Spain pledges a billion euros in food aid

One more item to report from the food security summit that recently concluded in Spain.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero says his country will provide 1 billion euros over the next five years to boost food security thought the world. This will help Spain meet the goal of 0.7% of the countries gross domestic product being used for poverty fighting aid.

We love the quotes that Prime Minister Zapatero made in announcing the pledge, Spanish newspaper Easy Bourse has the quotes.

"A total of EUR1 billion will go during this period towards the nations which are the most vulnerable and most affected by the global food security crisis," he added at the end of a two-day conference on food security.

The funding is part of Spain's aim to raise the amount of development aid it provides to 0.7% of its GDP by 2012, despite facing its sharpest economic contraction in decades amid the global financial crisis, he said.

"The crisis here will be temporary. In countries lashed by hunger and extreme poverty, the crisis, the more radical crisis which puts at risk that which is most needed, is a form of life, a life of subsistence," Zapatero said.

Spain will also push for the creation of a new global partnership to better co-ordinate the fight against hunger that will be made up of donor nations, aid agencies, food producers and unions, and will be headed by the U.N., he said.

Ban said the food crisis had brought the total number of hungry people in the world to "an intolerable 1 billion" and he warned the situation could get worse unless more is done to tackle the problem.
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While food prices have since dropped, they remain volatile.
The world's richest nations agreed to provide 0.7% of their output in development aid by 2015 as part of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, a series of targets aimed at reducing poverty and living standards around the globe, but so far only a handful have met this target.