Ron Bonnett, CFA president

 

 

With high food prices leading to political unrest in a number of countries, the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture says governments should avoid taking measures to lower food prices.

"I think it's a misconception that high food prices in developing countries are going to drive more people into poverty," says Ron Bonnett. "In the urban centres it will drive people into poverty, but when you consider that most of the people in developing countries are working on very small farms, if you improve the income they are making, they can actually bring wealth to the country."

He says rather than subsidizing food supply, governments should focus on helping local farmers.

"I've met with people in developing countries who say the worst thing that happens is when product gets dumped into their market, undermines their market and then they can't make a living on the stuff they're growing," says Bonnett. "We have to put a focus on improving storage capacity, education and training, filling local markets, those types of things will work."

"I think there's a fear that if we help people in developing countries it will undermine our markets, but the reality is those aren't our markets anyway," he says. "And often what happens in a very poor country,if you start raising their standard of living, their diet changes and they start consuming a lot of the product that they produce themselves."

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization last week confirmed that global food prices are as high as they have ever been. The FAO’s food price index increased for the seventh straight month in January, up by 3.4 percent from December 2010.

~ Tuesday, February 8, 2011 ~