It is true that the participants failed to deal with what some see as the immediate critical issue, i.e. reining back production of bio-fuels. Unquestionably the explosion in the USA in ethanol production from corn has contributed to the rise in its price. The floods in Iowa, heart of the US Corn Belt, are already causing corn futures to rise. If the price of petroleum fuels continues to escalate we may well see oil importing developing countries feel obliged to begin production. Given the surge in investment in new plants in the US it was unrealistic to expect agreement at this early stage. As a way of papering over differences the summit called for ‘in-depth studies’. Beyond studies, a first step might be agreement to reduce subsidization of bio-fuels.

To expect the Rome summit to reach concrete plans of action is to misunderstand the function of this kind of global conference. Its importance lay in the fact that its purpose was to bring home to national leaders two things, first that feeding the world population in the next decades is as big a challenge as sufficiently constraining global green house gas emissions; and secondly that the two issues are connected.

Over the last thirty years investment in agriculture in developing countries has fallen away including in agricultural research. Official development assistance to the agricultural sector fell from about 18 per cent of total aid to around 3.5 per cent in 2004. Other sectors became more fashionable such as ‘security’, governance and democratization. Donors and recipients lost sight of the reality that the foundation of economic development in poor countries remains a sustained rise in agricultural productivity. For most of the last thirty years food has been cheap and stocks high. Surpluses in developed countries meant that food aid was abundant. The consequence for some food deficit poor countries, especially in Africa, was a preferential shift in demand for imported wheat and rice in place of traditional staples.

With food stocks falling food aid is a diminishing resource. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reports food aid deliveries in 2007 fell by 15 per cent to 5.9 million tons, their lowest level since records began in 1961. As a consequence it has become difficult even to supply sufficient food to the victims of natural disasters and those displaced by armed conflict. Quite correctly the Rome meeting did not emphasise food aid as such though it did refer to the need for the relevant UN agencies to be assured of the ‘resources’, i.e. cash or food aid, to ‘enhance safety net programs through ‘local or regional’ purchase of food’.

Some of the same adverse effects of climate change on agricultural output that we worry about in Australia are beginning to be evident also in much of Africa and Asia. Appropriately the Summit saw it as ‘essential to address the fundamental question of how to increase the resilience of present food production systems to challenges posed by climate change’. To that end it called for a ‘decisive step up in science and technology for food and agriculture’ and for a reduction in ‘trade barriers and market distorting policies’.

On the whole the international community has a poor record in taking action to implement agreed general principles but their articulation is an essential first step. Meeting the climate change challenge is daunting enough. At the same time food production must be increased enormously in the next decades not just to keep people alive but also to enable the billion or more expected to move out of poverty to enjoy more varied diets.

Making real progress on the food and climate fronts will require strong, disinterested leadership that ideally should come from the UN Secretary General. Ban ki-moon’s attendance and involvement at the Rome (and Bali) Summits may signal that he seeks to do so beyond issues of peace and security which have preoccupied his predecessors.

James Ingram is a career Australian diplomat and international civil servant. He served as Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme from 1982 – 92, with the personal rank of Under Secretary General.