Summit targets global food crisis

[Gunny]

A key UN-sponsored summit is set to open in Rome aimed at addressing the problem of soaring global food prices.

Food costs are the highest in 30 years, causing riots in dozens of countries.

UN officials said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would call for the immediate suspension or elimination of price controls or other trade restrictions.

But many observers have so far focused on Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, whose presence at the summit has been called "obscene" by the UK and Australia.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the Zimbabwean president was "the person who has presided over the starvation of his people".

The hosts of the Rome conference - the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) - has warned the industrialised countries that unless they increase yields, eliminate barriers and move food to where it is needed most, a global catastrophe could result.

The recent crisis is believed to have pushed another 100 million people into hunger worldwide.

Poorer countries are faced with a 40% increase in their food imports bill this year.

more ... BBC NEWS | Special Reports | Summit targets global food crisis

 

[Toro]

Two things

First, Japan is offering to send free rice to some hard hit countries. The US is opposing it because the farm lobby fears that Japan is dumping. Read that in the WSJ.

Second, there may not be any leader who has done more to ruin his economy and starve his people than Mugabe. The incompetent thug destroyed a farming economy that was once an exporter of food. Today, the annualized inflation rate is over 300,000% and tens of thousands have fled into South Africa. The man is a joke.