attainable by the United States providing grain reserves for the world. But the world already produces enough food for all of us yet still 840 million people go hungry. The real cause of hunger is not lack of food, but lack of money to buy it. Poverty is the problem. Every country needs to be producing its own food, to have food security. Lasting food security will come from solutions that are not capital intensive. These allow people to work with their own local resources to produce their own food.

Beekeeping is just one of many ways that rural people can create income from the natural resources around them. It is one of the small solutions that can contribute to answering the big question.

Nicola Bradbear

Bees for Development

1 Agincourt Street, Monmouth NP25 3DZ, UK Tel: +44 (0)1600 714848 info@beesfordevelopment.org www.beesfordevelopment.org