U.N. Chief: World Needs 50% More Food

Addressing Global Food Summit, Ban Ki-moon, Pope Beseech Countries To Avert Hunger Crisis

(CBS/AP)  The U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday world food production must rise by 50 percent by 2030 to meet increasing demand.

Ban Ki-moon told world leaders at a food summit in Rome that nations must minimize export restrictions and import tariffs during the crisis that has caused hunger and riots across the globe.

Participants at the U.N. summit are trying to figure out how to head off skyrocketing food prices before millions more join the multitudes across the globe who already lack enough to eat.

In a message to the conference Pope Benedict told the massed world leaders that hunger and malnutrition are "unacceptable" in a world that has enough resources.

Benedict said in the message, which was read aloud Tuesday, that millions of people are looking to them for solutions while their very survival and their countries' security are at risk.

The Pope said the world has enough resources and know-how to end hunger and its consequences. He urged countries to make "indispensable" structural reforms to aid development.

The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the three-day summit with the goal of averting a looming catastrophe of widening malnutrition and civil unrest among poor people unable to afford basic foodstuffs because of what the World Bank calculates has been an 83 percent increase in prices in the last three years.

Some 40 heads of state or government were expected at the summit, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The area around the agency's headquarters was closed to traffic, private cars were towed away and scores of police officers provided security as the delegates arrived early Tuesday.

Distracting from the crucial business at hand was the presence of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.

Australia's foreign minister decried as "obscene" Mugabe's participation in the summit. The longtime African leader has presided over the virtual transformation of his country from a former breadbasket to agricultural basket case riddled with mass poverty and hunger.

The Dutch ministry for overseas development pledged to "ignore" Mugabe during the summit. The U.S. representative said Mugabe was welcome to attend, but that no American officials would be meeting with him.

Price speculation, the increasing diversion of food and animal feed to produce biofuel, sharply higher fuel costs have all helped to shoot prices upward, experts say.

Ban also intended to request that the United States and other nations phase out subsidies for food-based biofuels, including ethanol.

But that could be difficult. Participants on the eve of the conference did not agree on even how much a role biofuels play in driving up food prices.

The United Nations is encouraging summit participants to start undoing a decades-long legacy of agricultural and trade policies that many blame for the failure of small farmers in poor countries to feed their own people

"We're calling for a renaissance," telling leaders at the gathering that "it is time to reinvest, reevaluate agricultural" policies, said Jim Butler, a Texan who is deputy director-general of FAO.

That's an ambitious goal, considering that a previous pledged-upon aim of halving world hunger by 2015 has proven steadily elusive.

The subsidies paid by wealthy nations to their own farmers makes it harder for small farmers in poor countries to compete in global markets, critics of such subsidies say. Butler said in an interview ahead of the gathering that a draft document that could be the basis for a final summit declaration doesn't promise to overhaul subsidy policy.

The U.S. Congress last month passed a five-year farm bill heavy on subsidies, bucking White House objections that such aid smack in the middle of a global food crisis wasn't warranted.

Heading the U.S. delegation to the summit, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer insisted on Monday that biofuels contribute only 2 or 3 percent to a predicted 43 percent rise in prices this year.

Figures by other international organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, show that the increased demand for biofuels is contributing by 15-30 percent to food price increases, said Frederic Mousseau, a policy adviser at Oxfam, a British aid group.

"Food stocks are at their lowest in 25 years, so the market is very vulnerable to any policy changes" such as U.S. or European Union subsidizing biofuels or mandating greater use of this energy source, Mousseau said.

Brazil is another large exporter of biofuels, and its president, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva was expected to defend biofuels at the summit.

Washington's ambassador to the Rome-based U.N. food agencies, Gaddi H. Vasquez, predicted in an interview that the summit would be a "critical first step in a global conversation on issues related to food security that will continue beyond the summit," including at this summer's G-8 in Japan.

But on Monday, several participants indicated they wouldn't even be talking to each other.

Aside from the criticism of Mugabe, Jewish leaders and some Italian politicians were among those denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attendance at the meeting. On Monday, Ahmadinejad repeated his call for the destruction of Israel, which is also participating in the summit.

Ahmadinejad was scheduled to give a summit news conference Tuesday afternoon.

EU sanctions against Mugabe because of Zimbabwe's poor human rights record forbid him from setting foot in the bloc's 27 nations, but those restrictions don't apply to U.N. forums.

Italian news reports said that neither Mugabe nor Ahmadinejad were among leaders invited to a working dinner Tuesday night in the hilltop Renaissance Villa Madama, an Italian government showcase.

[aztecdakota]

Hey world, lets trade! We will freeze foods two days before we throw them in our dumpsters to go to the land fill. We will ship them to those who need food, in exchange for gasoline. I think I have just started a beginning of a solution to the worlds fuel and food problems. All prices will go DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, and let us start acting like normal human beings again. Hey, betcha the government will never act on this idea.

[donbl1]

Government action results in the Law of Unexpected Consequences: Rise in food prices because of ethanol.

BTW, nuclear power is still being resisted by the Democrats as well as additional drilling.

That leaves us with wind (now about 2% and more expensive), solar (insignificant and does not reduce oil much) and bio (which requires time and water we do not have). Hydro will not increase because environmentalists are concerned about the fish and requesting the damns be removed.

In other words, there is no quick fix.

All that cr@p we have been hearing about alternative fuels is just that: cr@p. We will not see significant contribution for 20 years.

[cbsfan73]

Posted by deacon20081:
"cbsfan and cbsblogger are the same individual,
both full of garbage"

You CAN be a deacon if your light don''t shine...

[minnick8-2009]

we can decrease our exessive consumption of food..either you have oil from middle east or we use our own resources..take a pick?? because just like ethanol..YOU CANNOT EAT WHINNING AND BIT CHINGPosted by libsluv2spit

Making corn ethanol is not the only option for energy. We can also increase use of hydro, wind, and solar, and nuclear energy. I don''t understand why corn ethanol is the only option to some people when corn is so useful as food for people and animals.

[minnick8-2009]

Either we discipline ourselves or Mother Nature will take care of it for us. One family one child max should be the limit
Posted by cbsblogger

How do you mandate that on third world countries?

[deacon20081]

cbsfan and cbsblogger are the same individual,
both full of garbage

[cbsblogger]

We had a declining birth rate in the USA until the Mexicans illegally invaded.

[cbsblogger]

We need to encourage abortion and birth control and get the population back down to 1950s numbers, and we would soon have enough food, eliminate global warming and have the price of gas back down under $1 per gallon.

The greedy endless consumption business mentality demands that people make babies until there is no more room on earth. That''s one of the sources of the anti-abortion and birth control movement...not just the churches that want more members.

Either we discipline ourselves or Mother Nature will take care of it for us. One family one child max should be the limit

[cbsfan73]

The world needs more wars to save it from us...

[fedup_w_pols-2009]

Yes what part of your poor don''t have 5 kids is so hard to understand? If your having trouble feeding the 3 you already have adding 2 more is not going to help your situation. As for the UN how much money do they pilfer from the childrens funds every year, lord only knows. How about this we shut down the UN and send it to Darfur and all the diplomats can go live it up there instead of NY. Then we take all the money we spend on the UN since the US is the primary source of money and by some groceries for these poor folks.

[haoli25]

World to U.N Chief: Eating less is good for you.

[randynason]

The Vatican and other church leaders have long preached abstinence, no on birth-control, no on contraception and no on *** education. Let them kick in the money needed to feed the masses that they have encouraged to breed.
I think the Chinese were smart to limit families to one child. That''s the right approach, for starters. Farmers and other small growers need federal financial assistance to grow natural, healthy foods.

[hypnotoad72]

If people would stop breeding... like the family with 18 offspring, amongst other situations - each situation is unique enough to be given its own merit.

Also, I am going to quote the post from itgrammy as itgrammy is by and large correct (though the Christian thing to do is to try not to let people starve):


back in college I had a science teacher that told us the only real way to lower the birth rate was to improve living conditions. I tend to agree with her. Modernized countries do seem to have a lower birth rate than the less fortunate. Lately, the US is now falling in rank in living conditions and the fertility rate is actually going up.

As a planet, we need to look at how we can fix the population/resource problem. Starvation (turning our back on the people that need help) will probably work, but perhaps the better way is to figure out how to improve people''''s lives so they don''''t feel they need to have 10 kids so that 3 will survive to adulthood.

Posted by itgrammy

[sistatee-2009]

The UN chief worried about world food shortages? That''s a hoot. Every meal this idiot eats is from a world-class restaurant, paid for with money stolen from U.S. taxpayers. WHAT A PHONY!

[downsteamjim]

The spirit of Pol Pot seems to be present in these posting. One discussed killing jews and another killing Christians. Sounds like some of you are ready to get fitted for your suicide vests.

[jimfinster]

I hope the RAPTURE comes soon, then we would get rid of millions of annoying Christians. LOL

[afsc30574]

The world doesn''t need 50% more food, but countries that can''t feed themselves now do need to have 50% fewer children.

[dobbershome]

Quit wasting corn making ethanol and that should take care of our end of the deal.

[downsteamjim]

To timothyone: So you came to the conclusion that exterimanting jews is unnecessary. It appears that you did consider it. Scary. By the way, Israel has made remarkable progress in making the desert green. Muslims seem more interested in making the desert red.

[incog-nito]

We already have the 50% we need. It''s just that it''s all being consumed by the average American who keeps getting fatter and fatter.