The United Nations today urged a summit on the global food crisis to help stop the spread of starvation threatening nearly 1 billion people by lowering trade barriers and removing export bans.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrives at the summit today. Photo: Reuters/Nikola Solic
"Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders who are likely to disagree over the link between biofuel production and high food prices.
The head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which is hosting the summit, said wealthy nations had been spending billions of dollars on farm subsidies, wasteful and excess consumption of food, and on arms.
"The excess consumption by the world's obese costs $20 billion annually, to which must be added indirect costs of $100 billion resulting from premature death and related diseases," said FAO Director General Jacques Diouf, who is from Senegal.
The World Bank and aid agencies estimate soaring food prices could push as many as 100 million more people into hunger. About 850 million are already hungry.
Mr Ban estimated the "global price tag" to overcome the food crisis would be $15-20 billion a year and that food supply had to rise 50 per cent by the year 2030 to meet climbing demand.
"Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing draft controls," he said. This "distorts markets and forces prices even higher. I call on nations to resist such measures and to immediately release exports designated for humanitarian purposes".
Aid agencies say Japan and China have contributed to high rice prices, which have triggered riots as far away as Haiti, by controlling their stocks. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda promised at the summit to release at least 300,000 tonnes of imported rice from storage to ease the crisis.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said in a speech opening the summit. that world public opinion had been "taken by surprise by the explosion of a rapid chain of events affecting food followed by the rapid, dramatic rise in the price of foodstuffs".
The cost of major food commodities has doubled over the last couple of years, with rice, corn and wheat at record highs. Some prices have hit their highest levels in 30 years in real terms, provoking protests and riots in some developing countries where people may spend more than half their income on food.
Some 44 national leaders attended, including the Japanese, French and Spanish prime ministers, the presidents of major farming nations like Brazil and Argentina and the leaders of many African nations including Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first trip to the European Union as president to attend the summit.
"Iran can play a determining role in order to get out of the current global issue related to high prices and a shortage of food products and agricultural products," said Mr Ahmadinejad as he left Iran.
Delegates at the three days of talks will discuss issues such as aid, trade and technology to improve farm yields. Hunger campaigners single out biofuels - often made by converting food crops into fuel - as a prime culprit for the crisis.
"Countries are justifying the pursuit of biofuels on the grounds that they offer a means to reduce emissions from transport and improve energy security," Oxfam said in a report released for the summit.
"But there is mounting scientific evidence that biofuel mandates are actually accelerating climate change by driving the expansion of agriculture into critical habitats such as forests and wetlands."
The United States is channelling about a quarter of its maize crop into ethanol production by 2022 and the European Union plans to get 10 per cent of auto fuel from bio-energy by 2020. Biofuel supporters say its effect on global food prices is small.
US Agriculture Secretary Ed Shafer said before the summit began that biofuels accounted for only around 3 per cent of the total food price rise. Oxfam said the real impact was about 30 per cent.
World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said the issue should not be allowed to dominate the summit, although biofuels clearly competed with food production. However, he said Africa could benefit from sugar-based biofuel production as Brazil has.
The World Bank estimates higher food prices are pushing 30 million Africans into poverty. Zoellick said African leaders wanted action, not words.
"It would be unfortunate if (bio-energy) becomes the sole point of debate, because then we would not meet what poor countries tell me they want, which is resources for safety net programmes, seeds and fertilisers, and export bans lifted," said Zoellick.
Brazil, a pioneer in sugar-cane based biofuels, is set to defend them at the summit. Its foreign minister, Celso Amorim, said fair trade and the abolition of rich countries' subsidies to farmers were crucial issues for the summit.