 At the UN food security conference, held in Rome on 3-5 June, heads of state and government gathered to discuss effective responses to the recent surge in food prices which has led to hunger and instability around the world. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon started the summit with an appeal for food production to be increased by 50 per cent by 2030. He further predicted that as much as £13 billion a year may be needed to increase food production. The European Commission announced plans to adjust the common agricultural policy (CAP) to maximise production potential and launch longer-term initiatives to increase food supply and security. FAO Assistant Director-General Alexander Mueller said, "Clearly this Summit has decided to act. It has called for both immediate humanitarian assistance to those hardest hit by the current food price crisis and it has taken actions that in the medium term should go a long way in considering the driving forces of food system fragility to shocks in order to reduce the number of hungry people in the world, helping us to meet the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals." However, many participants were not convinced that any effective decisions had been taken. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said the summit had been a waste of time. "There's been a brutal rise in prices [of food] and we were told there was a threat hanging over the world and all the heads of state were called to attend," he said. "I thought it was going to be to answer the question about what should be done, but it wasn't that at all. It was just a conference like any other and that's why I was disappointed." The director-general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, criticised wealthy nations for spending billions of dollars on farm subsidies and wasteful food consumption. "The excess consumption by the world's obese costs $20bn annually, to which must be added indirect costs of $100bn resulting from premature death and related diseases," he said. Source: |
