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Future for food

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-04 08:01

The world has a sad future to face.

Food commodity prices were likely to recede from the peaks they hit recently, but they would remain higher in the decade ahead than the one gone by.

It means millions more would risk further hardship or hunger.

This warning from a report the OECD and the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization issued on Thursday should make the world's hair stand on end.

It was an alarm that called world leaders to gather in Rome yesterday to discuss global food security. The main topics on the agenda of the three-day summit are rising food prices, climate change and the growing demand for biofuels.

This is the third summit of world leaders on global food, with the first in 1996 and the second in 2002.

However, food security has been turning worse recently. Agricultural and food prices have risen to record-high levels.

The OECD and FAO report helps us examine the reasons for the price hikes and finds that some are of a temporary nature, notably adverse weather conditions in some key producing countries and regions, while others are likely to prove more durable.

The report concludes that prices are unlikely to be sustained at current high levels and that farmers around the world will respond by boosting plantings and increasing supplies, with a return to more normal growing conditions in the main producing regions.

However, it also points to growing feedstock demand from an increasing biofuel industry, sustained high oil prices, continued strong growth in food demand as incomes rise in emerging economies and historically low global stocks as some of the factors which will keep prices higher on an average than in the past decade and possibly more volatile.

Beyond stating the immediate need for humanitarian aid, the international organizations suggested wider deployment of genetically modified crops and a rethink of biofuel programs guzzling grain that could otherwise feed people and livestock.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for handling the food issue properly as it could trigger a cascade of other crises - affecting economic growth, social progress, and even political security around the world.

Although the cost of food is determined by fundamental patterns of demand and supply, the balance between good and ill depends in part on government. If politicians do nothing, or the wrong things, the world faces more misery. If they get policy right, they can help increase the wealth of the poorest nations, aid the rural poor and rescue farming from subsidies and neglect.

So far, the auguries look gloomy.

(China Daily 06/04/2008 page8)