The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
The House will be aware that on 22 and 23 June, France as presidency of the G20, convened the first ever meeting at G20 level of Agriculture Ministers, to consider an action plan on food price volatility and agriculture.
The action plan which we agreed recognises that market fundamentals—supply and demand—are the key causes of price volatility in wheat, corn, maize and soya and that both increasing production sustainably and reducing shocks to supply such as those caused when policymakers respond to poor quality information are the means to ensure a healthier relationship of supply to rising demand.
We emphasised the need to trade openly and remove distorting measures, and that export bans in particular should not impede calls for humanitarian aid.
We are taking steps to improve market information and transparency, by establishing an agricultural market information system (AMIS) in order to encourage major players on the agri-food markets to share data, to enhance existing information systems, to promote greater shared understanding of food price developments, and further policy dialogue and co-operation. G20 countries committed to disclose reliable, quality, accurate and timely data for this initiative.
We also agreed to establish a senior officials’ group to act as a “Rapid Response Forum”, to share views and plans for immediate actions in order to prevent or mitigate world food price crises. Taken together with the improvement in market information which we anticipate that AMIS will bring, this improved co-ordination should reduce the extent to which G20 members are themselves the source of avoidable supply shocks in future, as happens for example when panic buying takes place or export restrictions are imposed.
G20 Ministers committed themselves to implementing a broad scope of actions to boost agricultural growth, including a strengthening of agricultural research and innovation. In particular, we launched an international research initiative for wheat improvement to co-ordinate our efforts on this major crop for food security.
We recognised the need for further analysis of the relationships between biofuels production and food availability and price volatility, as well as potential policy responses.
Finally, we welcomed and endorsed the importance of the work of the G20’s development working group—on risk management and the potential use of pre-deployed emergency food stocks—and that of G20 Finance Ministers on financial regulation.