Pressure mounts on farming powers amid food crisis

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(AFP)

LUXEMBOURG (AFP) - Pressure mounted Monday on global farming powers to ramp up production in the face of warnings that soaring food prices could drive 100 million people deeper into abject poverty.

French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier warned that farmers worldwide would have to raise their output sharply in the coming decades as demand booms in fast growing Asian countries like China and India.

"Global agriculture production will have to double by 2050 ... in order to feed nine billion people on the planet," Barnier told journalists on the sidelines of a meeting in Luxembourg with his EU counterparts.

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.

As prices rocketed, angry protests have erupted in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Indonesia.

World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned on Sunday that a doubling of food prices over the past three years could push 100 million people in poorer developing countries further into poverty and called on governments to tackle the issue.

"We have to put our money where our mouth is now so that we can put food into hungry mouths," Zoellick said. "It's as stark as that."

A new UN-sponsored study, due to be presented Tuesday in Paris, warns that farming practices must change to confront soaring food prices that threaten the poor in particular.

"Business as usual is no longer an option," the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development will say in the report, according to a statement from UNESCO.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that since March 2007 prices for soya beans have risen 87 percent and those for wheat 130 percent at a time when global grain stores are at their lowest levels on record.

It attributed the trend to increased demand in emerging market powerhouses China and India as well as the alternative use of maize and soya beans for biofuels.

UNESCO said the report will urge that agricultural science pay greater attention to safeguarding natural resources and to promoting "agro-ecological" practices, such as the use of natural fertilisers and traditional seeds and reducing the distance between the farm and the consumer.

Many observers have warned recently that using arable land to produce crops for biofuels has reduced surfaces available to grow food, putting further pressure on supplies already strained by the soaring demand.

UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler, speaking on German radio, went as far as to describe the recent rush to boost production of biofuels as "a crime against humanity" because of its impact on global prices.

He also accused the European Union of undermining the agriculture sector in Africa by exporting in the past the surpluses of its heavily subsidised farmers to the continent.

"The EU finances the exports of European agricultural surpluses to Africa ... where they are offered at one half or one third of their (production) price," Ziegler charged. "That completely ruins African agriculture."

While defending EU hand-outs to its farmers, France's Barnier said Europe should not bow under pressure at the World Trade Organisation to ease its farm support but should instead help developing countries build up their agriculture sector.

"Europe must remain a major producing continent but other continents have to get organised as well," Barnier said.