'Trade barriers to blame for food crisis'

A summit on the global food crisis has been told that trade barriers are to blame for high prices.

Lowering trade barriers and the removal of export bans would help stop the spread of hunger threatening nearly one billion people, the summit heard.

"Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made," UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon told world leaders at the meeting in Rome.

The head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which is hosting the summit, said wealthy nations had been spending billions of dollars on farm subsidies, wasteful and excess consumption of food, and on arms.

"The excess consumption by the world's obese costs $20 billion (£10bn) annually, to which must be added indirect costs of $100 billion (£50bn) resulting from premature death and related diseases," said FAO Director General Jacques Diouf, who is from Senegal.

The cost of major food commodities has doubled over the last couple of years, with rice, corn and wheat at record highs. This has provoked protests and riots in some developing countries where people may spend more than half their income on food.

The World Bank and aid agencies estimate soaring food prices could push as many as 100 million more people into hunger. About 850 million are already hungry.

Mr Ban estimated the "global price tag" to overcome the food crisis would be £7.7-£10 billion a year and that food supply had to rise 50 per cent by the year 2030 to meet climbing demand.

"Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing draft controls," he said. This "distorts markets and forces prices even higher. I call on nations to resist such measures and to immediately release exports designated for humanitarian purposes".

Aid agencies say Japan and China have contributed to high rice prices, which have triggered riots as far away as Haiti, by controlling their stocks. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has promised to release at least 300,000 tonnes of imported rice.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development sees prices retreating from their current peaks but still up to 50 per cent higher in the coming decade.

OECD chief Angel Gurria said that oil prices, "which are part and parcel of food prices", would not ease sharply either.

That has increased interest in biofuels, blamed by many for competing with food output for grains and oilseed.

The US and Brazil, the world's biggest producer of ethanol from sugar cane, defended biofuels from such accusations in Rome.

"It offends me to see fingers pointed against clean energy from biofuels, fingers soiled with oil and coal," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said.

The US plans to channel a quarter of its maize crop into ethanol production by 2022 and the European Union plans to get 10 per cent of auto fuel from bio-energy by 2020.

A distraction from food at the summit was the presence of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on his first trip to the European Union.

Critics accuse both of contributing to food shortages at home.

During a speech at the summit, Mr Mugabe blamed Britain for his country's economic collapse and accused the UK Government of orchestrating sanctions "to effect illegal regime change in my country".

Mr Mugabe was snubbed at the event by UK International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander.

Earlier, Mr Alexander said: "I think it is obscene. I will neither shake hands with Robert Mugabe nor meet Robert Mugabe.

"I will take the opportunity to make clear my abhorrence at his attendance at a meeting which is supposed to be about increasing the supply of food while his policies have directly the reverse effect in Zimbabwe."

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