Policy Focus

EU urged to take the lead on food crisis

The EU has been urged to press for a “multiple response”approach to tackling the global food crisis.

Speaking in parliament onMonday, Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned expert on the subject, also saidthe UN was “lagging far behind” its millennium development goals,which aim to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

Sachs, special adviser to the UN secretary general on the MDGs,said that growing global demand for food had been partly caused by“climate shocks” such as floods, usually in developing countrieslike .

One of the remedies, he argued, was for the EU and others toincrease funding of emergency food aid.

“However, there need to be some longer-term solutions as well,” hetold a news conference.

“One way of doing this is to encourage small farmers in placeslike to raise their output. Currently, it is about one tonne perhectare but, ideally, this should be increased to 3.5 tonnes perhectare.”

Apart from raising production levels, Sachs, an American academic,also called for improved research on drought resistance.

“We are currently stuck on focusing on the issue of emergency foodaid but there has to be a multiple response to this problem becauseemergency food aid will, on its own, not solve the problem.

“We also have to address things like the question of structuralsupply.”

Sachs was later due to appear in a discussion on the food crisiswith members of parliament’s development committee and AlvaroBermejo, director of the NGO Action for Global Health.

Spanish Socialist MEP Josep Borrell, who spoke at the same newsconference, said that “the food crisis has taken us all by surprisebecause no-one could predict it”.

“It has not helped that the EU has cut development aid and that weare long way off from meeting the MDGs,” he added.