US airs fear of hunger causing world unrest

A top US agriculture official has warned that unless countries take immediate steps to sharply boost agricultural productivity, food output and reduce hunger then the world risks fresh social instability.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Tom Vilsack, US secretary of agriculture, indicated that food security and global stability were tied, in a sign that Washington's worries about the global food crisis go well beyond its humanitarian implications.

“This is not just about food security, this is about national security, it is about environmental security,” he said on the sidelines of the first meeting of the Group of Eight ministers of agriculture. Although the US has in the past talked about the links, Barack Obama, US president, and his team have made it a priority, officials said.

Last year's spike in food prices caused riots in about 30 countries, from Haiti to Bangladesh. Leading agricultural commodity exporters, including India and Argentina, imposed bans on overseas sales of food products. “I can figure out there are only three things that could happen if people do not have food: people could riot, that they have done, people migrate to places where there is food, which creates additional challenges, or people die,” said Mr Vilsack.

The G8 meeting, which ends today,is expected to release a communiqué highlighting a political consensus to raise global food output and investment in developing countries.

A draft of the communiqué said the world was “very far from reaching” the United Nations' goal of halving the number of people facing chronic hunger by 2015, in the clearest admission yet by leading countries of the failure. This came after the group reviewed what it called “alarming data” on malnourishment. The UN told ministers that for the first time more than 1bn people went hungry every day and that this was set to rise this year due because of persistently high food prices and the economic crisis.

Despite Mr Vilsack's comments, the communique is not expected to produce any concrete measures or financial initiatives to resolve in the short-term the problems he highlighted

The charity Oxfam called the meeting “another nail in the coffin of the goal to reduce world hunger”.