Many of the forces driving this food crisis are beyond the reach of any summit, however high-powered: terrible harvests; rising demand for food in India and China; record energy prices. Other factors could in theory be sorted out by governments - but only the wildly optimistic would expect the UN's food conference to stop rich countries throwing subsidies at their farmers. A three-day meeting, even against the backdrop of riots and mass starvation, has no chance against the EU's decades-old common agricultural policy. So unless politicians watch out, the food summit that began yesterday in Rome will be remembered mainly for Robert Mugabe's attendance. There is, however, one measure ministers might take that could have a real and rapid impact: call a go-slow on biofuels.
British politicians and civil servants can come over rather shamefaced when the subject of using crops for transport fuel is mentioned. They know the arguments: that food has never been used for fuel like this; that the well-respected International Food Policy Research Institute and others believe biofuels are responsible for 30% of the rise in grain prices; that in many cases even the green arguments for biofuels do not stack up, which is why Friends of the Earth now says "biofuel expansion is making climate change worse". In the US, where up to a third of the maize crop is being used for ethanol production, the desire for energy security and the political benefits of handing out subsidies to midwestern farmers in an election year have pushed the biofuels bandwagon a long way.
The folk in Westminster know all this, and while some may look for silver linings in "second generation" biofuels or Brazil's use of sugar cane for fuel (sugar has not rocketed in price), many accept that the case for a moratorium is now compelling. So far, though, they will not come out with it; typical was yesterday's call from the chief secretary to the Treasury, Yvette Cooper, for merely a "close examination" of how biofuels affect food prices. In Brussels, too, they are perfecting this kind of tiptoeing retreat. While EU leaders last year vowed to get 10% of road fuels from plants by 2020, last month they began to back down. A European commission document said: "The target has never been to reach 10% biofuels at any price ... [but] under strict conditions."
It is dawning on the EU and Britain that crop fuels make the food crisis worse. They should use this summit to press the case for stopping biofuel production where there is any evidence that it is interfering with food supplies. Whether or not that bid is successful, the EU must halt its own biofuels bandwagon.