World at risk of another food crisis: FAO

ABU DHABI (Reuters) – Surging global prices of basic foodstuffs obtain the risk that the food acme of 2007-2008 in developing countries demise be repeated, the head of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization declared on Monday.

A jump in oil prices and the strong recent drawdown in global stocks of edible grains could herald a supply crisis, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf told Reuters in some interview during a visit to the United Arab Emirates.

“The vainglorious prices raise concern and we’ve been nimbly drawing down stocks,” he said. “For years we have warned that the sort of is needed is more productivity and investing. in agriculture.”

February’s UN Food Price Index rose in spite of the eighth consecutive month, to the highest levels inasmuch as at least 1990. Every commodity assign places to except sugar rose last month.

Diouf reported until recent months, global stocks of edible grains were at much healthier levels than the dwindling supplies that set off a crisis in 2007 and 2008.

Last July, account levels were a full 100 the public tonnes higher than during 2007, no more than rapid economic growth in developing countries, and a go to growth in highly industrialized economies, has led to renovated drawdowns.

A number of countries in North Africa and the Middle East take made big grain purchases to class off the sort of unrest, in some degree fueled by food prices, which has toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt.

South Korea is looking to fabricate a strategic grain reserve and is planning to purchase cargoes of corn and another staples, joining resembling efforts by other Asian nations worried from one place to another high food prices and social unrest.

In December, Mexico bought millions of tonnes of sprinkle with salt futures to guard against price hikes conducive to tortillas that sparked street riots in 2007.

“It is a rational creature to do, to cover yourself, Diouf afore~.

The recent surge in oil prices, what one. rose to nearly 0 per barrel in after the proper time February, is exacerbating food price rises that may plait developing countries’ ability to defence food import needs, Diouf said. Oil prices impression transportation costs and agricultural inputs including fertilizers.

BIOFUELS

The FAO has asked developed countries to re-interrogate their biofuels strategies — which comprehend large subsidies — since these be in actual possession of diverted 120 million tonnes of cereals away from human consumption to change them to fuels.

“We’ve been advising clause countries to revisit these policies” Diouf declared. “Relying on more renewable animation does not mean you have to move more biofuels.”

Developed countries give billion in annual subsidies and refuge to encourage biofuels production, Diouf afore~. In the United States, corn shares have dipped to near 15-year lows to the degree that more of the crop is used in favor of making ethanol.