G20 agriculture ministers to discuss curbing volatile food prices as World Bank launches food price hedging tool

"G20 farm ministers meet in Paris on Wednesday to review steps to curb food price volatility amid doubts France will win unanimous backing for a cornerstone proposal to tighten regulation for commodity markets," Reuters reports.

Though G20 countries have agreed that rising food prices need to be contained, they have not yet reached agreement over how this should be done, the news service writes. "A source close to the French negotiations said on Tuesday that France's Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire was making back-to-back telephone calls to G20 peers to clinch a deal that also includes proposals to improve market transparency and global policy coordination and set up humanitarian food stocks" (Maitre/de La Hamaide, 6/21).

The G20 meeting "comes a day after the World Bank unveiled a new measure to provide protection from volatile food prices in developing countries," the BBC notes (6/22). The bank and "J.P. Morgan are setting aside $200 million each to help finance what World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick described as 'plain vanilla hedges,' allowing agriculture-related businesses in developing nations to lock in prices well in advance of a harvest or commodity purchase," the Washington Post reports. "Because of the way such financial products work, the money put up by the World Bank and J.P. Morgan will provide as much as $4 billion in financing to farmers and food companies, Zoellick said" (Schneider, 6/21).


http://www.kaiserhealthnews.orgThis article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Comments

The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of News Medical.
Post a new comment
Post

While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. We do not provide medical advice, if you search for medical information you must always consult a medical professional before acting on any information provided.

Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles.

Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

Read the full Terms & Conditions.

You might also like...
Updated Food Compass 2.0 improves food health ratings using new diet data