Pope Benedict XVI delivers a speech during the opening session of a World Summit on Food Security organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) at its headquarters, in Rome, yesterday. The summit is bringing together more than 60 heads of states and government.

ROME: The UN food agency opened a summit here yesterday focusing on the plight of more than one billion people suffering from hunger amid criticism over the absence of leaders from the world’s wealthiest nations.

“Food is a basic right,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the start of the meeting at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

“The food crisis of today is a wakeup call for tomorrow. By 2050 our planet may be the home of 9.1 billion people by 2050 we know we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredicatable,” he said.

“We must make significant changes to feed ourselves, and most especially to safeguard the poorest and most vulnerable,” Ban said.

Pope Benedict XVI was to be among the inaugural speakers at the International Summit of Food Security, which was formally opened by Renato Schifano, Italy’s Speaker of parliament, on behalf of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the only leader from the Group of Eight industrialised countries who attended the “Hunger Summit” yesterday.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his controversial Zimababwean counterpart Robert Mugabe were among the some 60 heads of state and govermment participants.

“Sixty leaders are coming from around the world to this important UN summit, but where are the leaders from all the G8 countries?” asked international anti-poverty agency ActionAid.

“This doesn’t signal they are serious about finding global solutions to hunger,” said Francisco Sarmento, ActionAid’s food rights coordinator.

Meanwhile, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi also warned against the rise of “new feudal lords” in Africa where foreign companies are acquiring vast tracts of farmland.

“In Africa, foreign investors buy farmland, transforming themselves into new feudal lords against whom we must fight,” Gaddafi said at a UN summit on food security in Rome.

Gaddafi added that Africa’s most serious problem is the “monopolisation of seeds by companies that I would describe as diabolical.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, hosting the three-day summit, “must dismantle this monopoly in all countries,” he said. Around 60 heads of state and government, most from Africa, Asia and Latin America, are taking part in the three-day summit with the conspicuous absence of the leaders of wealthy nations.

Pope Benedict XVI warned against the “greed” of speculators in cereals markets as the UN summit on food security opened in Rome. The pope urged opposition to “greed which causes speculation to rear its head even in the marketing of cereals, as if food were to be treated just like any other commodity.”

Benedict also criticised “those forms of aid that do grave damage to the agricultural sector, those approaches to food production that are geared solely towards consumption and lack a wider perspective.”

The pope, speaking at the opening session of a summit that has drawn widespread criticism for the absence of key leaders from wealthy nations, also warned against resignation or indifference towards the problem of world hunger.

He said there was a “tendency to view hunger as structural, an integral part of the socio-political situation of the weakest countries, a matter of resigned regret, if not downright indifference.”

The pontiff stressed: “It is not so, and it must never be so.”

He said: “The weakness of current mechanisms for food security and the need to re-examine them are confirmed... by the mere fact that this summit has been convoked. Even though the poorest countries are more fully integrated into the world economy than in the past, movements in international markets make them more vulnerable.”

Last week the newspaper of the Italian Catholic Church warned that the summit may “flop” unless it produces concrete commitments. “FAO Summit Risks Flop—Much Ado About Nothing?” asked Avvenire’s front-page headline.

To help create a sense of urgency ahead of the summit, FAO chief Jacques Diouf went on a 24-hour fast on Saturday, and Ban followed suit on Sunday.

Accepting an award from the anti-poverty group ActionAid for his efforts to combat hunger, Lula said there had to be “political will” and criticised the apparent indifference of the international community. ”Many seem to have lost the capacity for indignation over such suffering,” he said.

The international peasants’ organisation Via Campesina for its part accused the FAO of favouring multi-national companies in the fight against hunger.

”The summit must make radical decisions to change the system of production. They need to give means to small farmers and not to big multi-nationals,” said general coordinator Henry Saragih outside the FAO headquarters.

Non-governmental organisations are holding a parallel forum with the slogan “People’s Food Sovereignty Now!” to be attended by Diouf and Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno.