World food crisis

Calls for increase in food output

Article published on the 2008-06-03 Latest update 2008-06-03 12:05 TU

Ban Ki-moon at the opening of the food crisis summit
(Photo: Reuters)

A three-day international summit on global food prices opened in Rome on Tuesday, against a backdrop of riots in some countries and calls to rethink agricultural policies. Italian president Giorgio Napolitano told world leaders at the opening ceremony that there is no way to ignore the gravity of the crisis that has affected one billion of the world's poorest people.

Jacques Diouf, Director General of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said rich countries are also affected by the crisis, and that food insecurity is a political issue.

In his keynote address, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for a 50 per cent increase in world food output by 2030 and what he called “bold and urgent steps” to confront spiralling prices.

He called for countries to open their borders and help their neighbours. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda offered more than 300,000 tons of imported rice and urged world leaders to release food stockpiles, calling it a “short-term measure to return some degree of equilibrium to the food market."

Ban rejected protectionism, and called for a rapid resolution of the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks to help bring about the elimination of "trade and taxation policies that distort markets".

He also called for a consensus on biofuels, which are seen by some experts as pushing up food prices as high as 30 per cent.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defended biofuels, saying that his country’s sugarcane ethanol production does not affect food production.

"Biofuels are not bandits,” he said. “We must remove the smokescreen of powerful lobbies that blame ethanol production for the rise in food prices.”