Press releases
World Food Day 2010 – United Against Hunger
World Future Council launches website on exemplary agriculture and food policies
Hamburg, October 14, 2010. Since 1981, World Food Day is celebrated on October 16th of every year to raise awareness of the issues behind poverty and hunger. The facts are still shocking: According to the 2010 Global Hunger Index 925 million of the world's population do not have access to sufficient food and drinking water. Consequently, every day 24.000 people die of hunger. To showcase and explain existing policies that can help solve this tragic global failure, on World Food Day 2010 the Hamburg-based World Future Council Foundation will launch a new ”Agriculture and Food” section on their policy solutions website www.futurepolicy.org.
The World Future Council's work in this field is based on the conviction that sustainable agriculture and food policies are the basis for providing food security, conserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change. The information on the new website section serves to help decision-makers find and implement good policies in four fields: Safeguarding food security, conserving genetic resources for food and agriculture, promoting urban farming and supporting organic agriculture.
WFC Councillor and Right Livelihood Award Recipient Vandana Shiva highly praises the endeavour: „I am absolutely thrilled at how the website shows the best political ways to protect genetic resources for the benefit of all humans. Moreover, it gives concrete guidance on how to fight hunger through appropriate policies“.
Many of the highlighted policies from all over the world were found and evaluated during the extensive research for the World Future Council's Future Policy Award 2009 which was presented on the topic of successful Food Security Policies. The three winners were the Belo Horizonte Food Security Policy, the Tuscan Seed Conservation Policy and the Cuban Urban Agriculture Policy. WFC Management Board Member Alexandra Wandel: „Again and again we find that optimal policy solutions for all kinds of issues already exist. In order to protect the rights of future generations we have made it our task to find these exemplary and future just policies and to spread them. In the agriculture and food area we found wonderful policies that were successfully designed to create win-win situations regarding food security, the protection of genetic resources and climate protection. These, we now showcase on www.futurepolicy.org“.
The other three policy areas covered extensively on www.futurepolicy.org are Renewable Energy Policies, Energy Efficiency Policies and Regenerative City Policies.
