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Staff Correspondent, The Daily Star, 09 May 2008
Politicians and civil society members yesterday urged the caretaker government to immediately introduce rationing system for providing lower and lower-middle class people with rice and other essentials at low price.
At a citizens’ dialogue, they also suggested that the government increase investment and subsidy in agriculture to ensure food security in the country.
Only an elected democratic government can control the skyrocketing price hike of essentials, the speakers said at the dialogue styled “Stop price hike, save people”. They also called upon all political parties to incorporate the issue of food security into their election manifesto.
People’s Forum on MDG and Campaign for Popular Education (Campe) jointly organised the dialogue at the Jatiya Press Club yesterday.
Awami League Presidium member Suranjit Sengupta said rice production and people’s purchasing capacity will have to be increased to control the prices of essentials.
“The country has to be self-sufficient in producing rice and other essentials. And for this, investment and subsidy in agriculture will have to be increased,” Suranjit said, adding, “All of these can be possible when an elected democratic government comes to power after the next general election.”
BNP leader and former state minister MA Mannan said the government should pay more attention to the agriculture sector, especially for increasing subsidy and investment.
Workers Party polit bureau member Hyder Akbar Khan Rono said rationing system should be immediately introduced for general people. “A long-term and effective planning is needed for increasing rice production and ensuring food security,” he said.
Shishir Shil, executive director of People Empower Trust and member of the steering committee of People’s Forum on MDG, said an inter-ministry task force for agriculture, food, fisheries, commerce, local government, land, law and science and technology will have to be formed to keep the price hike within people’s buying capacity.
Ataur Rahman Miton of Hunger Free World, Shirin Akhter of Karmajibi Nari, political leaders Shahiduzzaman, Dr Abdur Razzaque, Abdus Shahid and SK Shahidul Islam, among others, addressed the dialogue presided over by Campe Director-in-charge Azizul Haq.
Afp, Rome, The Daily Star, 29 May 2008
A summit next week hosted by the UN food agency will provide a key opportunity to relaunch the fight against hunger and poverty in the developing world, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said Wednesday.
The three-day gathering starting Tuesday “will offer a unique forum for world leaders to adopt the policies, strategies and programmes that are required to overcome the new challenges to world food security,” the Rome-based agency said.
“We hope that world leaders coming to Rome will agree on the urgent measures that are required to boost agricultural production, especially in the most affected countries,” FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said in a statement.
He added that “at the same time (the measures should) protect the poor from being adversely affected by high food prices.”
Several heads of state and government are expected at the summit on food security, global warming and the rising demand for biofuels.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will open the meeting, while the presidents of Argentina, Brazil and France, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Nicolas Sarkozy, have confirmed their attendance.
Afp, Rome, The Daily Star, 07 June 2008
A UN summit vowed Thursday to halve global hunger by 2015 and take “urgent” action over the global food crisis, but only after going into overtime at a fractious summit in Rome.
In a final declaration at the gathering — which saw some 6.5 billion dollars (4.1 bln euros) pledged, but which exposed strains notably over biofuels — world leaders also agreed to boost food production in poor countries.
“We are convinced that the international community needs to take urgent and coordinated action to combat the negative impacts of soaring prices on the world’s most vulnerable countries and populations,” it said.
The summit was an “important first step” but not sufficient to tackle the global food crisis, British charity Oxfam said.
Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking said in a statement that while leaders of the world’s richest countries had “acknowledged the importance of aid to agriculture”, the global food crisis needed “a wide-ranging plan to resolve it.”
“As the world’s most powerful countries, they must provide more money to deal with the immediate impact of the current crisis but also tackle some of the contributing causes by ending compulsory biofuels targets and providing more long term aid for agriculture,” she said.
“The current crisis illustrates starkly that what we need is not business as usual but deep reform of the international trading system,” she said.
The declaration was criticised even before it was formally agreed, with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini calling it “disappointing.”
The text was “unfortunately very watered down with respect to the initial ambitions,” he said, cited by the ANSA news agency.
Reaffirming a UN goal despite the current crisis — in which soaring prices have sparked famine and food riots around the world — the summit vowed to cut “by half the number of undernourished people by no later than 2015.”
“There is … an urgent need to help developing countries and countries in transition expand agriculture and food production and to increase investment (from) both public and private sources,” the statement added.
The declaration was finalised only after wrangling went down to the wire at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) headquarters in Rome, with biofuels and trade barriers among the most contentious points.
Biofuel development is promoted notably in Brazil and the United States, but criticised by others as taking up land that could otherwise be used to produce food.
In what critics would likely see as ducking the issue, the declaration says biofuels present both “challenges and opportunities” — and calls for more research.
The discord blew into the open at a sometimes stormy final session after the talks went into overtime, in which three Latin American countries — Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba — repeatedly voiced their dismay.
Cuba’s delegate at the final session notably lashed out at the United States and the “sinister biofuels strategy” as well as the “leaders of consumption” which he said marred the accord.
Speaking after the 11th-hour accord, FAO chief Jacques Diouf said some 6.5 billion dollars had been pledged at the summit.
Major pledges came from the Islamic Development Bank (1.5 billion dollars), France (1.5 billion dollars), the World Bank (1.2 billion) and the African Development Bank (1.0 billion), Diouf said.
“Our conference was not a donor conference, but we were pleasantly surprised to receive extremely generous pledges,” Diouf said.
The first day of the summit Tuesday saw colourful remarks by the presidents of Iran and Zimbabwe about Western pressure, while there has been plenty of criticism of rich countries’ protection of their markets.
But by Wednesday, John Holmes, head of the UN task force on the crisis, said a “broad consensus” had built around an action plan which is to be presented at a Group of Eight meeting in Japan this month, and a G8 summit in July.
Food prices have doubled in three years, according to the World Bank, sparking riots in Egypt and Haiti and in many African nations. Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt have all imposed food export restrictions.
In the summit declaration, the leaders vow to “use all means to alleviate the suffering caused by the current crisis, stimulate food production and increase investment in agriculture.”
But Italy’s foreign minister lamented the lack of real solidarity at the summit.
“There were grand statements, assertions of principle, but I didn’t hear the sort of unanimous cohesion that would have been necessary,” he said, according to ANSA.
