UN WORLD FOOD SECURITY CONFERENCE:UNITED NATIONS Secretary General Ban Ki-moon yesterday urged the international community to "act together now" in the name of "our common humanity" in order to deal with the current global food crisis.
Addressing the UN's World Food Security summit in Rome on the opening day, Mr Ban pointed out that the world's population will reach 7.2 billion by 2015, making it essential that action be taken now.
It is the "poorest of the poor", those who spend two-thirds of their income on food, who have been and will continue to be hardest hit by the current rise in world food prices, said Mr Ban, adding: "I have seen this for myself. In Liberia recently, I met people who normally would buy rice by the bag. Today, they buy it by the cup. In Cote d'Ivoire, the leaders of a country recovering from conflict and trying to build a democracy told me how they feared that food riots could undo all their hard work. We fear the same in other countries. Afghanistan, Haiti and Liberia to name but a few."
According to Mr Ban, the world needs to produce more food, increasing production by 50 per cent by the year 2030 to meet the rising demand. Praising those countries which have opted to help farmers pay for basic agricultural "inputs" such as seeds and fertilisers, Mr Ban said that ways must be found to support such initiatives, "politically and financially".
To that end, he said, he had set up a high-level task force that is intended to come up with a comprehensive framework for action.
Mr Ban was, however, highly critical of one form of action, saying: "Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls. As I have said before, I say again now: beggar-thy-neighbour food policies cannot work. They only distort markets and force prices even higher. I call on nations to resist such measures and to immediately release exports designated for humanitarian purposes."
Hosted by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Rome World Food summit is addressing the complex question of guaranteeing world food security in the context of the current, rapid rise in food prices.
Opening the summit yesterday, FAO director general Jacques Diouf said that in 2006 the world spent US$1,200 billion dollars on arms, adding: "Against that backdrop, how can we explain to people of good sense and good faith that it was not possible to find US$30 billion a year to enable 862 million hungry people to enjoy the most fundamental of human rights: the right to food and thus the right to life?"
Two of the most controversial figures at the summit, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, addressed the summit yesterday with both striking predictably controversial notes. Mr Ahmadinejad was critical of the UN, saying that it was controlled by western countries which "worked only in their own interests" and were sometimes moved "by diabolic motivations".
Despite the widespread starvation currently in Zimbabwe, Mr Mugabe praised the land ownership policies introduced by his government, saying that where once there had been 4,000 farmers, "mainly of British stock", there are now 300,000 previously landless but "now proud landowners".
Mr Mugabe went on to criticise the United Kingdom arguing that UK-imposed sanctions have crippled Zimbabwe's economy, while claiming that the West funds opposition parties in his country.
In an address due to be delivered tomorrow, Irish Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith is likely to call on the international community to put food security at the very top of its agenda, pointing out how Ireland has tried to show the way with the establishment of the Hunger Task Force.