Hungry for the Solution? Grow more Food

May 2, 2008 (LPAC)--Recently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the midst of widespread hunger, when Josette Sheeran, head of the World Food Program and a former U.S. State Department official, asked Yoseph Yilak, head of the Ethiopian grain traders association: What is the solution? Yilak shot back: "The best solution long-term is massive production of food."

Yilak told Sheeran: "Supply is low, demand is high. We have gone from three meals a day to two. Then it will be one meal. Then we will die...Why is the world taking corn for fuel? It will mean the death of many people."

In an interview with the Le Monde, UN's new top advisor on food, Olivier de Schutter, a law professor and human rights campaigner, blamed two decades of wrong-headed policies by world powers for the food crisis sweeping the globe.

"We are paying for 20 years of mistakes. Nothing was done to prevent speculation on raw materials, though it was predictable investors would turn to these markets following the stock market slowdown."

Schutter said the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had "gravely underestimated the need to invest in agriculture," and accused the IMF of forcing indebted developing countries to invest in export cash crops at the expense of food self-sufficiency.

He also accused biofuels of usurping arable land and distorting world food prices. "The ambitious goals for biofuel production set by the United States and the European Union are irresponsible," Schutter charged, calling for a freeze on investments in the sector.