Photo: Jason Sangster for Mercy Corps

The UN head of food and agriculture, Jacques Diouf, is urging oil-producing countries to reinvest oil revenues into local agricultural programs out of concern for rising food prices. The oil-rich countries termed by the UN the Near East (which includes most North African and Middle Eastern countries) has seen steady declines in agriculture productivity during the last two decades, and external food aid has dropped significantly as well. However, according to the FAO, the number of undernourished people in the region has grown from 33 million in the early 1990s to over 100 million by 2004.

With plans to feed as many as 73 million people this year, the UN World Food Program is alarmed by recent price increases, according to the New York Times editorial, "Priced Out of the Market". Increasing food prices in themselves are not extraordinary, but the fact that grain and wheat producers, among others, are shifting their effort away from food to alternative energy production will dangerously complicate the situation - higher prices combined with a global food shortage will prove deadly.

The FAO's Hunger Map shows that most of the countries with the most dire need for food aid are not high producers themselves. While Near Eastern countries are still able to find enough food resources to feed their people right now, the Financial Times quotes Mr. Diouf's warning that “it is a difficult balance for governments to respond to the need of their populations by importing food at very high prices, and also to ensure that the poorest of their populations get access to food at reasonable prices.”

Biofuel production. Photo: Benjamin Weller (flickr)

Jacques Diouf made a compelling argument last fall. The chief of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN stated that it is absolutely the responsibility of wealthy countries to ensure that a significant part of the emerging biofuel market is produced by the developing world. Right now, the U.S., European Union and Brazil are the leading producers and consumers of biofuels. If this situation remains into the future Diouf says,

“It will mean that we had a chance to honour all our solemn pledges to banish hunger and poverty but chose to look the other way.

If we get it right, bioenergy provides us with a historic chance to fast-forward growth in many of the world’s poorest countries, to bring about an agricultural renaissance and to supply modern energy to a third of the world’s population.

To focus debate exclusively on bio¬fuels for transport is therefore to miss much of the point about bioenergy’s potential for poverty reduction. This lies more in helping 2bn people to produce their own electricity and other energy needs than in keeping 800m cars and trucks on the road.”

Mr. Diouf has called for a world summit on food security, to be held in Rome in June this year. We will be watching for what decisions come out of this meeting, which will be discussing the challenges faced by the food and agricultural sectors from climate change and bioenergy. An interview with the agriculture head on the subject of food security and rising food prices can be viewed here.