Preview: Next Week’s Rome Food Summit

A post by Alex Evans, cross-posted from his blog Global Dashboard.
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Next week, the UN is holding a major summit on food security in Rome - I’ll be there throughout (and blogging regularly on what goes on). Ahead of the kick-off, I’ve updated the Global Dashboard page on where to get briefed on food prices, and put out a scene-setter press release through Chatham House that sets out a few thoughts on what the summit needs to achieve.

This week’s already seen a couple of new items on food prices that are worth a look, starting with a new annual FAO / OECD outlook report - which this year looks all the way out to 2017. It finds that although prices will come down in the short term (which you already knew, since you read it here on Global Dashboard on March 18th), nominal prices over the medium term will remain “substantially above” levels over the last ten years. In other words, it’s not just a blip.

Also worth a look is World Bank President Bob Zoellick’s ten point plan for food prices, published in the FT this morning. His article confirms that he’s well ahead of the curve on understanding the need for an integrated approach to scarcity issues:he says collective action is needed on “the interconnected challenges of energy, food and water [which will be] drivers of the world economy and security”. (I’ll be publishing a paper on how the multilateral system needs to be reformed to cope better with scarcity issues just before the G8 in early July.)

What will actually happen at the summit is currently anyone’s guess. It’s fair to say that FAO haven’t been very proactive in briefing the media on likely outcomes or what they’re hoping for, which puts them in the rather hazardous position of allowing high expectations to emerge without really managing them. Another risk is that a major spat over biofuels could erupt: Ahmadinejad and Chavez will both be at the food summit, and would like nothing better to embarrass the US over its support for ethanol - and while US subsidies for corn-based ethanol are certainly problematic, it’s hard to see these particular interlocutors opening up much political space on Capitol Hill as legislators contemplate the Farm Bill.

But on the upside, great progress has been made on financing the immediate humanitarian needs (after Saudi Arabia stunned everyone by coming up with half a billion dollars last week - a coup for WFP head Josette Sheeran and for UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Sir John Holmes, who’s invested much time encouraging Gulf countries to contribute). This, together with the prospect of some short term relief on prices, gives policymakers a chance to look ahead towards the longer term challenges as well as short term crisis management.

It’s also hard to remember a time when the UN system and the international financial institutions have worked together as closely or as effectively as they seem to have been doing on the UN’s food task force - a great story, given how fragmented the international system usually is, but one that’s gone largely unreported. Even so, the real work in pulling together the longer term agenda is still in front of us…

-Alex Evans

Zoellick Responds to Japan’s Prime Minister

Yesterday, World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick released a statement about Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda’s call to put the world hunger crisis on the agenda for the July G8 meeting.

“I welcome Prime Minister Fukuda’s intention to put the food crisis firmly on the agenda of the G8 summit in Japan in July, and his request that the World Bank, the United Nations, and other international institutions coordinate closely to prepare joint action. We will be pleased to support Japan as chair of the G8…

Donors must act now to support the World Food Program’s call for emergency funds to fill what is an urgent financing gap. Without this money, millions will go hungry. For them, the international system will have failed.

It will be important that as an international community we coordinate closely, minimize overlap and attack the issue from a variety of different fronts to ensure support reaches where it is needed most, and that longer-term supply issues can be fully addressed.

These short, medium and long-term issues will be a critical part of international action. But let us first raise the money to meet the most immediate needs. The world can afford this. The poor and hungry cannot.”

Read the full release on the World Banks site.

-Virginia Simmons
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Zoellick Calls For a “New Deal”

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has a guest op-ed in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer calling for a “New Deal” to confront the growing hunger crisis.

“The disturbing images should spur the global community to action: riots in Haiti, protests in Egypt and violence in many other countries, sparked by the rising price of food…

To help those who will be hit the hardest, the World Bank Group is calling for a New Deal for Global Food Policy. This New Deal should focus not only on hunger and malnutrition, access to food and its supply, but also the interconnections with energy, yields, climate change, investment, the marginalization of women and others, and economic resiliency and growth…

To be most successful, we will need to integrate and mobilize a diverse range of partners including the Gates Foundation, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development; other Multilateral Development Banks; agricultural research institutes; developing countries with great agricultural experience; and the private sector.

A New Deal for Global Food Policy will contribute to inclusive and sustainable development. People in poor, middle-income and developed countries will benefit together. Income gains from agriculture have three times the power in overcoming poverty than increases in other sectors, and 75 percent of the world’s poor are rural, with most involved in farming. Working together, we can ease the burden of high food prices on the world’s most vulnerable.”

Read the full op-ed here.

-Virginia Simmons

The Hunger Crisis: Take Action

The shocking headlines have had our attention all week. The price of basic food staples have increased 45% in just the last nine months - and they’ve doubled in the last three years.

As we all must know - these rising prices deal a crushing blow to the world’s poorest people - people who already spend more than half of their income on food.

This weekend, World Bank President Zoellick said that this hunger crisis could “push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty” and that the effects would be equivalent of “seven lost years in the fight against worldwide poverty.”

The shortage is fueling social unrest in some of the most fragile nations around the globe. Haiti, Egypt, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mozambique, Bolivia and Uzbekistan discontent has already erupted. “For countries where food comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival.”(Zoellick)

We have to do something. Please sign our petition to President Bush urging world leaders to take action.

-Virginia Simmons

More on the Food Crisis

World Bank President Robert Zoellick quotes from the last few days:

Speaking at the end of meetings between the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Zoellick warned:

“Based on a very rough analysis, we estimate that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty,” Zoellick said. “This is not just a question of short-term needs, as important as those are; this is ensuring that future generations don’t pay a price too.”

In an earlier speech, Zoellick said that the effects would be equivalent of:

“seven lost years in the fight against worldwide poverty.”

More resources at one.org/worldfoodcrisis..

Rising Food Prices Continued Impact…

The Wall Street Journal is featuring a major article today about the impact of rising food prices around the world. The article states that the cost of basic staples, which have risen 83% in the last three years, have instigated recent riots in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia and in “Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to deter food theft from fields and warehouses.”

From the WSJ piece:

“In a Sunday news briefing, [World Bank President Robert Zoellick] said, “We have to put our money where our mouth is now — so that we can put food into hungry mouths.”

But the weekend’s meeting produced few concrete results. Mr. Zoellick recently urged rich nations to contribute another $500 million to the United Nation’s World Food Program, but he said that the U.N. has received commitments for only about half the money.”

You can read more about rising food prices at one.org/worldfoodcrisis.

-Virginia Simmons