UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon mapped out a twin-track strategy to tackle soaring food prices as world leaders opened a three-day summit here Tuesday in a global response to the food crisis.
"You all know about the severity and scale of the global food crisis. Before this emergency, more than 850 million people in the world were short of food," Ban told the summit, hosted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The high-level conference comes as the world is experiencing a dramatic increase in food prices.
Agricultural commodity prices rose sharply in the past two years and continued to rise even more sharply in the first three months of 2008, with foodstuffs such as rice, corn and wheat all reaching record highs, sparking riots in many countries and worsening the situation of the 850 million people already affected by chronic hunger.
A joint report by the FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned last week that food prices were expected to remain high over the next decade even if they would ease from their recent peaks.
In a twin-track strategy, Ban said the international community must take immediate steps to increase food availability to vulnerable people as a short-term response.
He called on developed countries to help poor countries expand food assistance through food aid, vouchers or cash, scale up nutritional support and improve safety nets and social protection programs to help the most vulnerable.
Small farmers' food production should be urgently boosted by distributing seeds and fertilizers in time for this year's planting seasons, Ban said.
Some actions have been taken at international level to meet immediate needs.
The World Bank announced last week the establishment of a 1.2 billion U.S. dollars' financing facility to boost food production, including 200 million U.S. dollars in grants targeted at the world's poorest countries.
The FAO also called for 1.7 billion U.S. dollars in new funding to provide low-income countries with seeds and other agricultural support.
The UN chief in particular warned against food export restrictions imposed by certain countries in the face of higher food prices on the global markets to ensure domestic supply.
"Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls... They only distort markets and force prices even higher," Ban said.
"I call on nations to resist such measures and to immediately release exports designated for humanitarian purposes," he added.
Ban also urged developed countries to open markets for agricultural products from developing countries and eliminate subsidies to farmers, a thorny issue hindering the World Trade Organization (WTO) 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.
Ban said the world needs a dramatic increase in 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."
In the long term, Ban said investment in agriculture, especially in developing countries, was vital to ensure global food security.
"These are parallel tracks -- immediate needs must not be met at the expense of long-term solutions," he said.
On the more controversial issue of biofuels, Ban said the international community should reach a greater degree of consensus.
An FAO report said the growth of biofuel production is a factor contributing to higher food prices, a claim denied by major producers such as the United States, the European Union and Brazil.
Source:Xinhua
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