Cereal offenders: how the G8 has contributed to the global food crisis, and what they can do to stop it

Three years after the G8 pledged to ‘make poverty history’, the current global food crisis has left close to a quarter of the world’s population lacking basic food security. In this policy brief, Actionaid calls on G8 leaders to take bold steps in Hokkaido to prevent world hunger spiralling further out of control.

The briefing focuses on recommended steps regarding three main policy areas: biofuels, climate change and agricultural policy. Specific recommendations include:

On biofuels:

• the USA should immediately remove all subsidies for corn ethanol production and revoke the targets for increased use of biofuels that are driving the current increase in corn and other biofuels feedstock prices
• the EU should remove subsidies and targets that encourage the production of biofuels from food crops, such as beetroot and canola
• G8 leaders should support a five year moratorium on the diversion of arable land into biofuel mono-cropping.
  

On climate change:

• G8 countries should confine future increases in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius by agreeing binding and time bound targets to reduce their own emission levels
• the United States as the single largest polluter, must commit to reduce its emissions by at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
• G8 countries should provide at least US $55bn of the estimated US $67bn annual cost of helping developing countries cope with climate change
  

On agriculture:

• G8 countries must stop imposing trade rules and economic policy conditions that make it difficult for developing country governments to support smallholder farmers and agriculture. They should support developing countries’ proposals for tariff protections to allow them to shield key agricultural goods from the vagaries of international prices
• G8 countries should agree a timetable for scaling up G8 aid to agriculture by 2012
• G8 countries should investment more in public agricultural research and development, and should promote low-input, organic farming methods, rather than genetically modified organisms (GMOs).