FAO WARNS GLOBAL FOOD STORES AT RISK

FAO WARNS GLOBAL FOOD STORES AT RISK

(ANSA) - Rome, October 12 - Global food stores will be running dangerously low in 40 years unless the world starts spending more on agriculture, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization Director General Jacques Diouf said Monday.

Opening a high-level expert forum in Rome on how to feed the world in 2050, Diouf said food production would have to increase by 70% in order to feed the estimated 9.1 billion people who will inhabit the earth by mid-century, around 2.3 billion more than today.

''Unless we start making the right decisions now, we risk finding the global pantry in 2050 running dangerously low'', Diouf said.

But the director general cautioned that ''huge advances in agricultural production alone cannot guarantee that everyone will have enough to eat.''

''If people are still suffering from famine, it isn't because not enough food is being produced, but because it isn't being produced by people who live on what they grow''.

Diouf explained that, in order to reduce hunger, 90% of increases in farming yields would have to come from a more efficient use of land and resources by farmers in developing countries.

FAO experts predict, however, that even if governments scale up agricultural investments, there will still be 370 million people suffering from famine in 2050, around 5% of the world's population.

That would nonetheless reflect improvement on the 860 million hungry people estimated by the FAO in 2008.

Outlining major obstacles to boosting food production, Diouf estimated that climate change ''threatens to reduce agricultural output in developing countries by over 20%''.

''At the same time, the agricultural sector faces a shrinking labor force as over 600 million people move from rural areas into large urban centers,'' Diouf said.

FAO experts predict that urbanization will bring 60% of the world's population into cities by 2050, against 49% today.

A report issued by the organization last week put the cost of feeding an extra 2.3 billion people by 2050 at $83 billion USD per year in agricultural investments for developing countries.

The report said that most of the money could be expected from private investors but that public funding would be necessary to provide roads, water, power and sanitation services required for large-scale agriculture.

China and India alone will require one third of those investments, while experts say sub-Saharan Africa could reach food production targets with $11 billion per year.

The High-Level Expert Forum brings over 300 of the world's top food security experts to Rome to examine policy recommendations on feeding the world's hungry.

The two-day summit is expected to lay the groundwork for the World Summit on Food Security in November, which will convene world leaders to address the impact of the global economic crisis on the world's ability to feed itself. Photo: FAO Director General Jacques Diouf