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UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, is establishing a task force to combat the global food crisis and warned that the world faced "widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale" because of soaring food prices.
Mr Ban said the priority was to feed the hungry by closing a $755m (£380m) funding gap for the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) this year and urged donor countries to make more money available as only about half the money had been pledged and only $18 m had been received.
The WFP believes 100 million people are currently going hungry The task force, to be chaired by Mr Ban , will be made up of the heads of UN agencies and the World Bank.
"The first and immediate priority issue that we all agreed was that we must feed the hungry," Mr Ban said after a meeting of agency heads in the Swiss capital, Berne. "Without full funding of these emergency requirements, we risk again the spectre of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale."
Mr Ban said it was also essential to support farmers in poor countries who were producing less because of the high cost of fertilizer and energy, and to this end he said the task force hoped to offer $200m financial support to farmers in the worst affected countries to boost food production , set up a $1.7bn programme to help countries with a food deficit to buy seeds. This is all well and good but with investors leaping onto potash firms to ride the upsurge in demand for fertiliders the UN needs to be careful that it isnt simply underwriting loans and aids to western investors who have no qualms about exploiting the food crisis and farmers for personal gain. Sure thats how markets work but the market for food isnt working at the moment and higher fertiliser costs look set to queer the food supply even more. For its part the World Bank said that it would:double its lending for agriculture in Africa over the next year and consider providing quicker and more flexible financing for poor countries. Again, who is that more flexible finance going to go to and is it going to significantly reduce food prices or just get struggling countries further into debt? The irony here is that the agricultural sector is heavilly subsidised in the west and perhaps that's what the UN and World bank should be thinking about doing with poorer countries to get us through this current crisis , face up to the fact the market is working against the poorer countries and intervene with subsidies that directly help farmers and consumers not institutional investors and widebow shareholders on Wall Street , the City of London and other bourses throughout the world.
source BBC
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