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UN Report Demands Urgent Action on Soaring Food Prices    â€¢

    Wednesday 16 April 2008

Ample resources wasted, global study warns. Biofuels exacerbating shortage of food crops.

    Sixty countries backed by the World Bank and most UN bodies yesterday called for radical changes in world farming to avert increasing regional food shortages, escalating prices and growing environmental problems.

    But in a move that has led to the US, UK, Australia and Canada not yet endorsing the report, the authors said GM technology was not a quick fix to feed the world's poor and argued that growing biofuel crops for automobiles threatened to increase worldwide malnutrition.

    The report was issued as the UN's World Food Programme called for rich countries to contribute $500m (£255m) to immediately address a growing global food crisis which has seen staple food price rises of up to 80% in some countries, and food riots in many cities. According to the World Bank, 33 countries are now in danger of political destabilisation and internal conflict following food price inflation.

    The authors of the 2,500-page International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development [IAASTD] say the world produces enough food for everyone, yet more than 800 million people go hungry. "Food is cheaper and diets are better than 40 years ago, but malnutrition and food insecurity threaten millions," they write. "Rising populations and incomes will intensify food demand, especially for meat and milk which will compete for land with crops, as will biofuels. The unequal distribution of food and conflict over control of the world's dwindling natural resources presents a major political and social challenge to governments, likely to reach crisis status as climate change advances and world population expands from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050."

    Robert Watson, director of IAASTD and chief scientist at the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: "Business as usual will hurt the poor. It will not work. We have to applaud global increases in food production but not everyone has benefited. We have not succeeded globally. In some parts of India 50% of children are still malnourished. That is not success."

    Watson said governments and industry focused too narrowly on increasing food production, with little regard for natural resources or food security. "Continuing with current trends would mean the earth's haves and have-nots splitting further apart," he said." It would leave us facing a world nobody would want to inhabit. We have to make food more affordable and nutritious without degrading the land."

    The report - the first significant attempt to involve governments, NGOs and industries from rich and poor countries - took 400 scientists four years to complete. The present system of food production and the way food is traded around the world, the authors concluded, has led to a highly unequal distribution of benefits and serious adverse ecological effects and was now contributing to climate change.

    The authors say science and technology should be targeted towards raising yields but also protecting soils, water and forests. "Investment in agricultural science has decreased yet we urgently need sustainable ways to produce food. Incentives for science to address the issues that matter to the poor are weak," said Watson.

    The GM industry, which helped fund the report, together with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the British and US governments, abandoned talks last year after heated debate.

    The scientists said they saw little role for GM, as it is currently practised, in feeding the poor on a large scale. "Assessment of the technology lags behind its development, information is anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty about possible benefits and damage is unavoidable," said the report.

    "The short answer to whether transgenic crops can feed the world is 'no'. But they could contribute. We must understand their costs and benefits," said Watson yesterday.

    The authors also warned that the global rush to biofuels was not sustainable. "The diversion of crops to fuel can raise food prices and reduce our ability to alleviate hunger. The negative social effects risk being exacerbated in cases where small-scale farmers are marginalised or displaced form their land," they said.

    Responding to the report, a group of eight international environment and consumer groups, including Third World Network, Practical Action, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, said in a statement: "This is a sobering account of the failure of industrial farming. Small-scale farmers and ecological methods provide the way forward to avert the current food crisis and meet the needs of communities."

    Lim Li Chung, of Third World Network in Malaysia, said: "It clearly shows that small-scale farmers and the environment lose under trade liberalisation. Developing countries must exercise their right to stop the flood of cheap subsidised products from the north."

    Guilhem Calvo, an adviser with the ecological and earth sciences division of Unesco, one of the report's sponsors, said at a news conference in Paris: "We must develop agriculture that is less dependent on fossil fuels, favours the use of locally available resources and explores the use of natural processes such as crop rotation and use of organic fertilisers."

    At a Glance

    Bio-energy

    The report says biofuels compete for land and water with food crops and are inefficient. They can cause deforestation and damage soils and water.

    Biotechnology

    The use of GM crops, where the technology is not contained, is contentious, the UN says. Data on some crops indicate highly variable yield gains in some places and declines in others.

    Climate Change

    While modest temperature rises may increase food yields in some areas, a general warming risks damaging all regions of the globe. There will be serious potential for conflict over habitable land.

    Trade and Markets

    Subsidies distort the use of resources and benefit industrialised nations at the expense of developing countries.

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    UN Report Demands Urgent Action on Soaring Food Prices
    By James Macintyre
    The Independent UK

    Wednesday 16 April 2008

    The global food crisis became official yesterday when the UN called for urgent intergovernmental action and farming reforms to tackle the soaring prices that are plunging millions of people into potentially deadly poverty.

    A UN-sponsored study, compiled over three years by a panel of 400 experts, called for more local food production using sustainable, natural and ecological farming methods, as well as safeguards to protect rapidly dwindling resources.

    Publication of the report, for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), follows riots in Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines and West Africa over the costs of rice, wheat and soya - as highlighted by The Independent last week.

    Rising food prices - one of the world's fastest-growing crises - are being blamed on China's rapidly increasing consumption, climate change and the increased use of biofuels, all of which heavily increase demand disproportionately against supply.

    "The diversion of agricultural crops to fuel can raise food prices and reduce our ability to alleviate hunger throughout the world," the report said. Wheat prices have risen by 130 per cent since March 2007 and soy prices by 87 per cent, it added. Last week, the World Bank warned that 100 million more people could be pushed into poverty because food prices had risen by 83 per cent in three years.

    "The status quo is no longer an option," said Guilhem Calvo, an Unesco expert, at the report's launch in Paris. "We must develop an agriculture less dependent on fossil fuels, that favours the use of locally available resources."

    The Unesco report concludes that agricultural progress has been highly uneven and comes at high environmental and social costs. There is an urgent need for producers to use "natural" processes such as crop rotation and organic fertilisers, it says, adding that swathes of Asia and Africa are running out of water.

    The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, which contributed to the report, said food represented 60 to 80 per cent of consumer spending in developing countries, but just 10 to 20 per cent in industrialised nations. In many countries, price inflation is forcing poor families take children out of schools and go to work to help pay for food.

    Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said yesterday: "Often, the poorest of the poor have gained little or nothing, and 850 million people are still hungry or malnourished."

    Earlier yesterday, the US government pledged $200m to help poor nations combat the global food crisis, while Bangladesh became the latest nation to see protests.