Bush to send farm, aid officials to UN food summit

from Reuters

ASHINGTON, The Bush administration will send its top agriculture and aid officials to a meeting in Rome next week aimed at reversing the global food crisis.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer will lead the U.S. delegation at the June 3-5 meeting, hosted by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.

Schafer said he would urge other countries to join the United States in providing food assistance to the hungry, supporting improvements in global agriculture, and trying to foster regulation and technology to help feed a growing world population in the future.

The United States is the world's largest donor of food aid. But it has turned away from agriculture in recent decades as a mainstay of its international assistance programs, focusing instead on other priorities such as HIV AIDS, democracy and governeance.

Global food prices jumped 43 percent in the year through March, prompting widespread worry about growing malnutrition, poverty, and instability in developing countries where the poor are increasingly unable to put food on the table.

Some 40 heads of state are expected at the FAO meeting, which also will address climate change and bioenergy.

The administration also pledged to press countries to resist the urge to impose bans or restrictions, as some major food exporters have done. Experts believe export bans aggravate the turmoil on world markets.

"Now is the time to lift trade restrictive policy measures," Schafer said in a briefing for reporters on Thursday ahead of the trip.

Henrietta Fore, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the United States believed support for greater farm productivity in the developing world would be part of the solution.