Britain criticised as obscene the presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at this week’s global food summit in Rome, saying he had inflicted shortages on millions of his own people by his ”profound misrule”. Mugabe flew into Rome late on Sunday, making his first official trip abroad since elections condemned by Western leaders as fraudulent.
The rise of biofuels is not only adding to the global food price crisis but also poses a risk for peasants, pushed off their land to make way for energy crops, a report prepared for this week’s food summit said. The use of food such as maize, palm oil and sugar to produce fuel has been blamed in part for record high commodity prices.
Shortages of bread in Zimbabwe are expected to worsen after preparations for the country’s winter wheat crop failed, state media said on Monday. The state-controlled daily Herald said that farmers planted 8 963 hectares of wheat this winter, only 13% of a government target of 70 000 hectares.
It has been described as a global crisis pushing 100-million people into hunger, threatening to stoke social and political turmoil and set the fight against world poverty back by seven years. Now, the food price crisis will be tackled by world leaders, who meet in Rome next week to seek ways of reducing the suffering for the world’s poorest people.
World leaders are to meet next week for urgent talks aimed at preventing tens of millions of the world’s poor dying of hunger as a result of soaring food prices. The summit in Rome is expected to pledge immediate aid to poor countries threatened by malnutrition as well as charting longer-term strategies for improving food production.
World food prices are likely to stay high and volatile for the foreseeable future despite some record crops this year, according to a report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation on Thursday. Food import bills around the world are expected to total more than a trillion US dollars in 2008.
The United Nations food agency warned on Monday that war-torn Somalia could plunge into an acute humanitarian crisis if the unrest, drought, soaring prices and weak currency escalate. ”The humanitarian situation in Somalia is deteriorating quickly due to soaring food prices, a significantly devalued Somali shilling and worsening drought,” the agency said.
Food prices should stay high for the next two to three seasons but should eventually ease as stocks are replenished, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Thursday. Senior officials from the United Nations agency said corn prices would be supported this year by lower US plantings and by increased demand for ethanol.
United Nations agencies and the World Bank pledged on Tuesday to set up a task force to tackle an unprecedented rise in global food prices that is threatening to spread social unrest. The international bodies called on countries not to restrict exports of food to secure supplies at home.
United Nations agencies and the World Bank pledged urgent action on Tuesday to tackle an unprecedented rise in global food prices that is hurting developing countries. The international bodies called on countries not to restrict exports of food to secure supplies at home, warning that could only make the problem worse.
Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries.
Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the United Nations’s top humanitarian official warned on Tuesday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.
Food prices are soaring, a wealthier Asia is demanding better food and farmers can’t keep up. In short, the world faces a food crisis and in some places it is already boiling over. Around the globe, people are protesting and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports.
”What I have seen here, I will tell the world in words and in songs,” South African diva Miriam Makeba — an ambassador of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation — promised women with smallholdings on the banks of the Congo, then threw aside her cane for a spontaneous song in the sand.
President Robert Mugabe, on the campaign trail ahead of March 29 elections, acknowledged acute shortfalls in local food production and said Zimbabweans were being sent to neighbouring countries to speed up the delivery of imported food, state radio reported on Thursday.
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/ 24 February 2008
Guarded by motion-detector cameras, security fences and the odd polar bear, a huge cavern has been built in an island off northern Norway to help secure global crop diversity. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a veritable Fort Knox for seeds and aimed at safeguarding genetic heritage for future generations.
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/ 23 November 2007
Recent violent unrest over soaring food prices in several West African nations points to new signs of trouble on a continent where nearly half the people live on a dollar a day, experts warn. After Mauritania and Morocco, Senegal this week was the latest country hit by violent protests.
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/ 24 October 2007
Ethiopia has started re-erecting its famed Axum obelisk 30 months after it returned to the country from Italy where it stayed for 70 years, a United Nations expert said on Wednesday. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation is overseeing the operation.
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/ 15 October 2007
More than 150 countries are scheduled to observe World Food Day on Tuesday by kicking off a series of events including sports contests and a global candlelight vigil, the Food and Agriculture Organisation has said. This year’s World Food Day theme is The Right to Food.
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/ 27 September 2007
Floods that have left hundreds of thousands of Africans homeless across vast swathes of the continent have claimed 64 lives in Nigeria and 33 in Burkina Faso, government and aid officials said on Thursday. Nigeria’s Red Cross said the death toll covered a period since mid-July, while 22 000 people have been displaced in 10 sometimes arid northern states.
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/ 26 September 2007
The Red Cross warned on Wednesday that a food crisis could be looming across East and West Africa due to the massive damage wrought on crops by ongoing flooding. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies highlighted the situation in Ghana, Sudan and Uganda.
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/ 26 September 2007
Zimbabwe has ordered 120 000 tonnes of wheat from South Africa to ease food shortages, the country’s state security minister said on Wednesday. The Southern African country, once a regional bread basket, is experiencing acute shortages blamed on President Robert Mugabe’s policies.
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/ 25 September 2007
Fresh rainfalls and slow relief have deepened the humanitarian crisis caused by record floods in Africa that have affected more than 1,5-million people and killed at least 300, aid agencies warned on Tuesday. The worst floods in three decades have now affected 22 countries and displaced hundreds of thousands.