The New York Times (pg. A6)  [Printer-friendly version]
April 16, 2008

U.N. PANEL URGES CHANGES TO FEED POOR WHILE SAVING ENVIRONMENT

By Steven Erlanger

DATELINE: PARIS

Major agricultural countries must urgently change their policies to
avoid a social explosion from rising food prices, a panel of United
Nations experts warned Tuesday, adding their voices to new concerns
about the proper balance between saving the environment and feeding
the poor.

"Modern agriculture will have to change radically if the international
community wants to cope with growing populations and climate change,
while avoiding social fragmentation and irreversible deterioration of
the environment," said Salvatore Arico, a biodiversity specialist with
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,
or Unesco, summarizing the report by about 400 experts.

The report tries to provide a comprehensive view on how to produce
food that is less dependent on fossil fuels; favors locally available
resources, natural fertilizers and traditional seeds; and tries to
preserve the soil and water supply.

The prices of basic food like rice, wheat and corn have been rising
sharply, setting off violent popular protests in countries including
Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan,
Yemen, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Italy. The unrest has
resulted in tens of deaths and helped lead to the dismissal on
Saturday of the Haitian prime minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, and
the increasing cost of subsidizing bread prices is a major worry for
key American allies like President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Wheat prices have risen by 130 percent since March of last year, and
soy prices have risen 87 percent, the United Nations said, with food
now representing 60 percent to 80 percent of consumer spending in
developing countries. In general, the World Bank has said that food
prices have climbed about 83 percent worldwide over the past three
years.

Three years in the making, the report -- known as the International
Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development --
says that modern agriculture has brought significant increases in food
production, but that the benefits have been spread unevenly and at "an
increasingly intolerable price, paid by small-scale farmers, workers,
rural communities and the environment."

Even before the United Nations panel added its voice to the debate,
major international organizations like the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund had issued their own loud warnings at
their annual meetings over the weekend about the dangers of the rising
price of food, which has many causes.

These include bad weather, historically high prices for oil and
transportation, increased demand for meat and dairy products in the
richer Asian countries, and the Western push to use "biofuels" made
from grain, especially corn, to reduce the world's dependence on
fossil fuels.

Robert B. Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, called on rich
nations to provide an additional $500 million to the World Food
Program of the United Nations. On Monday, President Bush ordered that
$200 million in emergency food aid be made available to "meet
unanticipated food aid needs in Africa and elsewhere," the White House
announced.

The World Bank intends to nearly double its agricultural lending to
Africa next year, to $800 million, and the finance ministers who serve
as the International Monetary Fund's board of governors said the two
institutions should work together to provide "an integrated
response" to the crisis.

"As financial markets have tumbled, food prices have soared," Mr.
Zoellick said. "Since 2005 the prices of staples have jumped 80
percent."

The United States has been criticized for pressing for the use of
biofuels, especially corn-based ethanol, as a way to reduce oil
consumption and to keep corn prices high for farmers. But the same
prices that please farmers are causing shortages in basic grains used
for food in the developing world.

The European Union has been rethinking its emphasis on the use of
biofuels, even as the European Commission on Monday rejected an appeal
from an advisory panel to suspend its goal of having 10 percent of its
transportation fuel made from biofuel by 2020. That goal is seen as an
integral part of the European Union's pledge to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions by 20 percent by that year, as part of the effort to reduce
global warming.

The United Nations special rapporteur for the right to food, Jean
Ziegler, has said biofuels are "a crime against humanity" because they
raise global food prices. But Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for the
European Union environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said, "You
can't change a political objective without risking a debate on all the
other objectives" of climate change and energy reform.

The British in particular have asked for an urgent review of biofuel
programs. The French agriculture minister, Michel Barnier, has said
"absolute priority" must be given to food production.

Other critics, however, have pointed to the way the European Union
subsidizes its agricultural exports, which is to get rid of European
surpluses to keep European farmers happy, while selling at a price
well below the cost of production -- thus undermining the ordinary
market for local food production in Africa.

The quandary is an example of how environmental aims may have to give
way to the needs of the poor -- or, as the Unesco report urges, that
agricultural methods will have to change.

Providing enough food for the poor, while taking care of health needs
and the environment, means "reconciling contradictory objectives,"
said Guilhem Calvo, a consultant to the Unesco Division of Ecological
and Earth Sciences.

Among its findings, for instance, the Unesco panel's report says that
the growing involvement of women in agriculture in developing
countries is creating worsening health and work conditions for them
and is reducing their access to education. The report also highlighted
the intensifying water shortage in large parts of Africa and central
and western Asia.

Robert Watson, the report's director, said that it repeated an old
message about the cost of concentrating "on production alone,"
resulting in "an increasingly degraded and divided planet."

But it is a message not always heard, he said, adding, "If those with
power are now willing to hear it, then we may hope for more equitable
policies that do take the interest of the poor into account."

Australia, China, the United States and Canada expressed reservations
about some of the language in the report concerning biotechnology,
especially genetically modified foods, which many believe have the
potential to ease the food crisis, but others regard as potentially
dangerous for the future.