[THS] UN Cuts School Children's Meals

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19791.htm

UN Cuts School Children's Meals

By Jeremy Lovell in London

23/04/08 "SMH" -- - A "SILENT tsunami" unleashed by costlier food is
threatening 100million people, the United Nations has warned, revealing
that its World Food Program has begun cutting the provision of school
meals to some of the world's poorest children as the global food-price
crisis worsens.

Aid bodies said there was enough food to go round but the key was to
help the poor afford it, and urged producing nations not to curb exports
to stockpile food at home.

In London, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said Britain would seek
changes to EU biofuels targets if it was shown that planting crops for
fuel was driving up food prices - a day after the bloc stood by its plans
to boost biofuel use.

Britain has also pledged $US900million ($947 million) to help the UN
World Food Program alleviate its immediate problems and address
longer-term solutions to "help put food on the table for nearly a billion
people going hungry across the world".

In a meeting of experts which Mr Brown called on Tuesday to discuss
the crisis, the head of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, said a
"silent tsunami" threatened to plunge more than 100 million people on
every continent into hunger.

"This is the new face of hunger; the millions of people who were not in
the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," she said.

Riots in poor Asian and African countries have followed steep rises in
food prices caused by many factors: rising demand from consumers in
developing countries such as China and India, the effect of climate
change on food production, dearer fuel and the conversion of land to
grow crops for biofuel.

Rice from Thailand has more than doubled in price this year.

Ms Sheeran said artificially created shortages, such as those caused by
countries that have slowed or stopped exports, were worsening the
problem.

The major food exporters Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Egypt and Cambodia
have closed their stocks to safeguard supplies.

"The world has been consuming more than it has been producing for
the past three years, so stocks have been drawn down," Ms Sheeran
said.

"The world knows how to produce food and will do so. But we will have
a couple of challenging years."

Rising prices meant the UN food program was running short of money
to buy food.

A program providing meals for 450,000 Cambodian children has been
suspended and Ms Sheeran said a similar program in Kenya, serving 1.2
million children, was facing cuts of nearly 50per cent.

She said the cutbacks reflected "heartbreaking decisions" and were the
biggest challenges of the program in 45 years.

"The era of cheap food is over," said Rajat Nag, managing director
general of the Asian Development Bank.

He urged Asian governments not to distort markets with export curbs
but use fiscal measures to help the poor.

"We want to temper what we think is a bit of an over-reaction. There is
still enough supply," he said.

Mr Brown raised further doubts about the wisdom of using crops to help
produce fuel, an idea whose recent popularity in the United States and
Europe has been dented by fears that it harms the environment and
makes food dearer.

"We need to look closely at the impact on food prices and the
environment of different production methods and to ensure we are
more selective in our support [for biofuels]," Mr Brown said.