UN Taskforce to Tackle Global Food Crisis

Go to Original
By Allegra Stratton

The UN secretary general today said he would head a special taskforce to address food shortages and price rises around the world.

Ban Ki-moon said the move was an attempt to avert "social unrest on an unprecedented scale."

Convening a crisis meeting of world leaders in June, he also appeared to criticise the international community's response to the crisis.

He said people had not heeded warnings from the UN's food and agriculture organisation (FAO), amongst other bodies.

"The first and immediate priority, that we all agree, is that we must feed the hungry," Ban added as he outlined his taskforce plans.

He said the World Food Programme estimated that it needed a further $775m (£382m). A total of $475m (£240m) has already been pledged.

The FAO estimated that world price for foods such as cereals, dairy, produce, meat, sugar and oils was 57% higher last month than in March.

"Without full funding of these emergency requirements, we risk again the spectre of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale," Ban said.

The secretary general was speaking in Switzerland, where he and the heads of 27 other international agencies were holding talks.

Robert Zoellick, the head of the World Bank, and Pascal Lamy, the head of the World Trade Organisation, also attended the discussions.

Acknowledging that farmers needed assistance in planting and producing more crops in the face of rising energy and fertiliser costs, Ban said the FAO had developed a $1.7bn plan to aid agriculture in the world's poorest countries.

Many farmers had committed to selling their harvests at rates fixed before the recent dramatic increase in wheat, corn, rice, dairy, and oils prices.

Economists linked the rises to factors including drought, the use of crops for biofuels and speculation by commodity traders and hedge funds.

"We must make every effort to support those farmers so that, in the coming year, we do not see even more severe food shortages," Ban said.

Presenting research compiled by the World Bank, Zoellick said people "are not planting more because they are fearful that they face very high input costs".

He added that 100 million people were estimated to have been pushed into poverty over the past two years.

"This is not a natural disaster," he said. "This crisis isn't over once the emergency needs are met.

"The world can afford this. I think we've now got the attention of the world community."

Lamy said it was unrealistic to expect that farmers would immediately benefit from the increase in food staple prices.

Increasing food production and matching crops with the goods in highest demand would take more time and depend on fair and clear international trade rules, he added.

The WTO said it had been working for seven years to conclude a new deal to slash tariffs and subsidies skewing the global prices of agricultural goods, making it hard for poor country farmers to sell their crops abroad.