Foreign Adviser Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, who will lead a strong Bangladesh team to the UNCTAD XII conference in Accra, Ghana next week, observed that the recent worldwide shortages in grain supply is an issue significant enough for the United Nations to focus on as a priority. New Green Revolutions should be inspired through more research and development on food production and distribution of high-yielding seed varieties, and expanding acreage in agriculture should constitute elements of this ‘thrust-programme’. Bangladesh will press for this, along with a package of other ideas, as Chairman of the Group of Least Developed Countries in order to mainstream them in the global economy, at UNCTAD XII in Accra, he said.In recent months the prices of rice, wheat and corn have jumped 50 percent or more, pushing retail prices to levels unseen in a generation and prompting grain-exporting countries to curtail trade to suppress domestic inflation. On March 20, the World Food Program issued an emergency appeal for more funding to keep aid moving to the world’s poorest countries. Last week World Bank president Robert Zoellick called for urgent global action on the part of rich nations or many more people will suffer or starve. Today’s shortage punishes poor countries like Bangladesh disproportionately. In countries with low per capita incomes, food is often the largest single component of household spending-up to 80 percent, compared with just 15 percent for the average American or European family. On the United Nations’ list of countries most vulnerable to food shocks (according to their demand for imported food), Indonesia, the Philippines and Bangladesh rank first, second and fourth, respectively-and China and India make the top 10 due to their huge populations of rural poor. As grain prices push higher, a lot of people are going to be forced to tighten their belts when they don’t have any notches left. The people who will be most affected are those who are on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder. Poor countries are now vulnerable not because food is unavailable but because they can’t afford it.