Recent spikes in staple food prices resulting from the invasion of Ukraine have once again highlighted the difficulty faced by low-income countries that rely on imports for a substantial portion of their
Twenty-two mainly African countries are "especially vulnerable' to soaring food and fuel prices, according to a report by the UN food agency ahead of a summit on food security next week in Rome. "Large increases in food and fuel prices threaten macroeconomic stability and overall growth, especially of low-income, net-importing countries,' the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) notes in the report published on Wednesday.
Agriculture Secretary Edward T. Schafer is preparing to walk into a buzzsaw of criticism over American biofuels policy when he meets with world leaders to discuss the global food crisis next week. Mr. Schafer took the offensive at a press conference on Thursday that discussed the food summit, planned for Rome. He said an analysis by the Agriculture Department had determined that biofuel production was responsible for only 2 to 3 percent of the increase in global food prices, while biofuels had reduced consumption of crude oil by a million barrels a day.
Food prices will remain high over the next decade even if they fall from current records, meaning millions more risk further hardship or hunger, the OECD and the UN's FAO food agency said in a report published on Thursday. Beyond stating the immediate need for humanitarian aid, the international bodies suggested wider deployment of genetically modified crops and a rethink of biofuel programmes that guzzle grain which could otherwise feed people and livestock.
Ahead of a global summit on the food crisis, the United Nations called on world leaders on Wednesday to agree to urgent measures to ease demand for grains and ease high food prices. A report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations suggested that countries might need to reconsider policies that encourage the production of ethanol and other biofuels. The report also suggested that the food summit in Rome, which will run from June 3 to 5, will give world leaders a chance to renew a war on hunger.,
Libya on Tuesday shipped 30 tonnes of humanitarian relief to drought-stricken Niger, one of several African states struggling to cope with a surge in global food prices, Libyan state media said on Tuesday. Libya also sent a team of doctors and pharmacists to distribute the aid, which includes medicine, clothes and tents, and provide health care to the poor in the Sahelian country, one of the world's top producers of uranium. Oil-exporting Libya is one of the main sources of aid to its neighbour Niger, an arid country on the southern fringe of the Sahara.
Summit in Rome follows record spikes in cost of rice, wheat and dairy products
Experts in the food sector now assert that the present high food prices regime in the national and world markets shall be used to the advantage of food producers. However, they cautioned that this needs a lot of packaging.
China is buying farm lands abroad to ensure food supplies at home GURBIR SINGH GREEN PASTURES: China is eying Brazil's 1.2 billion acres of fallow land for farming (Reuters) The next step towards globalisation comes from an unexpected quarter
High oil and food prices are a double blow no nation can dodge entirely. Even oil states like Iran are seeing food-price protests. But there's a small class of farm-and-gas exporters for whom the dual spike is more opportunity than threat. Canada, Brazil, Vietnam and Thailand are all enjoying the windfalls, and even war-tattered Cambodia is now reimagining its future.
In Mexico City, mass protests about the cost of tortillas. In West Bengal, disputes over food-rationing. In Senegal, Mauritania, and other parts of Africa, riots over grain prices. And in Yemen, children march in public to call attention to child hunger. This chain of events is in stark contrast to the falling food prices that consumers have come to expect over the past several decades.
