Leading article: The world ignores these farmers at its peril

It is appropriate that participants at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation summit, gathering in Rome today, will be concentrating on the effect of soaring food prices on the developing world. Food prices are pushing up shopping bills in the rich world too. But in poor nations the spiralling cost of sustenance has become a matter of life and death. Some 800 million people were malnourished even before the present food price spike. Now the world is perilously close to witnessing an epidemic of hunger.

It is true that the prices of wheat, rice and pork have fallen back in recent months. But they are still at socially destabilising levels. Some point out that there are winners in the developing countries. And it is true that farmers and landowners are benefiting from higher prices. But they are vastly outnumbered by the urban losers. It is important to bear in mind that more humans now live in cities than the countryside

Some of the causes of high prices – world population growth, the changing diets of the China and India, rising fuel prices – are forces that governments can only hope to manage, rather than reverse. The same is true, to some extent, of the recent production-impeding droughts brought about by climate change. But there are certainly things that governments can do to make a difference.

Bio-fuel production is having an intense impact on global food prices, taking productive land out of circulation for the cultivation of fuel. The European Union and the United States are the worst offenders in this respect. The diversion of maize from international markets accounts for around one-third of the international price increase. There should be a moratorium on bio-fuel subsidies until the effects on global food prices can be better contained.

Distorted global trade patterns, misplaced subsidies and the consequent stunting of the agricultural sector in the developing world are also heavily to blame for this crisis. An internal report by the World Bank concluded last year that the organisation has neglected farming in sub-Saharan Africa. Its policy has, instead, been to encourage populations away from the land and into the cities. It has also forced poor nations to liberalise their economies prematurely, again damaging their agricultural sectors.

At the root of the problem is the fact that poor farmers are not playing on a level global playing field. In 2006, £2bn was spent on agricultural development in the poor world. Compare that with the £12.5bn spent worldwide that year on subsidies to farmers in the developed world. Bunging cash to farmers in Europe, the US and Japan for political reasons might just be defensible if it had no global repercussions. But it does. And they are dire. Subsidised surplus produce often ends up dumped on African and developing nation markets. Local producers have been systematically undercut and pushed out of business.

The course of action for the world's governments should be plain. What is required is heavy international investment in developing world agriculture (to rectify a historic imbalance) and a dismantling of all production subsidies to farmers in the rich world. But even that will not solve the immediate crisis. Because of the inevitable decrease in its purchasing power, the UN's World Food Programme needs another $500m to fill a shortfall in its emergency supplies. Those supplies are likely to be increasingly drawn upon in the coming years.

The task of adjusting to the end of the era of cheap food will be the work of decades. But the delegates in Rome must turn their attention, before anything else, to ensuring that the global poor do not starve today.

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