UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for immediate lift of restriction on food exports on Tuesday as world leaders opened a three-day summit in Rome in a global response to soaring food prices.
"Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls ... They only distort markets and force prices even higher," Ban told the summit, hosted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"I call on nations to resist such measures and to immediately released exports designated for humanitarian purposes," he added.
Ban also urged developed countries to open markets for agriculture products from developing countries and eliminate subsidies to farmers, a thorny issue hindering the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s Doha Round negotiations.
The international community must act for longer resilience and contribute to global food security by "eliminating trade and taxation policies that distort markets, not least through rapid resolution of the Doha Round," he said.
Developing countries have long complained about heavily subsidized food from Europe and the United States being dumped on their markets, damaging their own farmers.
The high-level conference, the first global response to the recent cycle of food price hike, was aimed at winning donor pledges for urgent aid as short-term solutions and also generating longer term strategies to safeguard food production.
Agricultural commodity prices rose sharply in the past two years and continued to rise even more in the first three months of 2008, with foodstuff such as rice, corn and wheat all reaching record highs, sparking riots in many countries and worsening the situation of millions of people already affected by chronic hunger.
A joint report by FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned last week that food prices were expected to remain high over the next decade even if they should ease from their recent record peaks.
Ban said the world needs dramatic increase of food production to feed people and higher food prices provide an historic opportunity to revitalize agriculture, especially in countries where productivity gains have been low in recent years.
"The world needs to produce more food," he said. "Food production needs to rise by 50 percent by the year 2030 to meet the rising demand."
Source:Xinhua
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