UNITED NATIONS — Many of the world’s poorest people are unable to get enough food because of soaring prices partly caused by the use of food crops to produce biofuels, the head of the U.N. food agency said.
“We’re seeing more people hungry and at greater numbers than before,” Josette Sheeran, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Program, said this week.
Higher oil prices are contributing to steeper food prices by boosting transportation costs, and severe weather is also hitting many countries and hurting crop output, she said.
“We’re seeing many people being priced out of the food markets for the first time,” said Sheeran, who was at U.N. headquarters for a General Assembly debate on global warming.
“For the world’s most vulnerable, it’s extremely urgent,” she added.
The WFP provides food aid around the globe, and Sheeran said the amount of food the agency can afford to buy for hungry children is down 40 percent from just five years ago.
One of the problems is the drive to use corn, soybeans, sugar cane and other crops to produce biofuels, which are seen as a cleaner and cheaper way to meet soaring energy needs than greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels. That has led to less grain being available for food, driving up prices for basic foods in many countries.
Sheeran said it would help if biofuel makers focused on using plants that aren’t food crops, noting that anything with cellulose can be used for such fuels, citing switchgrass, shrubs and trees as examples.
Instead, she said, “we’re seeing everything be used from cassava to maize to palm oil to wheat — all sorts of (food) crops.”
Using nonfood crops might bring additional benefits, because those plants often “can be grown on soil that couldn’t be used for food,” she added. “This can be a boon for poor farmers around the world. This can help poor countries.”
WFP said Sri Lanka’s government reported a 50 percent price increase for rice and a 62 percent jump for wheat flour last year. It said Benin reported a 100 percent leap in corn prices and 13 percent rises for wheat flour and rice just between July 2007 and January.
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