Co-operatives are key to providing food security for the developing world, according to the ICA's President Dame Pauline Green.
Over one billion people do not have access to an adequate food supply, with six million children dying of hunger each year.
As part of a visit to see the Obama administration at the White House, Washington D.C., Dame Pauline highlighted harrowing facts from around the world and discussed the role co-operatives can play in ending the world hunger.
At the Cooperative Issues Forum, organised by Cooperative Development Foundation, Dame Pauline explained that the fastest way to get people out of poverty was "to take themselves out of poverty" and co-operatives could help to achieve this.
Armed with these thoughts, the ICA and the Co-operative Group launched the Global Development Co-operative for the International Year, which aims to invest USD 50 million in small co-operatives that want to diversify and grow.
Dame Pauline gave an example that if a co-operative is producing surplus food for its community and wanted to send food to the next village then the interest rates for loans to buy a truck for transportation are astronomical. The ICA has put a call out to the top 300 co-operatives to invest in the GDC, so nil or low interest loans will allow co-operatives to repay these quicker and scale its business activities at a much faster rate.
Many agricultural co-operatives in the developing world have been very successful from papaya growers in Fiji to farmers in the Congo in Africa, said Dame Pauline. She also said that support for co-operative model has come from organisations such as the Global Forum on Local Development and the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization, headed by José Graziano da Silva.
Commented Dame Pauline: “I am very much heartened by the priority being given to the impact of co-operatives on food security by Graziano da Silva, who is really being a great spokesman on the impact co-operatives are having in agriculture terms on food security.”
The roots of the co-operative movement are heavily intertwined with food security; the Rochdale Pioneers who founded the movement ensured that people could buy clean unadulterated food at fair prices. “Food security is a part of our mission, its baked hard into our DNA,” added Dame Pauline.
Food security is an ongoing issue with an estimated population of nice billion by 2050, which will mean an increase of 70 per cent in food production.
Picture: Dame Pauline Green delivers the keynote speech at the Press Club, Washington D.C.
