ROME -- The United Nations food summit sputtered to a close yesterday with a pledge to take "urgent" action on the global food crisis, but making no efforts to curb the rapidly expanding biofuels industry or quickly break down trade barriers.
The final declaration did not call for controls on biofuels even though most delegates agreed that turning crops such as corn into ethanol and other plant-based fuels has contributed to soaring food prices.
Under pressure from the United States, Brazil and other countries with massive biofuels industries, the delegates watered down the declaration's biofuels' statement. The industry was called both "a challenge and an opportunity" that warranted further "studies" to ensure their sustainability in a world of soaring food prices and fear of widespread hunger.
While biofuels and trade barriers, such as export restrictions on rice in some countries, were left largely untouched, the UN said it had advanced the delegates' promise to halve the number of malnourished people, now estimated at 850 million, by 2015.
The UN also said it had secured pledges for more than $5-billion (U.S.) in food aid during the three-day summit.
Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, declared the summit a success but acknowledged the negotiations to write the final declaration had "not been very easy."
He did not go into details, but there were widespread reports of fighting by some countries over the language concerning trade barriers, among other issues. Cuba reportedly wanted language condemning embargoes. The United States did not want the declaration to criticize its embargo against Cuba.
The biofuels' statement disappointed some of the poorer countries, including Egypt and Venezuela, which argued that the crops used to make the fuels take food off the table. Estimates of the food-price increases caused by biofuels productions ranges from 3 per cent to as high at 60 per cent.
Several aid and anti-poverty agencies, including Oxfam and ActionAid, have called for the governments of biofuel-producing countries to end subsidies for fuels such as corn-based ethanol.
Abah Ofon, an agriculture commodities analyst with Britain's Standard Chartered bank, said he did not think the lack of a formal demand from the UN to curb the production of biofuels would raise food prices. "Biofuels demand is, to a large extent, already factored into current prices," he said.
But he said food prices might have fallen if the biofuels industry had been reined in.
Debate over the pros and cons of biofuels set the tone from the onset of the summit. While the FAO itself has no single policy on biofuels, Mr. Diouf on the opening day said "nobody" understood why rich countries are subsidizing crop production "to fuel cars."Toronto Globe and Mail
