A U.N. summit on the global food crisis asked rich nations on Wednesday to help "revolutionise" farming in Africa and the developing world to produce more food for nearly 1 billion people facing hunger.
"The global food crisis is a wake-up call for Africa to launch itself into a 'green revolution' which has been over-delayed," Nigerian Agriculture Minister Sayyadi Abba Ruma said on the second day of the three-day summit.
"Every second, a child dies of hunger," he told Reuters. "The time to act is now. Enough rhetoric and more action."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received a petition signed by more than 300,000 people saying there was no time to lose. A draft declaration from 151 countries taking part said: "We commit to eliminating hunger and to securing food for all."
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation called the summit after soaring commodity prices threatened to add 100 million more people to the 850 million already going hungry and caused food riots that threaten government stability in some countries.
The cost of major food commodities has doubled over the last couple of years, with rice, corn and wheat at record highs. The OECD sees prices retreating from their peaks but still up to 50 percent higher in the coming decade.
Ban said the summit was already a success. "There is a clear sense of resolve, shared responsibility and political commitment among member states to making the right policy choices and investing in agriculture in the years to come.
But discord over how much biofuels contribute to the rise in food prices by competing with foodstuff crops threatened to deprive the summit of a forceful final declaration.
"I doubt there will be a positive agreement on biofuels," said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, who spent the summit defending the biofuel industry, as did Brazil's President Luiz Ignazio Lula da Silva.
