Envoy urges joint efforts on food security

China's top envoy to the United Nations on Thursday urged the international community to oppose "actions that affect global food security and cooperation", such as disrupting market orders and suppressing foreign companies.

"We must firmly oppose actions that affect global food security and international cooperation, such as unilateral sanctions, decoupling and severing supply chains, disrupting market order and suppressing enterprises from other countries," Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the UN, said at a UN Security Council open debate on famine and conflict-induced global food insecurity.

"China urges relevant countries to immediately stop such practices, which lack legal foundations and also contradict fairness and justice."

Without common security in the world, it is difficult to achieve sustainable food security, Zhang said.

"We should uphold the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, stay committed to settling disputes through peaceful means and promoting dialogue, and respond to various challenges, including food insecurity in the spirit of unity and mutual benefit," the ambassador said.

Zhang called on the international community to address the issue of food insecurity within the framework of global macroeconomic policy coordination and sustainable development.

He further emphasized that developed countries "should cancel unreasonable agricultural subsidies and adopt reasonable monetary policies, (and) reduce the impact of factors, including imported inflation and exchange rate fluctuations on food security in developing countries".

The most severely affected victims of the food crisis are all, without exception, developing countries.

Food insecurity is "essentially the result of insufficient and unbalanced development worldwide and a concrete manifestation of the development gap between the North and the South", he said.

"It is closely related to the longstanding, unjust and unreasonable food production and trade system and the global governance system as a whole," he added.

Impact on Europe

Meanwhile, new data published by the European Commission's Eurostat office has shown that almost 1 in 10 people in the European Union were unable to afford a meal containing meat, fish, or a vegetarian equivalent every second day last year, up one percentage point on figures from the year before.

The conflict in Ukraine, one of Europe's biggest food producers, has had a major impact on supply chains and prices across the EU, with the cost of food and nonalcoholic beverages rising on an average of 11.9 percent last year, a trend that has continued into the first quarter of this year.

Altogether, 8.3 percent of people in the EU could not afford a meal with meat, fish, or a vegetarian alternative every second day. Overall, 19.7 percent were unable to afford a proper meal, more than two percentage points higher than in 2021.

Romania (22.1 percent), Bulgaria (21.6 percent) and Slovakia (15.8 percent) were the countries worst affected, while the problem was the least widespread in Ireland (1.4 percent), Cyprus (1.5 percent) and Luxembourg (1.8 percent).

Rising costs of agricultural goods such as animal feed and fertilizers have also been contributory factors, with extreme weather conditions only making the situation worse.