French minister urges global action on food prices

Governments must take action to regulate surging food prices and stop them being driven by speculative forces, French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier said on Monday.

"We cannot, and we must not leave food for people ... to the mercy of the rule of the market alone and to international speculation," he told BFM radio.

"I think we Europeans must ask this question within all international organisations," he said, adding there was insufficient global governance on the issue.

Later, speaking to fellow agriculture ministers from the rest of the 27-country bloc at a regular meeting in Luxembourg, Barnier announced a conference on food security when France assumed the rotating EU presidency in July, diplomats said.

"They will organise a conference in conjunction with the Slovenians at the start of the French presidency and Barnier said there could even be an EU initiative on food security," one EU diplomat said. Slovenia is EU president until June 30.

That conference would focus on Europe's need to produce more and better food, with any output increases not necessarily excluding "energy crops" destined for use in biofuels, she said.

At their next meeting scheduled for mid-May, EU farm ministers were expected to hold a full debate on food security, when perhaps more details of what Barnier has called a "European initiative on food security" might emerge, the diplomat said.

"What we may see happen at the next session is for more substantive detail to come forward," she told Reuters.

Top finance and development officials from around the globe called on Sunday for urgent action to stem rising food prices, warning social unrest would spread unless the cost of basic staples was contained.

The World Bank and Britain have said the issue of rising food prices needs to be addressed at the highest political levels.

Concerns about food costs took on new urgency as senators in Haiti ousted the prime minister after a week of food-related rioting in which at least five people died.

There have also been protests in Cameroon, Niger and Burkina Faso in Africa, and in Indonesia and the Philippines.