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ROME : Dozens of farmers' groups kicked off a forum in Rome on Sunday to coincide with the UN food agency's summit on food security with an impassioned plea for an overhaul of world agricultural policies.
"We have empty plates and we have empty policies," said Paul Nicholson of La Via Campesina, an international farmers' movement.
"Let us protect and defend a farming system that feeds the world and cools the planet," he said at an open-air news conference held across the street from the Rome headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
The FAO is holding a summit from Tuesday to Thursday at which world leaders will discuss food security as runaway prices have sparked riots across the world.
"On the eve of the High-Level Conference on World Food Security in Rome, farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples and non-governmental organisations have declared a People's State of Emergency," forum organisers said in a statement.
"Free trade policies have seriously damaged the food system over time, leading to the food crisis that we're facing today," said Maryam Rahmanian of Iran's Centre for Sustainable Development.
Alvaro Santin, representing the Movement of Landless Brazilians, said: "We reject the call of the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation for further liberalisation of international trade.
"These very policies have flooded our countries with cheap food, undermined our food sovereignty and devastated our ability to produce food for ourselves."
Rahmanian, who is on the forum's steering committee, told AFP: "The UN doesn't have anything new to say. It's obscene that the food crisis is being used to push stronger on policies" promoting large-scale agriculture, biofuels and the use of GMOs and pesticides.
"There's been a huge occupation of the FAO by American interests," she charged.
Meeting with journalists on Sunday, the administrator of the US aid agency USAID, Henrietta Ford, spoke of a "second green revolution" for developing countries that would emphasise public-private partnerships.
"Collaboration between private sectors, donors, nonprofit organisations, foundations such as the Gates Foundation ... will provide a win-win scenario for business (and) farmers," she said.
Meanwhile Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Rome for the FAO summit, on Sunday rejected claims that biofuels made from sugar cane are contributing to the global food crisis.
Brazil is the world's number-two producer of biofuels, which have been widely criticised as exacerbating food shortages and diverting crops away from traditional food uses.
Lula said that biofuels from sugar cane -- such as that produced in Brazil -- "is not a threat to food production" although he denounced those sourced from corn and wheat.
The UN's independent expert on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, last month joined the growing chorus accusing biofuels -- until recently cast as a miracle alternative to polluting fossil fuels -- of usurping arable land and distorting world food prices.
- AFP /ls
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