Brussels, 04/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - The G20 summit of heads of state and/or government, held in Cannes on Thursday 3 and Friday 4 November, underlined the need to “address commodity price volatility and promote agriculture”.
Nicolas Sarkozy, who presided over the work of the G20, said an increase in production is essential to feed the world's population. He underlined the need for transparency on agricultural markets. He said they were successful in achieving regulation of commodities derivatives markets. There is an agreement for regulating these markets, Sarkozy said, in order to combat market abuse and above all allow supervisors to set limits to prevent a single player from manipulating prices through disproportionate buying and selling. Other results of the G20 relate to emergency humanitarian stocks and a ban on export restrictions for food programme purchases. Sarkozy pointed out that this is the first time the G20 has discussed agriculture and the fight against commodity price volatility.
The G20 leaders also took a stance to improve the regulation and supervision of commodity derivatives markets. “We agree that market regulators should be granted effective intervention powers to prevent market abuses”, a G20 press release states. In particular, market regulators should, in addition to other powers of intervention, use formal position management powers, “including the power to set ex-ante position limits, as appropriate”.
G20 countries explain that promoting agricultural production is key to feeding the world's population. To this end, they say, “we decide to act in the framework of the Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture agreed by our ministers of agriculture in June 2011”. In particular, the G20 decide to invest in and support research and development of agriculture productivity. They say they have “launched the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) to reinforce transparency on agricultural products' markets”.
In order to improve food security, the G20 press release states: “We commit to develop appropriate risk-management instruments and humanitarian emergency tools”. G20 countries also decide that “food purchased for non-commercial humanitarian purposes by the World Food Programme will not be subject to export restrictions or extraordinary taxes”. They “welcome the creation of a Rapid Response Forum, to improve the international community's capacity to coordinate policies and develop common responses in time of market crises”.
Furthermore, at the G20 summit in Cannes, Bruno Le Maire, France's Minister for Agriculture, and Jacques Diouf, Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), welcomed the publication by AMIS of its first report on the state of agricultural markets. The report (http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituaiton/wfs-home ) presents the situation and the prospects of the markets for wheat, maize, rice and soya. (LC/transl.jl)