Bring agriculture in the centre to tackle food crisis: ECOSOC

With soaring food prices and shortage of basic staples looming on world's poor, its time to bring agriculture in the "centre of development agenda", employ the best available agri-technologies and create "level playing field" for farmers of developing countries, a UN body special meeting said.

"The time to act is now. It is my view that agriculture has to be put back in the centre of the development agenda," President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Lo Mrors told a special meeting stressing the need for both immediate action to meet humanitarian needs and for longer-term increased agricultural production.

"We need to concentrate efforts on minimizing greenhouse emissions, deforestation and global warming, while finding ways to promote investments in agriculture", the ECOSOC President said.

Calling upon the member states to muster political will and resources to ensure a lasting solution, Mrors said, "...(we've to) maximize the use of agro-science and technology, with the aim of reducing the costs of production and substantially increasing the productivity and output of every hectare of arable land."