U.N. Demands Urgent Action On Soaring Food Prices
The Independent:
The global food crisis became official yesterday when the UN called for urgent intergovernmental action and farming reforms to tackle the soaring prices that are plunging millions of people into potentially deadly poverty.
A UN-sponsored study, compiled over three years by a panel of 400 experts, called for more local food production using sustainable, natural and ecological farming methods, as well as safeguards to protect rapidly dwindling resources.
Food riots
Publication of the report, for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), follows riots in Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines and West Africa over the costs of rice, wheat and soya – as highlighted by The Independent last week.
Rising food prices - one of the world’s fastest-growing crises - are being blamed on China’s rapidly increasing consumption, climate change and the increased use of biofuels, all of which heavily increase demand disproportionately against supply.
“The diversion of agricultural crops to fuel can raise food prices and reduce our ability to alleviate hunger throughout the world,” the report said. Wheat prices have risen by 130 per cent since March 2007 and soy prices by 87 per cent, it added. Last week, the World Bank warned that 100 million more people could be pushed into poverty because food prices had risen by 83 per cent in three years.
“The status quo is no longer an option,” said Guilhem Calvo, an Unesco expert, at the report’s launch in Paris. “We must develop an agriculture less dependent on fossil fuels, that favours the use of locally available resources.”
The Unesco report concludes that agricultural progress has been highly uneven and comes at high environmental and social costs. There is an urgent need for producers to use “natural” processes such as crop rotation and organic fertilisers, it says, adding that swathes of Asia and Africa are running out of water.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, which contributed to the report, said food represented 60 to 80 per cent of consumer spending in developing countries, but just 10 to 20 per cent in industrialised nations. In many countries, price inflation is forcing poor families take children out of schools and go to work to help pay for food.
Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said yesterday: “Often, the poorest of the poor have gained little or nothing, and 850 million people are still hungry or malnourished.”
Earlier yesterday, the US government pledged $200m to help poor nations combat the global food crisis, while Bangladesh became the latest nation to see protests.
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lets be clear, the rush to fossil fuels has made us way worse off then before. everything involved in that process has gone up and if the UN makes a wrong move in dealing with this we are all pretty much fucked. think of the federal reserve handling wall street but with food instead of money.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:05 pmI think that’s what you meant. And I agree. But if the UN is allowed to be the sole arbiter of this “crisis”, it WILL grow to fucked up proportions.
The US has up to 2 Trillion barrels of oil locked up in the Bakken field, the shale deposits along the Rockies, the coasts, and of coarse ANWAR. Use corn for its God given purpose - eating.
But tell that to the fuggin libs…
April 15th, 2008 at 9:44 pmThe world’s industrial complex contributes 4% of all greenhouse emissions, yet we call this a crisis? Bio fuels are only NEEDED by those with a stake in creating the global warming hoax. That “crisis” has begotten this current crisis.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:22 pmI still can’t understand the logic of converting food to fuel. You can only live without one.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:38 pmI’m a big, pissed-off asshole when I’m hungry.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:52 pmthat’s a petty argument : China had the worst winter for years, that ruined her hopings for a good crops recolt in 2008, I doubt, according to the fuel consummation argument, that she didn’t know that would happen…
April 16th, 2008 at 12:51 amIf anybody bothered to look, you would find the consequences of agricultural burning, cooking with wood and heating with wood have far more consequences for what is dumped into the atmosphere than CO2. For instance, the CO(carbon monoxide) plume off of the Amazon from burning stretches across the Atlantic and into half of Africa. It’s impressive.
There is a satellite, it’s called AQUA, the same one that has recently proved CO2 caused warming does not exist, that has a sensor called MODIS which you can see for yourself. Just search on ‘MODIS’ and look through the recent images.
Isn’t the current planetary emergency what has caused this emergency? I am getting confused with all the planetary emergencies we have been having lately.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:12 amC’mon! Everything the UN says is a lie.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:28 amThey tried “global warming” It almost worked, but now it is failing
because - like DOH - the Earth isn’t getting hotter, it’s getting
colder.
So now we need a new panic. People are starving. And it’s all the West’s fault.
All of these prograns are crafted to achieve one goal - a massive
transfer of wealth to third world countries and a massive transfer
of power to the UN. This is a Communist manifesto, pure, naked, and
simple.
Take Zimbabwe. They were the breadbasket of Southern Africa. Now
they can’t even feed themselves. Why? Corrupt government playing on
black racism. They threw out all the farmers who were of the wrong
race without even securing some kind of orderly succession.
Any time the UN tells me I have to do something - I just say no.
Look, this revolt against biofuels is more leftist nonsense.
Let me just ask these greenies one question: Why did the Kyoto
treaty, which we had the good sense to not sign, and whose aim
was reducing carbon dioxide emissions, specifically rule out the
use of nuclear energy (the one thing we know now how to do) for
replacing fossil fuel useage.
Sorry ashols, but if you want to create your own nu-age religion,
based on the celebration of the failed, I’m going to say no thanks.
And if you really want the USA to join the carnival of failure,
then elect Barhaka Hussein Arugula Obama.
If the stakes were not so serious, it would be a good laugh.
wow 2 wrong words in one day. i need to stop having these brain farts. and yes of course i meant bio fuels.
and yeah RTLM that is a fact. we do have shale deposits and we do have the means to remove it also. Trillions of barrels scattered all over the US. that would be enough fuel for the US to avoid any type of foreign oil for a very long time. but yeah once again the Libs who are owned by the environmentalists wont allow us to get it.
April 16th, 2008 at 6:54 amI have always thought the only time food should not be eaten is when it gets re-routed through breweries and distillaries, for later consumption!
It is up to everyone who reads and posts here on Pat’s site to push the conservative agenda locally, and do what we all can to get a strong conservative Congress to support McCain’s tax cuts, and everything else that he proposed.
If we are lucky, he will also propose one of the following:
1) Get the US of A out of the UN, and quit footing the bill for them world wide, or
2)Demand that each member have a proportionate say on UN policy and actions, in a direct relation to the percentage of UN funding that member contributes.
That would get us either out all the way, or give us an 80% control of the UN. While #1 would be best, and save the taxpayers the most, #2 would give us the ability to make all the hemorrhoids around the globe to just STFU for once and for all.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:22 amDid we not foresee this? Putting a food that is a staple to so much of the world into or gas tanks! - BRILLIANT! Food prices soar, fuel economy goes down, that actually energy spent in growing, harvesting, transporting, and converting corn into ethanol exceeds it’s presumed offset/benefit, and gob’s of cash is made in the commodities market as corn futures tripled…
The law of unintended consequences rears its head once more.
April 16th, 2008 at 8:59 am