Ban Ki-Moon (L) meets with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
© AFP Tiziana Fabi

ROME (AFP) - "For years, falling food prices and rising production lulled the world into complacency," Ban told the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

"Governments put off hard decisions and overlooked the need to invest in agriculture," Ban said at IFAD's new Rome headquarters on the eve of the three-day Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) summit.

"Today, we are literally paying the price," he said.

"If not handled properly, this issue could trigger a cascade of other crises -- affecting economic growth, social progress, and even political security around the world," Ban warned.

Participants at the High-Level Conference on World Food Security will discuss short-term solutions as well as new strategies to deal with the effects of global warming, growing demand for biofuels and a crumbling agriculture sector in much of the developing world.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in London that Tokyo would use the outcome of the Rome summit to focus debate at a Group of Eight summit it is hosting in July.

"This is a multi-faceted problem that calls for multi-faceted response," Fukuda said. "We would like to build on the outcome of (the Rome) meeting and engage ... at the G8 on the various complex factors behind rising food prices" worldwide.

Ahead of the summit, battle lines were being drawn over the causes of the crisis.

Oxfam protestors
© AFP Tiziana Fabi

The humanitarian charity Oxfam staged a protest on Monday to dramatise the effects of the rising use of biofuels, with three actors dressed as ears of corn being strangled by a petrol pump hose.

"We're hoping for structural solutions to a problem that has gone on for at least 20 years, that of finding a sustainable model of agricultural production," local Oxfam official Farida Chapman told AFP.

But Oxfam stresses that European and North American biofuel policies are only one of several factors causing higher food prices.

Estimates vary on the extent to which demand for biofuels has pushed up food prices.

The International Food Policy Research Institute, based in Washington, estimates that it accounts for 30 percent of the increase, the International Monetary Fund puts the figure at 15 percent, while the US Agriculture Department says it is under three percent.

"Really the driving factor (behind soaring food prices) is energy and increased consumption," US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer told a news conference in Rome on Monday.

Three of the world's largest biofuels associations addressed a letter to the summit warning against "being distracted by the manufactured hysteria surrounding the limited role biofuels play."

Robert Mugabe
© AFP/File Desmond Kwande

The letter co-signed by the US Renewable Fuels Association and its Canadian and European counterparts said: "Most everyone understands there are multiple causes for the rapid rise in world food prices.

"These include weather events such as droughts and destructive storms, changing dietary habits, skyrocketing oil and fuel prices, commodity speculators, the declining value of the US dollar, and failed international agricultural policies."

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was to hold a news conference here on Tuesday, argues that the problem lies in poor agricultural and distribution models.

"It is not ethanol that is causing food prices to rise, because Brazil, which produces more biofuel, also produces more food," he has said.

Brazil's use of sugarcane for biofuel does not replace food crops, its supporters argue, whereas the US use of corn to make its ethanol does.

On Sunday, dozens of non-governmental organisations and small farmers' groups opened an alternative forum to coincide with the FAO summit.

Meanwhile the planned attendance of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe sparked condemnation from Australia and Britain.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith called Mugabe's presence in Rome "obscene," saying: "This is the person who has presided over the starvation of his people. This is the person who has used food aid in a politically motivated way."

In London, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman said: "We think it's particularly unfortunate that (Mugabe) has decided to attend this meeting."

©AFP