Rising food costs 'will impoverish millions'

Rising food costs 'will impoverish millions'

Jonathan Eyal

Wed, Apr 23, 2008
The Straits Times

LONDON - COSTLIER food will likely reverse progress in the developing world and plunge millions into extreme poverty, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned yesterday.

He called for urgent action, including a review of the impact of biofuels on global agriculture.

Speaking ahead of a meeting of United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) experts and others here, the British leader said: 'Tackling hunger is a moral challenge to each of us, and it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of nations.'

In Singapore, the Asian Development Bank said there was enough food to go round, and that Asian governments were overreacting.

'The era of cheap food is over,' Mr Rajat Nag, managing director general of the ADB, told reporters at Singapore's Foreign Correspondents Association.

He suggested they use fiscal measures to help the poor instead. 'We want to temper what we think is a bit of an overreaction,' he said. 'There is still enough supply.'

India and Vietnam have limited exports, hoping to tame prices at home - while goading them higher abroad, Mr Nag said.

'Banning of exports is no different from hoarding at a national level.'

His comments echoed recent statements by the International Monetary Fund and the UN which urged countries to ensure there was more money in the hands of the poor to buy food, instead of resorting to protectionist trade barriers.

The UNWFP called the crisis a 'silent tsunami'.

'This is the new face of hunger - the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago, but now are,' executive director Josette Sheeran said.

'The response calls for large-scale, high-level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions,' she said ahead of the meeting. Ms Sheeran, who is also addressing British lawmakers in a separate session, has called on 20 heads of government to offer emergency funding to help poorer countries offset the rising costs of producing or importing food.

'What we are seeing now is affecting more people on every continent, destroying even more livelihoods, and the nutrition losses will hurt children for a lifetime,' she said.

Mr Brown said he fears the use of agricultural land to produce biofuels - intended to help tackle climate change - may be a key factor in driving up prices.

'Biofuels, intended to promote energy independence and combat climate change, we now know are frequently energy-inefficient,' he said.

Mr Nag said on Monday that governments should question their use of agricultural subsidies to encourage biofuel production.

'Production of biofuels leads to forests being destroyed and reduces the land area available for growing crops for food,' he said.

Speaking at the UN in New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the development of biofuels harmed the world's most impoverished people, the BBC reported.

And President Alan Garcia of Peru said using land for biofuels was putting food out of reach for the poor.

Meanwhile, the European Union yesterday announced another big food aid package for those most vulnerable to soaring food prices. The EU said it would provide a further 117 million euros (S$251.3 million), on top of the 160 million euros announced last month.

REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE