Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on the world to fund agriculture and counter the destabilizing effects of food prices close to record highs.
Prices for staples such as corn and rice this year surged to the highest level in more than two years. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s index of 55 commodities rose to 232.1 points in April, down from an all-time high of 237.2 in February.
“We must act now cooperatively and collaboratively to blunt the impact of rising food prices,” Clinton said, speaking to about 400 international delegates at the FAO, an arm of the United Nations in Rome.
The cost of living in the U.S. rose at its fastest pace since December 2009 in the 12 months ended in March, the same month in which Chinese consumer prices rose by the most since 2008. TheEuropean Central Bank raised interest rates on April 7, joining China, India, Poland and Sweden in a bid to control inflation partly blamed on food costs. Costlier food also contributed to riots across northern Africa and the Middle East that toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia this year.
Clinton and President Barack Obama have funneled administration resources into food security, which the U.S. sees as integral to stabilizing developing countries.
At the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy in July 2009, global leaders said they would “act with the scale and urgency needed to achieve sustainable global food security.” Obama pledged at least $3.5 billion over three years to help leverage more than $18.5 billion in support of a global approach.
The Feed the Future program that Clinton’s State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development oversee aims to “strengthen the entire agricultural chain,” Clinton said.
That includes creating better seeds, connecting farmers to local and larger markets, and encouraging crop diversity and better nutrition, Clinton said.
She urged delegates to renew their commitment to sustainable agriculture and food security.
“We’ve learned a lot but we haven’t applied it all and we haven’t brought it to scale,” Clinton said, acknowledging that this was hard to do even within her own government.
“If we do not act now to increase the opportunity to increase security we may never catch up,” said Clinton, who is wrapping up two days of meetings in Rome.
Food output will have to climb by 70 percent from 2010 to 2050 as the world population swells to 9 billion and rising incomes boost meat and dairy consumption, the FAO forecasts. Producing 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of pork can take 3.5 kilograms of feed, U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows.
About 44 million people have been pushed into poverty since June by the “dangerous levels” of food prices, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in February. Another 10 million may join them should the UN food index rise another 10 percent, the World Bank said April 16. The number of hungry people in the world globally declined last year to 925 million from more than 1 billion in 2009, according to the FAO.