Bangladesh News

Thursday
Aug 21st
Home arrow News arrow Business News arrow London summit to tackle rising food prices
London summit to tackle rising food prices PDF Print E-mail
Wednesday, 23 April 2008

AFP, LONDON - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was on Tuesday to host a summit of policymakers and experts, including the head of the UN food agency, to develop a plan to tackle rising global food prices .

"At the moment we're hearing a lot about the world financial crisis," Brown wrote in an article to be published on the Downing Street website.

"But there's another world crisis underway, a world food crisis that threatens to roll back progress made in recent years to lift millions out of poverty."

Brown wrote that the international community "will need both short-term measures to deal with immediate hardship as well as a plan to address the more structural causes".

In all, 25 people will attend the summit, including World Food Programme head Josette Sheeran, African Development Bank chief Donald Kaberuka, as well as experts, campaigners, farmers and business people.

A Downing Street spokesman said a set of full proposals will be put before European Union heads of state in June, the Group of Eight industrialised countries in July and to the United Nations in September.

"Tackling hunger is a moral challenge to each of us and it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of nations," Brown wrote.

"So I believe we need to see a fully coordinated response by the international community."

In his article, he also called for an "agricultural revolution" for farmers to produce higher-yielding crops, but added that increased investment was needed in storage facilities and roads so that they could better sell their products in markets.

On biofuels, Brown said they were "frequently energy inefficient".
"We need to look closely at the impact on food prices and the environment of different production methods and to ensure we are more selective in our support."

Brown wrote to his Japanese counterpart Yasuo Fukuda earlier this month to urge him to include the impact of biofuel production on food prices on the agenda of the G8 summit in July.

The prime minister said a global trade deal, which he wrote was "inches" away, "could be a huge incentive for increased food production in poor countries".
Comments Add New
Write comment
Name:
Email:
  We don't publish your mail. See privacy policy.
Title:
Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.
 
< Prev   Next >