Should rich countries help poor ones?
How Canada copes with food crises.
The head of a UN agency says that richer countries need to increase aid to developing nations. That's because countries like Canada are willing to provide aid during crises that have already happened, and we need to prevent them.
"We continue going from food crisis to food crisis. If we don't invest now, very likely we will go through the same issues in the next shock, whether it's because of a climate shock, an income shock or a pandemic," Alvaro Lario, head of the International Fund of Agricultural Development.
The food crisis is nothing new today: pandemics, wars, droughts, fires and floods all hit food production and raise prices. Since February 24, the crisis has worsened in many countries in Asia and Africa, which depend on grain imports from that region.
We recently wrote about the G7 summit in Japan. There, the world's most progressive and prosperous economies pledged to work with IFAD to ensure that farmers have a central role in solving food crises.
In the budget the Trudeau government cut back its development assistance by 15 per cent, a $1.3 billion drop from the previous year.
Still, international development official Harjit Sajjan said Ottawa expects to increase spending on development and crisis prevention as humanitarian disasters become more frequent.
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