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UN food summit to release aid plan

Pope Benedict XVI implored world leaders gathered in Rome on Tuesday for a UN food summit to seek the eradication of hunger, which the pontiff said has no place in the modern world.

“Hunger and malnutrition are unacceptable in a world where the levels of production, resources and knowledge are enough to bring an end to these type of dilemmas and their consequences,” Benedict said in a message delivered to the summit by the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

The summit was to draw up an emergency plan yesterday to mobilize aid, reduce trade barriers and invest in farming in poor countries to stop the spread of hunger threatening nearly one billion people.

“We commit to eliminating hunger and to securing food for all, today and tomorrow,” read a draft declaration from the three-day Rome summit, whose opening session on Tuesday was attended by leaders of about 44 nations.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization called the emergency meeting amid soaring commodity prices that threaten to add as many as 100 million more people to the 850 million already going hungry and destabilize governments.

The cost of major food commodities has doubled over the last couple of years, with rice, corn and wheat at record highs. The OECD sees prices retreating from their current peaks but still up to 50 percent higher in the coming decade.

After lofty speeches from leaders on Tuesday, many of whom blamed trade barriers and biofuels — championed by Brazil and the US — for driving up prices, delegates were to hold talks yesterday to prepare a declaration for release today.

The draft declaration promised to “stimulate food production and to increase investment in agriculture, to address obstacles to food access and to use the planet’s resources sustainably for present and future generations.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who called hunger “degrading” and said the cost of increasing supply by 50 percent by 2030 to meet rising demand would be US$15 billion to US$20 billion a year, will receive a petition from online rights group Avaaz.org.

“We call on you to take immediate action to address the world food crisis by mobilizing emergency funding to prevent starvation, removing perverse incentives to turn food into biofuels and managing financial speculation,” the petition says.

Speeches from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, both of whose attendance sparked protests by FAO delegates or lobby groups, provided fiery rhetoric for the first day of the meeting.

But while the US dismissed both of them, it found itself on the defensive regarding biofuels, as did Brazil, which is the world’s largest producer of sugar-cane ethanol.

US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafter bristled at the criticism, telling a news conference: “I don’t think the United States gets enough credit at all for providing over one half of all the food aid.”

There was wider consensus on the need to reduce trade barriers and scrap export bans imposed by some countries in an attempt to safeguard domestic food supply during the crisis.

The Rome summit will set the tone on food aid and subsidies for the G8 summit in Japan next month and what is hoped to be the concluding stages of the stalled Doha talks under the WTO aimed at reducing trade distortions.
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