LAST year’s food crisis, which left the world’s poorest people struggling to buy food, is far from over. And things could get worse if money isn’t quickly invested in agricultural technology.
Compared with the record highs reached last year, food prices have dropped by around 30 per cent. But that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer are going hungry as the worldwide economic downturn has left people with less money to buy food.
Agriculture ministers from 95 countries who met this week in Madrid, Spain, called for more research and other investment in agriculture to boost food production worldwide. Without it, say UN officials, there is a risk that production will fall.
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Lower prices are leaving farmers with less incentive to plant a new season’s crops. Meanwhile, the global financial crisis is making it hard for them to obtain loans to buy seed and fertiliser.
The recession is also strangling investment in disease-resistant crops and other technologies that can help to boost food production. At the Madrid meeting, UN Food and Agriculture Organization chief Jacques Diouf asked governments to release the $22 billion they have pledged for such investment since June 2008.
Joachim von Braun, head of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, warned in Madrid that if R&D investment keeps falling, food supply will not keep pace with increasing demand, and could send food prices soaring.
