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, 01 June 2008, The Daily Star

Dozens of non-governmental organisations and small farmers’ groups plan a forum in Rome next week to coincide with an international summit on food security hosted by the UN food agency.

The Terra Preta (Portuguese for “black earth”) forum will not counter the Food and Agriculture Organisation summit next Tuesday through Thursday but run “parallel” to it, organisers told a news conference.

Indeed, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf will open the forum, and its conclusions will be presented at the summit on Thursday, they noted.

While the FAO has come under widespread criticism for inefficiency, Antonio Onorati, head of the Italian section of the Food Sovereignty movement, said the group has never criticised the Rome-based agency, which he said is “essential and needs to be strengthened.”

He warned however that some governments would use the FAO summit to call for further liberalisation of the global agriculture sector.

“We are prepared to work with committed governments and United Nations organisations that share our concerns and are dedicated to end the food emergency and develop food sovereignty,” the forum’s organisers said in a statement.

Afp, Rome, The Daily Star, 02 June 2008

Dozens of farmers’ groups kicked off a forum in Rome yesterday to coincide with the UN food agency’s summit on food security with an impassioned plea for an overhaul of world agricultural policies.

“We have empty plates and we have empty policies,” said Paul Nicholson of La Via Campesina, an international farmers’ movement.

“Let us protect and defend a farming system that feeds the world and cools the planet,” he said at an open-air news conference held across the street from the Rome headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

The FAO is holding a summit from Tuesday to Thursday at which world leaders will discuss food security as runaway prices have sparked riots across the world.

“On the eve of the High-Level Conference on World Food Security in Rome, farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples and non-governmental organisations have declared a People’s State of Emergency,” forum organisers said in a statement.

“Free trade policies have seriously damaged the food system over time, leading to the food crisis that we’re facing today,” said Maryam Rahmanian of Iran’s Centre for Sustainable Development.

Alvaro Santin, representing the Movement of Landless Brazilians, said: “We reject the call of the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation for further liberalisation of international trade.

“These very policies have flooded our countries with cheap food, undermined our food sovereignty and devastated our ability to produce food for ourselves.”

Rahmanian, who is on the forum’s steering committee, told AFP: “The UN doesn’t have anything new to say. It’s obscene that the food crisis is being used to push stronger on policies” promoting large-scale agriculture, biofuels and the use of GMOs and pesticides.

She said that peasants’ groups and NGOs had had a working relationship with the FAO since the 1996 World Food Summit here, but that the groups had become increasingly “marginalised.”

“The FAO as an institution in itself is the only forum that could potentially be democratic,” she said, noting that each member state has an equal vote.

Afp, Rome, The Daily Star, 04 June 2008

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for a huge rise in food production Tuesday as world leaders started a summit on the food price crisis that threatens to plunge millions more people into poverty.

The UN secretary general said food output had to rise 50 percent by 2030 to meet rising demand, increased finance for agriculture and the elimination of “trade and taxation policies that distort markets.”

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda urged fellow world leaders to release excess stockpiles of food to ease shortages in poorer countries, offering more than 300,000 tonnes of imported rice held by Japan.

“I believe that this not only constitutes an emergency response measure towards food shortages, but also serves as a short-term measure to return some degree of equilibrium to the food market,” he told the summit.

Ban said it was also essential for the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks to be completed as quickly as possible to alleviate the crisis.

“We have a historic opportunity to revitalise agriculture,” Ban told some 50 heads of state and government, gathered for the three-day summit.

“I call on you to take bold and urgent steps to address the root causes of this global food crisis,” he said at the Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome.

With food prices at a 30-year high, the UN secretary general warned that while the world must “respond immediately,” it must also put the long-term focus on “improving food security.”

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.

Rising use of biofuels, trade restrictions, increased demand from Asia to serve changing diets, poor harvests and increasing transport costs have all been blamed for the price rise.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said two billion people across the world are struggling with high food prices, and 100 million extra people in poor countries may be pushed into poverty by the crisis.

The summit opened amid controversy over the presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

Britain’s International Development Minister Douglas Alexander said he would snub Mugabe at the summit, telling AFP his attendance was “obscene.”

UN agencies have launched appeals for more than one billion dollars to alleviate the food crisis. Saudi Arabia has already given 500 million dollars to a World Food Programme appeal.

But the charity Oxfam has accused the international community of spending a “pittance” on supporting agriculture in developing countries compared to the huge support given to farmers in rich Western countries.

Oxfam stressed that European and North American biofuel policies are only one of several factors causing higher food prices.

Estimates vary on the extent to which demand for biofuels has pushed up food prices, ranging from 30 percent by some experts to less than three percent according to the US Agriculture Department.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defended biofuels, saying they could be an “important tool” against food insecurity.

“Biofuels are not bandits … We must remove the smokescreen of powerful lobbies that blame ethanol production for the rise in food prices. It’s a mockery, an affront,” he said.

FAO Director General Jacques Diouf lamented the failure to reach a goal set by the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome of reducing the number of hungry by half by 2015.

“With current trends, the summit’s goal will be attained in 2150 instead of 2015,” he said.

Afp, Rome, The Daily Star, 05 June 2008

World leaders meeting in Rome yesterday focused on the roles of biofuels, trade practices and global warming in the food price crisis that is threatening more hunger, poverty and conflict worldwide.

In talks on Tuesday clouded by controversy focused on the presidents of Zimbabwe and Iran, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for “bold and urgent steps to address the root causes of this global food crisis.”

“We have a historic opportunity to revitalise agriculture,” Ban told some 50 heads of state and government attending the three-day summit of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), adding that food output had to rise 50 percent by 2030 to meet ballooning demand.

With food prices at a 30-year high, the UN chief warned that while the world must “respond immediately,” it must also put the long-term focus on “improving food security.”

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.

The world “simply cannot afford to fail” in efforts to address the global food price crisis, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said later at a news conference.

“We simply cannot afford to fail,” Ban said. “Hundreds of millions of people expect no less,” he said, adding: “We are duty bound to act now.”

“We must make the international trade system work more effectively to make food available at reasonable prices,” Ban said.

Bilateral and international donors must reverse “years of neglect of the agricultural sector,” he said, calling for “sustained, intelligent investment in agriculture.”

He added that in the immediate term, “We must find a way to significantly boost the harvest in the next year.”

WORLD BANK CHIEF

World Bank President Robert Zoellick yesterday called for the lifting of trade barriers that contribute to food price inflation and “hurt the poorest people.”

“We need an international call to remove export bans and restrictions,” Zoellick told a news conference at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization summit in Rome.

“These controls encourage hoarding, drive up prices and hurt the poorest people around the world who are struggling to feed themselves,” he said.

“These restrictions and taxes must be lifted at the minimum for humanitarian food purchases and transportation by the WFP,” he said, referring to the World Food Programme, the UN agency that delivers emergency food aid.

“They should be lifted or at least eased for shipments to less developed and fragile countries,” Zoellick said, urging that “the immediate requirements of 20 of the most vulnerable countries (be met) by the time of the G8 summit in early July.”

Zoellick urged “safety net support, school feeding, food for work, maternal and child programmes, conditional cash transfers and budget support” for the countries most in need.

“We need to get seeds, fertilisers and inputs to those developing countries where smallholder farmers can expand production this season,” he added.

$1.5B ISLAMIC BANK SUPPORT FOR FARMING
The Islamic Development Bank will donate 1.5 billion dollars (970 million euros) to support farming in the developing world, the head of the Food and Agricultural Organization announced Wednesday.

 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.

Afp, Warsaw, The Daily Star, 08 June 2008

The world’s farmers were bypassed at this week’s Rome UN food summit, reflecting a crucial gap in addressing the crisis at its most basic level, the leader of a global farmers’ group said Friday.

“It’s a reflection of how disconnected and dis-linked our multilateral agencies are, from the situation on the ground,” Ajay Vashee, the freshly- elected head of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) told AFP at the close of the 38th World Farmers’ Congress in Warsaw, Poland.

“The people who have the ability to actually do something about this crisis were precluded,” Vashee said, adding it was a recipe for “confusion and chaos.” Uniting 600 million independent family farmers in 115 organisations from 80 countries around the globe, IFAP is the world’s largest farmers’ organisation. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) crisis summit which ended Thursday in Rome pledged 6.5 billion dollars (4.1 billion euros) in emergency food relief and vowed to halve global hunger by 2015 by taking “urgent” action over the global food crisis.