Real tasks for food summit

Thomas Malthus, the 18th-century cleric, must be chuckling in his grave. As world leaders gather in Rome for the UN summit on hunger, his grim prediction that humanity faced a future of rising food prices and mounting malnutrition has finally arrived at the center of the international agenda. Unfortunately, the summit itself has all the hallmarks of a sideshow to the real crisis in malnutrition.

Maize and rice have almost doubled in price over the past year. In Britain, higher food prices cause pain on the high street. For the roughly 1 billion people living on less than $1 a day, many of whom spend 80 percent or more of their income on food, they threaten malnutrition and ill-health. The impact of rising food prices on vulnerable populations is real.

In countries such as Bangladesh, Haiti, Nigeria and Ghana it is already driving up poverty levels. But the panic is diverting attention from some other unpalatable truths.