Canada and Latin American countries led an assault against the US at the World Food Summit in Rome today, saying Washington's farm subsidies posed an obstacle to the fight against global hunger.
Canadian Agriculture Minister Mr Lyle Vanclief said the US farm bill would hurt not only Canadian farmers but also those of developing nations.
And he also criticised European Union farm policies.
"The US farm bill and higher European Union subsidies distort world commodity markets and hinder the capacity of developing nations to participate actively in this system," said Mr Vanclief, who was flanked at a news conference by Argentina's agriculture minister Mr Rafael Delpech, Brazil's Mr Vincius Pratini de Moraes and Uruguay's Mr Gonzalo Gonzales.
The UN World Food Summit has drawn leaders of officials from more than 180 states to Rome but has exposed sharp differences between the rich north and developing south over how to tackle global hunger.
Mr Vanclief was speaking as African leaders from 15 nations met in a closed session for a "summit within a summit" centering on specific problems the continent is facing in the fight against hunger.
The leaders of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) were discussing how to gain more support from industrialised nations for the new African development initiative, which pledges good governance in African countries in exchange for foreign investment and development assistance.
"They will discuss how to gear up for the Group of Eight summit," Nigeria's Mr Isaac Aluko-Olokun, who chairs the NEPAD steering committee said.
The summit, which has renewed a pledge to halve the number of the world's 800 million hungry people by 2015, heard an appeal by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) to save the lives of 13 million southern Africans in the immediate future.
WFP chief Mr James T. Morris told a news conference on the sidelines of the summit that six southern African states faced severe drought and flooding, imperiling 13 million people.
"We have a very, very serious matter in front of us," said Mr Morris. "This is the largest single food crisis in the world today," he said, appealing for 1.3 million metric tonnes of emergency food aid for Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
African leaders in particular have voiced sharp disapproval of wealthy nations' trade tariffs, which Africans say are hindering developing countries' efforts to trade their way out of hunger and poverty.
AFP