Frankrijk roept EU op voedselprijzen aan te pakken (en)
France is to suggest the European Union promote more investment in farming as a response to the current rapid food price rises.
French agriculture minister Michel Barnier is due to press for a coordinated response to the issue at today's (14 April) meeting with his EU counterparts in Luxembourg, and urge them to develop a "European initiative on food security" for the world, AFP reports.
France - due to take over from Slovenia at the EU's helm in July - is suggesting that the EU's agriculture policy be directed back to its original purpose, the production of food, rather than shifting aid from farm production to environmentally-friendly projects.
Gradually reducing farm subsidies, of which the French are still the biggest beneficiaries, and re-focussing the common agriculture policy (CAP) have been the two key ideas featuring in Europe's debate over the future of the controversial farm package.
Some concrete proposals tackling the issue as part of the so called "CAP health-check" are due to be tabled by the European Commission in the coming weeks and later decided on by the bloc's member states during the French presidency.
Given the early signals by Mr Barnier, the discussion looks likely to be highly influenced by the current tense situation where a number of developing countries, such as Haiti, Egypt and the Philippines and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, are facing social unrest due to soaring food prices.
Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have urged western powers to act swiftly to prevent severe consequences from the gloomy trends on the world's food markets, with the IMF partly blaming it on the increased global interest in biofuels.
According to the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the food-price problem could also create trade imbalances that would affect major advanced economies, "so it is not only a humanitarian question," he said over the weekend.
If the price spike continues, "thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for the whole of their lives," Mr Strauss-Kahn added.
In a similar tone, World Bank President Robert Zoellick remarked over the weekend that while people in the US and Europe have been worried "about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it's getting more and more difficult every day."