Tape #329 - Food Security

?: Locate yourself towards the mike. Just walk toward the mike and the person can answer, can speak in the mike. Um, um, our . . . is getting us set up, um, I don't think that we'll have any need for a headset so, um, because all of our people are English, but if we have anyone in the audience that speaks another language we can make arrangements for that, that you need a headset. Okay. I, I think that indicates to me that we have them at this time.

The last question that, ah, statement I'd probably make is that, is that make sure you're in the session that you want to be in, that's on Food Security this afternoon. We're gonna cover that and at this time I would like to turn the mike over to Ann Bellow (spelling?).

Ann Bellows: Hi. Thanks so much for coming. Ah, what I'm going to do is, ah, an overview of some of the meetings, diverse and multiple and competing meetings about food security just an umbrella and then there are going to be key presentations talking, looking at issues of food security under transition, political, economical transition, moving from east to west, from Mongolia and Russia to Poland and then Betty Wells, ah, will do a wrap-up and, and what I suggest is that we do all the presentations and have, ah, Betty kind of open up and have questions all at once at the end. What I'll do also is introduce each person right before they speak so I'll kind of pop up and down.

I'm Annie Bellows, Ann Bellows. My nickname is Annie and I'm from Rutgers University in the States. I'm with the Center for Russian, Central and Eastern European studies and I'm a geographer.

Um, our session panel was originally called food insecurity because that's are real issue and, again, I'd like to emphasize, oh, what I really want to emphasize is somebody's got to, can you keep time?

((Inaudible)

Bellows: Okay, um, is the fact that food security is, um, there are competing meanings for it that every scale from households to communities, from regions and nations, um, and in every country there are different ways of interrupting. Women have a final responsibility very often for securing access to food for households for their nutrition and health. This responsibility is not fixed, it's not natural, but it is the case that there a final responsibility. Therefore, , um public policy, um, must address on a democratic basis the kind of concerns that women have as well as men in particularly because they are the final (inaudible) and because doing that work, having that social responsibility also provides them with a set of knowledge that is critical to the developments of policy and it is efficient as well as, as well as more receptive to have those perspectives included. Therefore, food security must be a food democracy which demands a voice in policy for all and food security must include, in fact it's founded upon the right to food, food rights. Um, both the internationally defined human rights and, ah, a kind of moral and ethical right to food.

Um, there, the meanings of food security have actually been going in two very different

directions - one - decentralized set of meanings and one a recentralized set of meanings and when I talk about recentralized and decentralized, I'm talking about the degree to which there is access to participation and development of policy around food security so it, a decentralized system would beware, there would be more access and local at a household level.

Um, in the 60's and the 70's the focus was very much on an international organization of food production and food security. In 1974 the World Food Conference was focus, focusing on cereal stock that could be moved on a mass basis from state to state but by the late 70's there was already a recognition that this wasn't some kind of structure that could be manipulated in such a, ah, anonymous way and states, national states began to have more input into the development of what we consider to be food security and strategies that would be built around it um, including in 1979 the plan of action for world food security which was much more based on um, um, national interest.

It went from an international policy to a national policy to a recognition that, in fact, specific population groups, specific groups had marginalized capacity to both gain access to food and define what food security should incorporate and through the 70's and 80's there were conferences on employment growth and basic needs, on the UN decade of women, um, and on, ah world migration. Ah, and in these conferences there was always a discussion of food security and marginalized access both to food and participation in the public policy.

Then finally in the 80's there was a movement toward, um, ah, by the FAL and the World Food Council to recognize food security in terms of access at country and at household levels and it is this beginning that grew through the 80's of a development of an enormous framework for household food security that I would like to emphasize in terms of a decentralization of definition of food security.

Um, the UN Center of Human Rights puts it in terms of food must be adequate in terms of nutritional quantity quality. It must be safe from adverse alien substances and culturally acceptable in the context of prevailing food patterns. Access to food must be sustainability over time. Sustainability is very important in terms of both sources of food are not contaminated in terms of access to land, that is not, that is constant and in terms of access to work such that there can be an income that provides sustainability access to food.

Um, this issue of land is very critical. Um, and it, within the context of household food security, there is a provision that households should have right over land and institutions and institutions that provide food and quoting again from this UN Center for Human Rights, "This implies that the physical institutional environment in which food is procured must be optimally utilized, protected from erosion or distortion and where necessary restored or replaced by effective alternative systems and arrangements to enable recovery after a crisis situation.

This means that land that is impaired from pollution, erosion, (inaudible), as well as good productive land and the food distribution system and the decisions about them should be fixed, should be secured, should be protected locally so that there is some kind of, ah, interaction between local population down to the household and their participation in local food supplies.

This has been a trend that, that goes toward decentralization. How am I doing on time?

(Inaudible)

Bellows: Got two minutes. The recentralization. The recentralization has been happening in terms of recognizing the human right to food and food security in the context of a growing, global market of food and for example in 19, from 1994 to 1997 food security has begun to also be talked about in terms of the Grant Agreement, the general agreement on trades and tariffs that in 1994 for the first time included the marketing of food under the context of international trade rule. This, ah, this period began to another set of meanings, around, around food securities that lead toward people's right to buy food and away from people's right to access food. The 1994 Grant therefore, um, included for the first time agricultural and food in the idea of trade rules and has resulted in a tremendous amount of concern particularly by the (inaudible) sector that the outcome is increased through insecurity in terms of both access and input into the policy that is, that, um, is related to access to food.

Um, what I would like to point out now, very briefly, about food security within this, um, region of the newly independent states, including, um, ah, by, by notion of proximity and, and being part of the Soviet sphere, to some extent, Mongolia and eastern Europe. Ah, issues that of looking at food security where before 1989 or 1992, depending where you are, it was a very difficult problem with availability of food. There were empty stores. I, I know the situation in eastern Europe better, but, there were empty stores. People had money but the stores were empty. Afterwards, there was a problem with, ah, stores that were full and suddenly there was a very great distant equilibrium, um, in terms of income to buy the food.

Time. This is particularly the case of women and, ah, the presenters will demonstrate. Thank you.

Oh, and, ah, the next speaker will be, oh, you know, (inaudible). She is from (inaudible). Ah, she is the Director of the Women's International, Women's Information Resource Center and is foreign relations manager for the Center for the Alleviation of Poverty and also for the Green Revolution. She's been working actively to support, ah, women and men, ah, access to food as well as access to other services in the, these recent times.

(Inaudible): Okay. My name is (inaudible). I came from Mongolia. Ah, let me thank the USDA giving me an opportunity to come here to participate in this important conference and networking with so many wonderful women here and Mongolia is (inaudible) country, ah, with a facilitating ancient histories, including (inaudible) his descendants dynasty and probably Mongolia has a little over 2 million population, a scarcely populated on its vast territory. About one square kilometer full per person so it's like Australia somewhat. Ah, our country is bordered by Russia in the north and China in the south. Um, Mongolia is an agricultural country, ah, mainly based on their livestock breeding. ah, Mongolia's main export items and gold and cooper mind (inaudible) and cashmere (inaudible) and animal (inaudible) raw materials. Ah, one of the advantages of Mongolia is, ah, about 18, about 98% of the population is literate and we have a quite good access to medical, ah, care, mental health system.

Mongolia's democracy started at the, in the, since the early 1990's after the collapse of the (inaudible) system and the (inaudible) in the Soviet Union and the second democratic election was held last, ah, 19, 1996 and we are having a good democratic coalition party ruling the country and since the 90's we have a parliamentary system and the multi-party system, too.

Ah, food securities, one of the major issues in Mongolia with its transition during the last eight years from centrally command system to a market list economy and Mongolia's protection of grains has declined rapidly due to the deteriorated farm machinery, stock and irrigation infrastructure, reduced use of fertilizers and pesticides and absence of trained economists in the newly established, ah, privatized farms. 1996 crop was about 200 thousand tons compared to the level of over 700 tons in the1990's. Mongolia imports about 300 thousand tons of grains from abroad and over 150 tons of, ah, food aids come from food aid emergency system programs.

Ah, "literazation" of prices and they show an annual inflation in excess of 100% through during the transition. It has become increasingly difficult for households to purchase their basic food stuff as well. Ah, according to the World Bank estimates the number of households falling below the poverty line reached 30% there among the population. In line with the '96 statistical information about 55,000 people were registered as unemployed. As of the first seven months of '97, um, there were 20, 225,000 able bodies unemployed, but, ah, out of homes, 65,000 being officially registered as unemployed.

Certain groups of population were identified as most vulnerable such as females headed of households, small herders, the unemployed, engineers, the elderly and disabled and children having (inaudible) one or two parents. 80% of Mongolia total land area, um, is, which is 125 million (inaudible) agricultural over which, over 123 million has some form of pasture and only an estimated 1.8 million has it edible, edible land.

So, the livestock (inaudible) counts for approximately 85% of agricultural output, three of the second most important subsector. Mongolia faces a, ah, major challenge in improving national and household food security as the country moves from a subsidized state farm projection system to a private sector which is market list system. Key constraints which need to be addressed include lack of rural finance, climatic risk, deteriorate in farm machinery and infrastructure, unresponsiveness of research and lack of services.

Continued transfer of projection in the agricultural from the pubic to the private sector including the food "privatization", flour milling in the street and input supply services and continued liberalization of pricing and marketing are key elements of the development strategy Mongolians will pursue for the agricultural sector increased food security.

Either options to fill critical needs include regulation of economically viable parts of the irrigation system, establishment of a rural banking system, development of (inaudible) research and extension systems, strengthening of safety procedures for the rural population displaced from a large state farms.

We have a food institute and experts up that institute have fixed the average food consumption level of the population for 12 main types of food products and determine the quantity and (inaudible) fat and carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals that are required to provide 3,136 calories for an average per person a day. Mongolians, the main, ah, consumable food is meat and wheat flour, rice and (inaudible) sugar, potatoes, vegetables, some fish and (inaudible) and oils. The total (inaudible) of population reached about 30 million at the end of '97. We have 2 million people on wheat and 30 million animals (inaudible) domesticated five types of animals like cattle, camels, two-hump camel, ah, sheep and goat and horse. We have a huge number of horse.

Ah, the ownership structure was basically changed in the livestock sector about 92% of the total livestock has been privatized to the individuals. As a result of the positive changes in the ownership system, the number of livestock for food consumption is increasing.

Um, it's a land lock country and imported food supplies are vulnerable to shortages and high prices in international wheat market. Consequently, it's estimated that Mongolia needs to import some over 200 thousand tons of food grain so the transformation of the Mongolia economy between the '50's and '70 created a new industrial phase but didn't destroy the underlying Mongolian (inaudible) tradition. Even in the cities the influence of this tradition on housing, of diets and culture is clearly a deterrent.

The food needs of the growing urban population and rising farm industrialization in the '50's lead to the new development of crop protection and investigation of livestock reduction, particularly dairy protection. Poultry in the peak operations account for an insignificant protection of livestock output.

The total area of agricultural land in Mongolia is 125 million (inaudible) with (inaudible) land estimated at 1.8 million comprised principally of dark chestnuts and brown soil in the inter mountains (inaudible). I may pronounce wrongly soils in valleys. Prior to the restructuring the economy in the late '80s approximately 800 thousand (inaudible) were cultivated on an annual basis but this has declined to some 300 thousand in 1997 last year.

Two more minutes, okay. Then I'll talk a little bit, very quickly, about the Green Revolution Program which was adopted last year. Um, this Green Revolution Program's objection is to support of people to, ah, to have an opportunity to grow a vegetables and, ah, improving their living standards and those in open and rural areas, promoting various (inaudible) prices, ah, through the extension centers which will be called agraparks (spelling?) at all levels. Those agraparks will serve as a resource centers for business and (inaudible), too.

Um, ah, being a, gender special (inaudible) in the country, I would say that (inaudible) women are shouldering double burden in our country being, ah, (inaudible) women they have a lots, lot to do and that they have access to information and, ah, small (inaudible) is very limited and also the networking with other women, the women from other countries is almost impossible, so using the opportunity being here and networking with you all I try to bring the message to all women that, ah, the women in all of the country try to come together to face the world so, which is very strong message and thank you very much for your attention. I couldn't fit in my time.

APPLAUSE

Bellows: Our next speaker, um, represents the work of two people from (inaudible), Russia. They're both from the Institute of (inaudible) Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences. (inaudible) is a professor of social and labor problems related to contemporary food systems development. She focuses, gender, health and rural sociology, as well as issues related to "privatization" of land and rural enterprises. (inaudible) is the Director of International Programs and Development at the (inaudible) Institute and, ah, she is focusing on regional and local food systems, um, as well as on expanding international cooperation, adapting advanced foreign experience to conditions of agricultural transformation and (inaudible) will provide, present their paper.

?: Ah, first, I would like to her to say that we highly appreciate the opportunity to be here and, ah, to attend this conference and we consider the problems discussed here very actual, very interesting and very burning Russia today.

And we work at the Institute of (inaudible) Problems that is situated on the (inaudible) in Russia and we simply, a group of callers from our institute has been involved in the gender study and I should say that all this, all these callers are women because we consider women, not only a (inaudible) object for investigation, but we think that they, themselves, should make, carry out investigations on women.

I should say that there is a majority, very complicated, burning problem concerning women in agriculture in Russia nowadays and I want to present ideas on the problem formation of the (inaudible) labor market and positional women in Russian-ruled regions.

In the first years of the (inaudible) reform when the actual position of women leaving rural areas was made known, they hoped around that many problems would be solved. However, as the overall crisis in the (inaudible) in the (inaudible) sector was getting (inaudible), the situation was only changing for the worse. New problems related to the social costs of the economic reforms added to the already existing ones. Instead of searching for effective spheres of employment, women are (inaudible) retaining their present jobs. A struggle for surviving when the (inaudible) traditions are still strongly, quickly turns into struggle for (inaudible) guarantees and (inaudible) employment bringing a minimum income enabling to some how withstand the decline in the standard and quality of life.

The lack of balance between the supply and demand at to the labor market is typical of ration rural regions. The number of quality and structural workplaces have, for a long time, been exclusive (inaudible) by large collective farms. After the (inaudible) transition, the (inaudible) is to construct such labor market regulation mechanism that will allow for the economic, social and democratic particularities of different population groups. This will enable to make to make the regional employment programs more benefit and more purposeful. Diversity of their own sheep forms and (inaudible) emergence of the labor market elements make it necessary for the women to adapt to themselves, to new common models of labor market.

Along with this the negative tendencies are getting stronger. The (inaudible) and technology structure of employment is becoming worse which manufactures itself in switching to more primitive technologies. This in turn worsens the working conditions and makes labor less safe. Now, that, to form a collective and state farms are experiencing a collapse. The labor activity of rural women is redistributing in the favor of a secondary reemployment. That is principally working on personal present holdings and their traditional nontaxable services. Personal holdings make it possible for the population to provide their families with food and also the exchange of the product so the labor less accumulating minor resources in order to (inaudible) manufactured goods, including durable goods

Their present stage of economic reforms is specific in that their strategy on surviving looks more attractive to the rural population than the strategy of development. Most rural women do not intend to start up their own business and only and an insignificant part of them plan to improve their qualification, go in for retraining, changing their profession or move to some other region.

Constant delays in the payment of wages and another, another payment of debts for the supplied product. Why don't the area of (inaudible). They increase in number and conflicts, huge sides, and so on . The danger lies in that situation creates, creates a distorted conception of the new economic environment, challenging the people's consciousness. Through the conception of market is something anti-domestically has broken their tradition life-style of the rural people. The new social and institutional structure are beginning to see not trustworthy. All this, ladies, that do a contradiction of situation when they're depending on the economical form is connected with certain social costs while assuring down on their reform process, weakens their (inaudible) to highly, productive labor causing complete loss of our orientations.

The "contradictiveness" on the situation is reflected in their rural women's consciousness through the, through the rise of anxiety and relative expectation. Our (inaudible) assure that the rural women, to a large extent, the men feel disappointment, inconvenience and trouble. They lack of effective training and retraining system in the field of agricultural and industrial production makes rural women more vulnerable at the labor market. In view of this, the educational system must be revised soon as to include for the interest of all rural social groups. This measure will strengthen their professional status of women.

Rural unemployment is mainly a problem of women. According to the data provided by the Ministry of Agriculture Products of the (inaudible) 30% of the total number of employment registered in the country are rural dwellers. 60% of them are women. Domination of women in their compositional rural unemployment is mostly a result of the agricultural production (inaudible) decrease, decreasing the number of specialists employed by agricultural enterprises and decline of the rural social infrastructure.

The above circumstances are a cause of (inaudible) rural unemployment is growing at a higher rate. According to our estimates, the actual overall number of the rural unemployment, unemployed, two times, three times exceeds the total registered number. Men rural dwellers and that have lost their jobs prefer not to register with employment agencies. There isn't (inaudible) the lack of prospects for obtaining a new job, nonpayment to compensations and a violation of their rights of the unemployment, unemployed.

In a number of regions (inaudible) land are not registered as unemployed by the employment agencies which is an impediment of legislation. Their irregularities of agricultural production development enable to predict a (inaudible) on women unemployment. The (inaudible) unprofitable agricultural and food for certain enterprises that has recently begun (inaudible) seriously (inaudible) these process.

In order to avoid massive rural unemployment and ensure normal labor force of our production, we need to change the economic terms of agricultural production and promote the development of the services sector. There, (inaudible), the matters taken on the federal level should include elimination of the price disparating. Finally, (inaudible) inform all related federal problems and actual, action of support of the agricultural and industrial complex. Lightening of the tax burden. On the regional level such measure should be following. Establishment of a system of government support to agricultural commodity process, promotion of corporation and integration among agricultural food processing and trade enterprises aiming to increase their share on the agricultural produces income in their retail prices and food products.

The emphasis in their employment policy should be shift from the passive forms of support to the unemployed such as the granting of compensation, compensation to the active ones, related to the expansion of employment opportunities. In connection with this, it seems important to underline that dealing with the problems or equal opportunities for men and women at the labor market, we should strive for their provision of adequate employment conditions for women. Besides . . .

CHANGE OF TAPE

Side 2

?: . . . human development, improvement of the social and psychological relations in families and whole society, the performance of their maternity functions. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Bellows: Now, the, the final, ah presentation before Betty Wells wraps up is one that I'm going to do, hopefully not too badly on behalf of two people, um who talked with us about food securities issue from Poland. Um, they are from the (inaudible) Chapter of the Polish Ecological Club and their, they are, ah, Maria (inaudible) who is the president and (inaudible) who is the vice president of a group that began in the late '80's to, actually, it began underground. Underground being part of the solidarity, ah, labor movement underground. Um, sort of critique of the government both in terms of the policies they had, um, on censorship of information about pollution and problems with health, um, and, and also, ah, critiquing specifically the environmental conditions.

Now, Poland has in the, in the north and the east, in particular, pristine gorgeous land, but in the southwest, in a region called (inaudible), a very small part of the country, um, there is a, a ancient industrial and mining base which has contributed to very severe pollution problems. Now, what I'm, um, going to do is, ah, I'm going to have to use this overhead (inaudible). Um, a combination of the, the pollution from, ah, industrial based, transportation, heavy transportation in the area and the third conforms of conventional agriculture that are poorly implemented have resulted in food contamination problems that, ah, basically are, are excessive levels of lead and cadmium and particular affecting children, um, and excessive concentrations of nitrogen compounds. World Health Organization and Polish research point out that 60 to 80% of all heavy metal toxin enter the human body through ingestion and that that intake is far more critical then breathing polluted air. Um, radioactive contamination in the region is not as critical, um, a problem. Poland does not have a, a nuclear, ah industry that might contribute to that.

I'm just going to run through these quickly. It's going to be hard to absorb, but, and it's hard to read, too. Let's see. Hang on. There we go and it's, this is just to give you a slight overview. A very small part of, of the country which, with a, a very high percentage, a relatively high percentage of the population and a great load of the, of the industrial base and the industrial waste space. So you have 2% of the land and 10% of the population. When I saw this it reminded me of my State of New Jersey which also has an old industrial base and um, and the highest population density of any state in the country.

The average death rate, um, in this particular region, of all the 49 regions in Poland, is much higher then the rest of the country. Nevertheless, unlike my State of New Jersey, 50% of the land is in agricultural production and 40% of all locally consumed fruits and vegetables are locally grown. Now, um, this is critical. This is not stupid. This is critical. When you have an economy that has not efficiently put food in the stores you have to grow locally and this was the case before '89. After '89 the, um, the availability to work and constant income has, has, ah, changed and there's a tremendous disparity in terms of people having, ah, essentially a living wage or living pension, in particular, so people on fixed incomes are in a bad way. So, this need to grow locally continues. So before and after '89 there was a need for local productions as urban based land, um, and there was also this, risk of, of, contamination.

Now, what this group did, it organized in three very important ways that became more possible after '89. It organized on a grass-roots level as an NGO, okay, in the private, nonprofit sector. That was a new, kind of, opportunity. It worked very closely with local governments, um, which has more autonomy to work with them. Another change. And they put together a very interesting system of a, um, um, a market distribution system from farmers to wholesalers to retailers to Britain, um, what turned out to be organic and chemically tested foods into markets within this reason trying to bring in safer foods. People who started this, this group, um, the (inaudible) Chapter of the Polish Physiological Club, are mostly women, not entirely women. They're mostly chemical engineers. There are, there are also a few, ah, teachers and they have all experienced, um, tremendous amounts of illness in their family, in their extended family, so they have experienced both in their workplace and in their homes with this critical health condition.

But, they have organized in three ways, um, ah, or (inaudible). But, the major element of the program is this, ah, is this chemical testing of foods. Um, and I won't, I won't go into it. What they have done is they've, they've tried to identify organic farms in , in the outlying regions. The very often organic, ah, is, is not enough for their own particular standards because its not at the essentially the organize process, but the chemical load that they're most concerned. The chemical load of heavy metals, of nitrogen compounds, etc., that they are testing for because they have World Organization standards and their own Polish studies which, in fact, are stricter to work with.

Now, I'm just going to show you one of the things that they do and everyone of the shops that participate with the group, um, whenever they pull in a lot for, of, of the product from the growers they put in these certificates that, ah, show what the, the, the load is and, and, and if you saw one of these things you would see, ah, it also register in norm and where it compares to the norm. This is a lot of information for consumers. Um, in New Jersey, um, there wouldn't be, I think, as much as an understanding of, of why to get into that much detail as a consumer, but, um if you, part of what, part of the education that they're doing is to be able to help people understand how to start thinking about the problems with local contamination.

Okay. The next, um, thing that they work on is educating, ah, community groups and, ah, I'm going to show you one of their overheads, it's a translation of one of their overheads, and this is essentially recognizing that people are not going to stop growing. There are various needs from tradition to absolute need that are keep people, um, gardening and doing local agriculture. However, there are some crops that absorb heavy metals, in particular, at a lower rate, and so they're trying to encourage people to, as long as they're going to be growing, to minimize risk so one strategy is instead of getting rid of the product to, um, to figure out strategies to help people to do what they can within the limit.

The third thing is to distribute these chemically tested, um, product directly from the farms to the most vulnerable populations, the most vulnerable populations to food contamination risks. These are the youngest of children, pregnant and lactating women and people who are already ill, so, um, in particular, they're trying to get, um, direct marketing to schools and to hospitals and one of the most exciting things they're doing is, um, working with local governments to develop subsidies to support the cost, to pay, actually, the difference of the higher cost of these chemically tested foods and the conventional market goods. Um, this is assuming from, from my narrow prospective in New Jersey, I cannot imagine a local government recognizing a problem to the extent that they would actually subsidize the cost of foods coming into, ah, in this case, they focused on nursery schools because in Poland kids get their major meal of the day at the nursery school.

That's, that's a very quick wrap-up. Um, I'm going to turn the mike over now to Betty Wells, sociologist at Iowa State University. She focuses on rural sociology and extension work and the network of women, food and agriculture and the most dynamic person I know who keeps me going regularly.

(Inaudible)

Betty Wells: Um, well, I was asked to a wrap-up. I think I would like to spend most of the rest of the time doing questions except, perhaps, point out what I see the "commonologies" among the various countries, whether it's the west or the east or various places in between. There's a persistence of a number of problems amidst plenty. I don't think the problem is, is truly lack of food being produced. The persistence of poverty, hunger malnutrition and contamination across different kinds of economic production systems and that, I think the common thread for me and I think our challenge is to put our head together and try to figure out if there aren't some solutions to this.

I mean, we have a very, ah, growing model, conventional agriculture in the west, as we're all very familiar with, and, and an emergence of a bit of a parallel track of local food systems and small scale farmers. In the case of the eastern countries represented by most of the women on our panel, today the system's, ah, we have a very large scale system of collectivized agriculture which is, by their largely in place or in various stages of disarray. Plus a large sector of people producing on small plots of land so I think between these various efforts none of us have the answer, but my hope that we can put our heads together to come up with a more rational way of distributing food for human consumption that is fair to the producers, ah, and the many woman among those producers.

So, I would just like to spend the rest of the time taking questions from the audience. Um, um, comments of questions for the speakers. Yea.

?: I think it was, ah, interesting, especially . . .

?: Can you hear her? Could you, do you mind standing?

(Inaudible)

?: Okay, Okay. My name is (inaudible) and I live in Germany, but originally I'm from Iran. I was very interested in also hearing the experiences in the eastern countries with the discussion of food security because I think this is an ongoing discussion, not only for third world countries, but as we hear now it is also a problem in the already industrial countries. This is one part, but I think it was very interesting that in the case of Poland, ah, the recommendations that we have talked about before, that means that we thought it is better to produce, for example, food on the regional level for the regional people, might not always be true and this, of course, might disturb our ideas of getting to solutions, but I think it's also very necessary to see that we should distinguish and not be too quick with our recipes, even though I like the idea of producing food and I think that, more or less, most of the countries are able to produce a lot of that what they need and it should be, of course, emphasized that they should do that and not getting too much subsidized product from other countries which will also disturb, not only their economy, but it is also, I think that was mentioned, it is the social infrastructure in rural areas that depends very much on the active participation of both genders, men and women, and, ah, I think that the eastern countries now are confronted with a lot of problems that third world countries had experienced before and as far as I live in Berlin we have very similar situations in East German where mostly women got really jobless and there is not a real positive perspective for them in the future and, of course, we tried to make some small scale project like in third world countries, like in my country in Iran, but the main agriculture policy is going into a completely other direction which is not taking gender and women into consideration and account. Now, that would (inaudible) reflect, first of all, not giving recipes for each country because sometimes its really better not to produce the food in the same region. Maybe in (inaudible) it is similar, but, if it is possible, of course, to put emphasis on social structure and to make rural life alive, still alive, and women share there. But, if the globalization is going to be the trend, now, there's the question. what can we do in putting forward all the interests of women which are not only, I think, vulnerable, they are the strongest group because despite the constraints that they are confronted with on the gender level they are the ones who nourish, I think I would prefer that word, not feeding, they are nourishing the, the world population and I think we can learn a lot from each other. The eastern countries are confronted with problems that I think third world countries had already done and maybe one should be open. I know that it was not very easy for our East German women to think as being a developing country, so also a cultural problem and, ah, I think maybe we should try to find language, ah, which is internationally transferrable and very culture bound. Thanks.

Wells: Thanks. Those are some great insights and ideas, um. We have other. Do we have other people wishing to comment?

(Inaudible)

?: I am (inaudible). I come from a (inaudible). I'm based in the regional office in (inaudible). First you have Ann talking our language. Ah, I agree with you because I think somehow, I, this not our official government, this is mine. We almost think of it as trade (inaudible) and I am feeling that there must be something in between the two because there are certain things that you're never going to be able to trade and then that is going to be a local production system. This is my conflict with my policy guys and when they put the language on the conferences, okay. I was in China (inaudible) apple until the apple comes to bear fruit, they're growing beans and tobacco and everything else in between. So each farmer community has got its own way of developing a farming system, so when you're putting so much emphasis on trade (inaudible) and push all the input in extension to only that product we are focusing to see what is growing in between your cash flow. So I tell my production people also this. I think they have to take (inaudible) completely all trade or completely self-sufficient between the two that is something because I sit in all this conferences trade versus aid, aid versus trade, trade versus (inaudible) and all that, okay. Japan is never going to come and agree to everything to be trade. It doesn't matter how that particular crop is growing. They're going to keep growing the rice. Okay, (inaudible) in Africa. You, she's going to keep on growing her okra and the peanut, doesn't matter how much are imported so I think you have to say that there must be something in between the two. It's not all trade and all self-sufficient security. I hope people like Ann will advising these guys in the field to tell them there's in between the two. Thank you.

Wells: Denise, could you make a few comments. We have a representative of U.S. farmer whose, whose done a lot of international work plus a lot of local work and knows a great deal about the topic of food security. This is Denise O'Brian.

Denise O'Brian: Um, I thought that (inaudible), um, um, overhead about the food being contaminated and, and that it's very interesting. It's something that I think a lot of us overlook when we talk about, um, growing food locally and it's the best place, and, and, and that, ah, we forget about those things of the contamination and, and we know that that's prevalent in different parts of our country wherever, in different parts of our world, wherever we've had contaminants dumped or buried or whatever. Um, and I think also, I think that the difference, or that it is not all trade and not all self-sufficiency. I agree with that totally. I think, in, in the situation that exists it seems to polarize into those two categories when, really, we, we, when we talk about bio-regionalism and we talk about, um, growing, ah, and local self-sufficiency in that, that there is a place for trade and that we cannot all be locally self-sufficient and, and I think a lot of the terms of the trade issue comes down to whether, what is fair trade and who is making the profits off of a trade and, and who is doing the trading and that those are what many people are trying to inject into the discussion around, um, international trade agreements and that and when we have the concentration in our world of the grain markets and the meat markets and that and that it's only circulating in between some very few, ah, trans-national corporations that there is, um, sever problems in, in the market orientated economy when we talk about where the concentration of wells is.

So, I produce locally, ah, very locally, for my market. Um, but everyone around me in Iowa, I'm from Iowa, produces grain, um, corn and soybeans for the export marketers and we in Iowa produce very little food that we eat within our state and we've become a very export orientated state and we are always going, my, our government officials are always going on trade missions to market pork and our beef and everything and, so, and, and we're also having very serious problems with that in the fact that we are becoming a monoculture. Our environment is very much destroyed. Our waters is, ah, is not drinkable. We're, we're lucky because we are in a developed country and we can filtration systems to clean our water, but basically the water in Iowa is not, it's not very healthy water and it's bringing problems along with many of you know about and, and experienced the same things with the hog industry where there's a concentration of factory farming of hogs so we have thousands of, of animals in a, ah, in a confinement building where they never see the light of day, where they, ah, just go from being born to being butchered in a very enclosed confinement system and we have, we have more manure in the State of Iowa then we have people and the manure, because we have so many pigs and, ah, the livestock numbers are much higher than the population is and I think that many of you all identify that from Nebraska, Minnesota, any of those, those kind of, ah, it's the same thing that's happening and we're told because we're feeding the world, but, um, there's projection of being 800 million people being, starving in the world by the year 2005 and, there's, yet, someone mentioned, I think yesterday, that, ah, there is enough food in the world at this point. It's the way it's being distributed. So, I think there are some serious problems talking about food insecurity.

? Thanks, Denise. How are we doing on time?

(Inaudible)

?: We have, ah, 20 minutes left in the session.,

?: Oh, great. We have lots of time. I'd like to hear from a lot more people. I know we gave a lot of very knowledge women in the group. Would you like to make some more comments (inaudible)? No. Tell us who you are.

Maria ?: My name is Maria. I'm originally from (inaudible). I'm a student in Michigan State in Department of (inaudible) and I'm working with Dr. (inaudible). I, I want to (inaudible) talking about food security at the household level, at the community level and, ah talking about trade and (inaudible) of the speakers this afternoon have experiences with what happened with food security within the household. Do you have any experiences in inter household food allocation, food distribution, (inaudible), you know, any comments to us that, so that we leave here having kind of (inaudible) to these different aspects of food security. Thank you.

(Inaudible)

?: I'll take, ah, this opportunity telling about the, briefly, about the food insecurity in Mongolia. So, as I said, the protection capacity is declining and we have a lots of problems economically at this stage and we do export, import a lot from China and due to this very cheap cost of food, especially vegetable, people do, ah, purchase a lot of Chinese food and we have some medical estimates of last year saying that at the sub-quality vegetable food has contaminated with different kinds of pesticides, um, created the problem, so the food security office of Mongolia is doing a lot of restrictive, restriction regulation, not much talking about the, ah, preventiveness and, ah, and, ah, public awareness part, so, I do appreciate, also, to, especially from the (inaudible) about this public awareness and preventive measures taken in other countries.

?: I think we have one, pardon?

(Inaudible)

?: Um, I just, again, want to talk about, um, food security and insecurity in terms of access to making policy, not only to access that food within a household and the distribution in the household and, um, and this is a, I was in a meeting where, um, the group from this club were talking about, to a community, their project, and they were talking actually to local government officials and, as I mentioned, most of them were women, they're not all women, but usually the ones who are organizing the sessions and everything, they're all women, so they were doing this program and it was, it was local government officials, mostly men, but not only, um, and so they, it was going on and everything was moving and this one man says, well, this is all very well that you women organized this, but now it's time to turn it over to us and everybody, it came out of the blue, and everybody kind of sat back and one of the leaders of the group, was very (inaudible), very calm, said, well, that's okay, we're all are involved in this and I think that there is something about, um, about who does the work around the securing of food and who gets to make the decision, who, who, who gets to actually make the public policy that exists in a household level and a community level and it's not something that's, that's, you know, clear cut, that's not what I'm trying to say. But there is a, there is a, um, there are moments where the groundwork in organizing is laid down by groups that aren't necessarily all women, but are largely women, and at that moment when it turns to policy, um, there's, there's something very, very specific, that's gender specific, that changes and it, it was one of those moments that was (inaudible).

?: We have some, are you addressing the, ah, intra-household?

(Inaudible)

?: I know, but we have a person here, yea. You were going to address the intra-household and then . . . .

?: I think that maybe this is one of the weak points in the whole general food security discussion that normally you don't think about the household even though household security now has become an important issue, but generally, I thought that this is also the case in Iran that food security has been translated and it is too much orientated to work either the food as a commodity as in market purchase stuff or calculated in kilocalories and how much of minerals and things like that are in food so these are normally things which are, um, statistically easier to be accounted the average amount of kilocalories and so on, but the whole process that goes with the nutrition and nourishment which means that if you want to translate, um, the example that I gave, in the Persian language we don't have food. Food is either something that animals eat or it, human beings, they do not eat food. They do not eat cereal, something raw. Human beings need meals that have to be prepared and this process we don't have a term that quite fits to everything maybe, also important that the English language needs just one word for everything no matter whether it is human being or animals or other things to the effect and, ah, I think that if we take this process into consideration also in the home food security debate, then the whole word that goes together, it is with the preparation of meals, then the work of women will be and has to be done in a different way and the whole problem of household security and the inside home processes will be part of this and in many countries food is a symbol of social interaction. This is very important I think for all Asian countries, for African countries, maybe also in the Soviet Union. Food is something where you can get in touch with other people. You can exchange food, prepared, of course, meals would be much better if you would say that and if this is the process of social interaction, networking, this gives social security which is as important as having the raw materials being purchased on he market so this is why I'm, I made my paper in saying that we have to think more of food culture instead of food as something to be distributed, to be marketed and to be, you know, put into the global economy, on the level of the global economy, it has something to do with the power structure and not actually something important for the nourishment of people. It's the nourishment of human beings are important so we should look at completely other spheres of action and this might be, of course, the local community and the activity that goes together in the preparation of meals and not of just some stuff.

?: Do you have more quick comments and then . . . Okay.

(Inaudible)

?: Ah, let me answer to the intra-household (inaudible) issue because we are putting together a technical (inaudible). We are looking intra-household (inaudible). The two aspects of allocation resources to produce food or generate income for food and the second part, a southeast Asia problem is, ah, so, Asian problem, is allocation of food on the gender basis within the household and your best source for you to know what's going on in (inaudible) in other places that are from African cities (inaudible). (inaudible) It is, it's a new terminology though, though it's been talked on the research circle. At the (inaudible) they do not like the word intra-household (inaudible) because they seem to think they're trying to do something which too sophisticated and, so, there is (inaudible), but we're all looking into it. The language for Africa is (inaudible). Ah, because (inaudible) stop making them feel really uncomfortable (inaudible). So, we are moving little bit in the direction. I think (inaudible) has somebody (inaudible).

?: We're still talking about intra-household food distribution.

?: Well, thank you for the, um, the (inaudible). The reason why I brought it up is that a lot of the time when you talk of policy, we really only talk of policies and regulations that are written, but a lot of policies governing how food is used within the home and some of these policies are not written. Some of them are ethnic and and we never know about them and that is why you find that women can have food in the house, but they don't go for it. Who gets it, how much they get and you want priorities. Some of these things are there that have been done but you never get (inaudible) on how these things are done and I think as much as we are concerned that what is happening in the community and the international level, we also need to be concerned and be aware what's happening within the household. Thank you.

?: I think, as well, when we look particularly developing countries of situations where we move women from subsistence agriculture to more commercial agriculture the intra-household food distribution also change because when most of their production has been for the household, they are now into the cash economy and there is not necessarily when that cash gets back into the household the access to it again, because of who spends the money, it compounds the who gets the food with who spends the money when you actually cut substance farming and perhaps when we do look at some of our policies that are actually developing, commercializing woman and virtually taking them out of substance agriculture, we may need to reconsider whether we want to have a diversified household economy where the women continues some level of subsistence production, as well as the commercial production, so that we can at least strengthen household food security.

?: Okay, there's a lot of people we haven't heard from. I sure like to take advantage of more expertise in this room. We can change the topic.

(Inaudible)

Jodie Bond: I'm Jodie Bond and I'm at Michigan State University and we have a group of ag economists who have brought millions of dollars, not millions, yea, more than a million dollars, millions of dollars into our university in the . . .