4.2. Broaden access to food
An important option for ensuring that everyone can enjoy adequate
access to food is to create targeted social protection or safety
net programmes, which target resources to the poor and vulnerable.
The most important safety net policies include cash-transfers,
in-kind transfers (such as school meals and take home rations),
food price subsidies, public works programmes, fee waivers (for
healthcare, schooling or transport) and food stamps. This option
was used successfully by a number of developing countries, such
as Brazil and Ethiopia, during the 2007–2008 food crisis (FAO,
2009c).
4.3. Improve governance of global trade
The 2007–2008 food crisis provided a clear reminder that the
global food and agricultural system, including agricultural trade,
is highly vulnerable. Price volatility is a key concern for policymakers
and the needs of low-income import-dependent countries
have to be addressed. For example, new and innovative arrangements
are needed to ensure that levels of worldwide food stocks
are adequate and that poor and import-dependent countries have
access to them, especially at times of extraordinary scarcity. The
rapid increase in cereal prices in 2010 has again brought the issue
of food price volatility into the limelight and experts from 75
FAO Member States met in Rome in September 2010 to discuss
the issue. In their report they recognised that unexpected price
hikes and volatility are among the major threats to food security
and that their root causes needed to be addressed (FAO, 2010a).
One month later, the Committee on World Food Security, which
was recently reformed to make it the cornerstone of the global
governance of agriculture and food security, met in Rome. At the
meeting, the Committee requested its high-level panel of experts
to take a close look and make recommendations regarding causes
and consequences of food price volatility, including market distorting
practices and links to financial markets, and appropriate
and coherent policies, actions, tools and institutions to manage
the risks linked to excessive price volatility in agriculture (CFS,
2010).