“We are at the last limit of what we could do” to avoid the food crisis, alert Thursday, May 26 on franceinfo Pascal Lamy, president of the Jacques Delors Institute, in the face of inflation caused in particular by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For the former director of the World Trade Organization, it is necessary “clearly” fear a food crisis, “It’s a storm that will last.”
franceinfo: Should we fear a food crisis?
Pascal Lamy: Yes clearly. The world is currently going through a series of simultaneous crises, a kind of storm that will last. It was likely, it’s happening, and we’re at the very end of what we could do to avoid it. It’s possible, there is enough food in the world to feed the hungry, provided we help them foot the bill, because on a number of foodstuffs prices have gone up by 30 to 40% for reasons prior to the invasion of Ukraine, but also because these two countries are major producers, particularly of cereals. And it is also necessary to favor the routings that the Russians have blocked. This crisis is upon us, but there is a way, with good national coordination, to deal with this issue.
The French government is trying to respond to inflation with the preparation of a purchasing power law to help households foot the bill, is that enough?
That’s a good answer, provided that the aid in question is targeted at the people who need it. It’s the weakest who get rusty, they’re the ones we need to help temporarily, hoping that we’ll also do what’s necessary to ensure that this price rise doesn’t last. It takes both the short term, the medium term and the long term. This type of crisis can happen again in the future, we must also think about investing more in production, innovating, without abandoning the greening of our agri-food model. This is a discussion we had with the German and French agricultural unions, and they react in different ways. The French unions tell us “we must drop greening, we must produce more”, when the Germans answer “we are committed to a path of greening, we can move a little but we must not let go”. There is one point on which everyone is more or less in agreement: we need to disconnect the production that goes to biofuels a little to reconnect it to food.
Will Europe cope?
I believe it is moving in that direction. It is the European Commission that buys American gas to negotiate the prices correctly. If Europe buys oil together, like it buys gas or vaccines, then I think it demonstrates its usefulness.