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PARIS: The United Nations’ new top adviser on food
blamed two decades of wrong-headed policies by world powers for the
food crisis sweeping the globe.
In a stinging interview published
on his first day in office, Frenchman Olivier de Schutter, a law
professor and human rights campaigner, told Le Monde newspaper that
the international community was “unforgivable” for its failure
to anticipate the riots sparked last month by soaring food prices.
“This is a call to order. The
days of cheap food are behind us,” said the UN rapporteur on the
right to food, arguing that the current crisis showed the “limits
of industrial agriculture.”
“We are paying for 20 years of
mistakes. Nothing was done to prevent speculation on raw materials,
though it was predictable that investors would turn to these markets
following the stock market slowdown.”
Schutter said the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) had “gravely underestimated the
need to invest in agriculture,” and accused the IMF of forcing
indebted developing countries to invest in export cash crops at the
expense of food self-sufficiency.
Workers across Asia, where one
billion people are now seriously affected by the food price surge,
made food their May Day battle cry, with volatile crowds staging
rallies in the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand.
Experts blame the soaring prices
on a confluence of factors, including trade restrictions; increased
demand from a changing diet in Asia; poor growing weather; rising
use of biofuels that rely on staples like corn; and the hike in fuel
prices that make transporting foodstuffs more expensive.
Schutter joined the growing
chorus accusing biofuels—until recently cast as a miracle
alternative to polluting fossil fuels—of usurping arable land and
distorting world food prices.
“The ambitious goals for
biofuel production set by the United States and the European Union
are irresponsible,” he charged, Schutter described the biofuel
rush as a “scandal that only profits the interests of a tiny
lobby” and called for a freeze on investments in the sector.
But he also distanced himself
from the hard-line stance of his predecessor in the UN post, Jean
Ziegler, who had called for an outright moratorium on biofuels,
describing them as a “crime against humanity.”
Schutter also took aim at the
giants of the agri-business world—such as US firms Monsanto and
Dow Chemicals—which hold patents on many of the world’s most
used seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides.
The World Bank said last month
that the doubling of food prices over the past three years could
push 100 million people in poorer developing countries further into
poverty.
The World Food Program is
appealing to donors for an extra $755 million to enable it to
purchase enough food to meet its global commitments, while UN
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon this week set up a new global task
force to address the food crisis.
Schutter said he was confident a
coordinated international response between now and the autumn
harvests would manage to avert famine.
--AFP
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