Commemorating World Food Day at Expo 2015 - Main contents

Innovative financing is essential to increase agricultural production and fight hunger

As I prepare to start a long awaited visit to the Expo 2015 in Milan, I cannot help but think about how appropriate its theme "Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life" is. Global food and nutrition security are key priorities of EU development cooperation and I am keen to take part in this global event, even more on the eve of World Food Day (October 16).

There has been great progress since the number of hungry people in the world hit the critical one billion mark in 2009: this number has fallen to 795 million, or one in nine people worldwide. The challenges, however, are still enormous.

It is my view there can be no substantial reduction in poverty and malnutrition in the world without addressing the rural areas, where small scale farmers form the core of the economy.

One example is Sokhna Faye , a successful onion farmer in Senegal, who began cultivating onions 20 years ago to help feed her family. The first months were difficult, working long hours, far away from home. But Sokhna Faye got support from an EU-funded local cooperative who proposed that she join them. The EU financed the construction of a drying warehouse and this allowed Shokna to stock her onions and sell them whenever the market is favourable, while benefiting from microcredits to buy fertilisers and tools. Now she is even exporting onions to Spain! This money allowed Sokhna to send her children to school, buy more nutritious food and be prepared in case of new droughts.

And she is not the only one. Just recently, when I was in East Africa I saw for myself the enormous scope of what smallholders, particularly women and young people, can do to produce food and fight hunger.

The European Union (EU) is already the biggest development donor in food security and agriculture, providing essential support, both financial and political. Already more than 60 developing countries have chosen nutrition and food security as core priorities in our cooperation and overall more than €8 billion will be allocated to these areas. And our efforts are bearing fruits. Since 2004, for instance, almost 60 million people have been assisted through food security related social transfers.

However, public resources cannot win the fight against poverty and hunger alone; we need both public and private resources in order to have a real and sustainable impact.

During my visit to the Expo, I will participate in several events regarding investments in agriculture. I am pleased that I will be able to present a new initiative on this field, the Agriculture Financing Initiative - AgriFI - that responds to the current lack of financing mechanisms adapted to farmers, particularly to smallholders and agri-business Micro Small and Medium Enterprises. AgriFI will improve the capacity to bear risk using public money and therefore help to close a financing gap.

This initiative is also fully in line with the Sustainable Development Goal on "ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture". Indeed, food security and nutrition will be an essential part of the Agenda 2030 that was recently adopted by the United Nations and will guide our development policy on the way forward.