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Why has the Global Food Crisis reached Emergency Proportions?

London, UK - 14th April 2008, 23:04 GMT

Dear ATCA Colleagues

[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]

The mounting global food crisis pushed aside fears of a protracted recession and systemic risk in the financial sector to become the top priority for the world's economic leaders gathered in Washington, DC. Ministers representing 185 countries agreed over the weekend that soaring food prices threaten global calamity and pledged to co-operate on a solution to save the world's poorest people from starvation. However, that solution remains elusive. The finance ministers and central bank governors who oversee the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank left Washington yesterday without a definitive response to agricultural prices that have surged 48 per cent since early 2007, sparking a wave of hoarding, speculation and riots throughout the developing world.

Food security has become a major concern in recent weeks as supplies of basic commodities have dwindled in the face of soaring demand, triggering riots and outbreaks of violence from Haiti to Indonesia. "The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions," United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a joint meeting in New York of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Bretton Woods institutions, the WTO and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). "We need not only short-term emergency measures to meet urgent critical needs and avert starvation in many regions across the world, but also a significant increase in long-term productivity in food grain production... the international community will also need to take urgent and concerted action in order to avoid the larger political and security implications of this growing crisis," Ban said.

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