Food Production Must Remain a Global Priority: French Minister

Food production must remain a global priority: French minister

PARIS, April 14 (Xinhua) — French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier Monday said that the world should do everything to ensure that food production remained a “priority,” as concerns continued to mount over the role played by bio-fuel production in the specter of soaring food prices.

Earlier Thursday, the French minister, who was speaking during a radio interview, had announced that his country was planning to submit the idea of a “European initiative for food security” in the world at the European Council of Agriculture Ministers slated to be held Thursday in Luxembourg.

Within the framework of this initiative, the agriculture minister told France’s BFM radio that “agricultural production for food would become a priority recognized throughout the world.”

“We can do something other than food production, such as bio- fuels, but the overriding priority should always be food,” said the French agricultural minister, decrying the rising costs of living that had led to riots in various parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Haiti.

The rationale behind the production of bio-fuels has recently come under fire, with Jean Ziegler, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, leading a chorus of condemnation against it as the key factor behind the rising food prices.

In the interview, the agriculture minister also stressed the need for “reorienting official development assistance towards the agricultural sector which has been neglected in the past by international financial institutions and donors.”

In a further move, the minister took a swipe at what he described as “an excessive liberalism, too much confidence given to the market, something that had given rise to the new phenomena of international speculation on raw materials which is a source of great concern.”

“We must not leave the feeding of the people, a vital issue, to the mercy of the whims of market forces and international speculation alone,” said the minister, arguing that Europeans would raise the issue with international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Earlier Monday, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler had warned that the world was moving towards a very long period of unrest and conflicts associated with rising food prices and shortages, France’s Liberation daily reported.

“We are moving towards a very long period of unrest, conflict, waves of uncontrollable regional destabilization, marked with a red- hot desperation among the most vulnerable of the world’s populations,” said the UN official.

“Even well before the phenomena of the soaring prices, already an estimated 854 million people across the world were suffering from serious malnutrition. This is a carnage,” said Ziegler.

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