High prices due to soaring demand could push 100m deeper into poverty
Straits Times 15 Apr 08;
LUXEMBOURG - PRESSURE was mounting yesterday on global farming powers to ramp up production in the face of warnings that soaring food prices could drive 100 million people deeper into abject poverty.
French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier warned that farmers worldwide would have to raise their output sharply in the coming decades as demand booms in fast growing Asian countries such as China and India.
'Global agriculture production will have to double by 2050...to feed nine billion people on the planet,' Mr Barnier told journalists on the sidelines of a Luxembourg meeting with his European Union counterparts.
At the same time, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon warned that the rapidly escalating crisis of food availability has reached emergency proportions, threatening to wipe out seven years of progress in the fight against global poverty.
He told international finance and trade officials meeting at the UN that the international community had 'to take urgent and concerted action' to avoid the larger political and security implications.
As well as calling for short-term emergency measures, he urged longer-term efforts to significantly increase production of food grains.
Food security has become a major concern in recent weeks as supplies of basic commodities have dwindled in the face of soaring demand, triggering riots and outbreaks of violence from Haiti to Indonesia.
World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned on Sunday that a doubling of food prices over the past three years could push 100 million people in developing countries further into poverty.
He said: 'We have to put our money where our mouth is now so that we can put food into hungry mouths.'
A new UN-sponsored study, due to be presented today in Paris, also warns that farming practices must change to confront soaring food prices that threaten the poor in particular.
'Business as usual is no longer an option,' the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development will say in the report, according to a statement from Unesco.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation said that since March last year, prices for soya beans have risen 87 per cent and those for wheat 130 per cent at a time when global grain stores are at their lowest levels on record.
It attributed the trend to increased demand in emerging market powerhouses China and India, as well as the alternative use of maize and soya beans for biofuels.
Unesco said the report will urge that agricultural science pay greater attention to safeguarding natural resources and promoting 'agro-ecological' practices such as using natural fertilisers and traditional seeds, and reducing the distance between the farm and the consumer.
Mr Barnier also said that Europe should help developing countries build up their agriculture sector.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
High cost of food sparks unrest across the globe
Straits Times 15 Apr 08;
Americas
# At least six people, including a United Nations peacekeeper, die in Haiti, where the prime minister has been ousted over the price of food.
# Political storm brewing in Argentina, where government efforts to tax exports of increasingly valuable foodstuffs cause social unrest.
# Food bank charities in the United States plead for extra donations to provide the poor with food that is becoming more expensive.
Asia
# Textile workers riot in Bangladesh over higher food prices and low wages.
# The Philippine government expands a programme to give rice to poor children in schools, and calls for talks on food prices with other Asian countries.
# Higher food prices in Pakistan and Afghanistan cause border tension, with guards firing on people trying to smuggle wheat flour into Afghanistan.
# Farmers in Thailand begin guarding their fields against theft after rice prices jump by 50 per cent.
Africa
# Riots over the cost of food kill at least one person in Ivory Coast, The government enacts a price freeze.
# At least 40 die in price-related riots in Cameroon, west Africa.
# Police in Senegal arrest the leaders of a protest against high food prices.
Middle East
# Riots in a working-class Nile Delta town leave at least one person dead. In the past year, the price of bread has risen by nearly 50 per cent in Egypt.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
