Resolution number: 03
Title: Food Security
Adopted by 60th Congress of Liberal International
The Congress of Liberal International, convened in Mexico City, DF, Mexico, on 31 October 2015
Recognises that:
- The global demand for food is rising rapidly, and the FAO estimates that by 2050, a 70% increase in food supply will be necessary to feed the growing world population, while it expects arable land to only increase by 4.3% ;
- Improvements in agriculture can be a powerful engine for economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries;
- Approximately 1/3 of all the food grown for human consumption is not used, either through food losses (weather conditions, poor storage, and transportation) or food waste occurring at every stage of the supply chain. This is equivalent to the food production of approximately 28% of the world’s agricultural land and costs $750 billion.
- Education can play an enormous role in improving food security, by teaching farmers to adopt more efficient farming techniques but also by making consumers aware of food waste and ways of decreasing it;
- The role of women is especially important in increasing food security in developing countries as they play a key role in providing food to their families, thus educating and empowering women can increase food production while also decreasing poverty and hunger;
Calls on governments, international organizations and all member parties to:
- Re-emphasize the importance of food production and agriculture in aid programs for developing countries;
- Make efforts to maximize the effectiveness of policies aimed at increasing food security, by making sure that they are coherent with other policies such as trade, climate, and energy;
- Prioritize cooperation programs based on microcredits to family farms and SME’s which provide food to local communities;
- Include a gender perspective and the promotion of women’s empowerment in all policies aimed at increasing food security and aid programs for developing countries concerning agricultural development;
- Lobby all national governments to take action to support the UN Sustainable Development Goal to halve food waste by 2030;
- Lobby national governments in developed countries to ensure that retailers and food producers develop fair terms of trade with suppliers in developing countries;
- Lobby national governments to adopt the “food waste hierarchy” to ensure that fiscal and policy interventions prioritise minimising then using potentially wasted food by humans, then animals, followed by energy recovery, composting, and landfilling.
