BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Benedict XVI's message
for World Food Day:
To achieve food security,
promote agricultural development
in the poorer countries




Here is the translation of the letter written by Pope Benedict XVI in French to the Director General of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization on the occasion of World Food Day. The message was read by the Vatican representative at a program in FAO headquarters today.

---

To Mr. Jacques Diouf
Director General
Food and Agricultural Organization


As the celebration of World Food Day recalls the foundation of FAO and its activities to combat hunger and malnutrition, it underscores above all the urgency and need for interventions in behalf of all those who lack their daily bread in so many countries because of the lack of conditions for adequate food security.

The present crisis, which cuts without distinction across all sectors of the economy strikes in particularly serious manner at the world of agriculture, where the situation has become tragic. This crisis calls on governments and the various components of the international community to make decisive and effective choices.

To guarantee to persons and peoples the possibility of defeating the scourge of hunger means to assure them of concrete and adequate access to healthy food. It deamnds, in fact, a concrete manifestation of the right to life which, although solemnly proclaimed, too often remains far from fulfillment.

The theme chosen by the FAO for this year's World Food Day is "Achieving food security in times of crisis". It means considering agriculture as a fundamental element of food security, and therefore, an integral component of economic activity.

For this reason, agriculture should be able to dispose of a sufficient level of investments and resources. It is clear that the goods of creation are limited by nature: they thus require responsible attitudes that are capable of promoting food security, while thinking of future generations as well. Profound solidarity and a far-sighted brotherhood are therefore necessary.

The achievement of these objectives requires a necessary modification of lifestyles and ways of thinking. It obliges the international community and its institutions to intervene in a more adequate and more determined manner.

I hope that such intervention may favor a cooperation that protects the methods of cultivation proper to each area, and avoids the inconsiderate use of natural resources.

I also hope that such cooperation may safeguard those values pertaining to the rural world, as well as the fundamental rights of the workers of the land.

Setting aside privileges, profits and convenience, these objectives can be realized for the benefit of men, women, children, families and communities who live in the poorest areas of the planet, and are, therefore, more vulnerable.

Experience has shown that technical solutions, though advanced, lack effectiveness if they do not take account of the person - the principal protagonist who, in his spiritual and material dimension, is the origin and the end of every activity.

Access to food, more than being an elementary need, is a fundamental right of persons and peoples. It can become reality, and thus security, if adequate development in all the different regions is guaranteed.

In particular, the tragedy of hunger can only be defeated by "eliminating the structural causes that give rise to it and promoting the agricultural development of poorer countries...by investing in rural infrastructures, irrigation systems, transport, organization of markets, and in the development and dissemination of agricultural technology that can make the best use of the human, natural and socio-economic resources that are more readily available at the local level" (Caritas in veritate, No. 27).

The Catholic Church, faithful to its calling to be close to the least among people, promotes, supports and participates in efforts that will allow every people and community to dispose of the necessary measures that will guarantee an adequate level of food security.

With these wishes, I renew to you, Mr. Director-General, the expression of my high esteem, and invoke on the FAI, its member states and its personnel abundant celestial blessings.

From the Vatican
October 8, 2009

---