WTO PASCAL LAMY: TRADE IS PART OF THE SOLUTION, NOT THE PROBLEM

Washington, January 24- Director-General Pascal Lamy, in his opening address to the Berlin Agriculture Ministers’ Summit, said that “trade plays or can play a better role in addressing the rise in food prices and tackling food insecurity. Trade is part of the solution, and not part of the problem.” In his speech, he also emphasized that “World food consumption is driven by three principal long-term, structural, factors as you know: income growth rates, population growth rates and dietary preferences.

The most extraordinary development of our times, of course, is that food consumption is also driven by energy production. In pumping biofuels into our tanks, we are in fact pumping corn, sugarcane, and other foods into our transportation systems. It is, of course, a matter of debate as to whether biofuels are transitory or structural, and will very much depend on how experimental biofuels policies across the globe fare, and the public's reaction to them.

Globally, we know that income is rising and will continue to rise, although unevenly. With rising incomes comes rising demand. Population growth rates, on the other hand, have been falling for almost 30 years now, and the world has certainly passed its peak population growth rate of the late 1960s. But the absolute rise in population remains.” In conclusion, Lamysaid that we all must work together and “brainstorm” to diagnose the problem.

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