WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  WT/L/725 
5 June 2008 
 (08-2652) 
 Original:   English/ 
                 French/                  Spanish 
 
   
FAO HIGH LEVEL CONFERENCE 
ON WORLD FOOD SECURITY 
Rome, 3 June 2008 
 
Statement delivered by H. E. Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt
 
  
 The following communication, dated 4 June 2008, is being circulated at the request of the 
Delegation of Egypt.  
_______________ 
 
 
 This Conference is being held while the world is experiencing difficult times, facing acute 
economic crisis, and subdued by sweeping inflationa ry waves and unprecedented price hikes of food, 
energy and commodities.   The current crisis poses several challenges that  are interrelated in their economic, social and 
environmental dimensions, leading to serious repe rcussions on economic growth rates and standards 
of living in developed and developing countries alike. 
  Despite the intertwinement in the dimensions  of this crisis and its causes, we have to 
acknowledge that its adverse repercussions, in large part, are rather borne by developing nations and 
African countries in particular. 
 
 The issue of food security is the most serious aspect of this crisis and is badly affected by its negative impacts.  Moreover, efforts made by de veloping countries towards achieving the Millennium 
Development Goals (MDGs) will be undermined.  We have to recall that the reduction of poverty and 
hunger was the first among the MDGs that we adopted eight years ago. 
 
 Today, we are meeting at this important conference and the issue of food security is facing a formidable challenge posed by the steady rises in the prices of commodities.  Today, grain stocks 
have been drawn down to its lowest levels since the seventies.  
 The FAO had called for increasing the grain stocks  from 14 percent to 19 percent of the total 
world production.  While we realize the ingenuity of  this proposal in the long run, its short-term 
repercussions are likely to exacerbate the current cr isis and engender further tensions on the demand 
side, thus additionally scaling up prices.   We are meeting today while this crisis is continuing to cause more economic bottlenecks and 
social tensions in many of the world's developi ng countries, in addition to its repercussions on FAO WT/L/725 
Page 2  
 
  activities, the World Food Program (WFP) and the agriculture negotiations within the World Trade 
Organization (WTO) Doha Round.   Our visions regarding the causes of the current crisis and the means to overcome it may differ, 
but what brings us together is the conviction that we are facing a global phenomenon that requires 
global action to address it and contain its negative implications. 
  We would like to welcome the establishment of the food crisis task force set up by the UN Secretary-General and look forward to the conclusi on of a strategy that maps future directions to 
meet the global challenges posed by the food crisis .  However, the matter – as we see it – requires 
widening the scope of our dialogue beyond in-house and off-shore bounds of the UN, to include the 
Bretton Woods Institutions, the WTO and the Regi onal Organizations both in the developed and 
developing countries.   The world is facing a common challenge.  We are witnessing the intersection of issues of food 
security, energy security, water as well as their conn ections with climate change and bioenergy, with 
all the complexities and options involved.   This conference is not a forum for exchanging  accusations between developing and developed 
countries, nor it is one for laying the blame for the curre nt crisis on one side or the other;  but rather it 
is an opportunity for dialogue a nd formulation of a global partnership that addresses this common 
challenge. 
  I am calling today for a global partnership, one that deals with the causes and repercussions of 
the current crisis to achieve the interests of deve loping and developed countri es.  A global partnership 
that would surpass the narrow national scope of politi es, orientations and interests, dealing with the 
issue of food security within the more comprehens ive humanitarian scope and its association with the 
inalienable human right to food a nd life.  A global partnership that witnesses concerted efforts on the 
national, regional, and internationa l levels, one that contains the current crisis and curtails the 
ceaseless rise in food prices.   I am renewing my call for an urgent internati onal dialogue that I called for in my statement 
before the World Economic Forum, held in Sharm El  Sheikh last month.  A dialogue by which food 
and energy exporters and importe rs from developed and developing countries huddle to lay out an 
international strategy for the short, medium and l ong-term handling of the current crisis.  A dialogue 
that proposes solutions to the needs of world popula tion with regard to food as well as traditional and 
clean energy supplies;  solutions that we all agree on and commit to. 
 
 An international dialogue based on common inte rests and mutual dependence, one that warns 
of the speculation risks pertinent to agricultural co mmodity prices, one that reinforces the efforts to 
promote the development of the agriculture sector in  fields of land reclamation, boosting productivity, 
and encourages the infrastructure needed for transporting and stockpiling crops.  A dialogue that 
bolsters and energizes scientific research in the fiel d of fertilizers and new seed varieties, one that 
scrutinizes the effects of genetically modified seed s on sanitary and phyto-sanitary, human, as well as 
animal health.   It is a dialogue that confronts climate cha nge challenges seriously and effectively in its 
relationship with prevailing cons umption and production patterns, and their grave repercussions on 
drought and land desertification, and their di rect consequences on the world's food security. 
  It is a dialogue that sets an internationa l code of conduct that reconsiders the current 
expansion in the production of biofuel as an alternat ive source of traditional energy.  An international 
code that sets standards for the responsible utiliza tion of agricultural crops, as food for human beings,  WT/L/725 
 Page 3 
 
 
  not as fuel for engines;  a code that reassesses the ac tual social and environmental costs of biofuel, 
and restricts its production to agricultural wast e and designated crops such as "Jatropha", while 
steering clear of humankind's food.  An urgent a nd serious dialogue that reconsiders the current 
subsidization offered to ethanol and bio-diesel producers, and subjects it to rules of world trade, a subsidization that is creating hazardous distortion to  the present international system of agriculture 
trade. 
  Egypt is facing the repercussions of the current  crisis, thanks to an economy strengthened by 
steps of reform and a wide-based network of social security.  
 While reviewing the dimensions of this cris is and calling for an international dialogue and 
global partnership to contain and ge t over it, I am not prompted by points of departure relevant to 
Egypt's sufferings, as we are all partners – at one level or another – in these sufferings.  My 
motivation stems from the conviction that we are all in the same trench, we all live in the same world, 
face the same challenges and aspire to a better futu re for our countries and peoples, and for a better 
world with prosperity for all. 
 
__________