The Brazilian president blamed rising oil prices for causing the current global food crisis, saying Saturday that biofuels had nothing to do with the problem, as some have suggested.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said escalating oil prices were pushing up freight costs, which in turn affected world food prices.
"Ethanol production has not contributed in any way to the food price crises," Silva told a news conference in Accra, where he was attending a three-day U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.
"It is the oil prices that have brought about high freight charges on the transportation of food," he said.
The U.N. body has criticized Brazil, however, for encouraging its farmers to grow biofuels including sugar cane, castor beans and corn, instead of traditional food crops. The U.N. body says the shift is a factor in the reduction of food production.
Silva has said such criticism is unfounded and that there is enough land for production of both food and biofuels, especially in Africa.
To solve the global food crisis, Silva said rich countries should remove their subsidies on agricultural production and give financial help to poor countries to allow them to increase their food production.
"The success that Brazil has achieved in food production can be done in Africa," he said, after a meeting with Ghana's President John Kufuor. "Forty years ago, Brazil's savannah zones were considered wastelands, but technology has changed that," and Africa can do the same.
Silva arrived in Ghana along with members of the Brazilian government's Agricultural Research Agency in Africa, which is expected to sign three agreements to transfer technology to Ghana for the production of biofuels and manioc.
Brazil's Cerrado region, a nearly 300-million-acre (120-million-hectare) arid savanna that crosses central Brazil, is a major grain producer. Its climate and soil are similar to those found in parts of Africa.
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