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H16912

Headlines : Human Rights

Summary:

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme met with European Union officials yesterday and reported that high food prices were exacerbating hunger among the world’s poor. She predicted widespread food riots, and ascribed the catastrophe to soaring oil and energy prices, the effects of climate change, growing demand from countries such as India and China and use of crops to produce biofuels. She suggests using more land for agriculture at the expense of biofuel production. Let’s see how many governments enforce this practical and straightforward measure.

[Posted By Watson]

By Darren Ennis
Republished from Reuters

Biofuel or Food

Record high food prices and resulting inflation are set to continue until at least 2010, fuelling a “new hunger” across the globe and anarchy on the streets of poorer nations, a top U.N. official said.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme, said the world’s economy “has now entered a perfect storm for the world’s hungry” caused by high oil and food prices and low food stocks.

“Our assessment is that the current level will continue for the next few years … in fact rise in 2008, 2009 and probably at least until 2010,” she said on a visit to Brussels on Thursday where she met European Union officials.

Her visit came on a day that oil, gold and copper surged to record highs as investors fleeing a weak dollar piled into commodities.

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