Oxfam ranks 2009 UN World Food Summit leaders' performance a paltry two out of ten.

International aid agency Oxfam gave the 2009 UN World Food Summit a 20 per cent overall rating as delegates left Rome today without tackling many of the biggest challenges of food security and agriculture.

The one kernel of optimism was that all countries had at least sanctioned a process to reform global food governance.

Oxfam Scotland's Campaigns Manager Malcolm Fleming said:

"A single meeting can't solve world hunger but we certainly expected far more than this. The result is not commensurate with the problem, which is historically huge. A billion people are now facing hunger and looming climate change.

"The near total absence of rich country leaders sent a poor message from the beginning. The summit offered few solid accomplishments."

Oxfam has ranked the Summit against five key criteria and found that not one was fully achieved. However, Oxfam says that sanctioning the reform of the UN's Committee for World Food Security (CFS) could be an important victory over the course of time, even if much more needs to be done.

1: United effort to fight global hunger - Oxfam ranking 45 per cent success

One of the most important issues was to bring all the fragmented international efforts to fight global hunger under the single UN roof. This was a heavily qualified success. The Summit said that the CFS should be reformed to play a greater coordination role but stopped short of giving it any way to hold countries to account or to track all the money. Until that happens, Oxfam says the CFS would remain relatively weak.

2: Specific plans to halve hunger by 2015 - Oxfam ranking 25 per cent success

Countries needed to make specific and properly budgeted plans to halve hunger by 2015. But they stopped a long way short of insisting on this at the Summit, making instead only a vague statement to "take action ... at the earliest possible date". This is the kind of language that substitutes for real action. On the positive side, the Summit specified that money must be channeled through country-owned plans and recognised the need for better coordination. The declaration also set out the goal for the progressive realisation of the right to adequate food and it committed countries to work "for a world free from hunger". In Oxfam's experience, this kind of woolly commitment rarely translates into real action.

3: Action on climate change - Oxfam ranking 15 per cent success

Oxfam reviewed the Summit's language around climate change and found it lacked ambition. Governments should have declared in Rome that any agreement on a global deal in Copenhagen next month must commit sufficient resources - over and above existing aid budgets - to specifically help smallholder farmers to adapt to harmful climate change.

4: Rescue package for Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger - Oxfam ranking 10 per cent success

This Summit could have declared a rescue package for the Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger by finding sufficient money - eventually up to $40 billion a year - with half of it going to the farming, transport and market systems that support smallholder farmers, and half to a reformed food aid. However, it brought little new to the table other than to declare "to be ready to increase the percentage of ODA to go to agriculture if countries wanted that."

5: Guaranteeing all countries have a right to food security - Oxfam ranking five per cent success

The Summit's language on trade is inconsistent with guaranteeing that all countries have the right to food security. Despite the Summit claiming to have put smallholder farmers at the centre of its mission, Oxfam says that it failed to specify the policies to help the poorest countries to reduce hunger and poverty.

Malcolm Fleming said:

"This meeting had to increase support to the kind of sustainable farming methods that would help poor farmers to feed their families and increase their income. That this did not happen taints the 2009 Summit with arguably its worst failure."