Hasan Suroor

A "Marie Antoinette moment'? Or much ado about nothing?

Either way it had all the trappings of a perfect media storm with Prince Charles bang at the centre of it. He was dubbed a "modern Marie Antoinette' after his remarks in a newspaper interview recently were interpreted as effectively tellin g people to eat organic food when, thanks to rising prices, they are struggling to afford Pot Noodle.

A six-day international symposium on 'Climate Change and Food Security in South Asia' will begin in the city tomorrow.

Dhaka University and Ohio State University of the USA, in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (Fao) and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (Escap) will jointly organise the symposium.

Some 70 foreign and 200 local experts mainly from Dhaka University and Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) will take part in the symposium.

In the backdrop of sluggish progress in cooperation among South Asian nations, the World Bank (WB) is now persuading for specific projects to strengthen regional collaboration in energy, transport, food security and other sectors.

The WB has already started a technical study on different projects and their feasibility to ascertain how those can benefit the region through these sectors.

The race by food-importing countries to secure farmland overseas to improve their food security risks creating a "neo-colonial' system, the United Nations' top agriculture official has cautioned.

The warning by Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, comes as countries from Saudi Arabia to China plan to lease vast tracts of land in Africa and Asia to grow crops and ship them back to their markets.

Saudi Arabia has no permanent rivers or lakes. Rainfall is low and unreliable. Cereals can be cultivated only through expensive projects that deplete underground reservoirs. Dairy cattle must be cooled with fans and machines that spray them with water mists. This is not, in short, a nation that would normally be associated with large-scale agriculture.

A comprehensive national agriculture policy shall have to be formulated for increasing crops production and ensuring food security, experts at a view exchange meeting said yesterday.

They also said that all political parties should reach a consensus for the implementation of the agriculture policy.

Farmers' representatives from south Asian countries at the inaugural session of a four-day meeting yesterday demanded duty and quota free access of their agricultural products to developed nations to ensure food security in the region.

Farmers who work for security of food and other agricultural produces are themselves in insecure position as fair prices cannot be ensured, said the farmers while sharing views at the meeting on 'Food Security and Food Scarcity in Asia', held at the auditorium of CARITAS Regional office.

The current food crisis has several causes-rising demand for food and feed, biofuels, high oil prices, climate change, stagnant agricultural productivity growth-but there is increasing evidence that the crisis is being made worse by the malfunctioning of world grain markets. Given the thinness of major markets for cereals, the restrictions on grain exports imposed by dozens of countries have resulted in additional price increases. A number of countries have adopted retail price controls, creating perverse incentives for producers.

Developing countries push for markets at WTO mini-ministerial Farmers