ROME: Global governance of food security and a so-called new world food order were on the table at World Food Day talks held by the United Nations yesterday in the face of drought and high prices.
The United Nations focused the talks in Rome on lowering food prices which have been pushed up by droughts in Australia and the United States and a drop in harvests in Europe and the Black Sea region.
A meeting at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation chaired by French Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll brought together ministers from 20 countries including major producers and import-dependent developing countries.
“The key is to ensure global governance on food issues,” Le Foll said. “Discussions were held on transparency in agricultural markets, the coordination of international actions, response to the global demand for food and the fight against the effects of volatility,” he added. FAO chief Jose Graziano Da Silva said: “Food prices and volatility have increased in recent years. This is expected to continue in the medium-term.”
He said new mechanisms for stronger global governance of food security that are being set up were part of “a new world order that needs to emerge.”
But there were divisions among participants at the meeting, with the United States voicing strong opposition to the proposal of setting up strategic food reserves in particularly vulnerable countries, to be tapped when prices spike.
Global food prices rose by 1.4 percent last month, after holding steady for two months, as cereals, meat and dairy prices climbed, the FAO said earlier. The food import bill for poor countries is therefore estimated to rise by 3.7 percentage points from last year to $36.5bn.
The FAO estimates that about 870 million people in the world — or one in eight humans — suffer from hunger, saying the figure is “unacceptably high” even though it has gone down from more than a billion in the early 1990s.
The UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, said that figure rises to 1.5 billion people if you include malnourishment which hampers the physical and psychological developments of children.
AFP
