A/42/427
English
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42. Shifting the focus of production to food-deficit countries will also reduce pressures on agricultural resources in the industrialized market economies, enabling them to move towards more sustainable agricultural practices. Incentive structures
can be changed so that istead of encouraging overproduction, they encourage farm practices that improve soil and water
quality. Government budgets will be relieved of the burdens of storing and exporting surplus products.
43. This shift in agricultural production will be sustainable only if the resource base is secure. As indicated, this is far from the case today. Thus to achieve global food security, the resource base for food production must be sustained, enhanced, and, where it has been diminished or destroyed, restored.
IV. STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY
44. Food security requires more than good conservation programmes, which can be – and usually are – overridden and undermined by inappropriate agricultural, economic, and trade policies. Nor is it just a matter of adding an environmental component to programmes. Food strategies must take into account all the policies that bear upon the threefold challenge of shifting production to where it is most needed, of securing the livelihoods of the rural poor, and of conserving resources.
1. Government Intervention
45. Government intervention in agriculture is the rule in both industrial and developing countries, and it is here to stay. Public investment in agricultural research and extension services, assisted farm credit and marketing services, and a range of other support systems have all played parts in the successes of the last half-century. In fact, the real problem in many developing countries is the weakness of these systems.
46. Intervention has taken other forms as well. Many governments regulate virtually the entire food cycle – inputs and outputs, domestic sales, exports, public procurement, storage and distribution, price controls and subsidies – as well as imposing various land use regulations: acreage, crop variety, and so on.
47. In general, patterns of government intervention suffer three basic defects. First, the criteria that underlie the planning of these interventions lack an ecological orientation and are often dominated by short-term considerations. These criteria should discourage environmentally unsound farm practices and encourage farmers to maintain and improve their soils, forests, and waters.
48. The second defect is that agricultural policy tends to operate within a national framework with uniform prices and subsidies, standardized criteria for the provision of support services, indiscriminate financing of infrastructure investments,
