Rome 16 Nov, 09

I am moving between two worlds.

In one, there is high security. The streets around the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation building are blocked off. The metro here is closed. You need a pass to get through the police cordon. And when you do and reach FAO, each group is segregated – delegates, staff, media and ngos, and ne’er the one will meet the other. It’s the World Summit on Food Security. All the papers are on the web and the event is web cast – - including the initial draft declaration with the 2025 commitment. Tune in and you’ll get almost as good a view as the ngos and media.

A few presidents and heads of government have come, but not that many, as the FAO DG noted, in a mild rebuke, in his remarks. The Pope came, spoke and went. A declaration has been adopted – but one with no ambitious targets – the one to eradicate hunger by 2025 was deleted in the wheeling and dealing before the meeting. It also ignores – as some of those at the other meeting I’m at point out - the recommendations of the recent International Assessment of Agriculture Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, to fundamentally change our approach to farming from an industrial one to an agro-ecological one.

The other meeting brings together hundreds of people from all over the world representing various pastoralists, fisherfolk, farmers, and civil society organisations. It is housed mainly in tents at the old slaughterhouse, now converted to a meeting place, with organic shop, café and restaurant and monthly farmers market, which filled the place yesterday.

This Civil Society Forum: ‘People’s Food Sovereignty Now!’ has 642 participants (more than half women) from 93 countries. They have been meeting in different caucuses – women, youth and indigenous peoples – and discussing 4 key questions since Saturday. Tomorrow they will produce their own declaration and present it at the main Summit. Today, some gathered outside the FAO to proclaim that 1.5 billion small farmers feed 75% of the world people and that building on their approach to food production could cuts agriculture’s contribution to global warming by 50% (See photos)...........Day 2

Geoff Tansey

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