Fighting a Food Crisis (2/2)
What is needed, says another expert, Gerald Nelson at the University of Illinois, is another Green Revolution to increase productivity. This past weekend, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their spring meetings in Washington. The bank president said hunger, malnutrition and food policy were a central issue.
The United Nations World Food Program has appealed for five hundred million dollars by May first. Bob Zoellick said donor countries had promised almost half of the money, but that was not enough.
He said a doubling of food prices over the last three years could push one hundred million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty. And that could hurt future generations.
I.M.F. chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the real problem is a food deficit which will probably last for years. He says it can be argued that there are good reasons, connected to climate change, to try to push countries to substitute some kind of biofuel for oil.
But he says nations have to balance the production of biofuel from food crops with biofuel from nonfood resources. Some of the finance ministers in Washington said using food for fuel is a crime against humanity.
