FAO to make “the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy” the focus of World Food Day activities

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said that World Food Day, celebrated on October 16th this year, would have  a theme of “World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy”. The FAO will hold special events throughout the week of October 14th, including symposia, roundtable discussions, concerts and a meeting of the Committee on World Food Security.

FAO background

At the UN Food Summit in Rome, “Everyone complained about other people’s protectionism — and defended their own,” according to the New York Times. The emergency gathering of world leaders teetered on the brink of farce as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe hectored listeners with an anti-colonialist outburst and the president of Iran, “talked about the need to inject religion into food politics” in the Times’ memorable take. It became obvious to observers by the end of Wednesday’s sessions that progress on Secretary-General Ban-KI Moon’s $30 billion food shortage target would be minimal. The roughest treatment for biofuels was handed out by Brazilian President Inacio Lula Da Silva, who pillories US corn ethanol in an address defending the sugarcane ethanol industry.

The June summit meeting of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization had been expected to propose an intergovernmental group to release guidelines for sustainable biofuels. The draft communique from the summit proposed that the governmental group ”identify best practices for the production and sustainable use of biofuel,” as an effort to address global food price escalation. ”We are firmly convinced that the international community must take, in the immediate future, coordinated action to mitigate and where possible correct the negative impact of increased food prices on the world’s most vulnerable countries and populations,” the draft report said.

In France, the OECD and FAO published a new Agricultural Outlook. The report forecasts an increase in global ethanol production to 33 billion gallons by 2017, up 100 percent from 2007, with prices averaging $2.07 per gallon in 2009. Biodiesel production was projected to reach 6 billion gallons in 2017, up from 3 billion in 2007. “Coherent action is urgently needed by the international community to deal with the impact of higher prices on the hungry and poor,” Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO said. “Today some 862 million people are suffering from hunger and malnourishment; this highlights the need to re-invest in agriculture. It should be clear now that agriculture needs to be put back onto the development agenda.”

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