ROME, Italy – The world is seeing an unprecedented increase in food prices that is provoking hunger, social and political unrest and inappropriate government responses, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned June 3 as it kicked off a meeting on the crisis.
But the FAO also warned member governments that their response has to be a delicate balancing act because rising prices also offer farmers in the developing world their first good news in decades.
“The immediate need is to prevent human suffering due to hunger and malnutrition and to induce a rapid supply response to restore a better balance between food supply and demand, especially in developing countries,” the FAO said in a document prepared as the working text of the June 3-5 conference.
Read Also
Interest in biological crop inputs continues to grow
It was only a few years ago that interest in alternative methods such as biologicals to boost a crop’s nutrient…
“The risks to food security posed by the present regime of low worldwide food stocks and high prices are substantial. The challenges of managing this crisis over the coming years are daunting.”
But costs of failure to respond properly “will be measured in terms of increased poverty and hunger, reversals in hard-earned gains in nutrition, health, education and social protection and more broadly, social unrest and insecurity.”
The conference has attracted hundreds of delegates including more than a score of country leaders and senior international agency officials.
FAO director general Jacques Diouf is asking member countries to make specific commitments to create safety nets for their poor, invest in their agricultural sectors and create “new international protocols and agreements surrounding biofuels.”
The meeting was called by the FAO months ago in response to growing concerns about the implications of food cost increases and shortages.
Since then, the crisis has worsened as the food price index soared 53 percent in the first quarter of 2008 compared to 2007. Increasingly, international agencies and developing countries are pointing at the role of the biofuel industry demand for grain and oilseed feedstock.
The report noted a recent World Bank conclusion that biofuel demand is responsible for 65 percent of food price increases worldwide.
“International Monetary Fund assessments have also concluded that rising biofuel production, largely due to biofuel policies, is responsible for a significant part of the jump in commodity prices.”
Before he arrived in Rome, United States agriculture secretary Ed Schafer said he planned to face down critics, and say American support for biofuel development is good farm development and environmental policy.
In fact, an underlying theme in the FAO analysis is that the opportunity in higher food prices should not be overlooked.
“The policy implication is that the present agricultural commodity boom provides an important opportunity for stimulating both short and long-term growth if it is not imprudently taxed away and if the public sector provides the necessary resources in the form of public goods, which will increase agricultural productivity,” it said.
But the immediate crisis at the core of the FAO conference is that by the end of 2008, world cereal stocks are expected to be at 25-year lows.
Meanwhile, the bill for imported food in 2007 was estimated at $812 billion US, a record level and 29 percent higher than the previous year.
The immediate impact is that for hundreds of millions of people, the choice is between buying grain or spending limited money on education, health or other necessities.
