The United Nations’ food agency, FAO, elected Brazil’s Jose Graziano da Silva as its Director General, the first new leader in almost two decades as the world faces near-record food prices that are driving millions into poverty.
Global rice production is expected to touch 476 million tons in 2011, on the back of improved weather conditions, as the influence of La Niña is expected to neutralize by June, United Nation’s body FAO said.
The inflation for food items in Latin America and the Caribbean reached 7.4% in May, according to FAO. The sharp rise in the regional prices was attributed to an even sharper increase in food prices which on a world wide basis rose 37% in May compared to world food prices in May 2010, the FAO said in a report from its regional headquarters in Chile.
Brazilian and Spanish candidates are leading the field for the Sunday June 26 upcoming election for the next head of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, the UN agency leading the struggle against global hunger.
World food prices that rose 37% in a year, driving 44 million more people into poverty, are a “plague” that needs action from world leaders now, said French President Nicolas Sarkozy during the two-day Group of 20 agriculture ministers in Paris.
Brazil is poised to overtake the United States for the first time ever, as the world’s leading exporter of chicken, with a third of global trade, according to the latest statistics from FAO released this week.
Citing dwindling stocks and only small production increases for the majority of crops, a new United Nations report released Wednesday world food prices are likely to remain high for the rest of this year and into 2012.
The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) declared rinderpest, one of the deadliest diseases of cattle and of several other animal species, eradicated from the surface of the earth.
Food inflation in Latin America and the Caribbean decreased to 1.9% during the first quarter of this year according to a report from the regional office from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, released Monday.
Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tons — gets lost or wasted, according to an FAO-commissioned study.