This is going to be a short diary, meant to be highlighting the opening of the Rome Food Conference today. For far too long, we in the developed world have taken food supplies for granted. For decades, ample food stocks, a well-supplied export trade and rapidly rising agricultural productivity seemed to have confined food "insecurity", in the west at least, to the history bin. Cause and effect: it has proved a costly complacency, the scale of which we are only just beginning to realize (latest diaries here, here and here). Have we forgotten the European famines of the war years, the end of British food rationing in 1953, and the US food shortages of the 1930s?
I'm eagerly awaiting the findings of the Food Summit in Rome (which starts today) organized by the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) though mixed signals have already been sent by same agency:
Food prices to remain high despite higher output.
As the officials throng the meeting rooms today, uppermost in their minds is, hopefully, likely to be the stark warning of higher prices for cereals, oilseeds, sugar, meats, milk and dairy produce (pdf). Beef and pork prices could rise by 20 per cent within ten years, wheat by 60 per cent and vegetable oils by up to 80 per cent, forecasts the report.
Meanwhile, the question remains this: will the representatives of developed nations in the northern hemisphere consider themselves at least partly culpable for what is now termed the global food crisis?
Clearly some should. By what collective amnesia did western policy-makers come to regard food and key food ingredients as something the west should buy mainly on world commodity markets? Uh?
Across the Atlantic, particularly in the United States and Brazil, growing crops for fuel rather than for food is increasingly swallowing up millions of acres of highly productive agricultural land formerly devoted to food production.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), biofuel production is responsible for only a 2-3 per cent increase in global food prices while reducing the consumption of crude oil by 1m barrels a day.
However, Keith Collins the USDA's recently retired chief economist told the Washington Post that ethanol was
"the foot on the accelerator of corn (maize) demand."
Even blunter was Merritt Cluff, one of the authors of the FAO report:
"We are very worried about biofuel policy. US government incentives for ethanol producers are distorting the market."
I hear him.
Of course, other factors are driving global food fears: higher oil prices (boosting food production, processing and distribution costs), emerging Asian economies and weird weather patterns (Australian droughts, rampant desertification) among a host of other irritants.
A lackadaisical attitude to economics has become painfully obvious when it comes to planning global food production and distribution, it has failed so far to produce any solutions and will continue to fail in a 21st century challenged by oil dependence, rocketing consumption and volatile weather unless politicians start to utilize their prime weapon: political will.
Decisive action must be taken to solve the current food crisis. Let's hope this Rome conference will address at least some of the problems. I will do a diary to sum up progress, if any.