Citing the “realities of demography, changing diets, energy prices and biofuels, and climate changes,” World Bank president Robert Zoellick earlier today called for “a New Deal for Global Food Policy.”  In a speech delivered this morning in Washington, Zoellick said:

As financial markets have tumbled, food prices have soared.   Since 2005, the prices of staples have jumped 80 percent.  Last month, the real price of rice hit a 19-year high; the real price of wheat rose to a 28-year high and almost twice the average price of the last 25 years.

The good news for some farmers adds a crushing load to the most vulnerable – children, as young as four or five, forced to flee the safety of their rural communities to fight for food in teeming cities; food riots threatening societal breakdown; mothers deprived of nutrition for healthy babies.   The World Bank Group estimates that 33 countries around the world face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices.  For these countries, where food comprises from half to three quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival.

Zoellick said that the New Deal should:

…. focus not only on hunger and malnutrition, access to food and its supply, but also the interconnections with energy, yields, climate change, investment, the marginalization of women and others, and economic resiliency and growth.   Food policy needs to gain the attention of the highest political levels, because no one country or group can meet these interconnected challenges.