Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Global food crisis requires emergency response: Ban Ki-Moon

Representatives from the United Nations, the World Food Program, the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation are meeting in Berne, Switzerland today to set out an emergency response to the global food crisis.
Since 2006, world rice prices have more than tripled, and world wheat, corn and soybean prices have more than doubled. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that the global organisations would develop an emergency response to the solution.
But there is concern about how appropriately the organisations will respond. In particular it is unclear how the World Bank, an enthusiastic supporter of trade deregularisation, will respond to the problem of market speculation, a key factor in the current crisis.
The food crisis is complex and involves a range of factors including climate change, rising meat consumption, the appropriation of agricultural land for biofuel production, trade liberalisation, market subsidies, food dumping and the rising price of oil.
International organisations such as Greenpeace have long been calling for a "Marshall Plan" to address carbon dependency and climate change. In the context of a global food crisis, it appears such a plan would need to broaden to include a fair trade framework, decreasing oil dependency, and massive promotion of permaculture and vegetarianism.
To date the United Nations has provided no indication of what the outcomes of its centralised approach might be.

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