Official: Food prices a crisis until 2015

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- A global food price crisis causing riots and political strife in poor and some developed countries may continue through at least 2015, a U.S. official said.

But a key to solving the food problem is for private enterprise to partner with government, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Henrietta Fore said.

"Food production is one challenge, but many of the problems are not actually the production of food but things like transportation, storage and efficient use of resources," she said at a U.N. meeting.

On the food-production side, Hugh Grant, chairman of USAID partner Monsanto Co., told the meeting about new corn varieties that "sip water instead of gulping it," The Christian Science Monitor said.

The head of the multinational agricultural biotechnology giant also spoke of a "technology skip" that will let African countries benefit from a new generation of high-yield seeds and other agricultural technologies.

Monsanto, Deere & Co., Cargill Inc. and other companies participating in USAID partnerships are not acting on "pure philanthropy," Grant observed.

But neither is Washington simply acting out of compassion when it spends $5.5 billion a year on world hunger, he said.

USAID receives policy guidance from the U.S. Secretary of State as it advances U.S. foreign policy objectives.