The world's poorest countries face starvation and civil unrest if global food prices keep rising, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said.Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in Washington that "hundreds of thousands of people will be starving". "Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives," he said.
He predicted that increasing food prices would push up the cost of imports for poor countries, leading to trade imbalances that might also affect developed nations. "It is not only a humanitarian question," added Mr Strauss-Kahn.
Global food prices have risen sharply in recent months, driven by increased demand, poor weather and an increase in the area of land used to grow crops for bio-fuels.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 37 countries currently face food crises. Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, urged members yesterday to provide £250 million to help alleviate the problem. There have been serious disturbances in more than a dozen developing countries, including Haiti, where a Nigerian peacekeeper serving with the United Nations police force was dragged from his car and shot dead as he was taking food to his colleagues on Saturday. Violence had flared in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince following the dismissal of Jacques Edouard Alexis, the prime minister, earlier in the day and the announcement of a plan to slash the price of rice.
In Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, 20,000 workers rioted over high food prices and low wages on Saturday. There have also been protests in neighbouring India.
Some experts, including Prof John Beddington, the British Government's chief scientific adviser, and Mr Zoellick, have identified the growth of bio-fuels as a major cause of higher food prices.
Several major agricultural nations, such as the United States, have used subsidised crops such as soya bean, sugar cane and corn for ethanol production, reducing the amount of crops available for food and pushing up prices.
"It is very hard to imagine how we can see the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous demand for food," Prof Beddington said last week.
European Union agriculture ministers will meet in Luxembourg today. Michel Barnier, France's agriculture minister, said he would urge his counterparts to devise a "European initiative on food security".
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/ … od.crisis/