U.N. food summit a shortage of solutions
It’s easy to identify a global crisis, but much more difficult to resolve it when all parties act exclusively in their own self-interest. At the U.N. food summit in Rome, heads of state and other global leaders met today to address skyrocketing global food costs. Among those in attendence? Zimbabwe’s President-for-life Robert Mugabe, who should ...
It's easy to identify a global crisis, but much more difficult to resolve it when all parties act exclusively in their own self-interest.
It’s easy to identify a global crisis, but much more difficult to resolve it when all parties act exclusively in their own self-interest.
At the U.N. food summit in Rome, heads of state and other global leaders met today to address skyrocketing global food costs. Among those in attendence? Zimbabwe’s President-for-life Robert Mugabe, who should know a thing or two about food crises.
Surprisingly, the attendees may have reached a consensus as to what must be done to reverse the "silent tsunami":
There was little disagreement about how to resolve the spiraling costs of food and its impact on the world’s poor: more food aid to feed the world’s hungry, additional seeds and fertilizer for poor farmers, fewer export bans and tariffs that restrict the flow of trade, and more research to improve crop yields.
Unsurprisingly, there was strong disagreement over the key causes of rising global food prices, particularly with regard to the so-called food vs. fuel argument.
When developing countries blamed shortages on the transferring of crops from food to biofuels, leaders of countries investing heavily in ethanol and biolfuel production, notably Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, fired back:
Biofuels are not the villain menacing food security in poor countries … It offends me to see fingers pointed against clean biofuels — fingers tainted with oil and coal."
The debates on farm subsidies for biofuel production is unlikely to end anytime soon. Then again, with gas prices at $4 a gallon, I’d say you can safely bet that biofuels — subsidized or no — are here to stay.
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