Earth Equity News

U.N. Chief Prods Nations to Address Food Crisis in Rome. By Colum Lynch, WashPost, June 2, 2008. "U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [is issuing] an urgent plea to world leaders at a food summit in Rome on Tuesday to immediately suspend trade restrictions, agricultural taxes and other price controls that have helped fuel the highest food prices in 30 years... Ban is seeking to prod more than two dozen nations that have imposed such measures in the current crisis to reverse course... The U.N. will also urge the U.S. and other nations to consider phasing out subsidies for food-based biofuels... and to hammer out a pact with poor countries that would reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies that have harmed poor farmers. The immediate goal... will be to secure a massive flow of assistance to the world's hungriest people and to ensure that subsistence farmers across the globe will have the seeds and fertilizers they need to plant their crops this season. World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick on Thursday announced the lending agency would issue $1.2 billion in financing for agricultural support, including $200 million in grants to help the world's poorest countries, starting with Djibouti, Haiti and Liberia."