Higher food prices risk wiping out progress towards reducing poverty and, if allowed to escalate, could hurt global growth and security, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.
Opening a UN trade and development conference in Ghana, Ban pledged to use the full force of the world body he heads to tackle the price rises, which threaten to increase hunger and poverty and have already sparked food riots in Asia and Africa.
"I will immediately establish a high-powered task force comprised of eminent experts and leading authorities to address this issue," he said.
The UN head warned the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting that huge increases in prices of food staples like cereals since last year could erase progress made towards UN-set goals of halving world poverty by 2015.
"The problem of global food prices could mean seven lost years ... for the Millennium Development Goals," he said. "We risk being set back to square one," Ban said.
He noted that several countries had moved to try to offset the food squeeze by barring exports of rice and wheat, or introducing incentives for easier imports of foodstuffs.
"This threatens to distort international trade and exacerbate shortages," he said. "If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others ... and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world."
UNCTAD is meeting in Ghana in West Africa, one of the world's poorest regions whose people are feeling the squeeze of the soaring food prices caused by factors including poor harvests, record fuel prices and tight international supplies.
The United Nations' food envoy Jean Ziegler told an Austrian newspaper today that global food price rises are leading to "silent mass murder" and commodities markets have brought "horror" to the world.
Mr Ziegler told Kurier am Sonntag that growth in biofuels, speculation on commodities markets and European Union export subsidies mean the West is responsible for mass starvation in poorer countries.
He said he was bound to highlight the "madness" of people who think that hunger is down to fate, and blamed globalisation for "monopolising the riches of the earth".
Mr Ziegler said he believed that one day starving people could rise up against their persecutors. "It's just as possible as the French Revolution was," he said.