and says side lost and russian republic of dagestan. also hold line between downing street on the ground and one of the outcomes of the meeting between russia's foreign minister and his british counterpart in london is hope to mark the new improvement in relations which have cooled since the death of former federal security service agent and examine london in two thousand and six. while several european national leaders say multiculturalism has failed and all straight activist says she has been tried and found guilty people saying much the same thing in her criticism of muslims of their religion this comes as new migrants freed their troubled countries in search of stability and security. food prices surged to an all time high in trying to read twenty and the number of undernourished people is said to hit one debate because up next hosted by peta about and he also what's causing the global food crisis and what can be done.

if you can. follow in welcome to cross not computable is the world facing a serious and sustained food crisis prices are at all time highs and tens of millions of people are joining the dinner table every year and all of this is reflected in some of the political upheaval seen around the world is food security only for the few. and you can. start.

to discuss what is happening in the world of food i'm joined by deborah don't in london she is director of the world development movement also in london we have caroline hurford she's a u.k. spokesperson for the world food program and in warsaw we cross the patrick young he is to executive director at devi advisors and another member of our cross talk team yell on the hunger all right folks crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want deborah i'd like to go to you there is there's a lot of facts out there but what does it all mean coffee prices are thirteen year high sugar prices at a thirty one year high we did in corner a very high very high levels as well and you know there are three reasons i keep coming across it is a natural growth of population ok we've that's been around for a long time others will point to profiteering and speculation and i guess no one can deny there's a lot of extreme weather out there so is what reason would you in

a hierarchy explain why we have such high prices for food around the world. i mean we would say there are certainly long term trends that will lead to higher food prices climate change biofuels those are those are big factors we've had floods this year in places like sri lanka but we would actually point to the spikes that we're seeing that cause say a seventy percent rise in the price of wheat which is you know directly impacted on the egyptian revolution that's directly related to speculation by traders who ten twenty years ago weren't actually trading in the sector ok well if i could stay with you deborah i'd like to quote something the euro to you about a year ago people die from hunger while the banks make a killing off from betting on food would you say that she says a possible now is when when you wrote the article your ago it's even it's even more of political now actually so i mean what happened after the subprime mortgage which

effectively collapse the global economy all the traders like goldman sachs and other speculative traders poor and hot money into the and into into commodity markets driving up the prices and it's bore no relation whatsoever to the fundamentals of supply and demand so food prices are actually directly related to oil prices and a lot of these prices are coming out of the index fund so these are composite funds so if the price of oil is going up the price of wheat goes up even if there's been no change and we supply and it's having a massive impact as governments like the u.k. government and like the u.s. government have chosen to put money to prop up their markets quantitative easing this is put more speculative money into the market and traders need somewhere for it to go and they're just pouring it rapidly and even more so into these commodity markets and you know as they are what the problem is it's just like any asset bubble when you see the price rise you put your money in there because you want to

place your bets on on the price going ever higher and it's just got hugely destabilizing. so the world economy patrick if i can go to you can the world food order that we have right now and if we throw in this element of speculation is it sustainable and just one simple question is there a nuff food out there is the supply and the price is there an equilibrium is that we seeing just the market forces in play. look absolutely peter there is a crisis and ultimately there is going to have to be a change in the way that food is produced but let me just come back on what deborah has said because to be quite honest it's economic mumbo jumbo of the sort that we get from non-governmental organizations who simply are trying to cover their own backsides for their inability to manage to actually deliver food to people's tables the issue here it's got nothing to do with speculation the issue has got nothing to do with these index funds and so on that she talks about yes they may well be active participants in the market but the simple fact is that if you look at food per se i mean take for example onions the price of onions is managed to go up by

a vast amount in recent times in india it collapsed recently by seventy percent because the government produced more supply it's actually a true truth of the market that in fact there are no futures contracts for example in the united states of america the world's greatest capital market on onions so the idea that this is all the failure of the market is actually just wrong the difficulty we have is that governments are trying to spend too much of their time and money and effort to control farming and as we all know that didn't work for stalin when he collectivized the farms and it's not going to work not we need larger farms we need better organization we need better use of technology and ultimately that will feed the world without any problem whatsoever even as we see a large and increasing population what do you think about this carolina mean i asked if the current status quo is sustainable because if we continue to see these price increases and already on this program we have a variety of interpretations of why this is happening but is the current situation sustainable because we've seen the political effect all through north africa and

probably will continue to see the knock on effect of political turmoil because of high food prices. well indeed and the world food program which is responsible for feeding approximately one hundred million of the world's hungry but that's only a tenth of the nine hundred twenty five million who are hungry now according to the f.a.a. oh this this affects us very much because over half of our budget is in cash and we need to to buy the food commodities to put in the food basket to give to those people so clearly we can buy less food as our donor dollar is stretched and there are more people who are hungry and therefore come into our domain. if i go back to me i think the feeding the world's poor is obviously when you know when people are starving there is the obvious thing you want to do but we need to change tracks and maybe just help people grow food for themselves here because we've seen with the

you know i'm not in it you know this anti globalist fanatic type person but i mean we see these trends in the in every culture markets around the world were fewer and fewer people going to countries going to actually feed themselves in the become much more dependent on others and that that trend needs reverse expression if you're helping to feed people when they can't they're spending their time trying to be bad by someone else instead of growing their own food. this i mean there's a couple of issues here if i can just come back on on what the other speaker said in terms of this being n.-g. o. mumbojumbo. you know it's painfully obvious actually you know up from the depression era nine hundred thirty s. up until markets were deregulated we had fairly stable food prices that reply that responded quite clearly to supply and demand signals the types of volatility we're getting is directly related to what's happening in futures markets with regards to your issue about countries being vulnerable i'll give you

a case in point malawi in the around two thousand and one two thousand and two is facing severe food crises and they've had constant food prices for many years there's no doubting that there are fundamental problems in them allowing market they were encouraged by the world bank and the i.m.f. to drop subsidies for local farmers to produce for export and they became incredibly vulnerable and much more vulnerable to famine finally in two thousand and five two thousand and six they said never mind we're not going to do that anymore you know after this was after things like corn prices shot up by four hundred percent they said we're going to subsidize our local farmers and we're going to prioritize local food production and that meant when the price crisis of two thousand and seven two thousand and eight came around they were vulnerable anymore to these rising commodity prices and in fact were able not only to feed their own population but those in the surrounding area there is a problem with reducing deregulating both in financial markets and making sure

there are no trade barriers at all because what happens is countries that can't feed their own people if you do get into a crisis. what about the road just already that is going to do you very you are i mean are you very much i mean the i'm really sorry but i mean i fundamentally disagree with deborah i mean she can pick out one small african nation argue that that's the key. yes of the world and she talks about the idea that since you know the great depression we had no bit no problems with farming in this the other think of the tens of millions of russians and chinese people who starved to death under communism i'm sorry that's absolute nonsense the west may have been ok for a certain period of time but a politically that was also not long enough to see a complete cycle the whole point about this actually peter is the fact that the technology is not good enough the organization is not good enough and ultimately governmental organizations are not in a position to manage to organize national agriculture if we look at the fact of something like onions the price of onions recently in new delhi was more expensive

than the price of onions in a tesco supermarket in the u.k. why is that because of inefficiencies in the market with too many intermediaries a disorganization too much government influence the case is the same in egypt i mean deborah talked about the fact that mubarak was definitely pushed from power partly because of rising food prices absolutely correct but the fact of the matter is that tomatoes a staple product of egypt to give but one example fifty percent of them actually end up perishing between where they are grown in egypt and when they actually manage to get to the consumer those are the efficiencies that are wrong it's got nothing to do with speculators in fact what deborah should be doing is looking at hard to manage to reappraise the use of farm resources to add technology and i'm not even getting into genetically modified organisms here simply using better technology and better organization to create better farming and that will feed the world it's not difficult and rather than beating up on the capitalists and trying to go back to the era of stalin we would be much much better served by actually having

a sensible dialogue that works forward in order to feed the world as the world food program are trying to do right caroline you work on the ground we've just heard deborah we've heard patrick where do you stand on all this. well essentially as a totally voluntarily funded organization we are very much dependent on what are called commodities cost and i just like to put in a little word in facts to russia by the way who imposed a week in a way to export ban last year following their dreadfully hot summer and all the fires and everything but fortunately humanitarian aid is exempt from that so we'd like to thank russia very much because that so much of our wheat does actually come from the black sea region because so much of our so many of our beneficiaries are in sub-saharan africa but going i can't really join in the polemic with the others but i would say that essentially we have what i would call an unholy trinity of the rising food prices the a the emergency is the weather emergencies and of course the political instability

and if you compare now with two thousand and eight when we had our last food crisis when we were obliged to put out to our donors seeking extra money so that we could just continue to feed one hundred million people a year they came back very generously to us but i don't want to equate this year with that crisis two years ago until we've seen exactly what the weather patterns do and what are our best and we have to jump in here after a short break we'll continue our discussion on the global food situation today are . you. still. want.

our coffee shop we are going to come back. we'll have a rally we'll sell lots of beer low wrong wrong the state will wear uniforms that little damage is down the black man but very little damming the white. and they are the key to our problem are already.

knew her. sister street still keeps its secrets but it's time to feel that the soviet finds the key to the true light comes on to. wealthy british. time. the market. has come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for. a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on r g. twenty.

and. welcome back to cross talk i'm peter lavelle remind you we're talking about high food prices around the world. but first let's have a look at russia's spending patterns for buying food. the vicious circle again and again the global food situation does not look promising with harvests down in many places around the world and transportation becoming more expensive and the price of food is increasing as well the public opinion agency in nevada senate conducted a research to assess russians purchasing power for food the overwhelming majority of russians ninety two percent say they don't experience problems in buying basic foodstuffs and for only eight percent of buying food is problematic still many

experts say the situation in iran food prices will continue to worsen. ok there's no denying the fact that food is a commodity and you can make money off of it ok the producers and vester is eccentric cetera to what degree it's helpful to the world economy is up to opinion we've seen on this program here but also it's a very political thing at the end of the day food security is determined by each individual country and look let's face it politicians don't want to be thrown out of power because food is too expensive here deborah fine go to you how do we square all of those issues here because they're all they're not always on the same page rarely are they on the same page you people want to make money off of food that's why they do it ok not just because it's nice and because people want to eat and politicians don't want to make sure that they're protected lot of them or even if you're not elected we saw mubarak's case how do we square the circle there because how can we have an international food policy i mean the first thing actually and in

my mind would be to look at all of the pieces of the puzzle i don't disagree that there are distribution problems in some country if you actually look at supply versus demand we have enough food to feed the world so a lot of the problems do come down to how do we get the food to people and politically you know you need it in my mind you need to get the financial markets out of it so you can deal with some of those for a fun. mentals of supply and demand i mean what happens when there are these incredible spikes of seventy percent one hundred fifty percent depending on the commodity you know that may be fine for me sitting here in london i don't feel a big impact on that but for poor farmers who are looking at market signals and saying what do i do do i plant to increase production what happened in two thousand and seven two thousand and eight developing country farmers tried to do that and then of course the next year the price collapse because of the volatility in

financial markets so you can't come up with a global food solution until you get those those rogue traders really out of the business now then you have to look at actually what what do we have to take care of first do we look at food as a priority or trade as a priority and trade and and commodification financialization of food seems to have become more important than actually feeding people and people meeting their needs so they're you know the bottom billion basically doesn't have their needs met their needs met because we're so concerned about the big traders making making their fast buck ok patrick if i go to you again if we do if you don't want to go down the path of speculation that's ok but the whole mechanism of the food industry here getting it to market as you pointed out there's just simply too many intermediaries involved in all of this and it kind of loses the point. i mean there's two things i think you're absolutely right peter first of all we far too many intermediaries in the position and that's always what happens when we have not a problem of rogue traders because that's not the issue at all i'm sorry i totally

take issue with deborah the problem we have is rude bureaucrats that are endlessly adding extra layers of bureaucracy to try and justify their own budgets and the whole thing the difficulty here is peter it's not a question of a simple sort of on one side we have incredible huge agri traders or speculators or whatever we're talking about the issue is you need capital to manage to run an agricultural market properly and when the government comes in and tries to do something it ultimately drives that sort of capital out of the market all powerful is speculative in some way shape or form even when we go and buy a mortgage that speculation the fact of the matter is peter that what we're looking at right now is getting people to invest in our great cultural technology i don't agree with the idea of a global solution that's of bureaucrats in irvine or what we need is grind up operation we need sensible laws and rules to allow people to invest in land and then we have a huge opportunity because deborah rightly says we already have enough food to feed the world and actually we have a great deal of land line follow

a great deal of it in fact actually east of where i'm sitting in warsaw and west of where you're sitting in moscow alone peter that can be used productively to grow more crops and better. i definitely believe russia is going to turn into a huge agricultural state and once they get their act together and it's already happening deborah you want to jump in. i just wanted to jump in on that point so we need more land available to production you know and forgive me for keeping going back to the speculative end of it we also have a number of speculators going into land grabbing holding on to land not enabling it to be productive waiting for the prices to go up you know it is a problem we can't ignore the issue and i'm very sorry the point about that is i think i disagree with you in terms of there may be some people who are holding onto a lot but the truth of the matter is that people are not going to buy land and they're not seek to get the you golf it's active moments when no one so therefore people who are buying you are going to be looking at farming it getting to you from

that and using better technology because one of the biggest problems in emerging markets at the moment throughout the east is the fact that the technology on the land is very poor and that's further calls in crop yields to be much lower ok carolina me it must person that works on the ground it just must be hard braking for you we just turn on this program and we all agree there is enough food out there why it is getting more and more expensive there are different interpretations but nonetheless i mean you see the food you see where it needs to go and it doesn't always happen that must be what makes your job most difficult absolutely because as i think it's already been said by one of the other speakers it's always the poor who bear the brunt of these high food prices because essentially they are spending so much more of their average income on food and that's why you've got these kind of disturbances going on right now in the middle east and that's what's making governments so nervous because if they can't maintain the subsidies for food like

bread saying in egypt a staple then obviously they're going to have very angry populations and hungry people either they have a options to migrate revolt or die and i'm afraid that's what we've been saying but if i just go back to i think what patrick was saying there is this issue of land ten. and one of the things that the world food program has been trying to do is to help small holder farmers and particularly women because most of the farm is in africa are women because if we can persuade them to grow just that little bit more little bit of surplus so that they're not only feeding their own farmers but they've got a little bit left over to sell to w.s.p. . and then we can get things really going small scale from the roots up as it were but helping nonetheless and some of the other issues which w. of p. is trying to raise is the possibility of food reserves now this is something that bob sell it for instance of the world bank has suggested that perhaps the world food program could manage that food reserves where essentially you have but perhaps

like our emergency that goes around the world whenever there's a crisis somewhere we've got food there ready and able to distribute you know and i to ask all of you i mean one thing we haven't talked about here beyond the extreme weather that is something that is you can't really account for but i suppose since it's been with this for a while probably stay with this planet change climate change right with extreme weather but we also have another element here with something that i find really fascinating is the growing middle classes in the world we look at the bric countries and the chinese consume more meat than any other country in the world and this is one thing that is is the new mix here is because you have people that want better higher more in higher quality food and deborah if i get and a lot of people see that and it's a good way to make some money because there's a good investment when you see these growing middle classes that have changing their diet because they're richer. i think it's a bit of a fallacy that that's

a big issue yes of course you know people are over the long run we do have rising middle classes but actually in china for example if you look at the data on on increasing consumption down to me there wasn't any during the two thousand and seven two thousand and eight crisis so i think that argument is a little bit leading us a bit over the. it's definitely going to be a long term deficit i mean these are what we have to separate or you know the short term volatility that doesn't enable us to plan properly and the long term trends so what we're seeing right now is about short term crises which lead to incredible destabilization and short term crisis lead to long term nourishment populations what you're talking about and rising middle classes is a longer term issue but you know going back to two production increasing production versus the supply issue we have enough food and we have the ability to feed the

rising population and aspirations of middle classes what we need to do is get better at it and i would really support what carillon is doing in terms of focusing on small holder production we keep saying technology and intensive agribusiness and so on but actually small holders do feed the world and can feed the world and we should be supporting smallholder production which we've been disinvesting from for the last twenty years and we need to go back to supporting that when you think about that magic i mean going from the bottom up i mean more being more self-sufficient and feeding your own population first and then maybe using the surplus for profit there we've got. going to go back to the beginning of the program is the status quo sustainable maybe we should be looking in that direction . peter the status quo is absolutely not sustainable because there are far too many bureaucrats that are ruining the system in the world for food program and caroline in particular should become mended for what they're doing the whole idea of small tenant farming is a great idea if you look at what's been happening in india they've actually been

encouraging small indian farmers to use the exchanges like the multi commodity exchange in the national commodity derivatives exchange in order to hedge their production and overnight you can turn someone into somebody who was previously a farmer on the edge into someone who actually has a budget because they know what they're going to achieve for their crop at the end of the day this endless talk about short term volatility is actually a nonsense because we're not getting on with solving the problem you see we're trying to justify certain aspects of the chin i think the bottom up approach is great that's why we've always been supporters of micro finance and it's a wonderful idea because the whole concept is peter we want everyone to have their stake in managing to move their future forward this is not just a discussion about major agri business and i i never wanted to suggest that it was so and at the same time we need a revolution the technology is there the ability is there to grow and we can actually manage to feed everybody well thank you very much from my panel here for this discussion then and i think we came to only one conclusion that everyone likes

to the world food program many thanks to my guests today in warsaw and london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember a process. if you want to. see official t.m. placation. i pod touch from the dumpster. what. video on demand. and streets in the palm of your.

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