Reform needed in U.S. agricultural trade policy: panel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As soaring food prices drive millions into poverty worldwide, the United States must work to keep borders open to farm trade so adequate food supplies can continue flowing to poor countries, panelists said Monday at a food policy conference.

Robbin Johnson, a teaching fellow for the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, said the U.S. agricultural trade policy must be reshaped to fit a global food system transformed by globalization.

Johnson said past policy decisions have brought "high import barriers and preferences for local production over imports, so we depend less on markets as a result," he said.

"In the last year, more than 40 countries have imposed some form of price or export control in order to protect their own supplies at the expense of others," Robbins said.

Robbins advocates an open global food system built on supply insurance, market pricing and financial assistance.

Supply insurance would give importers "an enforceable guarantee against export controls," and market pricing would entail "dismantling all price-distorting policies," including those in U.S. and foreign farm programs, import barriers and other border measures, Robbins said.

High food prices are not likely to ease any time soon, Joseph Glauber, chief economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told the conference by the Consumer Federation of America and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

"Food price inflation will remain with us -- moderate with about a percent drop next year, but still higher than what we saw over the last 15 years," Glauber said.

Food prices jumped 5 to 6 percent this year, and the USDA projects next year to see a 4 to 5 percent increase in prices.

Glauber said normal yield growth is expected to increase supplies over the long run, which will bring down prices, but high costs will persist for now.

In the past year, some 100 million people around the world have been driven into poverty because of high food prices, Gawain Kripke, director at Oxfam America, said.

As economic growth in developing nations, such as China and India, has spurred demand for food and energy, driving up prices.

"The global markets are going to have to adjust to this increased demand, and make sure that the most vulnerable and the poorest are taken care of because while there is dramatic growth in some areas of the world, there has been absolute stagnation in other parts," Kripke said.

(Reporting by Jasmin Melvin; Editing by Marguerita Choy)