| Author (Corporate) | United Nations: Food and Agriculture Organisation |
|---|---|
| Publisher | FAO |
| Publication Date | June 2008 |
| Content Type | News, Report |
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Biofuels stalemate passed over at summit The United Nations food summit was last night set to by-pass the dispute over biofuels and their impact on rising food prices, as countries could agree only to continue "ongoing international dialogue", according to a draft of the summit's declaration. The US, Brazil and some European countries have defended their pro-biofuel policies at the summit, hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, while developing countries such as Venezuela have criticised them strongly. Diplomats and FAO officials said one way to resolve the dispute would be to take it to the Global Bio-Energy Partnership, a group created at the Gleneagles G8 summit three years ago. It includes the G8 countries plus developing nations such as Brazil, China and Mexico as well as international organisations. "This would be a way to bury the dispute and deal with it at a later stage if possible," said a diplomat. The group has so far produced very little fresh policy on biofuels and is dominated by rich countries and Brazil. It is without representatives from African countries, which have led complaints about the impact of biofuels on food inflation. Jacques Diouf, FAO director-general, has supported the charge against using food crops for fuel. In his opening speech he said "nobody" understood why rich countries were subsidising the diversion of cereals "to fuel cars". At the heart of the biofuels debate is disagreement over their impact on food prices. European governments yesterday backed the stance of Ed Schafer, the US agricultural secretary, and Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, saying biofuels were only one of the causes of the food price rises, citing other factors such as the increase in oil costs, higher consumption in developing countries, adverse weather and export bans. A US official said: "Biofuels are part of the problem but not the major cause of food inflation. Oil and rising demand are much more important." The dispute over biofuels overshadowed a consensus reached yesterday to boost investment in agriculture to tackle the slowdown in farming productivity and announcements of multi-million dollar contributions to food aid and farm projects. France promised $1bn (€644m, £509m), Spain $500m and the Islamic Development Bank $1.5bn for food aid and agricultural development over the next five years. Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general, said that higher levels of investment were critical to address rising global demand for food to meet population growth. The FAO estimates that global food consumption will double over the next 30 years. But although it was agreed that boosting farm productivity was vital, countries disagreed about how to achieve this. The US said the world needed to use genetically modified organisms, with Mr Schafer adamant there was "no way" yields could be raised without GMO. European governments opposed the idea. Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, said this month's G8 meeting would address the question of how to boost food production. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008 The overall purpose of the High-Level Conference was to address food security issues in the face of soaring food prices and the new challenges of climate change and energy security. The objective was to assist countries and the international community in devising sustainable solutions to the food crisis by identifying the policies, strategies and programmes required to safeguard world food security in the immediate, short and longer term. |
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| Source Link | http://www.fao.org/foodclimate/conference/en/ |
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| Subject Categories | Business and Industry, Energy, Environment |
| Countries / Regions | Europe |
