The UN World Food Program (WFP) yesterday compared the escalating global food crisis to a “silent tsunami” that could plunge more than 100 million people into hunger and poverty.
WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said the international community needed to respond like it did to 2004’s giant Indian Ocean wave that killed 250,000 and left 10 million destitute.
Sheeran spoke in London ahead of talks on the global food crisis convened by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Downing Street, attended by aid organizations, agricultural experts and representatives of leading supermarket chains.
“This is the new face of hunger — the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are,” Sheeran said.
“The response calls for large-scale, high-level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions,” she said.
Rising food prices, stoked by increased fuel costs, have led to the world’s first major food crisis since World War II and sparked protests around the world.
Experts believe rising food prices have pushed about 100 million people deeper into poverty, requiring a response like the record £6 billion (US$11.9 billion) given to help the tsunami victims, Sheeran said.
“We need that same kind of action and generosity. What we are seeing now is affecting more people on every continent, destroying even more livelihoods and the nutrition losses will hurt children for a lifetime,” she said.
Meanwhile, Brown said rising food costs pose as great a threat to world prosperity as the global credit crunch, warning the crisis would likely reverse progress in the developing world and plunge millions into extreme poverty.
In a statement released ahead of the meeting, Brown said urgent action to stimulate food production was needed, including a review of the impact of biofuels on global agriculture.
“Tackling hunger is a moral challenge to each of us and it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of nations,” Brown said
He said he fears the use of agricultural land to produce biofuels may be a key factor in driving up prices. Britain has introduced targets aimed at producing 5 percent of transport fuel from biofuels by 2010, but Brown said his government will now review the policy.
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