THIS HALLOWEEN, UNICEF WILL BE COLLECTING FOR STARVING BUGS

UN agency marks World Food Day (David Willey, BBC, October 17th, 2004)

In Rome, the United Nations food agency is celebrating World Food Day - the anniversary of the founding, back in 1945, of the world's first organisation devoted to the abolition of hunger.

Each year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) chooses a theme to illustrate the paradox between the riches of our planet and the fact that hundreds of millions of its inhabitants do not have access to enough high quality food to enable them to live healthy and active lives.

The buzz word this year is the threat to biodiversity, that is to say the pressure being put on the survival of plant and animal species and the genetic diversity within those species.

For many poor farmers in developing countries, the diversity of life may be their best protection against starvation, the FAO argues.

Peter Kenmore, an FAO expert, explains: "In one hectare of a rice field, there can be over 500 species of predators, all of whom are working in their own ecosystem in a way that will protect our rice from the 10 to 15 species that are significant pests.

This, of course, is why nobody went hungry in pre-industrial times–-lots of biodiversity.

Private land-holdings, the abolition of tariffs, measured technological innovations and free markets would effectively abolish hunger. Technical assistance and emergency relief are just about the only interventions required. But, even after sixty years, the scientific and policy elites that make good livings out of the starving can be found championing little icky things in rice paddies and extolling a Rousseau-like state of nature where human lives are secondary.