Food Summit in Rome Ends with Calls for Boosting Farm Aid to Developing Countries. By Karl Maier, Bloomberg, June 6, 2008. "World leaders overcame disputes over biofuels and last-minute objections by Argentina, pledging to boost spending on agriculture in developing countries and ease trade restrictions to counter hunger and soaring food prices. Delegates from 181 nations at a UN-sponsored Food Security Summit in Rome closed a three-day meeting late yesterday with promises to push the United Nations' 12-year-old pledge to halve the number of malnourished people, now 860 million, by 2015 and help farmers from developing countries produce for international markets... Debate over biofuels was the focus of the much of the discord, resulting in a compromise in the declaration that dropped calls for more controls... UN officials called the meeting a success for focusing attention on food prices ahead of a meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight nations in Japan next month. Other participants were more skeptical, saying the discussions resulted in an essentially meaningless statement. 'These are political ceremonies and after that, nothing is done,' said Rabelais Yankam Njomou, an agricultural economist at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Cameroon. 'I don't want to say that this is a waste of time, but it is near that, it is not far from a waste of time.'"
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