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Before the G-8 Summit

Merkel Warns Food Crisis Could 'Destabilize Nations'

The G-8 summit in Japan, which opens Monday, faces a number of alarming problems, and Germany's chancellor has sent a letter to other leaders of the world's industrialized nations arguing that the sudden rise in the price of food needs urgent attention.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has set a tone ahead of this week's G-8 summit in Japan by sending a starkly-worded warning to her colleagues about the consequences of rising food prices. The crisis, she wrote in a six-page letter to other G-8 leaders last Monday, might "endanger democracy, destabilize nations and lead to international security problems."

Merkel organized a working group last April to analyze the recent rise in world food prices and to recommend solutions. Her government experts have found that "speculative trading in futures markets … have a significant influence on the level and volatility of staple food prices." To answer the "dramatic nature" of the crisis, the commission recommends "heightened agricultural productivity" in developing nations, a "quick supply of seeds, fertilizer and farm equipment to selected regions" as well as "the instant abolition of export restrictions."

These measures should guarantee that financial and food help will reach the people most affected by the crisis, according to the commission.

The chancellor also mentioned that Germany has made available $750 million (€477 million) to ease the food shortage in poor nations. Her commission found that 30 of the world's poorest countries needed about $20 billion to import needed food. At the G-8 meeting in Toyako, on the island of Hokkaido, Merkel wants to organize a UN task force to address the problem, and help plan the way ahead.

Over the weekend Merkel also noted in a guest commentary in the German paper Tagesspiegel am Sonntag that the recent spike in oil prices would be a topic at the G-8 summit.

"It's important to increase transparency in international oil markets," she wrote, in order to "hamper speculation, which is responsible for a perceptible portion of the price rise."

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