The role of the European Union in supporting the realization of the right to food

Mr. Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, has issued a report on the effects of the CAP reform on the right to food in developing countries, particularly on poor, net-food-importing countries that are in particularly vulnerable situations, which have not been given appropriate consideration in the ongoing debate.

The right to food requires that each individual has the means either to produce food to satisfy his or her needs or has a purchasing power sufficient to procure food from the markets. If increases in food production rise in tandem with further marginalization of small-scale farmers in developing countries, the battle against hunger and malnutrition will be lost.

The Reform of the CAP, Mr. De Schutter states, should therefore keep in consideration the situation in developing countries, which are confronted with a tension between the short-term objective of importing cheap food, affordable for people living in poverty, and the long-term objective of improving their own ability to produce the food resources they need.

The Special Rapporteur encourages poor, net-food-importing countries to strengthen their agricultural sectors by investing infrastructure to improve the ability of small-scale producers to be linked to markets; to support their farmers through extension services; to encourage small-scale farmers to form cooperatives in order to achieve economies of scale in the processing, packaging and marketing of food.

The EU has a responsibility to facilitate such a transition. This means encouraging developing countries, which currently depend on food imports, to feed themselves in order to gradually reduce such dependency.

Mr. De Schutter added some suggestions on how to improve the EU import and export policies:

• The EU should closely monitor the impacts of the CAP on EU agricultural exports to developing countries.
• Farmers' organizations in developing countries that are EU trading partners should have access to grievance mechanisms
• Economic Partnership Agreements should allow and encourage net-food-importing developing countries to rebuild and strengthen their agricultural sector
• The EU should align its export strategies with national strategies for the realization of the right to food of net-food-importing developing countries, and it should support the adoption of such national strategies where they do not yet exist
• The EU should integrate the CAP reform into a broader strategy to improve food systems
• The EU should review its existing tariff structure with the view to encourage diversification of economies of developing countries into higher added-value products and the emergence of a food processing industry, which will create employment opportunities that can contribute to the realization of the right to food for the urban poor
• The EU should address power imbalances in food chains by more effectively applying its competition law to address the creation, maintenance and abuse of buyer power not only to protect suppliers, particularly in developing countries, from the impacts of abuses of dominant positions, but also to ensuring the longer term stability of supply for consumers.
• The EU could put in place a system of positive incentives to encourage the import of agricultural products to the EU that comply with certain environmental, social and human rights standards
• The EU should mitigate the negative impacts of increased biofuel production that are encouraged by EU subsidies and fiscal incentives and by the adopted target of 10 per cent of renewable energies in the transportation sector by 2020.

Read the full comments and recommendations by the UNSR on the right to food Mr. Olivier De Schutter here