UN: Apathy worsening food crisis

Billions of dollars are being wasted on feeding obese people in the West while millions starve around the world, Jacques Diouf, the United Nations food agency chief, has told world leaders at a summit on food security in Rome. "No one understands... how over-consumption by obese people in the world costs $20 billion each year," Diouf said. On top of this, there are "$100 billion in indirect costs resulting from premature deaths and associated diseases." Speaking at the opening of the three-day UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) summit in Italy's capital, Diouf also highlighted how an estimated $1.2 trillion was spent on weapons in 2006 while aid to agriculture fell by more than half, from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.4 billion in 2004. "In real terms, the share of agriculture in public aid to development has fallen, from 17 percent in 1980 to three percent in 2006," he said. Recent food riots "are but the chronicle of a catastrophe that was foreseen," Diouf said. Diouf lamented the failure to reach a goal set by the 1996 world food summit in Rome for reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half by 2015. "With current trends, the summit's goal will be attained in 2150 instead of 2015," he said. Rising prices throughout the world are being blamed on high oil prices, changing diets, urbanization, expanding populations, flawed trade policies, extreme weather, growth in biofuels production and speculation. People have protested and riots have broken out from Africa to Asia, raising fears that millions more will suffer from malnutrition. The World Bank estimates that 100 million people are at risk of hunger because of surging prices. It says the prices of all major food commodities reached their highest levels in nearly fifty years, in the first three months of 2008. Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, told the summit that food production needs to rise by 50 percent in the next 20 years to meet the rising demand. Ban also urged the US and other nations to phase out subsidies for food-based biofuels, including ethanol, that have been used to encourage farmers to grow crops for energy use rather than human consumption.