Food Price "Catastrophe" Feared On Eve Of Summit
ITALY: June 3, 2008
ROME - Soaring food prices could trigger a global catastrophe and the
world's poor need action, not words, from this week's UN food security
summit, human rights activists and the World Bank said on Monday.
The warning came as world leaders arrived in Rome for a global conference to
tackle a food crisis that is pushing 100 million people into hunger,
provoking food protests and could aggravate violence in war zones.
"The current food crisis amounts to a gross violation of human rights and
could fuel a global catastrophe, as many of the world's poorest countries,
particularly those forced into import dependency, struggle to feed their
people," said Johannesburg-based poverty campaign group ActionAid.
"It is an outrage that poor people are paying for decades of policy mistakes
such as the lack of investment in agriculture and the dismantling of support
for smallholder farmers," said ActionAid analyst Magdalena Kropiwnicka.
Poor harvests, low stocks and rising demand, especially from India and
China, caused huge food price spikes over the last two years, stoking
protests, strikes and violence in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that increased
hunger caused by the price spikes will exacerbate conflict in war zones and
experts say food riots could worsen if nothing is done.
"Our estimate is that higher food prices are pushing 30 million Africans
into hunger," World Bank chief Robert Zoellick told Reuters in Rome, adding
that the message he had received from Africans is that they were tired of
talk and wanted action.
"We have got a lot of world leaders here, let's try to focus on what we can
do in real time to make a difference," said Zoellick, who last week
announced $1.2 billion in loans and grants to help poor countries cope with
food and fuel costs.
He said immediate action was needed to deliver aid to the countries most at
risk, send poor farmers seeds and fertilisers and lift export bans driving
up prices.
MUGABE, AHMADINEJAD STEAL LIMELIGHT
Forty-four heads of state and government are expected at the three-day
meeting, which kicks off a round of diplomatic talks on poverty, hunger and
development in the coming months, including a G8 Summit, a UN General
Assembly and potentially conclusive talks on new world trade rules.
Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said the summit should issue a "forceful
message on medium- to long-term measures such as increasing food production
and agriculture productivity."
But the hunger discussions are in danger of being overshadowed by the
presence of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who
both have strained relations with the West.
The European Union has a travel ban on Mugabe, but that does not apply to UN
meetings.
Britain and Australia called Mugabe's presence at the summit obscene, while
the World Jewish Congress said it was deplorable that Ahmadinejad "is
allowed to hijack the agenda of this important FAO conference."
Hunger campaigners have targeted the recent rise in bio-fuels -- usually the
conversion of food crops into energy -- as one of the main culprits for the
price rise and say the summit should declare a ban on arable land being
switched to biofuel production.
"To continue the pursuit of biofuels in the face of the credible, impartial
and growing opinion that this is exacerbating the food crisis is morally
outrageous and utterly indefensible," said Rob Bailey, of hunger campaigners
Oxfam.
Under US plans, about a quarter of the US corn crop will be channelled into
ethanol production by 2022 as an alternative to crude oil.
US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer played down the impact of biofuels on
food pricing, saying they only contributed 2-3 percent of overall price
rise. Oxfam says the real figure is closer to 30 percent.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, a pioneer in sugar-cane
based biofuels, said he would use the summit to defend biofuels.
"It's up to Brazil, a centre of excellence in ethanol production, to prove
that it's fully possible to make ethanol output compatible with the
production of food."
(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart and Silvia Aloisi, editing by Ralph
Boulton and Jon Boyle)
Story by Robin Pomeroy and Stephen Brown
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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