UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to urge world leaders yesterday to immediately suspend or eliminate many price controls and other agricultural trade restrictions in an urgent appeal to bring down soaring food prices.
Ban was to press nations to ease a wide variety of farming taxes, export bans and import tariffs to help millions of the world’s poor cope with the highest food prices in 30 years, UN officials said.
Ban also intended to request that the US and other nations phase out subsidies for food-based biofuels, including ethanol, that have been used to encourage farmers to grow crops for energy use rather than human consumption.
He was due to make his appeal yesterday in Rome at a summit of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, where he hopes the donor nations will develop a concrete plan to revitalize and redirect the global response to hunger.
“What we are looking for is at least an agreement on how to deal with the issue of biofuels and subsidies that is not detrimental to the needs of poor people,” said a UN official in New York who was among several speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to upstage Ban’s speech.
“They are a bunch of options for governments, donors and other sectors to pick and choose from,” said another UN official, in Rome.
Ban’s recommendations are contained in a 38-page draft report to be presented at the summit by the UN task force that he created to deal with the problem.
It could cost US$15 billion to implement, according to preliminary figures that account for what everyone — including governments, donors, UN agencies and the World Bank — pitches in, the officials said.
The task force’s draft report contains two set of recommended actions — one responding to immediate needs, the other to longer-term needs.
In the short term, Ban plans to urge that the US and other developed countries negotiate an agreement with poorer nations to scale back on agricultural tariffs that hurt struggling, subsistence farmers.
He also calls for targeted subsidies so that poor farmers can increase their pension payments and buy more fertilizer and seeds.
In the long term, he hopes to increase farm production by boosting investment in agriculture, irrigation and roads, the officials said.
“This is a case where the rising food prices are presenting an opportunity,” the UN official in New York said. “It’s a major objective to find a way to put those tools in the hands of farmers — meaning fertilizers, seeds and other tools.”
“Especially export bans are seen as being problematic. It’s sort of like muscle spasms that tend to slow down the whole body,” the official said. “They say: ‘Let’s keep all the food in this country,’ which means less on the market.”
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