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World leaders to seek way out of soaring food prices
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-03 09:03 ROME -- World leaders are poised to gather here Tuesday for a three-day summit, seeking ways of tackling soaring food prices and helping millions of people in the fight against hunger. The summit, hosted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), was called at a time when the world is experiencing a dramatic increase in food prices.
Agricultural commodity prices rose sharply in the past two years and continued to rise even more sharply in the first three months of 2008, with foodstuff such as rice, corn and wheat all reaching record highs, sparking riots in a number of countries and worsening the situation of the 850 million people already affected by chronic hunger. A joint report by FAO and the OECD warned last week food prices were expected to remain high over the next decade even if they should ease from their recent record peaks. "The current dramatic world food situation reminds us of the fragility of the balance between global food supplies and the needs of the world's inhabitants, and of the fact that earlier commitments to accelerate progress towards the eradication of hunger have not been met," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said ahead of the summit. The high-level meeting, to be attended by UN. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and some 40 heads of state or government, was the first global response to the recent cycle of food prices hike, aimed at winning donor pledges for urgent aid as short-term solutions and also to generate longer term strategies to safeguard food production. "We hope that world leaders coming to Rome will agree on the urgent measures that are required to boost agricultural production, especially in the most affected countries, and at the same time protect the poor from being adversely affected by high food prices," Diouf said. In an address to the Rome-based UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on Monday, Ban warned the world had come to an "alarming juncture", blaming food prices hike on lack of incentives to invest in agriculture. "For years, falling food prices and rising production lulled the world into complacency," Ban said, "You know better than anyone how we arrived at this alarming juncture." "Governments put off hard decisions and overlooked the need to invest in agriculture," he added, warning the food issue could trigger a cascade of other crises, affecting economic growth, social progress, and even political security around the world. Ban was expected to call on developed countries to open markets for agriculture products from developing countries and eliminate subsidies to farmers, a thorny issue hindering the Doha Round global trade talks. Developing countries have long complained about heavily subsidized food from Europe and the United States being dumped on their markets, damaging their own farmers. In an interview with Financial Times, Diouf urged rich countries to increase their aid to agriculture tenfold to 30 billion US dollars a year to help resolve the global food crisis. He said that for the first time in 25 years record prices were providing the fundamental economic and political incentives to stimulate investments in the agricultural sector, adding investment were not only crucial to resolve the current crisis but also to double global food production by 2050 in order to meet the expected increase in the world's population from 6 billion to 9 billion. In a report prepared for the summit, the FAO said with the current situation of high food prices, providing emergency assistance to the most poor and hungry as well as re-launching agriculture and revitalizing rural communities are key elements to reduce hunger and ensure an improved world food situation. It called for urgent measures to boost local food production, including the distribution to small-scale farmers of seeds, fertilizers, animal feed and other inputs through vouchers or smart subsidies. As a twin-track approach, the FAO said in the long term, investment should be made in long neglected areas such as agricultural research, extension and infrastructure. On the agenda of the summit are ways to deal with the threat to poor nations' food security posed by climate change and biofuels when food crops are used as alternative fuels to more expensive or polluting petroleum products. Various studies showed climate change, which is hitting developing countries hardest, could threaten future agricultural production, while the FAO report said the growth of biofuel production, especially in the United States, the European Union (EU) and Brazil, is a factor contributing to higher food prices. World fuel ethanol production tripled between 2000 and 2007 and is expected to double again between now and 2017 to reach 127 billion liters a year. Biodiesel production is seen to expand from 11 billion liters a year in 2007 to around 24 billion liters by 2017. The growth in biofuel production adds to demand for grains, oil seeds and sugar, also contributing to higher crop prices. While blaming higher food prices on increasing demand from emerging economies, developed countries were defending their biofuel policy. Controversy was set to appear at the summit. The United States is planning to channel about a quarter of its corn crop into ethanol production by 2022 as an alternative to crude oil. However, US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer on Monday played down the impact of biofuels on food pricing, saying they only contributed 2 percent to 3 percent of overall price rise. "We have to face completely new challenges -- climate change. It changes the way we are producing, and there is an increasing demand for bio-energy," said FAO's Assistant Director-General Alexander Muller. "So if we want to solve the problems of hungry people in the world, we have to bring together world food security, high prices and the challenges of climate change and bio-energy," he added. |
