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Join on Telegram Rabat – Morocco has a role to play in a global challenge as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned of a looming crisis in food security.
The FAO is aiming to provide 49 million people with assistance this year as food security becomes an increasingly pressing issue. The FAO is calling for funding to support its efforts to help feed millions in 2021.
The issue of food insecurity is escalating as the effects of climate change become ever more apparent. While the climate is producing more extreme weather and exacerbating natural disasters, economic and political shocks amid a COVID-19 pandemic are only worsening the situation.
“Hundreds of thousands of girls, boys, women and men are at extreme risk of acute food insecurity in several countries,” the FAO warns in its press release. The organization is calling on international donors to “act now” before more famines begin to cost human lives.
Many in less-struggling regions have long posited the issue of food insecurity as a future threat, worsened by climate change and most apparent in arid regions such as the Sahel.
The irony of food insecurity is that it often impacts people who themselves are involved in agriculture but cannot raise enough crops to support their own nutrition.
In the short-term, funding for the FAO can help mitigate the devastating effects of a lack of food security, while in the long-term, Morocco has a key role to play.
Morocco’s role in providing food security
International aid organizations like the UN’s FAO and the Nobel Prize-winning World Food Programme are struggling to provide food security to millions. They operate in some of the world’s worst affected regions to alleviate suffering.
While these programs are vital to the subsistence of millions of innocent people, their efforts cannot help resolve the issue in the long-term.
Morocco has a role to play in ensuring the world can sustainably enjoy stable and reliable food security. As the largest source of phosphates worldwide, Morocco is literally needed to help feed the world. Phosphates are a key ingredient in fertilizers that can allow people to grow their own crops in previously infertile soil.
Morocco’s diplomacy in Africa has recognized this need and made its phosphate and fertilizer exports a key component of its mutual development agreements. Several African states are already enjoying the benefits of such agreements.
Morocco’s largest company is the phosphate giant OCP Group, which has a particular focus on providing food security on the African continent.
The state-owned company’s OCP Africa initiative is already making an impact in Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana.
Morocco’s fertilizer giant works with the African Development Bank to realize the Africa Fertilizer Financing Mechanism, which already supports 430,000 smallholder farmers, including 104,000 women.
While short-term assistance to the FAO and WFP is crucial in order to stave off disaster, Morocco’s global role is set to grow, as it holds the key to provide food insecurity in the face of rapidly escalating climate change.
