UN WORLD FOOD SUMMIT:DELEGATES TO the UN's World Food Summit in Rome worked late into the night yesterday in an attempt to hammer out a final conference document that might best indicate how the international community should confront the world food crisis.
After just two days of often heartfelt debate, the summit, held at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, is expected to come up with a final communique that will find common ground on such controversial issues as biofuels, agricultural subsidies, transboundary pests and diseases and world trade policies.
For if one thing has been made clear this week in Rome, it is that the vexed question of the food crisis has as much to do with stock market prices in New York as with the effectiveness of fertilisers in Liberia, and as much to with agricultural policies in the first world as with climate change in the developing world.
Over the last two days, various speakers have repeatedly pointed out that at least 862 million people worldwide are facing starvation, with UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon pointing out that unless meaningful action is taken, that number could rise by another 100 million in the immediate future. That 862 million people are short of food seems to be all delegates agree over.
When it comes to assessing the causes and/or possible solutions for the crisis, countries differ radically. Against the tide, both president Lula da Silva of Brazil and US agriculture secretary Ed Shafer this week defended controversial bio-fuels such as ethanol and the much criticised diversion of crops for energy.
Mr Lula argued that biofuels were a source of "clean" energy, while he described "attempts to draw a cause and effect relationship between biofuels and the rise of food prices" as frightening.
When the delegates representing seven world areas (Ireland forms part of the EU delegation) sat down to hammer out the final communique yesterday, they also faced problems from Cuba, which, perhaps not surprisingly, wanted to include a condemnation of US sanctions in the document.
While confirming the continuation of US support for the biofuel industry, Mr Schafer also acknowledged that the US was "deeply concerned by the current crisis", adding that the US was now "projecting to spend nearly $5 billion in 2008 and 2009 to fight global hunger".
The UN World Food Programme also claimed that, temporarily at least, it was "helping the world to weather the storm" by making an additional $1.2 billion in food assistance available to help tens of millions of people in more than 60 hard-hit nations.
Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith, due to address the summit this morning, is likely to touch on an oft-repeated theme of the last two days, namely the chronic need to reform the FAO itself, a top-heavy institution that many observers consider to be strong on pay and privilege but weak on effective, problem-solving initiatives.