Food price warning

Mon, 08 Sep 2008

World leaders had been warned of soaring food prices, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation director general Jacques Diouf said on Thursday.

"In 1996 the FAO organised the first food summit to draw the attention of the world to food security. They decided that in 2015 they would have cut by half the number of hungry people.

"So we provided the forum and opportunity to take the decision," he said.

Diouf told reporters in Pretoria: "We indicated that if the trends were maintained we would achieve the goal not in 2015 but in 2050, so it was said.

"The conclusion was that we have the programme, we have the objective what lacked was the political will and the resources.

"In September (of the same year) I announced that there would be a crisis of a social and political nature.

"So no-one can say that we didn't inform well ahead of time.

"As usual unfortunately this is a general trend in the world. We react when the crisis is here."

Rising food prices had resulted in global food protests that had also occurred in South Africa.

Diouf is in South Africa on a one day visit. Earlier on Thursday he held discussions with land and agriculture minister Lulu Xingwana.

The director general said there was a problem of adequate investment in agriculture at a time where the world population was increasing at 78.5 million a year.

"We have seen between 1980 to 2006, the share of agriculture in development assistance going from 17 percent to three percent," he said.

"We are also seeing that food is being diverted by energy because if high prices of oil," said the director general.

On the supply side, he said that production was being affected by climate changes impacting on the highest food prices in 30 years.