THE United Nations farm fund head has warned of a global food crisis and said China was an example of how to fight poverty.

Alvaro Lario, head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, said on Wednesday that climate change, a growing global population and volatile food and energy prices may push millions more vulnerable people into extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Lario warned that the ongoing food crisis is likely to continue this year.

Mr Lario said: “For 2023, we’re not expecting a better situation than for 2022. Some of the shortcomings in the global supply chains that we have seen in 2022 will have an impact in 2023.”

“We are working with many of our partners in seeing how to also unlock the fertiliser situation. However, for 2023, given the planting season in 2022, there will not be much good news,” he said.

Mr Lario said that although action is being taken to address the food crisis, it is barely enough and more investments will be needed.

“We’re seeing many of the smallholders suffer because of the cost-of-living crisis, with limited access to food and fertilisers. Unfortunately, the planting season has been lost,” he said.

“However, there are several ongoing initiatives on how to address the shortcomings of food systems. Some of them relate to taxation, subsidies, distribution and production. We’re looking into ways to increase in a massive way the investments that go into food systems,” he said.

According to the fund, three-quarters of the poorest people in the world live in the rural areas of developing countries. Most of them depend on agriculture for their livelihood.

Mr Lario also said that China could serve as an example of how to eradicate absolute poverty. As both a borrowing and donor country, China’s role has been “fundamental,” the fund’s chief said.

“Given what China has experienced over the last decades, they are really a good example of how to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. 

“We still work with China on rural poverty, and they have been a fundamental actor for us.”

In 2021, China announced a “complete victory” in lifting almost 100 million people out of absolute poverty.