Food prices hike has captured the attention of the entire international community, and food issue not only concerns the economy and people's well-being of each country but also bears on the development and security of the whole world, said Chinese President Hu Jintao here Wednesday.
Addressing an outreach session of the Group of Eight (G8) in the northern Japanese resort, Hu estimated that there are now more than 800 million people living under the threat of starvation, and the surging food prices will swell the figure, which is not conducive to building a world of enduring peace and common prosperity.
On the cause of the prices hike, Hu said it is the combined "result of many factors."
"To blame the development of developing countries or a certain policy of a certain country for the increase in world food demand does not tally with the fact, nor is it a constructive attitude to solve the problem," he said.
"The key is to embrace the spirit of common development, actively and effectively coordinate policies and actions and make concerted efforts to safeguard world food security," he suggested.
He said the pressing task now is "to scale up assistance, support the United Nations in playing its coordinating role, work to stabilize food prices and help the developing countries to tide over the difficulties as quickly as possible."
"At the same time, the international community should give priority to developing agriculture and formulate a long-term international food cooperation strategy," he said.
The Chinese leader made a four-point suggestion on solving the food crisis:
--Attach importance to food production. All countries should recognize the fundamental importance of grain production from a strategic perspective, raise grain production through science and technology and increase grain reserves. Major grain producing countries should make more efforts. The developing countries should keep improving their production capacities and the developed countries should provide necessary financial and technical support.
-- Improve the trading environment. It is necessary to create a favorable international trading environment and establish a fair and equitable international trade order for agricultural products. All countries, the developed countries in particular, should display greater sincerity in the Doha agricultural negotiations, remove trade barriers, demonstrate flexibility over such issues as the reduction of agricultural subsidies, give full consideration to the special concerns of the developing members, and ensure duty-free and quota-free market access treatment to the least developed countries.
-- Enhance macro coordination. Governments of all countries should strengthen oversight of their agricultural product markets, facilitate policy coordination, contain excessive speculations and work to stabilize food prices. It is important to set up a UN-led international cooperation mechanism and work to establish a global food security safeguard system that integrate early warning, monitoring and supervision, macro regulation and emergency relief.
-- Create favorable conditions. All countries should recognize the cross-sectoral nature of the food issue and adopt a multi-pronged approach to address the issue by taking measures in finance, trade, assistance, the environment, intellectual property rights, technology transfer and other areas, thus creating a favorable environment for safeguarding food security. It is necessary to take into full account the issue of food security in tackling the challenges in energy, climate change and other fields. It is ill-advised to do one thing at the expense of the other.
Hu said China attaches great importance to agriculture and especially the food issue, which pursues a food security policy of relying on domestic supply, ensuring basic self-sufficiency and striking a balance through appropriate import and export.
China feeds about 20 percent of the world's population with around 9 percent of the world's arable land, which is a major contribution to global food security, said the president.
For nearly ten years, China has met over 95 percent of its food demand on its own and exported a net amount of 8 million tons of staple grains annually such as wheat, rice and corn, and China's current average agricultural tariff is only a quarter of the world's average, Hu said.
China takes an active part in international cooperation in the field of food and agriculture and provides foreign assistance according to its ability, he said.
The Chinese head of state went on to say that since 2003, China has provided nearly 300,000 tons of food assistance, built 14 integrated agricultural projects, established more than 20 demonstration centers of agricultural technologies overseas, trained over 4,000 agriculture-related managerial and technical staff for other developing countries.
China is ready to share more experience of agricultural development with other developing countries within the framework of South-South cooperation and provide various kinds of assistance in its power, said Hu.
The outreach session of the G8 summit was convened at the Windsor Hotel and attended by leaders of the G8, which comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, and leaders from five major developing nations -- China, Brazil, India, South Africa and Mexico.