News as per Agence France Press of Wednesday June 4, 2008 - posted on truthout.

World Leaders Struggle to Agree to Food Crisis Plan.

by: Michael Thurston, Agence France-Presse

Pakistani women struggle as they try to order food outside of a subsidized food store on the outskirts of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Basic food and fuel prices have soared in Pakistan over the last months, causing many to depend on government subsidies to simply get by. (Photo by Emilio Morenatti of AP)

Rome (the location of the UN fight) - World leaders battled Wednesday to agree on how to tackle the global food crisis, making multi-billion dollar aid pledges but struggling to agree notably on biofuels, sources said.
In a draft of the final declaration to be agreed Thursday, obtained by AFP, they vowed to use “all means” to ease suffering of those left hungry and poor by soaring food prices.
But the draft, a final version of which is due to be agreed on Thursday, includes compromise language on the vexed issue of biofuels, which are promoted notably in the United States but criticized by others.
In what critics would likely see as ducking the issue, they agreed that biofuels present both “challenges and opportunities” — and say that more research is needed.
“We are convinced that in-depth studies are needed to ensure the production and use of biofuels is sustainable … taking into account the need to achieve and maintain food security,” adds the draft, which was still being worked on.
The wrangling over diplomatic language came after United Nations officials announced almost three billion dollars (2 billion euros) of new aid to help ease the food crisis, but UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned up to 20 billion dollars a year would be needed.
“We simply cannot afford to fail,” the UN Secretary General said at the food security summit in Rome, which is grappling with how to stop the crisis escalating. “Hundreds of millions of people expect no less.”
New funding totalling some 2.7 billion dollars was announced on the second day of the summit in Rome, where Ban has already demanded a 50 percent increase in food production by 2030.
Food prices have doubled in three years, according to the World Bank, sparking riots in Egypt and Haiti and in many African nations. Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt have all imposed food export restrictions.

John Holmes, head of the UN task force on the food crisis, said a “broad consensus” was building around an action plan, which is scheduled to be presented at a Group of Eight meeting in Japan later this month.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick called for the lifting of trade barriers that contribute to food price inflation.
“We need an international call to remove export bans and restrictions,” he said. “These controls encourage hoarding, drive up prices and hurt the poorest people around the world who are struggling to feed themselves,” he said.
Humanitarian charity Oxfam spokesman Alexander Woollcombe said that criticizing developing countries’ trade barriers distracted from the need for wealthy countries to re-examine their own trade policies.
“Rich countries would do better to focus on fixing their own policies instead of criticizing developing country governments,” he told AFP.
World leaders also agreed that food security must be taken into account in a long hoped-for new world trade accord, according to the draft declaration.
“We will strive to ensure that food agricultural trade and overall trade policies are conducive to fostering food security for all,” they said, referring to last-gasp efforts to agree a World Trade Organization (WTO) deal.

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan put his signature Wednesday to a new initiative partnering the three UN food agencies with his Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
“By unifying our efforts we can drastically step up our support for Africa’s smallholder farmers,” said Annan, stressing that the alliance would “focus on the small-scale farmer, not to run them out of business.” Buyers pick maize at a market on the outskirts of Nairobi
World Food Programme executive director Josette Sheeran announced the 1.2 billion dollars in new emergency aid. “With soaring food and fuel prices, hunger is on the march and we must act now,” Sheeran said in a statement.
The Islamic Development Bank would spend 1.5 billion dollars on agriculture in the poorest countries, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf announced.

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Once more - hunger is imposed by US and EU policy that creates set-asides in order to decrease quantities of agricultural commodities in order to support the prices of those commodities.

Then they dump remaining surplus in developing countries, and are happy also to hand out food for free - obviously, using US/EU ships, NGOs, bureaucracies, consultants … So “our” economy is not at a total loss. There is money in hunger!

The result, agricultural production in the receiving countries is made “uneconomical” and their dependence on hand-outs perpetuated. - NOW THAT IS THE HONEST BACKGROUND TO THE ROME HIGH LEVEL FIASCO. Ahmedi-Nejad and Mugabe are there for further distraction.

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And then, also from the FAO meeting some much better news:

ROME - The rapidly growing global bio-energy industry escaped unscathed from a food summit on Thursday, but its wings must be clipped to stop fuel-from-food stoking world hunger, the UN envoy on the right to food said.

The conversion of foodstuffs like maize, sugar, soy and palm oil into biofuel was one of the most controversial issues at the June 3-5 summit, pitting biofuel giants, the United States and Brazil, against countries who fear its harmful effects.
Under pressure from Washington, a draft summit declaration avoided negative language on biofuels, instead saying they present “challenges and opportunities” and calling for an “international dialogue” on the issue. {this time a BRAVO even for Washington - and obviously for Brazil.}

Olivier De Schutter, an independent UN expert on the right to food, said countries opposed to biofuels had given in, rather than hold out against the pro-biofuel countries and risk sinking the broad declaration vowing to fight hunger.

“The final declaration says only one thing: we need to have a continued international dialogue on this issue,” De Schutter told Reuters on the sidelines of the Rome summit.

“That’s important in one way. It shows that agrofuels are now becoming part of the international agenda and that states may not act unilaterally in this domain,” he told Reuters.

The draft declaration was still being negotiated on Thursday evening, but there was no disagreement on the biofuel reference.

US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, who has defended a policy that will see about a quarter of US maize turned into ethanol production by 2022, said the summit declaration’s neutral language was acceptable to the United States.

De Schutter had lobbied the summit to call on the United States and the European Union to abandon policies promoting biofuel consumption — something he believes can still be achieved.

SOIL

“I think we should move towards a code of conduct that should, minimally, have the requirement that soil which is suitable to the cultivation of food should not be diverted to (grow) fuel beyond the current figures,” he said.

De Schutter’s predecessor, Jean Ziegler, caused a storm when he said using arable land to make fuel was a “crime against humanity”. The current UN food envoy may use more tempered language but his message was broadly the same.

“I am calling … for a freeze in any new investments in that kind of agrofuel which is directly competing with food.”

On the last day of the three-day summit, corn futures set record highs at the Chicago Board of Trade after rain delayed seeding the US crop.

But the United States, which has managed to increase its maize output and exports while growing its bioethanol production, maintains that biofuels contribute only about 3 percent of total global food inflation which has seen commodities’ prices double in the last couple of years.

“The reality is there is a basketfull of problems here that are causing food price increases and the majority of it is energy costs and increased consumption,” Schafer said.

That is an argument the big biofuel countries will have to continue to make as the sceptics push for global controls.

De Schutter said pressure would continue for a strict code of conduct, which could be negotiated at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation which hosted the summit, to rein in biofuel, once considered a green alternative to oil.

“There is mounting scientific evidence that the use of energy to produce agrofuels, the use of water, the use of arable land is destructive to the environment, a threat to food security and feeding into speculation on the market,” he said.