Tucking into vol-au-vents stuffed with mozzarella, delegations from 162 countries gathered in Rome this week to attempt to map a way out of the current global food crisis.
While the details of the conference were in danger of being overlooked in the hubbub surrounding the unwelcome and unexpected attendance of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, some aid groups called for an African ‘green revolution’, while UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon argued that food production would have to grow by 50% by 2030 to stave off starvation. Hungry people, he warned, are angry people – a redundant observation, perhaps, given the doubling in food prices this past year has already seen riots from Buenos Aires to Manila.
There are some forces driving the current food crisis that this week’s UN food summit can’t tackle, says The Guardian, be it terrible harvests or rising demand from China and India. However, “there is one measure ministers might take that could have a real and rapid impact: call a go-slow on biofuels”. According to the International Monetary Fund, biofuels have been responsible for 20%-30% of the rise in food prices.
And the Secretary General of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, pulled no punches in denouncing America’s policy of diverting 100 million tonnes of cereals from human consumption “to satisfy a thirst for fuel for vehicles.”
Be that as it may, biofuels “have got too much attention”, says Bronwen Maddox in The Times, and the World Bank’s Robert Zoellick “rightly called for the issue not to dominate the summit”. Indeed, “a cocktail of factors – low stocks and a weak dollar, soaring energy prices, and “a hunger for richer foods” have also contributed to the current crisis, says the BBC’s Stephanie Holmes.
Even so, “politicians in Europe and America should recognise that the subsidised growing of bio-fuels has been an error”, says The Daily Telegraph. “Yet the EU refuses to accept this is mistaken and has decided that 10% of all transport fuel should come from biofuels by 2020. The subsidies should be repealed.”