A United Nations global food crisis summit risked embarrassing failure to reach any formal agreement on combating hunger threatening a billion people worldwide.
Delegates from 183 countries at the Rome talks were supposed to issue a resounding declaration on Thursday on ”eliminating hunger and securing food for all”.
But squabbling about trade barriers and geopolitics raised the prospect of the statement being scrapped.
”There are difficult negotiations going on,” said Matthew Wyatt, deputy head of the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development.
The meeting was called by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation to seek ways to secure food supplies in the face of rising demand — especially from rapidly developing Asian countries — poor harvests and rising fuel costs.
Those factors have contributed to a doubling of commodity prices over the last couple of years which the World Bank says has put 100-million people at risk of joining the 850-million already going hungry.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development sees prices of rice, corn and wheat retreating from peaks but still up to 50% higher in the next decade. The FAO says food production must rise 50% by 2050 to meet demand.
Despite repeated urgings at the summit to stop talking about hunger and take action, it was the wording of the final document that threatened to undermine the talks’ success.
Swedish delegate Tomas Dahlman said most countries disagreed with trade barriers such as export curbs and duties, like those that grain and beef exporter Argentina uses to protect consumers against food inflation — sparking strikes by powerful farmers.
”Most countries in the world think these are the wrong measures, that’s why this language is being proposed in the declaration,” he said, adding that Russia also defended timber export tariffs. ”Argentina, Russia, they’re the most vocal.”
Latin American delegates said allies of communist Cuba want to insert language Washington sees as critical of its embargo.
Delegates were seeking last-minute agreement on the text ahead of a closing news conference delayed until 16.30pm GMT.
Brutal price rise
Ghana’s President John Kufuor said that, given the urgency of the food crisis, ”it would be disastrous for the survival of mankind if the conclusions reached suffer the same fate” as earlier fruitless international summits.
The point of the summit, which began with speeches by 44 leaders, was questioned by Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, a sceptic of international hunger relief and critic of the FAO.
”There’s been a brutal rise in prices [of food] and we were told there was a threat hanging over the world and all the heads of state were called to attend,” Wade told Reuters.
”I thought it was going to be to answer the question about what should be done, but it wasn’t that at all. It was just a conference like any other and that’s why I was disappointed.”
Others believed the summit had fulfilled its role already by focusing world attention on the hungry and on poor farmers.
”This is at the top of the global agenda and it’s none too soon,” said Josette Sheeran, head of the World Food Programme which delivers emergency supplies. ”Hunger is on the march.”
Although the summit was not meant to produce promises of aid or set new global policies, it has put hunger on the agenda of July’s Group of Eight summit in Japan. By then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due to have issued an action plan.
The Rome debate on the potential benefits to poor farmers of new global trade rules will also feed into a push to conclude the so-called Doha round of World Trade Organisation talks, which reach a potentially conclusive phase in coming weeks.
Biofuels were the subject of heated debate at the summit, where the United States defended its policy of diverting an increasing portion of its maize harvest into fuel.
Washington acknowledges the spread of biofuels has added to the demand for crops, especially maize, and contributed to food inflation but says its impact is marginal. – Reuters 2008