The latest in a series of fairly fruitless international gatherings ends today in Rome, as the United Nations food security summit draws to a halt amid a plethora of platitudes about feeding the poor.
The world is currently in what is essentially a pause in a continuing food crisis. Most of the elements that produced the food price spikes in 2007 and 2008 are still there: a trade system marred by protectionism; production incentives distorted by subsidies; artificial demand for biofuels competing with food production; low agricultural productivity in the poorest regions, especially Africa; and an emergency food aid system that gets humanitarian relief too slowly to the locus of famine.
