UN General Assembly
2008

price fluctuation in the world immediately affects the day-to-day lives of our people. Mozambique is endowed with natural resources which are favourable to mixed farming. However, the shortage of financial resources and the weak banking network in the rural zones, combined with the lack of infrastructure and technology to secure the development of commercial agriculture, have not allowed us to scale up our production to the levels that could meet the food needs of our population. The situation is worsened by poor distribution and marketing systems, making it difficult to distribute and market the products from certain surplus zones to the needy ones. Moreover, the cyclic natural disasters that have struck us have resulted in losses of significant plantation areas, causing the people of those areas to live permanently in need. Those calamities have also caused soil erosion and depletion and as a consequence food insecurity and malnutrition affect our people. Mr. Choquehuanca Céspedes (Bolivia), Vice- President, took the Chair. In order to address the food crisis, our Government approved last June, a Food Production