Food And Agriculture Organization Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Founded on October 16, 1945, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the United Nations agency charged with the mission of leading and coordinating activities to eliminate global hunger. The organization’s Latin motto—fiat panis—translated into English as “let there be bread!” reflects its primary focus on promoting global food security, especially among impoverished rural areas of the world. After its beginnings at the First Session of the FAO Conference in Quebec, Canada, its headquarters was moved to Washington, D.C., in 1948 and to Rome, Italy, in 1951. With 191 states and the European Union as members, the FAO functions as a forum for member nations to engage in policy debate and negotiate agreements relating to food production, distribution, and nutrition. In particular, the FAO serves an important function as a source of information and knowledge for developing nations to improve their food production productivity and the effectiveness of food marketing systems. In 2003 the FAO joined other international organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and private sector organizations to form the International Alliance Against Hunger to work in partnership toward the eradication of global hunger through advocacy, accountability, resource mobilization, and coordination.

The FAO’s major activities, detailed in its Program of Work, are funded through member contributions determined at the Conference of Member Nations every two years. At the biennial conference, members meet to elect a council comprised of 49 member nations, which governs for three years. Members also elect the director-general to head the agency’s eight departments—agriculture and consumer protection; economic and social development; fisheries and aquaculture; forestry; knowledge and communication; natural resources management and environment; technical cooperation; and human, financial, and physical resources. Importantly, the conference reviews the FAO’s key programs and policies and approves its plans and budget for the following period. Two major financial initiatives were introduced in 1994 to improve the FAO’s efficiency. First, the structure of the agency has been decentralized, streamlining procedures in order to save costs. Second, the organization’s two-year budget was frozen at $650 million from 1996–97 to 2001 and has since gradually increased, but has not kept pace with inflation.

Programs designed to elevate hunger and promote its elimination are the core of the FAO’s work. A centerpiece initiative, the Special Program for Food Security (SPFS), aims to reduce the number of people suffering from hunger by half by 2015. To achieve this goal, projects are implemented in over 100 countries, with about 30 of them developing and implementing National Food Security Programs by mid-2007. Another key FAO initiative was leading the promotion of integrated pest management for rice promotion in Asia during the 1990s. Through bilateral funding from a number of developed countries, hundreds of thousands of farmers were trained under the Farmer Field School (FFS), a group-based learning process.

Apart from the operational programs deployed in target nations, the FAO works to raise public awareness and financial support to address the problems of hunger and malnutrition facing millions of the world’s people. One example of the FAO’s efforts to these ends is TeleFood, a campaign of concerts and sporting events launched in 1997. This campaign has attracted donations that are used to fund projects to assist small-scale farmers to produce more food for their families and local communities. Most prominent of these efforts is the Goodwill Ambassadors Program initiated in 1999. FAO Goodwill Ambassadors are drawn from a wide field of achievements— the arts, entertainment, sports, and academia—to garner public support for the campaign against world hunger. As part of its informational role, the FAO’s statistical division generates extensive time-series data on agriculture, nutrition, fisheries, forestry, food aid, land use, trade flows, and population from over 210 countries and territories. This is made accessible through the online multilingual database FAOSTAT.

Despite the progress, the FAO has also attracted much criticism, particularly since the 1970s. Over the years, critics have described the organization as increasingly inefficient, irrelevant, politicized, mediocre, and losing focus on its purpose to combat global hunger. Several high-profile summits, reports, and audits have expressed serious concerns about the FAO’s effectiveness. Radical changes to its culture and management systems have been recommended to improve its efficiency and refocus its strategic priorities.

Bibliography:

Fabrizio Bresciani and Alberto Valdés, Beyond Food Production: The Role of Agriculture in Poverty (Edward Elgar and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2007);
Hambidge, The Story of FAO (Van Nostrand, 1955);
B. O’Brien, “F. L. McDougall and the Origins of the FAO,” Australian Journal of Politics & History (v.46/2, 2000);
W. Phillips, FAO: Its Origins, Formation and Evolution 1945–1981 (Food and Agriculture Organization, 1981);
Amy L. Sayward, The Birth of Development: How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945–1965 (Kent State University Press, 2006).

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