The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched an emergency program of 17 million dollars to respond to historically high food prices, FAO said on Wednesday.
The start-up funds will cover the immediate needs to give small farmers in some of the poorest countries seeds, fertilizers and other tools they need to boost agricultural production for the upcoming planting seasons through 2009, according to FAO.
But the countries most affected, especially in Africa, will need much more - a total of 1.7 billion dollars in the same period- to start to revive agricultural systems that have been neglected for several decades.
The FAO Initiative on Soaring Food Prices, launched in December 2007 to respond to the price crisis, aims to not only increase the food supply starting right now during this planting season, but also to ensure that impoverished farmers seize the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
Poor farmers stand to benefit from high prices and boost the supply of locally available food, while helping to bring prices back down.
This is especially important in low-income countries that rely heavily on imports to meet their food needs.
"The high prices are a burden for all of us, no one will be immune," said FAO's Assistant Director-General Jose Maria Sumpsi.
"At the same time, in countries where agriculture has fallen to the wayside because it was cheaper to import food than try to produce locally, farmers have the incentive to produce and make a living while securing food supplies at the global level," he said.
"Prices have been steadily rising for some time, but the sudden sharp jump this year is just one small symptom of an illness caused by years of neglect of world agriculture. This imbalance now threatens the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people, who have been priced out of the food they need to survive," Sumpsi said.
Source:Xinhua
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