Yearender: Food security further hurt amid financil crisis

by Li Rong, Yang Aiguo

ROME, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- The whole world is being absorbed in taming the raging global financial crisis, which diverted much energy that should have been used to avoid the food problem from deteriorating, experts have warned.

The food crisis is far from being solved and the meltdown in world financial market has further shaken the world food security and made farm produce markets more volatile, they said.

MULTIPLE CAUSES OF FOOD CRISIS

According to the latest FAO Food Outlook, high food prices from2005 to 2007 have helped push another 75 million people into hunger, raising the number of undernourished people in the world to 923 million.

Both traditional factors such as population surge, shortage in arable land and water resources, and non-traditional factors such as the development of biofuels and climate change have profound impact on food security, said Fang Cheng, a senior economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Climate change has taken a toll on farming, fishing and aquatic production, deteriorating living condition of people in rural areas which are more vulnerable to economic turmoil, he said.

Meanwhile, the development of biofuels that derived from crops have further undermined food supply. The production of biofuels has more than tripled from 2000 to 2007 and demand for sugar cane, corn and oil seeds, the raw materials for making biofuels, is expected to continue to rise in the coming 10 years, a factor that would further push up food prices, the FAO report said.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf cautioned that the development of biofuels threatens to alter the role of farm land and increase the emission of green-house gases. He urged relevant countries to consider the food issue during their policy-making.

FOOD MARKET FURTHER DESTABILIZED AMID FINANCIAL CRUNCH

The ongoing financial crisis would further undermine the food security and farm produce market in terms of production and consumption, said Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the FAO's Intergovernmental Group for Grains.

Uncertainties in next year's food markets rose due to the credit crisis in such major food producers as the United States, Europe and Brazil, which might in turn result in reduction of growing areas and production.

In addition, the financial woes further hurt the purchasing power. More people had to turn to cheaper and low-nutritional food, which could lead to the increase in the number of malnourished people, especially in poor countries.

A 20-billion-U.S.-dollar donation was pledged by the wealthy nations during the FAO Rome Food Summit in June to help those hardest-hit by food shortage, Abbassian said, however, only less than 200 million was disbursed so far.

As a result of the global financial crisis, said Abbassian, the rich nations may "forget" the promises they have made in Rome if the turmoil on the money market drags on without a clear sign of coming to an immediate end. 　

NEW WORLD AGRICULTURAL ORDER NEEDED

The core task of the world's farmers is to increase production to feed an ever-growing world population. According to Diouf, food production should be doubled by 2050 to feed a population of 9 billion.

Diouf has proposed a summit for the first half of 2009 to draw up a new agricultural order and find 30 billion dollars a year to eradicate hunger from the Earth once and for all.

Addressing a special session of the FAO's 191-member-nation governing conference last month in Rome, Diouf said the world summit was needed because "after more than 60 years (since the FAO's foundation) it is essential to create a new system of world food security."

The director-general said, "We must correct the present system that generates world food insecurity on account of international market distortions resulting from agricultural subsidies, customs tariffs and technical barriers to trade, but also from skewed distribution of resources of official development assistance and of national budgets of developing countries."

Proposing to commit such a sum to save humanity from hunger was not unreasonable given it had taken only a few weeks to find more than 100 times that amount to deal with a global financial meltdown, Diouf said.