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The United Nations’ food agency held a special meeting to discuss the rise in food prices worldwide. Anchor Marco Werman asks Alex Evans, who’s studied the causes of food price fluctuations, to explain the upward trend.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Food production experts from around the globe gathered in Rome today for a special meeting. It was hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The meeting was called to discuss a rise in food prices worldwide. Alex Evans is author of Rising Food Prices: Drivers and Implications for Development which he wrote a few years ago for the London-based think tank Chatham House. Alex, these experts in Rome are discussing some of the causes for rising food prices around the globe. What are they telling the UN is at fault?

ALEX EVANS:  I think that what’s at fault with the current spike in food prices is, it’s mainly limited to wheat, and it’s to do with a spate of bad weather in a few countries, especially Russia. And then more recently the fact that the Russians have introduced export restrictions on wheat and that spooked the market a little bit and pushed prices up.

WERMAN:  So, some experts will hear that pension and hedge funds are partly to blame for the spike in food prices. Maybe you can connect the dots for us between hedge fund managers and, say, wheat prices in Mozambique?

EVANS: I think there is a lot of concern out there about whether speculators are driving food prices, but I think the balance of evidence suggests that although they can be a factor at the margins, amplifying what’s already there to some extant. They can’t change the supply and demand fundamentals. For those, what we need to be looking at is rising demand for food both from changing diet patterns and from [SOUNDS LIKE] biofuels. And also just increasing tightness on the supply side, whether that’s from water scarcity, climate change and extreme weather events, energy considerations, and so on.

WERMAN: So you don’t give too much credence to the idea that speculators are fiddling around with food prices and making some people around the world suffer?

EVANS: It is a factor, but I think it’s not the main factor.

WERMAN: So, what will the UN be able to do about all the factors in terms of food prices that are rising? I mean national governments seem to be able to exert little control over investors and banks that are far away. What can the UN do about this?

EVANS: We need some [INDISCERNIBLE] breaks to make the system a little bit more robust in the face of supply pressures. One way of doing that is by building up reserves of food, whether those are national or regional. And another thing we could be doing is agreeing rules against export restrictions as part of the World Trade Organization.

WERMAN: One of the millennium development goals is to half the hunger in the world by 2015. I’m just wondering with all the discussion of the MDGs in New York this week at the general assembly, why this meeting’s happening in Rome away from the public eye?

EVANS: Well, I think the meeting happening in Rome is more of an expert-level meeting. It’s not a head-of-government meeting like the Millennium Development Goal Summit was in New York. So this if more of a stock-taking exercise than an attempt to take decisions. Those will be returned to next month at the Committee on Food Security meeting in Rome. And I hope that they’re policy makers will start to put in place the long term agenda we need for food security. We are playing catch up on these issues and we don’t have that much time left to keep messing around.

WERMAN:  Are you confident that the system can be tweaked so that another food crisis won’t be catastrophic for millions of poor people around the world?

EVANS: I think we do know by and large what to do. Part of it is about fixing the trade system. But, of course, another huge part of it is about changing the way we do agriculture. We have to produce a lot more food to meet a rising population and a population that’s eating more meat and dairy products, too. But we also need to look at how people access food. I mean, of course, today we produce enough food to feed the world, but there’s still nearly a billion people who are undernourished.

WERMAN: Alex Evans, a fellow at New York University. Thanks very much for speaking with us.

EVANS: Thanks for having me on.

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