Food security and boosting global agricultural output to stamp out hunger will top the agenda of the first-ever meeting of farm ministers from major industrialized and developing nations this weekend in Italy.
After sky-high food prices sparked riots and panic buying last year, the world has sought to boost farm output and stocks. Richer nations like South Korea and Saudi Arabia have also been buying land abroad to feed their people.
Prices have dropped since then but experts have warned global supplies remain a structural problem and prices could take off again once the world economy starts recovering.
Farm ministers from the G8 industrialized countries — to which Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina, Australia and Egypt are also invited — will meet from today to Monday.
“We are ... taking responsibility for marking out a common route able to lead us out of the crisis and respond to the world food emergency,” Italian Agriculture Minister Luca Zaia said.
The G8 farmers groups at their meeting last month proposed creating a global grain reserve to improve supply stability and avoid price shocks, but details have yet to be worked out.
France will push the idea of regional farm policies as a way of promoting agricultural development, a French farm ministry official said.
NEGLECTED SECTOR
Farmers from poor and rich countries alike want to get more funds for agriculture, saying the sector has been neglected since the economic crisis broke out.
Billions of dollars were poured out to prop up ailing banks, while funds are drying up to help the world’s almost 1 billion hungry, advocates for the poor say.
“With 1.7 billion more mouths to feed by 2030 and the ratio of arable land to population declining by 40 to 55 percent, the food crisis is set to increase,” said Ajay Vashee, president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers.
Putting hunger, food supply and poverty back on top of the international agenda would be a major achievement of the meeting, said Hafez Ghanem, assistant director-general at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The FAO and other campaigners against hunger will push for more funds and other assistance to help low-income countries boost productivity, improve water supplies and training as well as give better access to international markets.
PROTECTING MARKETS
But richer countries are keen to protect their markets. Russia, the largest importer of US chickens, aims to become self-sufficient in poultry and pork in two years.
Agreement is expected on boosting aid to poor nations, but on easing trade barriers ministers are likely to settle for a less specific call to move ahead with the Doha round of global trade talks, an official familiar with the matter said.
US President Barack Obama has pledged to ask Congress to double US aid for food safety in poor countries to US$1 billion next year. US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said he will reiterate this commitment at the G8 meeting.
The ministers are likely to make most progress on the global partnership on farming and food security which was rolled out by French President Nicolas Sarkozy last June and backed by last year’s G8 summit in Japan, the official said.
Italy’s Zaia said survival of the country’s agriculture sector was at stake.
“Our direction is to defend our agriculture, our farmers, our agribusinesses, our local products,” Zaia told a news conference presenting the meeting, which will be held in a secluded castle in his native north Italian province of Treviso. “On the other hand, we are willing to listen to the entire world ... We should find common ground.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS