Today's opening plenary session featured comments by Per Pinstrup-Andersen from Cornell University, Francesco Branca of WHO and David Nabarro of the UN. Each speaker underscored the negative impacts of recent food price increases and overall volatility in agricultural markets on food security and nutrition, particularly among the poorest citizens in developing countries. According to Dr. Pinstrup-Andersen, this problem has been exacerbated by extreme weather events related to global climate change as well as by poorly informed expectations by speculators, traders and farmers and inadequate policy responses by governments. Effective policy interventions, meanwhile, will entail a clear understanding of the problem we are seeking to address- namely, that we must understand that the world is not running out of food yet citizens of developing countries continue face problems of access to adequate amounts of nutritious foods. read more