NEW DELHI (AFP) — The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation on Wednesday urged world leaders to attend a summit in early June to discuss what he described as an "emergency" global food shortage.
"In the face of food riots around the world like in Africa and Haiti, we really have an emergency," FAO chief Jacques Diouf told a news conference in New Delhi.
Diouf said as populations have moved to the cities, food output has stagnated, prices have risen and food stocks are at their lowest since 1980.
He said this crisis should be addressed by the 191 members of the FAO in Rome in early June.
Diouf said that in fast-growing countries such as India and China, which together account for a third of the world's population, "demand for more milk and more meat because of economic growth of eight to 10 percent means higher demand for more cereals" that in turn worsens food shortages.
Lennart Bage, the president of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), said government were waking up to the problem.
"There is a real realisation that we cannot take food and food security for granted anymore," said the official, who was speaking at the end of an UN conference on agrobusiness.
The head of the UN's Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Kandeh Yumkella, said wider trade links and a focus on agrobusiness, or the business of food production, were the long-term answers to the shortages.
He said by 2030, more than half the world's population will live in urban areas and require sophisticated methods to bring in food.
"We need to look at supermarkets and how they deliver food to be processed to the the consumer. We need to pass that technology to developing countries and understand the processes to increase shelf life of basic foods," he said.
At least five people have died in violent protests against high food and fuel prices in Haiti's capital, while there have been similar deadly disturbances in Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Mauritania.
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