by TRACY MOORE

IT WOULD TAKE another $1.2 to $1.6 billion to address the high food prices and food insecurity.

This, said Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) sub-regional representative Dr Barbara Graham, would be in addition to its contribution of $17 million to developing countries.

She was addressing last Wednesday's National Forum On Agriculture – Food Sovereignty, Security And Nutrition: Agriculture Our Future at Sherbourne Conference Centre, Two Mile Hill, St Michael.

"FAO's work . . . as well as the international food price research institute, foresee that food prices, over the next ten years, would be higher than [those in] the last ten years.

"This sustained high price of food will apply to all basic food commodities and across all major crops.

"Barbados, like most Caribbean countries, . . . must take stock of these new and conflicting challenges in global food markets," she said.

She lauded the Ministry of Agriculture for hosting the conference stating that it was "the right thing to do".

Graham said that globally the food price index rose by nine per cent in 2006 and 23 per cent in 2007, but in the last 12 months, ending in March, it reached 30 per cent.

"Total food import costs for developing countries have risen rapidly by 30 per cent in 2005 to 2006 and 33 per cent in 2006 to 2007 for a total of $254 billion. And this is not expected to change over the short period," she said.

The FAO, she said would continue to provide technical support and guidance nationally, while regionally, a paper has been prepared to give guidance "to our intervention and interaction within the countries . . . with attention to production, marketing and special measures to embrace the most vulnerable to food security".

Internationally, she added that the FAO would continue to address food insecurity with a series of stakeholder consultations on climate change and bio-diversity, to be followed by a conference at its headquarters in Rome between June 3 and June 5.